Are there any "new classic" X-Men stories?

[RoJoHen]

I am not a big comic book guy, and my knowledge of the X-Men is pretty limited to the 90s FOX cartoon and the recent live-action films. I watched a little bit of Evolution, and I've just started watching the new Wolverine and the X-Men. That said, it is my understanding that the 90s cartoon did the best job adapting the major stories from the comics. But have there been any new "classic" stories that have been told since that show ended?

The Phoenix/Dark Pheonix Saga
Days of Futures Past
The Age of Apocalypse

These, to me, are the big X-Men tales. These are the ones that people tend to talk about, and (especially with the Pheonix) these are the ones that tend to get re-told with every new incarnation of the X-Men universe. Even with this brand new Wolverine X-Men cartoon, they're still telling the same old stories. It's still DoFP, Sentinels, Senator Kelly hates mutants, etc. They're being told in different ways with different players involved, but they're still the same stories that were being told decades ago.

I'm just wondering, have there been any huge/memorable X-Men storylines since these classics were first released? Or do the comics just keep rehashing old stuff?

 

[Hermiod]

This will be a controversial choice, but I will say the E is for Extinction, Assault on Weapon Plus, Planet X storyline from Grant Morrison's run.

On top of that, I'd go with House of M although that was also a company-wide crossover. E is for Extinction establishes that humans will be in the minority within a few short generations. House of M undoes that.

Since then, to be honest, the X-Men titles have become a big, unreadable mess with characters switching affiliations almost randomly, obscure characters from decades ago making "shocking" returns and so on.

Excused from all of this is Joss Whedon's run on Astonishing X-Men, which was quite wonderful, but only managed to be that way by completely ignoring everything else going on in the Marvel Universe at the same time.

 

[RoJoHen]

How long has it been since those titles have been released?

One of the reasons I haven't even bothered with the comics is because I wouldn't even know where to start. I glanced at the comic rack at Borders a month or so ago, and there was Uncanny X-Men, Ultimate X-Men, and X-Men Noir (wtf?) sitting there. And they all had Wolverine on the cover. And then there was also a separate Wolverine comic!

So the X-Men has basically just turned into a bad soap opera? How long has it been since it was consistently good?

 

[Hermiod]

E is for Extinction was published originally in 2001. Grant Morrison's overall run on New X-Men lasted until 2004. House of M is from 2005.

Whedon's run on Astonishing X-Men lasted from 2004 to the middle of last year.

There are numerous X-Men titles with different creative teams and different teams of X-Men appearing in them.

Today, the main one is Uncanny X-Men. There is also X-Men: Legacy, Astonishing X-Men (now written by Warren Ellis) and X-Factor, X-Force.

Ultimate X-Men is a seperate title set in the Ultimate universe. The Ultimate universe is a reboot, supposedly for new readers, free from the burdens of the massive Marvel universe continuity. There are also books like Ultimate Spider-Man and The Ultimates (the Ultimate universe version of the Avengers). Ultimate X-Men recently came to an end due to something which I'm not quite up to date with regarding the Ultimatum crossover story.

And yes, Wolverine gets around a lot. He currently appears in most of the X-Men titles, he is a member of the New Avengers and he also has two solo titles, though Wolverine: Origins (nothing to do with the upcoming movie) largely focuses, I believe, on the fact that Wolverine has recently regained all of his memories of his past life.

There is also someone claiming to be Wolverine in Dark Avengers, but like most of the members of that team, he is not the real Wolverine - he is, in fact, Wolverine's son Daken.

The X-Men Noir series was a brief miniseries telling an X-Men story in a film noir style. There has also been a Spider-Man one, IIRC. They certainly are not required reading by any stretch of the imagination.

 

[RoJoHen]

How the hell does anyone keep all that stuff straight?

 

[Hermiod]

How the hell does anyone keep all that stuff straight?

I have no idea. I do not read X-Men titles anymore except for the Emperor Vulcan stuff that's going on right now with the Shi'ar and their impending war with the Inhumans which is much more interesting.

I find Avengers related titles, especially those written by Brian Michael Bendis, far more entertaining.

I'm not very happy with Marvel at the moment, though. I may stop reading comics altogether as a result.

 

[Icemizer]

No.

 

[Tomato]

^

Don't listen to him. Not the biggest X men fan but what I would say is..

- Astonishing X Men by Joss Whedon. My most favourite X men story to date. The art rocks, Whedon kicks butt a true X men classic. http://www.amazon.com/Astonishing-X...=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238508219&sr=1-6


- New X Men by Grant Morrison, Not really "feeling" it so far but I heard it gets really good in the latter volumes. http://www.amazon.com/New-X-Men-Vol...bs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238508011&sr=8-1

- Rise and Fall of the Shi'ar empire: Bit heavy on the X men history but Ed Brubaker can do no wrong. http://www.amazon.com/Uncanny-X-Men...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238508247&sr=1-1

 

[Thrall]

No.

Yep. Preach it brother. After Morrison took over the mythology died. Something similar he did with Batman. I did however enjoy Mark Millar's Ultimate X-Men run. It's not the greatest thing ever, and he does some things that are different and not as good as the original, but it's got a lot of heart and soul to it and resembles more of what The X-Men are and should be about then any X-Men book in the past couple years could ever hope to. And then he went and wrote The Ultimates and Civil War and ruined my good will towards him.

 

[Klagg]

Isn't Chris Claremont coming back again to the X-Men comic? After the New York Comic Con, there was an announcement that he would have a separate continuity continuing from X-Men 3 when he originally left. I had not heard anything else on that.

I hated buying all the different X-title back in the day and left shortly after Claremont. But a single title with no crossovers sounds good, especially if I don't have to care about all the different writers that came after.

 

[Mistral]

I have the Clairmont(sp?) storyline engraved in my head. I just can't reconcile anything I've seen on the newsstand in the last 10+ years-so I quit trying. Although the Cable/Bishop run was interesting-I got the hardbound graphic novel last summer-good read.

 

[Ethros]

I got all the TPB of Whedon's run on Astonishing and enjoyed it very much, and I believe the series continued with another writer for the following issues. Are they any good? Are the TPBs of that out yet? Worth it?

 

[Tomato]

I got all the TPB of Whedon's run on Astonishing and enjoyed it very much, and I believe the series continued with another writer for the following issues. Are they any good? Are the TPBs of that out yet? Worth it?

I think Warren Ellis is writing it. And it is 10 years and counting from Planetary to finish so no TPBs yet.

 

[ManOnTheWave]

Isn't Chris Claremont coming back again to the X-Men comic? After the New York Comic Con, there was an announcement that he would have a separate continuity continuing from X-Men 3 when he originally left. I had not heard anything else on that.

I hated buying all the different X-title back in the day and left shortly after Claremont. But a single title with no crossovers sounds good, especially if I don't have to care about all the different writers that came after.

I'd read that. I hated everything that happened after Claremont quit.

 

[Norrin Radd]

I recently read Age of Apocalypse. Talk about overrated!

To me, Classic X-Men=Late 70s and 80s X-Men.

With few exceptions, nothing was really better...before or since.

 

[TheBrew]

Whedon's Astonishing I would call a must read. What you need to know can be summed up in a few sentences and it is a good read.

 

[darkwing_duck1]

How the hell does anyone keep all that stuff straight?

How do sports fans keep the stats for all their favorite teams and players straight?

 

[darkwing_duck1]

I'm not very happy with Marvel at the moment, though. I may stop reading comics altogether as a result.

I haven't been happy with them since around the time they took Thunderbolts "Fight Club"...

 

[RoJoHen]

How the hell does anyone keep all that stuff straight?

How do sports fans keep the stats for all their favorite teams and players straight?

I can't figure that out either! It's one of the reasons I'm not a bigger sports fan.

 

[Mr Light]

I pretty much stopped reading the X-Comics in 1999, so to my knowledge the only good thing since Age of Apocalypse was Joss Whedon's 25 issue run on Astonishing X-Men which I found very enjoyable. From my sampling it seems that the X-Comics have pretty much been crap this millennium. I found Grant Morrison's run to be interesting but flawed and a perversion of the series. The big recent Messiah Complex crossover was just alright. I'm not familiar with the Rise/Fall Shi'ar Empire storyline though.