Which X-Books Are You Actively Supporting? (More Categories Now Included)

[AppleJ]

Which X-Books are you actively supporting? I am defining actively supporting as books you are purchasing on a monthly basis as they release either by picking up the physical copy through your LCS/bookstore OR through a subscription OR through legal digital download such as Comixology.

I'm not at this time counting those using Marvel Unlimited or waiting for the Trade Paperback release, though I know these do factor at least partially into long term decisions on book longevity.

I'm also not currently including those sharing copies with a friend, using library loan, or viewing pirated copies as these don't count toward financial support of a book and don't factor into company decisions.

I'm re-posting this to add more categories that were previously missed in the last poll. Apologies! Thanks to the admins for helping me fix this.

Please note I didn't include titles not yet started (Way of X, X-Corp) or that have finished (Fallen Angels, X-Men/F4) to date.

[ChronoRogue]

Hellions, New Mutants, S.W.O.R.D and X-Factor.

The only titles I've found to be entertaining month to month so far. Hellions has a great sense of humor, X-Factor is actually exploring character beats, SWORD's world building and art is beautiful and New Mutants is surprisingly adept at juggling multiple plot-lines.

I might have added X-Men but it's been inconsistent. Hickman's main strength of course continues to be world building but his character voices can come across as flat sometimes.

Excalibur and Marauders both have problems writing team books as solo titles. X-Force like X-Men I will occasionally pick up but outside of Sage, I don't have any characters I'm attached to there and she barely gets panel-time as it is.

I don't really like any of the solo titles. CoTA still unsure about.

[FFJamie94]

X-Men
X-Force
Wolverine
New Mutants
Sword
Excalibur
Giant Sized
(Also Demon Days)

Also have Way of X and X-Corp on my pull list.
However, I buy every issue for the events.

[salarta]

Option for None requests comment as to why someone voting for it isn't actively supporting any x-books, so here's my response.

I mainly read stuff for Polaris. I once saw her as my gateway into more X-Men and Marvel content in the future. In 2015 and earlier, I bought and read part of Age of X, and also all of the Magneto solo, both as context for Lorna. AoX because I knew she was about to return to Earth in Five Miles South of the Universe by the same writer. Magneto solo because even though there were no plans for Lorna to appear on it at the time, I figured it would at least give me context for dynamics between Lorna and her father.

It helped greatly that Marvel appeared to be on an upward trajectory in their perception and treatment of her. I learned of her in 2009, and even though her opportunities weren't getting support or promotion they needed, I figured that Marvel would eventually come around to doing right by her as her potential became more apparent. They just needed a big moment to see her true worth, is what I thought. If things had continued in this vein, I think I would have eventually become more invested in X-Men stuff beyond Lorna - because you want to know more about the world she's operating within, right? And what else she might be able to do, who else she might be able to interact with.

Unfortunately, Marvel's been treating her progressively worse post-2015. She went from finally getting to lead her own team on ANXF, to existing exclusively as a supporting character for teams and stories focused on other (so far all male) characters. With Marvel trying to dress it up as something good with nice but empty words that end up ringing even more hollow after seeing her depictions and all the things Marvel keeps refusing to acknowledge about her. There have been extremely rare bright spots, like the Deadpool issue last year or a couple of the Uncanny X-Men event issues that led into Age of X-Man, but they don't come anywhere close to offsetting everything else. And Lorna breaking out unexpectedly on Gifted did nothing to change Marvel's attitude toward her. If anything, it looks like seeing that she could be immensely popular if handled right made them want to treat her worse. Hold her back while exploiting interest in her to promote other characters they like and respect more.

And yes, all of that means my core reason for not supporting any books is lack of support and respect for my fave. But it's really more than that. Poor treatment of Lorna makes me more critical of what they're doing to her. That, by extension, leads me into being more critical of everything else they're doing. I'm more aware of when they make huge mistakes, or when things they try to hype really aren't as amazing as the hype is trying to make them out to be. I notice when bad things happen but get swept under the rug, or when people try to justify those bad things as "deserved" or good actually, and I remember them. They stick with me. They're not isolated and unfortunate incidents to me as they might be to a hardcore fan. They're patterns of behavior. How deep do I really want to get invested in work from a company that has all these problems and shows no signs of wanting to fix them and be better?

The way I see it, any real change would naturally result in better writing and treatment of all sorts of characters, Lorna included. Because Marvel would identify problem areas and seek to fix them. Explore characters and concepts too often ignored. Consider ramifications of things they took for granted, set their nostalgia aside to really interrogate assumptions and past work. They might even catch issues that nobody's noticed before and handle them in advance. If that's not happening, then it's not real change. It's not a new era. It's just the old era with old ideas remixed to look fresh. The "Omega" lists exist and are still just whichever characters the people who work at Marvel like the most on any given day. Canon's impact on their criteria need not apply. Krakoa is just Genosha with all mutants. HoX/PoX and current scenario are just a remix of the time travel concept. Etc, etc, etc.

[nx01a]

Thanks for adding other options!

I'm reading X-Men, S.W.⨂.R.D., Hellions, X-Men Legends, and the crossovers which include books I don't normally read. I doubt there are anymore Giant Size issues to come but I did read them, too.

And I'm looking forward to reading X-Corp.

[Sunny]

Right now only SWORD then sometimes individual issues of others depending on the story.

[Journey]

X-Factor & SWORD are the only 2 I care about, & I'm gonna buy children of the Atom for a while.

[Devaishwarya]

X-Men, Marauders, Hellions, New Mutants, SWORD, Excalibur, and the Giant-sized stuffs. Other than a few missteps here and there, these have held my interest since DoX started, and still do.

I'm not mad at the other books...I'm just not interested in them for varying reasons

[bladeofdarkness]

Wow, Sword is a surprise hit - didn't expect that one to be a main attraction.
Which just makes the boneheaded decision to include it in the KIB crossover even more boneheaded.

[butterflykyss]

Right now only SWORD then sometimes individual issues of others depending on the story.

I agree here.

[Gylfie]

Wolverine

[Frobisher]

Didn't Giant Size X-Men finish like a year ago?

[Raz]

X-Factor, Marauders, Hellions, SWORD for me.

I tried Excalibur for 3 or 4 issues and while the art is lush and I don't necessarily DISlike the writing style I just feel like it was a waste of most of the characters. Even if you don't wanna use actual magic-connected mutants to explore mutant magic, surely someone like Nature Girl fits a druid role better than Rictor? They couldn't have used Brian and Meggan instead of Rogue and Remy? Etc...just really bizarrely chosen characters that aren't being at all written to their strengths.

I get the occasional X-Men issue if the issue sounds up my alley and I did get New Mutants for the 1st arc then dropped it like a hot potato, but I like recent previews and am thinking about picking it up again.

I'll give X-Corp a try as well, I like the idea of seeing Warren in a story that isn't about Apocalypse ruined his life for the 4500th time...

[ARkadelphia]

None - since my shop closed in January, I haven’t been buying floppies anymore

[The Man With The Stick]

Didn't Giant Size X-Men finish like a year ago?

6 months ago. Easy to lose track of time at the moment!