How to start reading X-Men comics

Cafe Society
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I’ve seen and loved both movies, seen an episode or two of both of the animated series, but have only ever read 1 X-Men comic in my life, the #1 of the new X-Men series that was so heavily hyped a few years ago. I was always a DC guy, never that interested in Marvel.

So where do I start reading? There are at least a dozen X-Men series and spin-offs. Is it even worth getting into it now? Are there any good currently-running series to start reading? Must-have story arcs available as trade paperbacks? (I’ve already bought the Dark Phoenix saga.)

Excelsior!

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There’s a lot of X-books out there, but you can safely ignore most of 'em. The two worth checking out are New X-Men bu Grant Morrison and a variety of artists (Frank Quitely is the best of these) and Xtreme X-Men by Chris Claremont and Salvador LaRocca.

There’s a New X-Men TPB called “E is for Extinction” that collects the first story arc by Morrison. You need know no continuity prior to this, or you can pick up the character profiles off the Marvel Comics website, www.marvel.com . Morrison, an endearingly snotty Scots punk (See his previous comics, including Doom Patrol, Animal Man, Skrull Kill Krew, Zenith and JLA) writes every title like he doesn’t plan for the book to be around when he leaves, and this is a good thing. He is particularly good at writing villains, and he has one join the X-Men; his Emma Frost is evil, selfish and the most fun character of the lot. If you like “E is for Extinction,” you can easily and cheaply locate his more recent story arcs. I’m enjoying the current one quite a bit.

Xtreme X-Men, despite the panderingly juvenile title, is also a lot of fun. It’s written by Chris Claremont, the man who wrote most of the really good X-Men stories from 1975-1991. His prose has gotten purpler and denser in his old age, which takes some getting used to, but honestly no one knows these characters better than he does. The art is by Salvador LaRocca, one of the best pencillers working these days. They shlock up his art with too much computer color special effects (See his work on the Fantastic Four about five years ago or Namor currently to see what his stuff is supposed to look like), but his take on the characters is really first-rate. I gather this title is getting a new artist soon, Igor Kordey, whose stuff I’m not yet ready to recommend, but back issues of this title are still pretty cheap and available. It’s only been around for 4 or 5 years, and I think the earliest issues are collected in a TPB or two.

As for the other X-books–look at these two first and see if you’re really dying to buy eight X-titles a month. No one else does, really.

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Or you can get the inexpensive black and white collections Marvel put out which hold about 20 issues, starting with Giant Sized X-Men #1.

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OR, you could just start reading “Ultimate X-Men” which is a parallel world version of the X-Men that’s very self-contained and (IMO) “feels” more like the movie, IMO than the very good Morrision X-Men. I’m pretty sure it’s available in trade paperbacks.

Fenris

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I’d only look at X-treme X-men if you don’t mind re-reading the same 3 or 4 story lines Claremont has been telling over and over again for the last 30 years. Not only is he revisiting many of the same plot points as he’s done before, but it takes FOREVER to get anywhere in the freakin’ story! Most story arcs are told in about 3-5 issues. I followed X-X for over a year and they were still working on the same story arc. It just wasn’t going anywhere, except that Claremont was introdicing new characters with ever issue, so there was too much inertia to get any story telling done. Okay, I’m off my rant now.

As for helpful recommendations, I’d go with Ultimate X-Men (the alternate-world title Fenris mentioned) and possibly either New X-Men or Uncanny X-men. Either of these two will get you introduced to most of the major players without getting into the “spin-off” type stuff too much. Of the 8+ “X-titles” that Marvel puts out, “New” and “Uncanny” are the two the are closest to what you might call “core” titles.

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What’s the difference between the different X-Men teams?

When I last knew Xavier’s team, there was his school and two teams… the “graduates” (X-Men) who when out and battled baddies and the “students” (New Mutuants) who were still in school.

I know that Ultimate X-Men is a separate universe, so no need to bother with that, but if someone could tell me how the other X-teams interrelate and who is currently a member of which strain, I would appreciate it.

Thanks in advance

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Thanks for the recommendations. I’m familiar with Grant Morrison’s stuff for DC, and I can usually take it or leave it. Something about his whole rock-star attitude just bugs me the wrong way. (But of course, he is a pretty good writer, so it’s impossible to dismiss him completely). Still, it sounds like a good candidate.

I’m assuming that “The New X-Men” and “Ultimate X-Men” are directed right at people like me, who want to get a good entry point into a 30+ year old series. I’m only partially interested in the “real” history of the series; just reading up on the whole Jean Grey/Marvel Girl/Phoenix/Dark Phoenix/Madeline Pryor business was enough to make my head hurt and convince me that trying to work out a consistent history was futile. The characters work better as archetypes than as real characters, anyway – something the movies seem to understand perfectly.

I never, ever, would’ve bought a title called “X-Treme X-men” just because of the title. So I may check out a couple of issues of that.

“Uncanny” was the original series, correct?

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Dammit, when are they going to turn on editing for this message board? Until then, change that to “rubs me the wrong way.” Can’t go criticizing someone else’s writing with typos.

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Here are the X-Men books as I understand them

New X-Men: The actual school, and the X-Men’s interaction with new students
Uncanny X-Men: The flagship title, by a writer I don’t like
Xtreme X-Men: A vanity project for the writer most associated with the franchise. These guys are basically globe-trotting mutant mystery solvers.
MechaniX: Barely connected to the X-Men. I think the floating potato guy has some history with Wolverine, and the Orphan was once trained by Professor X.
Muties: Never read it.
Exiles: Never read it.
Ultimate X-Men: What would happen if a writer got to start over from scratch, using whatever X-characters he wanted, totally unencumbered by 40 years of continuity? By my estimation, not much that’s interesting.
New Mutants: The trainee kids from 20 years ago are coming back to try their hand at teaching.
Excalibur: This used to be the UK branch of the X-Men, but every time they relaunch, they seem to have fewer X-related characters.
Alpha Flight: Same as Excalibur, but substitute “Canadian” for “UK”
X-Men The Hidden Years: The old X-Men, right before GS X-Men #1, drawn by John Byrne, who pissed off the publisher and got the book cancelled. Ah well.
Soldier X: Cable
Mutant X: Havoc, in a different, creepier dimension. Apparently, a TV show of the same name is based on this, despite not having any of the same characters in it.
Weapon X: Deadpool
Something Else X: X-Man, some alternate version of Cable
X-Men Unlimited: Any of the above, thrown together haphazardly in a quarterly title no one actually buys or likes

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**
Actually, Morrison’s done the near-impossible: he’s made X-Men comprehensible for the first time in like 15 years: I understand the story and I can enjoy an issue without having to draw a flow-chart diagramming crap like retroactively erased alternate future histories, past altered parallel presents and the like (So’s Chuck Austin in Uncanny, but his stuff is only good).

I’d really love to see someone come in and simply say that everything past oh…say…Uncanny X-Men 183 or so (roughly Rachel’s first appearance) was Kang fucking with the X-Men for kicks and grins. I mean c’mon. At one point there were…what? Three? Four? parallel versions of kids that Scott / Jean / Maddy did or didn’t have.

**

**
Yes. Apperently when the first X-Men movie came out, the story (written by Claremont, hired back for the occasion) was such an absoutely continuity nightmare that the X-books sales didn’t go up. IIRC, TV Guide offered Marvel space for an 8-page comic to introduce everyone to the X-Men. TV Guide has the highest circulation of any magazine in the world…and they offered Marvel an 8-page adveritizement free. And allegedly (I never saw it, but from people I trust who have) Claremont just wrote another chapter in the crap storyline he was telling: it had no beginning, no ending and if you didn’t know who the characters were, it was incomprehensible. Claremont was kicked off Uncanny soon after.

Marvel learned from it’s mistakes however. When the Spider-Man movie came out, there was a nice clean story-arc for newbies to pick up on. Ditto with X-2. To pick up the current storyline you need to get last issue and the current issue. No cross-overs, no 200 back issues. Morrison, when he chooses to, knows how to tell a traditional storyline.

And Uncanny is the original book.

Fenris

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Exiles is kinda like X-men meets Sliders. It’s a group of X-men from assorted parallel timelines thrown together to put right what once went wrong, hoping each time that their next leap… err… I mean to repair the multiverse so that it doesn’t unravel entirely. It’s basically an excuse to bring back the old “what if?” series with a bit of character consistency. But despite that, it’s very well written.

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New X-Men is particularly worth reccomending at the moment because of Phil Jimenez’s great artwork. Even better than his run on Wonder Woman because you don’t actually have to read his horrible writing.

I’m enjoying Uncanny alot right now, but from what I’ve heard I might be in the minority. Northstar wears a horrible costume and Polaris is a total bitch, but hey, you do get a pretty well-written Juggernaut as part of the team.

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Krokodil meant X-Statix, not Mekanix. Mekanix is a Claremont-penned miniseries about Kitty Pryde at college. (Kitty is the girl who can walk through walls and has had small parts in both films.)

X-Statix, the successor title to the revamped X-Force, is about a group of media superstar mutants unaffiliated with the X-Men who, like the sports figures for whom they are a metaphor, sometimes behave heroically and sometimes behave like spoiled brats. As Krokodil notes, it’s not in tight continuity with the rest of the X-books, but Professor X does know some of the team members.

New X-Men is pretty good, but by no means as excellent as Morrison’s Invisibles or JLA. However, a lot of it plays as riffs off the classic Claremont-Byrne years; while I can understand it fine after a 15-year absence from X-Men, I don’t know if it would be as understandable to someone who hadn’t read X-Men from 1975-85. Major characters are Jean, Cyclops, Wolverine, Beast, and Emma Frost.

X-Treme, I understand (haven’t read it) is kind of Claremont continuing his never-ending X-Men saga – in particular, the team is looking for the books of prophecy written by the precognitive Destiny, one of Mystique’s Evil Mutants from the late 70’s and early 80’s. Storm leads that team, and I believe Rogue and Gambit are around.

A couple new series include the new “New Mutants” which will bow in a few months and feature some of the folks from the original New Mutants book grown up and serving as teachers for the younger set and Mystique, with the eponymous mutant working as a covert agent for Professor X. The latter is written by Brian Vaughan, who also writes the submile Y - The Last Man for DC’s Vertigo.

However, the thing worth noting is that now, for the first time since The New Mutants and X-Factor started up in the 80’s, you can pretty much read one x-book without needing to keep track of all the others. While there are things going on in the other books, they’re all separate enough to be read separately.

–Cliffy

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ARgh… so they cancelled Generation X because there were too many books on the market and the “young mutants coming to terms with their powers” theme was being covered in the other book, and now they’re starting up another book that focuses on the younger set and their teachers?

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I picked up from the library the two X-Force TPBs that introduced this new team and have enjoyed them thoroughly, although I was sorry to see U-Go Girl buy the farm. You could easily pick this up with New Beginning without knowing a thing about the other X-titles – although it doesn’t have much to do with them in the first place.

Morrison’s X-arcs are definitely worth checking out, too. Again, got them from the library, and they’re the first X-books since early Excaliber that I was at all interested in. White Queen rules.

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I have another question for y’all. What’s everyone’s opinion on the “Ultimate” universe? I got the Ultimate X-Men #1 for Free Comic Book Day (actually, the day before at the X2 premiere), and saw an ad inside for Ultimate Spider-Man. Since I know a lot of Dopers are Spidey fans, I wanted your take on it. Is Marvel going to try to do an “Ultimate” for most of their other titles?

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Okay, so based on suggestions I went out and bought an issue of Uncanny X-Men (it was only 25 cents, and I haven’t read it yet), an issue of The New X-Men, and a TPB of The New X-Men called “Imperial.” (I just still can’t bring myself to buy a comic book with “X-Treme” in the title, even if it is good.)

So just based on the TPB, I’m really frustrated with The New X-Men. It has so much potential but manages to fall just short and bug the hell out of me.

The good:
Emma Frost is a great character. It’s just a great idea to have her on the team, and she’s so well-written. Not really pure evil, but just completely self-absorbed. And the psychic girls in her tutelage are great as well.

The Beast looks cool.

The relationships between the adult characters are very well-defined, and it’s established how they work as a team. It manages to present the school and the X-Men as a functioning body instead of just a place where super-heroes go to between adventures.

It manages to juggle comedy & action & spectacle very well, without getting too slapstick or too silly or too pompous and overblown. In particular, the one issue with Jean and Emma going into the mind of Professor X, told with almost no dialogue, was well-done.

The bad (abridged):
It might just as well have “X-Treme” in the title. It kept feeling like a desperate attempt to seem edgy and hip and modern and adult. All the crap about organ-harvesting and broken homes and death and all – whatever. Comics can be more than trivial, but I think they should still be fun.

The Angel character is annoying and cliched and not at all interesting.

Even though Emma Frost is a great character, it kind of sucks that she’s the only character. The rest are just ciphers; the same two-dimensional cut-outs from 30 years ago with updated dialogue. There’s no feeling that they’re characters.

And the thing that ruined it for me: in a rousing speech for mutant/human cooperation, Jean Grey is listing off the great minds of humanity and says something like “there’ll never be another Shakespeare, another Einstein, another Kurt Cobain.” No. That’s wrong on so many levels. First, it’s just factually wrong – whatever your opinion of Cobain, to claim that his contribution to culture or society was anywhere near as relevant as Shakespeare’s or Einstein’s is just ludicrous. Second, it’s not something the character of Jean Grey would say; she’s just acting as a mouthpiece for Morrison. Third, it just comes off as another attempt to be hip and modern. Booo.

So it wasn’t entirely awful, but didn’t grab my interest enough to keep reading, either. I guess I’ll give “Uncanny” a chance. I got a couple issues of “Ultimate X-Men” on Free Comic Book Day and really, really hated them, so I won’t be reading that. Maybe I’m just not a Marvel person.

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I apologize for the mild hijack, but I have lately developed some interest in the series, spurned mostly by the movie, and am wondering which comics would be best to see Dazzler? I read a short bio of her on some web pages, and she interested me for some reason.

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Don’t.

Marvel sucks.

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Okay, so based on all this I shouldn’t bother reading the comic books and just hope the early 90s cartoon comes out on DVD?