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Hello all,

I started reading X-men again with House of X/Powers of X and I really liked what they were doing with it. Unfortunately I kind of lost the plot after a while - it seems like there is a new X title every week and I can't keep track of them all. However, I really would like to catch up again - but now I am lost.

If you were to start reading X-men books starting with X of Swords, how would you get current to where you are now? What can you skip? (I do have a reading order for X of Swords, fwiw).


Thanks for any suggestions.

I have been following everything since house/powers. Don't read individual titles. Get the trades. They released trades called "Dawn of x" That collected every series they were releasing, Ongoings, miniseries, and 1 shots, in reading order, so that you get the full new Krakoan age of the Xmen together.

Dawn of X ends with the X of Swords Cross over (also a trade) and then picks up with Reign of X which recently had a Hardcover Event the Hellfire Gala after about 8 trades of Reign.

X-Men is always really bad about floundering around for a while, finding something that works, and then spamming that to the point its impossible to follow. I have little advice to this matter. I've tried.

 Lance845 wrote:
and then picks up with Reign of X which recently had a Hardcover Event the Hellfire Gala after about 8 trades of Reign.

Thanks, that is pretty straightforward. I am going to read X of swords and then look for trades. You post led to me googling the trades which led me to this, which is, well, exactly what I was looking for:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawn_of_X
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reign_of_X

So thanks for the pointer.

I really like where they are going with Krakoa in general (up until X of swords, which is where I am at now) - the "no more death" and the way they leverage it to corrupt the Quiet Council is very neat, as well as all of the villains and long-missing characters reappearing.

I recently got back into X-Men with House of X/Powers of X. I liked where it was going but I bailed before the Hellfire Gala b/c the previews were extremely bad/cringey.

I'd recommend turning back the clock to pick up trades of the Chris Clairmont/John Byrne era and working your way forward. This is where all the great X-Men stories live and you didn't have thirteen X-books to keep track of.

Other great runs of X-books:

Excalibur (Clairmont/Art Adams?) - Shadowcat/Pheonix/Nightcrawler in England with Captain Britain and Meggan. Several years of really well written and drawn comics on an epic storyline with a satisfying ending.
New Mutants (original run) - solid start, but they kept changing artists and many of them were NOT GOOD but some great characters get introduced and some real gems of storylines.

And there are obviously a ton of other runs (X-Factor, X-Force) that become required reading beyond a certain point. Jim Lee's run on X-Men in the 90's had great art at least so that's worth checking out too.

 Ouze wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
and then picks up with Reign of X which recently had a Hardcover Event the Hellfire Gala after about 8 trades of Reign.

Thanks, that is pretty straightforward. I am going to read X of swords and then look for trades. You post led to me googling the trades which led me to this, which is, well, exactly what I was looking for:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawn_of_X
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reign_of_X

So thanks for the pointer.

I really like where they are going with Krakoa in general (up until X of swords, which is where I am at now) - the "no more death" and the way they leverage it to corrupt the Quiet Council is very neat, as well as all of the villains and long-missing characters reappearing.

Not only that, but if you are reading the actual trades there are little single line or whatever bits that show that something is seriously off in the whole thing.

Like Domino and Colossus have a conversation about how neither of them want to go through resurrection because their scars are part of who they are. (Domino missing large parts of her skin from some bull gak).

Then at the end of that little arc Domino is killed and bought back. She doesn't have any memory of the trauma or her conversation with Colossus. So... is that Domino? Did professor X decide to remove those bits of her mind for her? Did someone else?

Later they fight the risen zombies of the mutants who died in Genosha. But... those Mutants have been resurrected. But some of the zombies have their minds in tact. One mutant has a conversation with himself. So they are not really resurrections. They are clones with implanted memories. Every mutant who went on that first mission to the sentinel factory that got dropped into the sun is dead. Including Wolverine. They are not resurrected. They are dead. These are clones with potentially manipulating gaps in their memories. Or false memories. Or anything really? And it's not like there are not souls or resurrections in the Marvel universe. Some gak is going to come back to bite them for this.

Resurrection Protocols are not REALLY resurrection.

This whole Krakoan era is fascinating.

I loved X-Factor Investigations as something really different, though it got a bit derailed before the end.

Jason Aaron's Wolverine and the X-Men is also a solid run. I'd also recommend the 2008 run of X-Force as particularly worth reading.

 Lance845 wrote:

Resurrection Protocols are not REALLY resurrection.

This whole Krakoan era is fascinating.

It's the Star Trek transporter problem.

Are people just information you can move around?

The Resurrection Protocols doesn't address the soul at all, something that canonically exists in the Marvel Universe. You can lose parts of it, you can sell it, it doesn't seem 100% necessary to be a living conscious being, but most living beings have one. The resurrected X-Men might not have their souls. Or they might get brand new ones at resurrection, which doesn't make much difference if the mind is properly copied to the new body. Though it might make a difference for magic using mutants like Storm or Apocalypse. Or Rachel Summers if she has any remaining link to the Pheonix Force, which is basically the source of new souls IIRC.

 John Prins wrote:
I recently got back into X-Men with House of X/Powers of X. I liked where it was going but I bailed before the Hellfire Gala b/c the previews were extremely bad/cringey.

I'd recommend turning back the clock to pick up trades of the Chris Clairmont/John Byrne era and working your way forward. This is where all the great X-Men stories live and you didn't have thirteen X-books to keep track of.

Other great runs of X-books:

Excalibur (Clairmont/Art Adams?) - Shadowcat/Pheonix/Nightcrawler in England with Captain Britain and Meggan. Several years of really well written and drawn comics on an epic storyline with a satisfying ending.
New Mutants (original run) - solid start, but they kept changing artists and many of them were NOT GOOD but some great characters get introduced and some real gems of storylines.

And there are obviously a ton of other runs (X-Factor, X-Force) that become required reading beyond a certain point. Jim Lee's run on X-Men in the 90's had great art at least so that's worth checking out too.

I loved all this stuff too, for sure - I grew up reading these eras. The Dark Phoenix saga, but good! Days of Future Past! I was a huge Chris Claremont fan.

Except the X-force stuff. I know it's shallow but I could not get past Rob Liefeld.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Lance845 wrote:
Resurrection Protocols are not REALLY resurrection.

This whole Krakoan era is fascinating.

I knooooooow. I am sure at some point we are going to find out that Krakoa is, I don't know, feeding off them or eating them or something (please no spoilers if that has been revealed). I can't wait to see where this is going (and am a little bummed that the path there has branched off into so damn many divergences).