I loved the X-Men comics when I was a kid, but I haven’t read one in 15 or so years, and even then I was more into the cartoon and the characters themselves rather than the comics’ storylines. After seeing all three movies, my interest in the mutants is sparked again, but with all the alternate timelines and retroactive rewriting of past storylines, it’s amazingly hard to catch up on the “canon.” From what I’ve gathered in the threads about the movies here, there’s something called the Apocolypse series which may or may not have sucked. And Wolverine aparently has bone claws (I thought they were Adamantium? (sp?)). What’s the most current X-Men comic series? Is there some kind of giant compilation book I can read front to back to catch up on what’s gone on since day one?
There are series’ of trade paperbacks which collect the more recent comics (usually in sets of 6.) I honestly don’t know how far back they reach for Uncanny Xmen. I feel fairly confident they exist, or that there is some larger book you can buy. If you go to the local comic
If you’re looking for newer series to read, there is a new Xmen series called Astonishing Xmen which is written by Joss Whedon (Firefly, Buffy, Angel, et al) and is phenomenal. Due to his busy life it is only being published quarterly right now, and I think the latest is 14. I’d have to dig through my comics to find out. But there are 2 trade paperbacks for it which will bring you up to issue 12 quite quickly.
A quick google search turns up “The Essential X-men.” Amazon has them, and they are 24 issues of Uncanny Xmen at a time. I’m not sure how far into the series they go though.
Cheers!
My suggestion would be to lie down until this urge passes, but I suspect you wouldn’t find that particularly helpful…
Turns out he always had bone claws. They were covered with adamantium the same way the rest of his bones were. At some point Magneto stripped the adamantium out of Wolverine’s body, revealing the bone claws.
Seriously, you’ve missed a whole lot of mess. I’ll second Astonishing X-Men. It’s well written and you don’t need a lot of backstory to catch up. Worth the read.
Important points:
Wolverine has the adamantium back. He got it back after a brief stint as one of Apocalypses horsemen. Also joining the ranks of the X-Horsemen are Gambit and Polaris.
Jean Grey is dead…again. No really. She’s dead for good this time. Stop laughing. I’m serious.
The White Queen (Emma Frost) is an X-man and is banging Cyclops.
A lot of mutants lost their powers in something called M-Day, including Polaris, Xavier, Magneto, and a bajillion other mutants who never really mattered anyway. It’s a long story that doesn’t make a lot of sense, but I can try to catch you up on it if you wish.
Yeah, except she got replaced by a black Jean, a cyborg Jean, a hip young Jean and a vicious clone Jean. Cyclops is trying to decide which one to bang right now.
From my lips to Marvel’s ears
If you can spare the cash for it, there’s a DVD-ROM that collects all of the Uncanny X-Men issues from #1 through to, I think, August 2005. Including the annuals.
I got it for a friend for his birthday and thought it looked pretty good. Now I’m wondering if I really need all those short boxes in the closet…
I had the same urge, and have read all of the Astonishing X-Men up through #12. But as I was browsing through a couple of the other titles on the racks, I saw a story line where Gambit and Rogue had kids, and Kitty Pryde was running for mayor of Chicago on a pro-Mutant platform. Or was I hallucinating?
I bought that disk, and have spent the last few weeks reading up on old X-Men that I remember. Now I need to go back and read X-Men that I don’t remember.
Sean Factotum:
What you describe sounds like “X-Men: The End”, a trio of minseries set in a potential future which writes the “last X-Men story.”
Thanks. I was wondering how that fit into the Astonishing arcs. Guess it’s not canon, then.
I will cast one more vote for the two Astonishing X-Men trade paperbacks, by Joss Whedon and John Cassaday. Aside from the movies, I haven’t cared about the X-Men since around 1993, and Whedon reminded me why I used to be a fan, and why the characters can still be great fun to read about.
Is Ultimate X-men any good?
I want to get into them again as well and the regular continuity is too convoluted for my patience.
Another vote for Astonishing X-men - those first 12 issues were the best 12 issues of an X-book in about 20 years. Too bad it doesn’t come out more often! Definitely pick up the first two trades (issues 1-6, then 7-12).
The other two X-books (regular and Uncanny) are kind of at an ultimate nadir right now - Chris Claremont is back writing Uncanny, but has become a sort of parody of what he was in his heyday, and it’s s still trying to recover from all sorts of retardation that a writer called Chuck Austen heaped on it over the course of a few years with completely nonsensical storylines and retcons (two words: pee iceman). However, both X-books are getting new creative teams in the near future, and it looks promising - Ed Brubaker just did a miniseries called “Deadly Genesis” where he revealed a hidden secret from way back around “giant size x-men #1,” and that’s going to carry over as he takes over Uncanny.
Ultimate started out okay – it was very consciously borrowing from the movies, with all-black costumes, simplified and updated origins, and so on. But by now, the Ultimate continuity is just about as convoluted as the “real” Marvel Universe, from what I’ve heard.
I tell ya, Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men is pretty much free of continuity problems. Everything is self-contained, he explains anything you might need to know, and has avoided crossovers with the other X-books or heavy references to past events. The current team consists of Cyclops, Wolverine, Beast, Kitty Pryde, and Emma Frost, and it made me an X-Men fan again. You can get these books (and most TPBs) for 30% off through Amazon.com.
I hate this, the claws being blades added when they added the adamantium was what I liked about his powers, they did this in the movie and it was quite well done. This bone-claw crap just irks me.