X-Men Starting Point

[Legion564]

Hey guys just wanted some recommendations to start out reading xmen. I have seen some of the movies and have the all new xmen from marvel now. What are some runs that are good for someone who knows almost nothing about xmen? Something from the last ten years preferably and nothing by grant morrison if possible cause his batman confused the crap out of me. Thank you.

[Qrx2]

Do yourself a favor and make sure you get a hold of the Dark Phoenix Saga. It is one of the best stories ever told in the history of Comicbooks.

I enjoy All-New X-men a lot. It's the original six X-men being brought into today's world.

The thing about the X-men movies is that IMO they don't really follow any of the "rules" of the books in terms of history or events so it's a little hard to hand pick storylines based on the movies at least for me.

I know when I first got into the X-men when I was a kid I just picked up a trade paperback started reading it and going hey I want to learn more about such and such and then would ask my comic guy which books he would be good for that. As I've gotten older and with the help of the internet that process has gotten easier. I also read the Marvel Masterworks of the original X-men all the way through till you get to Giant Sized X-men Number one. It's six or seven volumes of Marvel Masterworks but it lays the ground work that the X-men are based on.

[SamuelbelievesinCyclops]

Ashtoning X-men by Joss Whedon or perhaps you would like New X-men by Grant Morrison (it's not thaaaaaat confusing lol)

A couple of good series would be New X-men by Kyle/Yost, X-factor Investigations by Peter David, or the Messiah Complex event and the series leading up from there to Second Coming.

Those are pretty good

[Slicknickshady]

A lot of great stuff. I would get ahold of whatever you can from the early issues. Really you should have no problem finding good stuff.

[Anduinel]

Despite the stipulation that you're looking for material from the last ten years, I would still highly recommend getting the Essential X-Men volumes and starting from there. So much of the X-Men mythos is built on the foundations that Claremont laid down. I don't think it's required reading to get into the newer books, but I do believe it enhances the reading experience tremendously.

[cwatz]

I started off with DPS as my intro to comics in general, then New X-men (Morrison), Astonishing (Whedon) to begin catching up to current day, while keeping up with ANXM. I found it to be a pretty awesome path.

Youll be a little behind on a few things like the very start of Morrison, but it was pretty easy to follow for the most part once the ball gets rolling.

[Mari]

If Morrison's New X-Men is excluded I would recommend starting from Astonishing X-Men or Messiah Complex.

[Bafflement]

If you want to get a real feel for the X-Men, I'd recommend some older stuff before the shake-ups of the last ten years. For more recent things, you could start with Claremont's X-Treme, which ran at the same time as Morrison's New X-Men, or try Whedon's Astonishing, which does a good introduction to the characters.

Many of the story-lines of the last ten years have been rather bad, but if you're looking for a good recent run there's Uncanny X-force vol. 1.

[Synthetic Innocence]

If you really want an understanding of the xmen (and I know you said from the last ten years but ) I'd recommend that you read Marvel Masterworks. You can get away with just reading vol 1 but I'd read the first 3 if you can.

Really it is the foundation for everything to come and it's still good (if not a bit cliché) but definitely worth reading.