I count down my ten favourite X-Men story arcs, from Inferno and the Mutant Massacre up through Age of Apocalypse, God Loves, Man Kills, Broodfall and the Hellfire Club, with a quick rundown of what happens in each and what I think is good and bad about it.
Most of my complaints are about crossovers that make you chase a story across too many books, and a few of these I couldn’t find anything bad to say about at all. My number one is the one that turns up on everybody’s list, and I think it deserves to.
This was meant to be a list of the 10 best single issues of the X-Men, but as I started researching (OK, re-reading) and reviewing, I quickly found that a list of the 10 best story arcs in the X-verse would be a lot more useful and a lot more fun, so that’s what you’re getting. A single issue on its own rarely tells you why people love this team. The arcs do. So for each one there’s a brief synopsis, then what I think is good about it and what’s bad about it, and for a few of them the bad section is going to be very short indeed.
It’s been a big year for the X-Men anyway, with Days of Future Past taking one of the best of these stories to the cinema, so it felt like a good time to go back to the comics that started it all. Every X-Men story on this list comes from the main books, mostly Uncanny X-Men, with one graphic novel thrown in, and I’ve put the issue numbers next to each so you can track them down. A lot of them are collected in trade paperbacks now, which makes life easier, especially for the crossovers that wander off into other titles. And yes, Wolverine turns up a lot, but that’s the X-Men for you.
Numbers 10 and 9: Demons in New York and Murder in the Tunnels
#10 – Inferno (Uncanny X-Men #239-243)
Inferno was a company-wide crossover, so it’s about a lot of things at once. Madelyne Pryor gets corrupted into the Goblin Queen, Illyana Rasputin goes through her final change into the Darkchylde, and demons pour into New York City, which is becoming a bit of a Marvel tradition after what the Avengers had to deal with. Because it ran across books all over the Marvel Universe, with some of the storylines being incidental at best and irrelevant at worst, it was a bit of a mish-mash of characters and writers. But the actual main X-titles, the ones Claremont wrote, were very well done, and the story and character development in them is really well explored. Some of the fight sequences in this arc are exceptional and worth a read on their own, and so is a lot of the art. The bad side is the one I mentioned: because it crossed the whole Marvel Universe it was a bit of a pain to make sure you’d actually caught all the key bits.
#9 – The Mutant Massacre (Uncanny X-Men #210-213)
The Morlocks, the mutants living in the tunnels under the city, are under attack. The Marauders are acting like hunting parties, tracking them down and killing them without any obvious reason, and the X-Men and a few other heroes rush in to stop the slaughter, or at least slow it down. What I love about this one is Wolverine and Sabretooth going at each other, setting up what turns into one of comics’ great rivalries, and there’s real character growth here too. Shadowcat, Nightcrawler and Colossus all take serious injuries, and Angel over in X-Factor goes through agony when his wings get pinned by harpoons. This was the first X-Men crossover and still one of the best, so I’ve not got much to say for the bad side at all.
Numbers 8 and 7: A World Without Xavier and a Preacher With a Plan
#8 – Age of Apocalypse
Legion, Xavier’s very powerful and very unstable son, goes back in time to kill Magneto, believing that with Magneto gone his father’s dream of humans and mutants living together will finally come true. But he arrives when Magneto and Xavier are still friends, Xavier dies protecting Magneto, Legion vanishes, and a whole new timeline takes over. Only Bishop, who followed Legion back, knows history has changed. Magneto ends up carrying his dead friend’s dream, and Apocalypse, who was watching the fight, decides it’s the perfect moment to start conquering the world years ahead of schedule. What’s good? Logan and Jean Grey get together, Magneto and Rogue get together, and you get loads of excellent what-if scenarios and battles. What’s not to like?! Some people have this near the top of their lists and others near the bottom. It’s near the bottom of mine, not because the story isn’t interesting, but because there are just too many different books to follow and pick up.
#7 – God Loves, Man Kills (Marvel Graphic Novel #5)
A TV preacher, Reverend William Stryker, whips up a crusade against mutants, kidnaps Professor X and plans to use his mind to wipe them all out, and the X-Men end up having to team up with Magneto to stop him. It’s another X-Men story that’s widely thought of as a classic, and it’s an emotionally charged one, opening with young kids being murdered just for being mutants and carrying on from there. The real heroes of this story are actually two normal cops who don’t know who to believe but still do their duty. The bad? Well, it’s definitely NOT the story you’d expect in a comic book. It’s very deep and emotional and shows a different side to a lot of the characters, and honestly that’s more a warning than a complaint, because there’s nothing really bad about this one.
Numbers 6 and 5: Ninjas, a Kidnapped Psylocke and the Brood Come to Earth
#6 – Acts of Vengeance (Uncanny X-Men #256-258)
At this point in X-Men history the team has broken up and everyone is scattered around the globe, so during the Acts of Vengeance crossover Wolverine and Jubilee end up facing Iron Man’s arch enemy the Mandarin and the Hand’s deadly new assassin, who turns out to be Psylocke?! The Mandarin has taken advantage of the chaos to kidnap her, brainwash her, swap her into a new body and turn her into his weapon. What’s good is Wolverine on his own against the Mandarin, the Hand and a whole host of ninja assassins. It’s a great kung fu action story, with one hero facing impossible odds and the other an unwilling pawn of the enemy, and it looks fantastic. The bad is that the main Acts of Vengeance crossover is pretty awful, if I’m honest, but it produced some great tie-in stories, especially these ones in the X-Men titles.
#5 – Broodfall (Uncanny X-Men #232-234)
The Brood are Marvel’s predatory alien race, not all that far off from H.R. Giger territory, except they infect their victims like a virus and slowly turn them into more Brood. This is the best Brood story ever, bar none. All the earlier Brood stories had the X-Men going out into space to face them, but this time the Brood come to Earth, which means if the X-Men lose, the Earth loses, and that makes the stakes a lot bigger and a lot more personal. The Brood infect Wolverine with one of their seeds, and Wolverine has often been the focus of stories where he battles his own inner demons, but this time he has to fight one that isn’t his own! Of course there are also big battles, panic in the streets to keep any Japanese monster movie fan happy, Brood beasts throwing cars around and more superhero action than you can shake a stick at. It’s definitely the highlight of that era of the book, with some excellent covers and artwork too, and I’ve got nothing bad to say about it.
Numbers 4 and 3: Rogue Comes Back and the Hellfire Club Comes Out
#4 – Rogue Redux (Uncanny X-Men #269)
Rogue gets spat out of the Siege Perilous and lands in her room at the X-Men’s base in the Australian Outback, apparently unchanged. Then she hears on the news that Mystique has been murdered, finds out she’s lost the Ms. Marvel powers she’d absorbed years ago, and discovers the base is back in the hands of the Reavers. Even more surprising, Carol Danvers has a body of her own again. While Carol fights the Reavers, Rogue borrows Gateway’s powers long enough to teleport herself and (accidentally) Carol away, and it all gets messier from there, with Carol ending up as the Shadow King’s servant and coming after Rogue. What’s good is Rogue and Magneto together again, some great fight sequences and battles, and some amazing covers. The bad is that it doesn’t really do much to move the bigger storyline along, but it’s still a very good story in and of itself.
#3 – The Hellfire Club (Uncanny X-Men #207-209)
This arc has a murderous fight between Rachel Summers, the second Phoenix, and Selene, a member of the infamous Hellfire Club, whose secretive Inner Circle likes to control world affairs a lot more than it should. Rachel’s out for blood, the rest of the team are trying to stop her doing something she can’t take back, and the Hellfire Club are only too happy to fight dirty. What’s good about it is pretty simple. There’s a huge brawl in Central Park with the whole Hellfire Club taking on the X-Men, and then it gets even better when Nimrod turns up, the super mega badass Sentinel built to destroy all mutants. Bad? Nothing bad here either!! This is the X-Men at their most fun, all fists and powers and nobody holding back.
Numbers 2 and 1: Sentinels in the Future and Jean Grey
#2 – Days of Future Past (Uncanny X-Men #141-142)
A greying Wolverine, a grown-up Kitty Pryde, a dark future ruled by mutant-hunting Sentinels, the deaths of the X-Men and a time travel story to try and stop any of it happening. It’s the inspiration for the most recent X-Men movie, and it’s another of the classic X-Men stories, which is why it’s this high up. The only bad thing I’d say is that it doesn’t hold up quite as well as number one does, but it’s hard to hold that against it. It’s just been copied, imitated, parodied and revisited so many times since that it doesn’t feel as original now as it must have when it came out. Two issues, and it still packs more in than most crossovers manage in twenty.
#1 – The Dark Phoenix Saga (Uncanny X-Men #129-138)
Jean Grey, now calling herself Phoenix, starts using her powers in ways her teammates find more and more worrying, and the Hellfire Club makes it all so much worse, with Mastermind getting inside her head and playing with her mind and her feelings until she breaks. As Dark Phoenix she feeds on a star, it goes supernova and billions of people on the planets around it die. That brings the Shi’ar Empire down on her, determined to put her on trial and execute her, and the X-Men, for all their doubts, stand by Jean right to the end, on the moon, where she gives her own life to save the rest of them. It’s the X-Men’s greatest story for me, and it’s one of comics’ great tragedies.
Action, fights galore and an excellent story that captures your heart and your mind. This is number 1 because it’s the best, and it well deserves the spot. This is it. This is the big one. There is NOTHING bad about this book, and if you’ve not read it before, get it now. You won’t be sorry.
What’s your number one X-Men story, and which one did I leave off this list that you’d have put in? Tell me in the comments.