Been away for 8+ years - Help me catch up and make my new pull list...

[gater]

Okay, well the poll at the top of the page said, "How long will Wolverine stay dead?" So, I guess that happened...

Super quick background. Collected and read from 1984-2004. Collected everything, but focus was all X-Books (ALL - Deadpool, Bishop, Cable, Wolvie, even stuff like New Mutants and Excalibur and ... everything...Power Pack..yuck). Got married and kids entered the picture - stopped reading around House of M, subscriptions ended around Uncanny 500. Been buying random TPBs along the way, but mostly non-Marvel stuff on recommendations (Walking Dead, Fables, Y:The Last Man, Sleeper, etc). But now the kids are needing a little less attention and a little less $$$. I certainly appreciate certain writers and follow them as I can (Vaughn, Brubaker, Ennis, Morrison, Johns...)

So, I'm looking to catch up and re-sub...

Question #1: Since House of M, what major events happened that I need to know about? I can pick up some TPBs on big time events. Got some expendable cash (maybe like $300-400 to spend on trades to catch up). If it's garbage, I can skip it...

Question #2: I'm sure that like everything else, there are now exponentially more X-Books and similar titles and minis and all - what are the decent ongoings I should add to my pull list? Uncanny, X-Men and Wolverine are still around, I'm sure and I subscribe to even if they are **** (because I'm stupid), but what else is good? Focus on the X-world, will expand into the MU if they are really well done.

Many thanks in advance and excited to be back!

[Optic Rage!]

What characters are you interested in? How important is it for you to read the ''core'' books?

[gater]

Well, I've got pretty much every Uncanny from #97-507 and read full runs of X-Factor, X-Force, etc - so I like to read the core books as an anchor. But I'm fairly typical fanboy - I enjoy core members Wolverine, Cyclops (and whoever he's in bed with), Iceman, Rogue, Colossus, Kitty, Cable, Bishop, Nightcrawler, Storm.

So, yeah - core as the core, but not even sure what X-Books exist anymore. When I left, X-Men had just stopped being "New" X-Men, X-Force was back for a 3rd time. There was Astonishing X-Men, X-Treme X-Men... as to ongoing, will probably sub to core books and then 2-3 others that are "good right now".

[Chris24601]

#1) The biggies in terms of story arcs would be;
-Messiah Complex (detailing the birth of Hope, the 'mutant messiah' and how she gets sent along with Cable to be raised in the future along with the start of the complete faceheel turn of Bishop into an irredeemable monster).
-Second Coming (when Hope and Cable come back from the future, features an attack by Bastion and future Nimrods trying to kill Hope, the death of Nightcrawler, the revelation of the secret kill team sanctioned by Scott and run by Logan to take out threats to the mutant population and Cable appears to die too, but is revealed to survive in X-Sanction).
-Schism (details the split-up between Scott's faction and Wolverine's faction. It's rather contrived would have made a ton more sense if it had been Storm instead of Wolverine, but she was stuck over in the Avengers books at the time).
-X-Sanction (only worth mentioning for the conclusion with Cable revealing the future to Scott that if the Avengers tried to take Hope from the X-Men they'd destroy the world... which explains much of Scott's motivation in the next arc).
-AvX (a bloated crossover that more or less throws out quite a bit of continuity and tries to cast Scott's X-Men as the villains, but ends up just making the Avengers look like morons, Beast and Wolverine into hypocrites and Scott into a Martyr. The mutant race is re-ignited by Hope and the Phoenix after a bunch of needless drama where the Avengers listen to Logan and his murderboner for redheads. The Avenger's screw-up ends up with Scott getting possessed by the Phoenix and killing Professor Xavier in self-defense. This makes Scott the most evil man who ever lived... so say Wanda the Genocidal Maniac, Beast the World Slayer and Wolverine the child murderer).

If you're going to pick up some trade-paperbacks I'd recommend skipping those and just starting with the Mavel.NOW trades. They're intended to be good jumping on points. I'd start with 'All-New X-Men' and 'Uncanny X-Men' (which gets attacked a lot for decompressed storylines, but this isn't nearly as noticeable when you're reading an entire arc at once) and add on from there.

For pure quality storytelling (though unconnected to major events) go for the Legion issues of 'X-Men: Legacy.'

'Cable and X-Force' isn't bad and I'd pickup at least the first trade of the newest all-woman iteration of 'X-Men' (it gets a bit derailed by events of Battle of the Atom and Uncanny Avengers) and definitely snag the first trade of 'Amazing X-Men' when it comes out if you're at all a fan of Nightcrawler.

I hesitate to recommend it, because the story is pretty much crap, but in terms of understanding where things are going you'll probably also want to pick up the trade for 'Battle of the Atom'.

Personally, I'd skip 'Wolverine and the X-Men' as nothing important actually happened there unless you care about wacky hi-jinx of the Hellfire Brats (yes, the Hellfire Club was taken over by a bunch of prepubescent kids and went after Logan's school for... reasons) and 'Uncanny Avengers' is a travesty that will make you completely hate Alex/Havok, despise Wanda and ultimately root for Rogue even as the writer tries to villainize her by having her spout strawman versions of what his critics are saying (which still makes her look like the only member of the team who is remotely sane) and murdering 'Saint' Wanda (if by 'saint' you mean 'genocidal whackjob who was about to do it all over again' and by 'murder' you mean 'heroically trying to stop a genocidal whackjob from getting a whole bunch more innocent people killed').

[Purplevit]

All-New X-Factor with Gambit, Polaris, Quicksilver, Danger, Cypher and Warlock. You will love it!

[victorxd1999]

If you missed out on Whedon's Astonishing X-men #1-24 you're doing yourself a big disservice. Possibly one of the three best X-Men runs ever (along with Morrison and Claremont of course). Current awesome X-books:
X-force
All-New X-factor
Uncanny spawned out of All-New X-Men and is also written by Bendis so you either love it or hate it. They both spawned from Avengers vs X-Men but tge story itself isn't worth the bucks so just use wiki (or us if you like).
Amazing X-men is about to be taken over by Kyle and Yost so you don't want to miss that

[gater]

Thanks guys for all the insight! I got my tpb list and my new pull list, thanks! I appreciate you all taking the time to respond.

[victorxd1999]

Thanks guys for all the insight! I got my tpb list and my new pull list, thanks! I appreciate you all taking the time to respond.

And? What's your final decision list?

[General Nerditry]

Good luck. The opposite happened to me. I unfortunately stuck around for the last 8-9 years and the appalling quality led to me eventually dumping the X line altogether after being a fan for 20 years. I hope you find something you like!

I second Astonishing X-Men by Whedon. Great run.

[Geralt of Rivia]

#1) The biggies in terms of story arcs would be;
-Messiah Complex (detailing the birth of Hope, the 'mutant messiah' and how she gets sent along with Cable to be raised in the future along with the start of the complete faceheel turn of Bishop into an irredeemable monster).
-Second Coming (when Hope and Cable come back from the future, features an attack by Bastion and future Nimrods trying to kill Hope, the death of Nightcrawler, the revelation of the secret kill team sanctioned by Scott and run by Logan to take out threats to the mutant population and Cable appears to die too, but is revealed to survive in X-Sanction).
-Schism (details the split-up between Scott's faction and Wolverine's faction. It's rather contrived would have made a ton more sense if it had been Storm instead of Wolverine, but she was stuck over in the Avengers books at the time).
-X-Sanction (only worth mentioning for the conclusion with Cable revealing the future to Scott that if the Avengers tried to take Hope from the X-Men they'd destroy the world... which explains much of Scott's motivation in the next arc).
-AvX (a bloated crossover that more or less throws out quite a bit of continuity and tries to cast Scott's X-Men as the villains, but ends up just making the Avengers look like morons, Beast and Wolverine into hypocrites and Scott into a Martyr. The mutant race is re-ignited by Hope and the Phoenix after a bunch of needless drama where the Avengers listen to Logan and his murderboner for redheads. The Avenger's screw-up ends up with Scott getting possessed by the Phoenix and killing Professor Xavier in self-defense. This makes Scott the most evil man who ever lived... so say Wanda the Genocidal Maniac, Beast the World Slayer and Wolverine the child murderer).

I agree that this would be the best way to catch up from on major storylines. If you can fit a bit more Id add two books that got relaunched in the wake of Messiah Complex: first the Cable solo depicted the journey he and Hope underwent traveling thru time, and it was a great read. Also, X-Force went thru some great quality years first with Kyle and Yost as writers and afterwards with Remender when it got the 'Uncanny' adjective: both volumes are must reads IMO.

If you missed out on Whedon's Astonishing X-men #1-24 you're doing yourself a big disservice. Possibly one of the three best X-Men runs ever (along with Morrison and Claremont of course).

Also, 100% agreed on this. Heck the 10 or so issues that came afterwards are pretty good as well - yeah yeah Im an Ellis fan :P


Regarding the current state, Im sorry to end this in a somewhat sour note but AvX and its fallout pretty much alienated me from the X books. I havent liked the direction or style on the core or even most of the secondary books in quite some time.

Only the newest version of X-Force and the newly launched Magneto ongoing are of interest to me.

[Sundowhn]

@gater

The major storylines are Utopia, Messiah Complex, Second Coming, Schism and AvX. Beast brought the original five X-Men forward to try and have the last word in an argument with Cyclops and has now created a situation that risks wiping out reality. BOTA went into that but didn't give any satisfactory answers as to why the kids couldn't go back.

As far as current titles go:

Uncanny X-Men is now about Cyclops and the revolution he's been talking about for the past year (that hasn't yet manifested). It has Cyke, Magneto, Emma, Magik, Kitty and some kids with Cyke hiding in an old Weapon X bunker and talking war and occasionally presenting propaganda. It's grim, full of snark, the team barely likes one another, let alone do they trust each other and is the aftermath of the fallout from AvX. Bendis appears to be trying to reset the MU to an atmosphere of God Love, Man Kills, more or less.

The good: an active premise and potentially interesting storyline and roster
The bad: severely decompressed story-telling, the characterization and voices can be way off, lack of explanation why the world reflected in the title doesn't really jive with the MU in other books

ANXM is about the time displaced original five plus Kitty and X-23. It's heavily promoted and based more or less around events and crossovers. We just finished with the Shi'ar Trial of Jean Grey (Jean the teen, not to be confused with the original Claremont trial of Jean Grey the elder). It operates on its own, but the team has ties to Cyclops and his Revolution. Both are written by Bendis.

The good: If you don't mind rewrites of iconic characters, a la Ultimate Universe, it gives some entertaining characterization and dynamics as Bendis excels in creating his own sandbox and playing in it, beautiful art
On the fence: It's a youth oriented title, imo, with a great deal of teen drama
The bad: A premise full of plot holes. Why can't they go back? Why does anyone feel it's a good idea to have them in the field when it's already been shown that whatever happens to them also happens to their older counterpart and can thus rewrite history?


Amazing X-Men is more of a classic X-Men team with a group that views one another as family. Storm, Nightcrawler, Wolverine, Beast, Iceman, Rachel and soon to be adding Colossus, they also have both Northstar and Firestar (from Avengers) and basically anyone on the Jean Grey School side of Schism can show up. This side is trying to pick up where Xavier left off in matters of coexistence. Very old school feel so far, but we've only gotten through the initial arc which was a mission to rescue Nightcrawler from the afterlife.

The good: Classic X-Men presentation, solid characterization and voices, reference to continuity, good pacing, beautiful art
The bad: lack of relevant direction and premise, currently in flux with the writer changeover


(Adjectiveless) X-Men is an all female title also on the JGS of Schism. Currently, they have Storm, Psylocke, Rachel, Jubilee, Monet and a couple of the New Mutants showing up from time to time. They're fighting a sisterhood of mutants at present.

The good: solid pacing, good character development for most, interesting team dynamics
The bad: It suffered badly when the original cast including Rogue and Kitty was changed to allow Bendis ownership of Kitty and Remender ownership of Rogue. It's floundered a bit since.


WatXM: A book about the JGS itself, with Storm as headmistress. It has tie ins to the wider MU, but remains predominantly about the younger generation and their probable impact on the future of mutants.

The good: it's a somewhat lighter read and decently paced, focusing on the next generation of mutants
The bad: needs more solid characterization and development of the kids

For all JGS books (Wolverine's side of Schism) writers mainly present them as the ones who disagree with Cyclops rather than telling stories to show their philosophy.

The satellites:

All New X-Factor -- Polaris, Gambit, Quicksilver, Cypher, Danger, Warlock. They are a team working in the corporate world, uncovering secrets and being X-Men. Innovative concept.
The good: Peter David's writing, entertaining cast, solid art
The bad: nothing bad to say for this one

X-Force -- Cable, Psylocke, Fantomex, Marrow. They're the black ops team, doing what has to be done to protect mutants and the world, or so they see it. Grim and edgy.
The good: Solid cast and Spurrier tells a good story
The bad: His style isn't always pleasing to everyone

The current solos (neither are many issues in, so hard to give firm opinions):

Magneto -- Mags is out in the world going to the extremes in dealing with mutant bigotry and his own dark ambitions
The good: Solid art, solid premise, good pacing by Bunn
The bad: Is a matter of taste -- he's too much like movie Mags and not enough like comic Mags

Nightcrawler -- Nightcrawler is once again in the land of the living and trying to learn his place in the world now
The good: Written by Claremont, complex unfolding story and development, good art
The bad: heavy on the nostalgia for the first issue


So yeah, that's my 2 cents, OP

[cwatz]

For current day stuff...

All-New and Uncanny are the larger titles. The biggest stuff will happen there. For that reason alone id have them at the top of the list. All-new has been the better of the two thus far, Uncanny is inconsistent, but is looking to get very good with this current arc. Both can be frustrating issue by issue on occasion, but the material is good in big batches.

Amazing is solid, mindless fun so far. Certainly not a must buy at this point, but I dont think many people would be able to say they disliked it.

Adjectiveless is ok and I still pick it up, but id recommend the other 3 before it.

Wasn't a fan of WatXM before, so I can't speak for current quality, and I haven't jumped on any satellites yet so I can't give an opinion on those.

[JackalsIII]

Here is my pull list for July -

All New X-Men
Uncanny X-Men

Then side comics, All New Ultimates and Legendary StarLord

[Stryfe8]

honestly, except for whedons astonishing,and davids x-factor, i would stay away and preserve your good memories

[General Nerditry]

honestly, except for whedons astonishing,and davids x-factor, i would stay away and preserve your good memories

Quoted for truth. I'm sure there are some good stories I'm forgetting, but the bad is such an overwhelming volume. Whedon and PAD are worth getting, sure, but otherwise? Take that money and pick up Robert Kirkman's Invincible. Best superhero book on the market ATM IMO.