If I want to start reading X-Men from the very beginning and go through them chronologically, which books should I buy? Amazon lists X-Men Essentials, Classic X-Men Essentials, X-Men Marvel Masterworks, Uncanny X-Men Masterworks… I’m terribly confused. I want to start from the very first episode ever. In color if possible. Can you guys help sort it all out?
Well, it depends. If you want to start reading X-Men from the VERY beginning, go for the Classic X-Men Essential collections. IIRC, this is the collection that starts reprinting from X-Men #1 in the Kirby-Lee days. The team at that point was Jean Grey, Cyclops, Iceman, (non-furry) Beast, Angel, and Professor X.
If you want to start reading the X-Men from when the book actually started to get popular – re: The All-New All-Different Era with Wolverine, Storm, Nightcrawler and the rest – going from Essential X-Men vol 1 on up is a good start and probably the most affordable way to go about it. There’s been 30+ years of X-Men books since then and there are still large chunks of the book that haven’t ever been collected, but that’ll get you the Claremont/Byrne - Claremont/Smith - Claremont/Davis runs, and those are a lot of fun, if a bit dated these days.
Just a warning, the Essential Collections are black and white art on newsprint. If you want color for the old stories, there are a few trades of the older story arcs out, but generally only collecting the “classic” stories from the Claremont era – the intro of the All-New, All Different team, The Dark Phoenix Saga, Days of Future Past, etc. – but your best bet might be checking eBay and places like Mile High Comics and My Comic Shop.com for the Classic X-Men single-issue reprints. I’m not sure where to get the pre-ANAD stuff cheap and in color.
EDIT: If you’re not hung up on print, you could also try this nifty collection: 40 Years of the X-Men CD Rom. It’s color, even.
DVD, not CD. Disc thing. Put in magic info-machine, make pretty pictures.
I have one of those for the Spiderman series, and I LOVE it. Currently on like 1984 or so…
I hope they do one of those for Batman, i’d TOTALLY pick it up…
So in original print order it should go:
Essential Uncanny X-Men vol. 1
Essential Classic X-Men vol. 2
Essential Classic X-Men vol. 3
Essential X-Men vol. 1
Essential X-Men vol. 2
…
The name change from Uncanny to Classic from book 1 to book 2 was confusing me. Do I have it right? It’s too bad they’re not in color. The Marvel Masterworks books are color, do you recommend those?
That looks right, yeah.
The Marvel Masterworks volumes that I’ve seen are put together quite nicely and are generally attractive books. With the caveat that they’d be an expensive way to find out that you don’t care for the early X-Men books, I don’t see why not. (Of course, considering that the used copies of Essential Uncanny v 1 are going for something like $45 on Amazon, maybe it would be cheaper to get the Masterworks edition at that. 
)
Are you totally obsessive about reading every single one? If not, I would HIGHLY recommend Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited online. For like 50 bucks, you get a ton of titles. Granted, you have to read them online (which with the Smart features is not as bad as it sounds). And granted, everything is not digitized yet. But, I liken it to a friend with a really bitching comics collection. No it’s not perfect but it’s really good.
Anyways, great time waster. Great way to read a TON of comics. As for X-men, as far as the Uncanny series goes (the original) - they have (by my quick count) #1 through #66 digitized. Then it skips a bit. That’s not counting the dozens of other X-titles that are available online.
Thanks for linking to Marvel’s digital comics site. Wow! What a good idea! This would suit me, since I would like to revisit some of the comics I used to read as a kid, but I don’t want or need the actual, physical comic (just more clutter around the house that I’ll sling out next year).
I was wondering if there is a DC equivalent? I couldn’t find one. My problem is that I’d really like to re-read some of the Silver Age DC comics I enjoyed in my younger years (especially Superman, LOSH, Flash and World’s Finest) but these are hard to find as compilations in colour. DC have so far only done one hardback volume of silver age Superman (AFAIK).
I know the stories from this era are ridiculous beyond belief (especially Superman) but I still enjoy the nostalgia. Also, I’m in the UK and never had a sub to any of these titles, so I just purchased at random whatever comic was in the store. Modern compilations not only allow me to look back, but to actually follow complete stories across several issues in a way that I could hardly ever do when I was younger.
A few more details for you.
First, the very early X-Men are, to put it mildly, not very good. They were a late edition to the Marvel stable and they came on at a point where Lee was managing the entire line and writing about 3/4 of it while Kirby was drawing approximately five books a month (there were a few where he did half issues). They put their real efforts into a few places (the FF for both of them, Spider-Man for Lee, and Thor for Kirby) while other books suffered. X-Men was one of these.
Sales were very bad for the series and it limped along for a few years until around issue 60 they stopped making new ones. X-Men was a bimonthly reprint book just putting out the old stories for another few years. (I should mention that Neil Adams did a few issues toward the very end of this run and things improved dramatically under him, but when the series was de facto canceled he jumped to DC.)
So the book lay fallow for a few years when it was revived by Len Wein and Dave Cockrum in a book called Giant Sized X-Men #1 (Marvel was publishing some lengthier species under the “giant sized” banner at the time). It got enough attention to revive the series at issue #94. Wein quickly left and was replaced by Chris Claremont. And that’s when everything came together. Claremont started a nearly two hundred issue long run on the book that took it from an obscure bimonthly to the centerpiece of the Marvel line to the best selling comic book ever.
That is the X-Men that you’re probably familiar with and that’s the line that starts with Essential X-Men.
All of that was just a quirk compared to what happened later. By the late 80s X-Men wasn’t a comic, it was a franchise. There were ongoing series that ran parallel with it and miniseries that started or finished stories that happened in the main book. By the mid-90’s the series could no longer be considered coherent as any given story in the main book was tied into half a dozen others. Crossovers, stories told across multiple comic book series, ruled the day.
Anyhow, my point in this is that if you read from the beginning don’t expect much. It does get entertaining much later and then wavers in and out of that state until you get to a point where you need a degree in Mutant Studies to understand it.
That’s the whole series. The original X-Men title (what’s now called Uncanny X-Men) was all-reprint from #67 to #93. Some new covers, I think, and it’s possible there were new interstitial pages here and there, but essentially no new material until the All-New, All-Different X-Men appeared in Giant-Size X-Men #1 and then started up in X-Men #94 onwards.
–Cliffy
There are simply decades’ worth of X-stories that can be ignored without consequence. The Fabian Nicieza and Chuck Austen stuff alone is pretty dispensible. Claremont’s stories are exactly as good as whoever drew them, so focus in the Cockrum, Byrne and Smith stuff. I like Jim Lee and JR Jr., but their collaborations with Claremont are from what I call their “pre-competent” period. Also, the Grant Morrison and Joss Whedon stuff is worth buying in hardcover.
As for the 60s material: Between the Kirby issues and the Steranko/Adams periods, nothing of importance happened. Nothing. Roy Thomas was learning his craft, and not always in an interesting way. How much do you really want to pay for the Don Heck period?
I don’t think the Silver Age X-Men is as bad as Just Some Guy does, but it’s certainly a very different beast than the classic Claremont material of the '70’s and '80s, and I do agree that if you’re interested in comics from that era, you’re better served with FF or Thor.
As noted above, the Masterworks were meant as archival volumes. They’re awfully pricey to try and build a back collection of stuff you don’t already know you like, especially for such a long-running title. Moreover, I doubt they’re as complete as the Essentials, and I for one don’t like the way the colors look. The color design in the original comics was meant to deal with primitive printing on crappy paper stock. On glossy white paper it manages the feat of looking both flat and too bright. At least to my eye. Oh, and I have similar problems with the appearance of old comics on Marvel’s digital site. I prefer b&w to that.
Speaking of the Marvel Digital site, I was surprised to see that they only have the Claremont run up to #189, then just a handful of intermittent issues after. I’m sure that’s a priority title for them, but still. I have to admit that most of the best X-Men stuff is there (Dark Phoenix, Days of Future Past, Proteus, etc.), but the Mutant Massacre, Fall of the Mutants, the first Genosha arc, etc., are all great, and they’re not yet available. If you’re able to read comics on the computer (I can do it a little, but I’m much happier with something tangible), then I’d say the DVD linked earlier is a better bet. Also, that stuff is scanned from original comics, so the color presentation isn’t a problem. Of course, since the DVD doesn’t have the spin-off titles, I agree it’ll become completely unreadable by the late '80’s (mid to late 200’s), but IMO there was a precipitous drop in quality around then as well (related to the schizophrenia of the presentation).
Welcome to the X-Men, Carnick. Hope you survive the experience!
–Cliffy
Just as a warning… there are 3,500+ X-Men comics out there (counting spin-offs but not crossovers).
I’d go for digital distribution if I were paying for a download. I’d drop twenty-five cent to a buck on a CBR file, depending on how recent a release the content was and be all for moving my back-issue collection from longboxes to a couple of thumb drives without having to do the scanning myself. I use my old issues as reference pretty frequently, though, so it’s not worth it to me to pay to read a limited selection of back-issues on someone else’s viewer without even screencap ability.
Oh, also plus original lettercols. house ads, and other advertisements to give you more of a sense of time of when this stuff was originally produced.
–Cliffy
Thanks for the info everyone. I probably won’t read EVERY single episode, especially if the originals are as bad as everyone says, I just thought it’d be fun to follow its evolution. I loved X-Men as a kid but only followed it casually, and I’d like to learn how all my old favorite characters developed over time. I guess I’ll check out a few Uncanny X-Men, and if those do indeed suck I’ll simply skip ahead to the Claremont period. I’ll also check out those digital comics, that sounds cool.
Minor disagreement–I thought the first, oh 15 or so issues were very good and I loved the Sentinels trilogy from 14-16. It got good again when Thomas and Adams took over around issue 55. But yeah, much of it ranged from “Mostly harmless” (the Mimic stuff) to uber-lame (Grotesk and Factor Three)