something i posted on tumblr some time ago

[etrangere]

X-Men is one of the hugest and often most confusing corner of the Marvel Universe. Therefore despite its popularity it can be hard to get into. I’m hardly the most well read X-Men fan ever - yet - but I’ll try my best to give some pointers.

Comments

[after_nightfall]

Wowza! That's a lot of reading. :-) Yes, as a matter of fact, I did want to read X-Men, but was stumped about where to start. I think I'll go with the Phoenix saga - I always thought this wasn't handled very well in the movies. Thank you for writing this.

[etrangere]

It was really, really not handled well in the movies XD It's good stuff, if very frunky/weird (lots of alien stuff).

[q99]

Minor nitpick: Grant Morrison.

-
New Mutants (v2) & New X-Men (Academy X)
Was the ’00s era book for young mutants. It is divided in two runs, Academy X by Weir & DeFilippis before Decimation (New Mutants v2 #1-12+ New X-Men#1-19 + Hellion miniseries), and the run after by Kyle & Yost (#21-46). The former is kind of basic high school drama; and the latter is about giving a lot of poor innocent kids PTSD. Love the characters but it’s pretty uneven in terms of stories; so it’s rather superfluous.-

I'll comment that it was also the young-mutants book I got into the most.

[etrangere]

fixed!

Yeah, I loved those kids. Wish we still saw more of them :/

[q99]

Quite!

[lousy_science]

very cool, thank you!

[etrangere]

you're welcome!

[i_llbedammned]

Thank you for this. I'm never sure where to start with comics, especially ones that are as old as the X-Men. I'm going to have to look into X-Men: Mythos and Joss Whendon's things.

The Dark Phoenix saga was one of my favorites! It really reminded me why I love the Jean Grey dynamic.

What does it mean that it is a very 90s comic?

House of M is something I've been meaning to read for a while now.

[etrangere]

Mythos might be hard to get ahold of, so ask away if you want me to upload it for you.

90's comics are characterised by a lot of specific aesthetic flourishes. 90's Anti-Heroes, a lot of gratuitous blood & gore & grime that frequently doesn't make much sense, villains that are very over the top but ring very hollow. It was also a bad time for X-Men in term of female characters development since it had been a great series during Claremont for genuinely and diverse strong female characters, whereas 90's comics frequently emphasize macho heroes along with Bad Girls who are overly sexualised and frequently painted as straw feminists and all the other parodic Strong Female Characters traits.

Hope you enjoy :)