That era of X-Men, from about #200-#280, is my all time favorite run. It's just wonderfully dark and contemplative, and it goes beyond what any other ongoing superhero book had ever done before. They lost Professor X, there's the Mutant Registration Act, Genosha, all of the internal conflict... there's this palpable sense of dread that hangs over the team the whole time... they're superheroes fighting against the whole world rather than regular villains.

Well yeah, comparing him to Lee and he's going to come up a bit short. Before Lee came aboard though I felt Silvestri was the quintessential X-artist. I know there will be some older school fans then me that will laugh at that but personally I never really like Byrne or Romita Jr. or Corkrum. I'm not even going to get started on Paul Smith or Rick Leonardi.

Indeed that was a great run. The changes the team goes through just roster wise in that 6 or so years was amazing. Claremont at his best because he had almost complete control over them because they weren't "the franchise" yet.

Damn, I'm going to have to go dig through the boxes and read these again.

Neal Adams version which I stated in an earlier post; influenced what they look like today and I think was the best artist that book ever had. I bet every artist that worked on that book would agree with me. Even Cockrum had more originality in his designs than artists of today. His design influence is still seen today. Besides, when you think about them in your mind you probably see his costume designs than most others. Those other artists are ok but compared to Adams they don't even compare.

I forgot about Adams and honestly he was before my time so he didn't make an impression on me. However I remember reading Classic X-Men stories and his art was super detailed for his time. His art holds up a lot better then the others I mentioned.

And yeah Cockrum was great at costume design but his art just left me lukewarm.

You probably know this but Adams is doing a limited Batman series called Odyssey. His art hasn't changed all that much since the 60's. Check it out.

I remember this old interview back in the 80's he stated that if superheroes were real; they would look exactly the way he drew them. I guess that's why I'm drawn towards his art; the realism of the way he draws human anatomy. I can only name a handful of comic book artists that do that today.

I also really enjoyed that period in X-Men history. However, I was always disappointed in the way the team was brought back together after the Siege Perilous. I remember thinking how cool the "in search of the missing X-men" story was going to be, but after a few issues it was time for X-Tinction Agenda and everyone just sort of showed up again. Of course all of this lead to the rise of Jim Lee (who I do love actually) and the ousting of Claremont and basically the end of X-men as it came to be known over an amazing period of 15 years.

I loved how Claremont kept stories simmering over the course of years and you never knew when they would be paid off. Unfortunately you also never knew if they'd be paid off. That kind of thing could never happen now because of the obscene number of titles and the seemingly annual Marvel company wide crossover. That's one reason I enjoyed Morrison's run, because it was long, but also self contained.

I think X-Tinction Agenda was the first cross over that didn't come organically but was a company mandate, Inferno felt that way as well but they made it work a lot better. Like the others, the Uncanny parts were good but New Mutants and X-Factor were crap.

I never could get into the Morrison run, it didn't really have a "X-Men" fell to me and the art was just horrible through most of his run. It was pretty much the beginning of the end of my comic book days.

Is there a trade that covers the X-Men going into the Seige Perilous? I kind of want to read that and the Psylocke transformation.

Not that I'm aware of, though I bits and pieces are in the Jim Lee X-Men Visionaries TPB.

The storyline (mostly) runs from about #246 to around X-Tinction Agenda (which was... 270-272?). The X-Tinction Agenda kind of forces all of the players back into place rather abruptly, and then there are couple more storylines that do a bit of clean-up before the big relaunch of the franchise in X-Men #1 and Uncanny X-Men #281.

#246-247 is where the team first begins to break up, and then the "Dissolution and Rebirth" story runs from #248-254 -- this was a biweekly summer event. The Psylocke story (with Jim Lee art) is from 256-258. This is followed by a lot of one-off issues, including #268, which is a cool Captain America/Wolverine/Black Widow story that's partially set in WWII. The first appearance of Gambit is also in here somewhere, #266, I think.

Thanks, at that rate it'll probably be worth going through the digital comic collection that they have, since those stories seem contained in Uncanny.

Reading this thread forced me to "get" that collection. It was just easier then going down and digging through my boxes. A lot of memories in that collection for me.

I personally think you're going to get a better story if you just stick to the Uncanny issues and then fill in any blanks you need to. Like you've seen, reading some of the crossover issues can be a bit of a chore.

So i've caught up fairly well with recent X-Men, at least with the big story arcs via the trades and collected editions. I've read House of M, Messiah Complex, Divided We Stand (that was a waste of time), parts of Manifest Destiny (more waste), Messiah War, Utopia (meh) and Nation X (more meh). In between those, also Secret Invasion and Siege.

I'm really enjoying them. Maybe i'm the more casual fan that Marvel is targeting since I hear nothing but people complain about how X-Men or Marvel have sucked since the 80's or 60's or whatever decade, but as someone that really started in the early 90's reading stuff like Xtinction Agenda and watching the X-Men Animated Series, i'm having a lot of fun. The plots are interesting to me, I still dig the characters, and since i'm not reading issue to issue, the story flows together nicely across the different series. Other then some really awful lines and scenes between Cyclops and Emma.

I've also enjoyed the big arc in the entire Marvel Universe with House of M, Civil War, Secret Invasion, and Siege. I can see why regular readers hate big change after big change if they're reading single issues given how spread out some of the stories are, but as a casual reader they've been entertaining.

Now I just need to wait for the Second Coming collection to come out to finish that arc

And I received and finished reading Second Coming today.

I enjoyed the heck out of, and loved the bold moves by Cyclops despite the concerns of his oldest friends, and the deaths of various characters were definitely shocking to me. I even dug the X-Force stuff, which I thought was a cool concept when Cyclops resurrected it. It's a shame that the stuff between this arc was fairly mediocre, but reading Messiah Complex, Messiah War, and Second Coming were extremely entertaining. I assume the "modern comics suck" crowd hated it as well? I guess I just don't see a big difference between this arc versus the ones from Claremont, let alone something like Astonishing X-Men that people seem to love.

Meanwhile, my girlfriend bought the 4 volumes that make up the Complete Onslaught Epic, so off to that next. The Curse of the Mutants stuff going on now that I read about on Wikipedia seems pretty lame though.

So I just read through X-Men utopia, and it doesn't make much sense to me at all



And I also read X-Nation. I don't like the X-men being a huge legion of mutants who they can mix and match at will. I think it started with Morrison's run, but even after House of M they seem to have so many mutants that they just call on whenever they need someone. They're no longer underdogs, at least it never seems that way. It doesn't help that I have absolutely no idea who half of these people are...

Completely random update, but I finally read and finished the Complete Onslaught Saga a couple weeks ago. Meh. Talk about a whole lot of boring nothing. Crossing between Thor, the Avengers, and Fantastic Four was kind of annoying for a primarily "X" title, and it felt like very little happened through the 4 volumes other then people talking about how powerful Onslaught was and getting randomly zapped wtihout much actual action. What a long but disappointing read.

I don't really know what X title to read now. Maybe Age of Apocalypse.

Age of Apocalypse is an awesome cross over. I don't know if I said earlier but the art/writer teams seemed to click one the 4 major titles. Joe Maduirra(sp?) and Andy Kubert at their X-Men best IMO. Steve Skorce, Adam Kubert (although I don't remember if he did all 4 Weapon X's), I personally loved Epting on Factor X, Chris Bachalo pretty much given free range to do his wacky best, and Tony Daniel.

Stay away from Ages of Apocalypse though, that was horrible reading.

Age of Apocalypse was a great read at the time, because it was pretty revolutionary to change the name and premise of pretty much every X-title for a period of 4 months. It doesn't really hold up in trade format, I think partly because the titles were meant to be read concurrently.

Most of the art was decent, but I wasn't a fan of that era of Epting (Avengers and X-Factor, pre Cross-gen when he really started to show his stuff), and Excalibur was absolutely terrible... Lashley and Cruz. And the bookends, while entertaining, were drawn by Cruz as well. Dodson also did one of the one-shots, which was great. Bachalo was still semi-coherent in his art (seriously, sometime during his creation of Steampunk he lost something), and after drawing a relatively sane Generation X title was able to release his creative side.

A few things I didn't like about it:

You're absolutely right in that it doesn't read very well in TPB form. You have to get the guide that breaks down the order to read them in.

I wasn't a fan of the bookends or the oneshot (I think there might have been some other fluff in there as well that I didn't like)

Bachalo was always hit and miss with me but I think his art here was probably his best.

I don't remember reading X-Calibur because I wasn't and Excalibur fan at the time so I don't remember if I even got them.

I'm kind of wary about reading it just because I know it's self contained and doesn't really mean a whole lot to the actual continuity outside of the characters that came from that age. I'm familiar with X-Man and Dark Beast... but if the trades aren't a very good read, maybe i'll pass.

There's gotta be something interesting to read

My X-Men reading resumed yesterday thanks to the Amazon Gold Box, where I picked up the Psylocke trade and X Necrosha. Read the Psylocke story, which I bought mostly because it included the initial transformation in to her Asian body, and enjoyed it quite a bit. Dug both the artwork and the end of Matsu'o, and Psylocke has always been a favorite character of mine (ok, it's the costume, but whatever!).

I'll get into X Necrosha in the next few days.

Is the Psylocke trade fairly self-contained? It looks worth a flyer, but I'm woefully out of date on my X-continuity.

Yeah, I would say so. It relies more on Psylocke's past (and Wolverine's in Japan) then anything recent, and you can probably just read reprint of the original story first as a refresher.

Thanks, I may pick that up.

Also, I don't know if you ended up reading Age of Apocalypse. As I said earlier in the thread, I'd never read it before and was totally confused by the trades. I got through one and bought another but never read it. I suppose I could have researched it or something but didn't feel like making the effort.

All you have to know is that it's an alternate reality caused by the death of Professor X before he started the X-men. As a result, Apocalypse got into power and Magneto formed the X-men against him instead. Things come out of nowhere, but it's not because you're new to the book, it was new for everyone, except for the copious nods to the "real" reality which was half of the fun of the series. It's not as good of a read as I remember, and certainly the trades can be a little confusing, but I still enjoy it.

I think you're missing Nation X in between the Psylocke one and Necrosha... the only reason I know that is because I never read the Psylocke one and read Nation X and was a little confused.