Are you an X-Men fan who doesn’t have time to hunt down single comics from a story spanning sixty years and thousands of issues?
Me too!
Many of those single issues are collected into omnibuses, hardcovers, and trade paperback (“TPB”) graphic novels. Figuring out which books to buy and in what order turns out to be a very complex task – half research project, half detective novel.
I’ve taken the work out of it for you. This Guide to Collecting X-Men can help you figure out the right collection to buy no matter what run of X-Men comics books you’re looking for. It contains titles, issue ranges, ISBNs, and links to every modern X-Men collection. I also break down the major characters and creators for each group of issues.
If you want to read the current X-Men comics from 2019 to present, visit the Guide to X-Men – Age of Krakoa.
If you’re looking for the core or most-important books from the past, you probably want to skip right to start of Uncanny X-Men, which is the flagship X-title launched in 1963 and the heart of most X-Men stories.
Collecting X-Men Team Titles
– Astonishing X-Men, Vol. 3 picked up from Grant Morrison’s New X-Men with an award-winning run from Whedon/Cassaday. Amazing X-Men debuted at the end of 2012. Astonishing X-Men was revived for a brief run in 2018.
Excalibur – The Britain-based adventures of all teams named “Excalibur,” which usually are one of the following: based in Britain, lead by a Braddock, or focused on magic and Otherworld.
– The younger, more scholastic side of X-Men launched in the 80s and has a through-line to the present day.
– An X-Men/Avengers hybrid titles launched in the wake of Avengers vs. X-Men.
Uncanny X-Men – The flagship title of the X-Universe, most major developments of the X-Men happened here from 1963 to 2019.
Guide to Silver Age X-Men, issues #1-93(1963-1974)
Guide to Uncanny X-Men by Chris Claremont, issues #94 – 280 (1975-1991)
Guide to Uncanny X-Men – The Crossover Era, issues #281 – 393 (1991-2001)
Guide to Uncanny X-Men – The Trade Era, issues #394 – 544(2001-2011)
Guide to X-Men flagship titles (2011 – 2019),Uncanny X-Men (2011), Uncanny X-Men (2013), Uncanny X-Men (2016), and many others!
Weapon X – A team of characters experimented on by the many generations of the Weapon program, often anchored by Wolverine or Sabretooth.
X-Factor – Includes multiple eras of the team, including the original X-Men reunited in the 1986 series, Peter David’s 1991 and 2004 iterations, and a 2020 team of Krakoan investigators.
– Originally a more proactive New Mutants, eventually X-Force descended into tongue-in-cheek farce with X-Statix before the more militant X-Force returned as a major core title.
X-Men – Marvel’s adjectiveless X-flagship was launched by Claremont/Lee in 1991. It was rebooted by Grant Morrison in 2001 as New X-Men, and transformed to X-Men Legacyin 2008 with issue #208.
Guide to X-Men, Vol. 2, issues #1-113
Guide to X-Men flagship titles (2011 – 2019),X-Men (2010), X-Men (2013), X-Men Gold (2017), X-Men Red (2018), and many others.
X-Men Legacy – X-Men Legacy focuses on a smaller cast of characters with a single-character focus – first Xavier, then Rogue, and later Xavier’s son Legion.
– The incredibly strange team of non-heroes from Peter Milligan and Mike & Laura Allred
X-Treme X-Men – The 2001 Claremont/Larroca title featured a Storm-lead, globe-trotting team. The 2012 Grek Pak version featured Exiles-style alternate-reality tales starring Dazzler.
Collecting X-Men Solo Titles
In addition to maintaining a core of guides collecting X-Men major characters with a long history of solo series, I also launch special complete reading order guides for other solo X-Men exclusively to Patrons of Crushing Krisis.
Other X-Men Titles & Appearances
If the X-Men title you’re looking for is not on that list, try one of the following pages:
Other X-Men Regular Series – If it’s an X-Men ongoing series not included above, it’s on this page! Learn how you can collect titles including Alpha Flight, Bishop, Daken, Dazzler, Gambit, Mystique, Rogue, Nightcrawler, and X-23.
– The only place on the internet that catalogs the constant stream of X-Men limited series, from the
Marvel Universe Events –Marvel has executed regular line-wide crossovers ever since Secret Wars, and they frequently center on our favorite merry band of mutants. Find out how the X-Men were involved in each event, and make sense of the main story without buying every comic involved. 1980s to present.
Plus, see the following X-associated team pages:
- Alpha Flight – This team launched out of Chris Claremont’s run on Uncanny X-Men and includes Northstar and Aurora
- Defenders – Beast and Iceman anchored this team for a period in the early 80s.
- Exiles– The cross-dimensional adventures of this alternate-reality team mostly-mutant team don’t typically have a bearing on the main X-continuity.
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