There are a lot of great X-Men stories, but not all of them are great all the way through. Take Ultimate X-Men, which started out with a new vision of Marvel’s mutants and ended up crashing with the trajectory of a meteor.
Here, then, are the 12 X-Men stories that are 10/10 from start to finish, and we’re starting with a potentially controversial entry…
12
Hellions Volume 2, Zeb Wells and Stephen Segovia
Collects Hellions Volume 1 #7-12
Does this lesser-known series really belong in a list of all-time greats? Yes! While this list could just be made up of Chris Claremont stories, it’s not about how essential they are to the X-Men mythos, but how consistently great they are. By that score, Hellions did something truly great, turning a roster of D-list characters into an incredibly compelling cast.
Hellions is about a group of mutants gathered together because their powers or experiences make them dangerous to others. The villainous Mister Sinister (then working with the X-Men) is given permission to use them on missions which require excessive violence so long as he also helps them bond as a team. Of course, being an evil mastermind, he has plans of his own.
While the first volume is good, the second really embraces the dark comedy of turning such damaged characters into a superhero team, and includes the amazing Hellfire Gala tie-in issue where Mister Sinister gets to smarmily insult Marvel’s greatest heroes while sipping champagne, delivering #1 on our list of the best insults of X-Men’s Krakoan Era.
11
X-Men: Supernovas, Mike Carey and Chris Bachalo
Collects X-Men Volume 2 #188-193
Every so often, X-Men needs an injection of big ideas to keep the franchise feeling fresh. ‘Supernovas’ changed the game by introducing the Children of the Vault – hyper-evolved cyborgs who are the best candidates to supplant the X-Men as humanity’s final evolution. The volume also includes a scrappy X-Men team where heroes like Rogue and Iceman have to deal with allied villains Sabretooth and Mystique.
10
Astonishing X-Men: Gifted, Joss Whedon and John Cassaday
Collects Astonishing X-Men Volume 3 #1-6
Astonishing X-Men set a new watermark for modern X-Men stories, depicting the characters as a tried-and-true team with personal relationships tempered by years of adventures. Wolverine and Cyclops have rarely felt more like people you could meet in real life, and Kitty Pryde officially graduates from being the team’s little sister. The introduction of a mutant ‘cure’ also introduces huge stakes, while Colossus gets the greatest moment of his comic career.
John Cassaday’s art shows why he’s the best in the biz, though later accusations about Joss Whedon make this a volume fans might want to skip regardless.
9
Excalibur: The Sword Is Drawn, Chris Claremont and Alan Davis
Collects Excalibur Volume 1 #1-5
At a time when the X-Men are believed dead, Nightcrawler, Kitty Pryde and Rachel Grey head to England and set up a new team in a lighthouse. There’s nothing before or since like Excalibur – a comedy/action/soap opera where the relationships between the heroes matter as much if not more than the threats they face along the way.
Claremont is a legendary character writer, and nails the idea of flawed heroes who fear they’re not living up to their potential. Villains like the body-stealing Warwolves introduce ideas that are still inspiring stories nearly 40 years later, and things get very werid very quickly.
8
X-Men: God Loves, Man Kills, Chris Claremont and Brent Eric Anderson
The X-Men weren’t always an allegory for bigotry and prejudice, but God Loves, Man Kills sealed the deal that those concepts would be part of the franchise’s DNA forever. Religious leader William Stryker wasn’t like the villains superhero fans had come to expect, genuinely seeing mutants as inhuman with a fiery loathing that makes even Xavier consider whether Magneto might be right.
This story holds up as an examination of the soul-decaying hatred of bigotry, and what makes the X-Men so unique as a comics franchise.
7
House of X/Powers of X, Jonathan Hickman with Pepe Larraz and R.B. Silva Respectively
House of X Volume 1 #1-6 and Powers of X Volume 1 #1-6
It can’t be overstated how much these twin series – intended to be read by bouncing issue-by-issue between the two – changed the game for X-Men. In House of X, the X-Men have formed a mutant nation and become a world power overnight. Meanwhile, in Powers of X, we see how the entire future of mutantkind will play out, setting up a threat that the new mutant nation was secretly founded to defeat.
Hickman’s masterwork is incredibly rich with ideas, supporting the line-wide ‘Krakoan Era’ reboot that ran from 2019 to 2024. Villains and heroes are forced into a closer alliance than ever as the project of mutant survival is approached in startling new ways, and fans begin to wonder if Professor X was ever actually a hero.
6
X-Men Red Volume 1, Al Ewing and Stefano Caselli
X-Men: Red Volume 2 #1-5
After settling the otherworldly mutant civilization known as the Arakki on a terraformed Mars, the X-Men actually have to do the work of maintaining their alliance with this powerful new faction. Storm, Magneto and Sunspot journey to the red planet, becoming part of a new culture where self-sustenance is valued above all else and disagreements are settled by gladiatorial combat.
One of the Krakoan Era’s breakout successes, this comic unleashes the X-Men’s biggest badasses to be themselves without the constraints of a realistic backdrop, and with planetary stakes that only increase as the series goes on.
5
The New Mutants: Demon Bear Saga, Chris Claremont and Bill Sienkiewicz
The New Mutants Volume 1 #18-21
A work of comic art that’s rarely been equaled, the Demon Bear Saga is known as much for its art as its writing, as the X-Men’s neophyte recruits face a villain that literally embodies trauma. X-Men often uses mutant powers as a metaphor for its heroes’ inner conflicts, and ‘Demon Bear’ is the zenith of that concept.
Superhero comics are often celebrated for how they absorb other genres, and the Demon Bear Saga is a coming of age/psycholocial horror story par excellence.
4
Uncanny X-Force: The Apocalypse Solution, Rick Remender and Jerome Opeña
Uncanny X-Force Volume 1 #1-4
Wolverine gathers the X-Men’s deadliest killers to bring down Apocalypse, only to discover the world-ending villain has been reincarnated as a child. No-one expected X-Men to tackle ‘would you kill Hitler as a baby?’, and fewer still would imagine that story could be genuinely reflective, viscerally compelling and unexpectedly funny. Jerome Opeña’s art is museum-worthy, and Remender writes one of the few stories where Deadpool is actually funny.
While many lists recommend the later ‘Dark Angel Saga’, it’s important to be there when the team first get together and begin to clash and gel as a unit, especially because the conclusion of this story is the original sin that gives the rest of the run such compelling emotional stakes.
3
Uncanny X-Men: Everything is Sinister, Kieron Gillen, Carlos Pacheco, Jorge Molina, Rodney Buchemi and Brandon Peterson
Uncanny X-Men Volume 2 #1-4
Cyclops assembles a group who are part-superhero team, part-nuclear deterrent in this iconic X-Men run that’s worth reading all the way through. In the first volume, the team face off against Machiavellian geneticist Mister Sinister, in a portrayal that realized the villain’s potential as the best X-Men nemesis since Magneto.
The X-Men have never been wittier, in a story that was integral in taking Cyclops from bland boyscout to the franchise’s most compelling character.
This story originally appeared on Screenrant
