1. X-Men Endangered Species
(Mike Carey, Christos Gage, Christopher Yost, Craig Kyle, Mark Bagley, Scott Eaton, Andrea DiVito, Mike Perkins)

Beast has been the X-Men's science guy for a while. He is racking his brains trying to figure out how to reverse the destruction The Scarlet Witch has wreaked on the mutant population. He teams up with his sketchy Age Of Apocalypse alternate, Dark Beast, and some other questionable allies to try and discover a way out of mutants going completely extinct. It's a nice, thinking X-book that completely sets up the next episodes non-stop action madness.

For more Beast-centric adventures, he and his green-haired special agent friend team up in X-Men SWORD: No Time To Breathe, which also features Special Agent Lockheed. Yea, Kitty Pryde's dragon.


2. X-Men Messiah Complex
(Ed Brubaker, Mike Carey,  Christopher Yost, Craig Kyle, Chris Bachalo, Humberto Ramos, Billy Tan, Marc Silvestri, Billy Tan, David Finch)

For the first time after The Decimation, Cerebra registers a new mutant. But this isn't a teenager getting their powers, it's a new baby. This story connects four different runs of X-books, most of them mediocre or awful, but apart from one story thread (Predator X is hella stupid), this is probably the best X-crossover of the 21st century.


3. Wolverine Origin Deadpool
(Daniel Way, Steve Dillon)

Since getting his memories back last season, all the Wolverine books became this super-serious and maudlin book about coming to terms with his past. His past in Japan. His past in Canada. His past in Weapon X. His past in the X-Men. His past in Des Moines. His past as the understudy to Jean Valjean in Les Mis. It's exhausting, and mostly awful. Meanwhile, he's also in the X-Force books exploiting other mutants and killing a bunch of dudes, so his future isn't looking much brighter. 

One of the main plot points in his ongoing series (which you should avoid) is that he has a son, and his son is a lot like him. And evil. And Wolverine wants to save him. It's also dire and maudlin. Except when Deadpool shows up. This whole volume is a Looney Tunes episode with Deadpool as Bugs Bunny and Wolverine as Elmer Fudd, and Dakken (Wolverine's son) ends up as a bit of  a Daffy Duck. It's fun and silly, while also progressing Wolverine and his son's story forward in a way that the more serious books were unable to do.

Deadpool titles are always a mixed bag, but the first volume of Daniel Way's Deadpool Secret Invasion is a fantastic read, and may inspire you to keep reading Way's run on Wade Wilson, which is inconsistent but way better than his run on the Wolverine family.


4. Astonishing X-Men Exogenetic
(Warren Ellis,  Phil Jiminez)

The Brood are back! The green haired director of SWORD, and Beast's sort of girlfriend is back! Are there...Krakoan Sentinels? The elite X-Men team is only slightly different from the Whedon run, but things have changed. Beast is wary of Cyclops, Storm is the aloof Queen of Wakanda, Armor refuses to take shit from Wolverine, and Emma Frost is...still pretty much Emma.

There's a later volume of Astonishing X-Men called Children Of The Brood that's also fun, filled with Brood and Brand, and even features a returned character!


5. Cable Waiting For The End Of The World
(Duane Swierczynski, Michael Lacombe)

At the end of Messiah Complex, Cable took the baby into the future, and Bishop followed. The concept is great. Unfortunatelty, the series became sort of one-note as it went on, but this is the peak of the series. 

There is a crossover series of Cable & X-Force Messiah War that's not the greatest story in the world, but it will give you a glimpse of X-Force, a check in with Deadpool, and the continued saga of time traveling Cable, Bishop, and  Hope.


6. Wolverine Dark Prince
(Daniel Way, Marjorie Liu, Giuseppe Camuncoli)

Wolverine's son Dakken is, in many ways, way more interesting than his dad. During this era of the Marvel Universe, SHIELD had been renamed HAMMER and was being run by Norman Osborne. He made evil versions of The Avengers, and The X-Men, and pretty much all the heroes. But Dakken, who is Osborne's Wolverine, isn't really evil, he's just self-interested, so watching him interact with actual villains makes for a fun story.

While not about any of the X-Men that I recall, one of the best titles to come out of  the ridiculous HAMMER-time Dark era of the Marvel Universe is Kelly Sue Deconnick's  Osborne: Evil Incarcerated.


7. X-Factor Time & A Half, and X-Factor Overtime
(Peter David, Valentine De Landro, Marco Santucci)
It's another mutant birth! As Madrox and Siryn's baby is born. Plus, Darwin, Longshot, and Shatterstar join the cast, and we get a glimpse into the non-Cable focused post-Messiah Complex future,  as the noir aspect of X-Factor becomes progressively more meta, and more progressive. 

I would keep reading the series, as X-Factor The Invisible Woman Has Vanished and X-Factor Second Coming continue to evolve the X-Factor stories in fascinating ways.


8. New Mutants Return Of Legion, and New Mutants Necrosha
(Zeb Wells, Diogenes Neves, Paul Davidson)

While the 1980s New Mutants run is a fan favorite for a lot of people, it wasn't a book that I loved. So I really enjoyed that Zeb Wells made these characters interesting to me. There are a ton of returning characters in these two volumes, as we re-establish the middle generation of mutants, as they are becoming one of the top tier X-teams. This volume skirts one of the worst crossovers of the new millenium, Necrosha, but Wells makes the New Mutants corner of the crossover impactful and fun.

I'm actually missing  a huge chunk of the New Mutants run, so I can't for sure speak to its quality. But these two volumes are good enough that I will hunt down the next couple of volumes and check them out myself.


9. X-Men Second Coming
(Mike Carey,  Zeb Wells, Matt Fraction, Craig Kyle, Christopher Yost, Greg Land, David Finch, Mike Choi, Ibraim Roberson, Terry Dodson)

Guess who's back? Back again? Hope is back. Tell a friend. So is Cable, by the by. The return of the prodigal mutants ends up, much like Mesiah Complex, doing a fantastic job of weaving a bunch of mediocre or worse storylines from the Uncanny, Legacy, X-Force, Astonishing, Wolverine, and Cable runs, as well as the excellent New Mutants and X-Factor runs into one giant game-changing story. 


10. Uncanny X-Force The Apocalypse Solution
(Rick Remender, Jerome Opena)

Ending the season on a dark note. While the original X-Force was a muddily colored, X-treeem Darque Edgee Goth action book, this reimagining of the team comes across as brutal and necessary. This first volume shows how Angel has assembled this updated team to track down and kill Apocalypse. It's a typical Nothing Is As It Seems Nor Goes The Way You Expect It, but it's paced perfectly, and I'd be impressed if anyone actually saw how this story plays out in the end.

The next volume of Uncanny X-Force is pretty terrible, so skip it, and go check out Remender and Opena's  Fear Agent​ series.

A few years ago, while working on the now defunct VeXed-Men website, I did a series of The X-Men in ten seasons, where I did some exhaustive reading, some skimming, some Wikipedia-ing, and some trips to the used book store that carries comics, and put together an exhaustive timeline of how to read the X-Men using pretty much all of the trade paperbacks that were then available.

Don't do that to yourself.

In the last couple of months, I've been reading nearly 100 X-Men and X-Men adjacent books including spin-off titles like  Cable, X-Factor, X-Force, X-Man, Generation X, Rogue, Wolverine, Wolverine & Gambit...if it has been collected into trade in the last fifteen years or so, I've read it and reviewed it on Goodreads, and it made me question why I ever even liked the X-Men.

For this project, I'm just going to condense it down to the books I enjoyed reading. There are going to be ten "episodes" per season, and it's going to lean heavily and more modern stories/collections because they're easier to access, and some of the writing techniques of the 60s, 70s, and 80s haven't aged well.  Season one took us from the original stories all the way through the Claremont run and beyond. This season focuses on the late 90s/early 21st century X-Men with a focus on the better spin-offs

Episode 1: X-Men Gold Homecoming
(written by Joe Kelly, Joe Casey, Jorge Gonzales, and Bill Rosemann, art by Carlos Pacheco, Jeff Johnson, German Garcia, and Mat Broome)

90s X-Men books were terrible. The comic boom at the beginning of the decade meant that Marvel continually introduced new characters, higher stakes, sillier villains, and massive crossovers, almost all of which were terrible. But in the midst of the garbage fire was a run of issues that gave some actual depth to the weird assemblage of X-Men, most of whom have since fallen out of continuity: Cecelia Reyes, Marrow, Maggot, and Joseph. There's no single threat against the team, most issues are one-and-dones that build relationships between the new characters and the classic ones, while giving some spotlight time to various villains. There are no cosmic consequences, it's just some very enjoyable superhero comicing.

If you like this volume, check out  X-Men Vs Apocalypse: The Twelve by everyone who worked at Marvel in the 90s. It's a mixed bag of art and storylines, but it encapsulates the high drama of prophecy, which was so prevelant in 90s/early 21st century X-books.


Episode 2: X-Men Dream's End
(written by Chris Claremont,  Joe Pruett, Robert E. Weinberg, Scott Lobdell, art by  Salvador Larroca), Leinil Francis Yu, Tom Derenick, and Michael Ryan)

While not my favorite X-storyline, this ties up a ton of 90s storylines that I saved you from having to read. The Legacy Virus, a metaphor for the AIDS crisis that removed the sexual stigma from the disease, and focused only on the prejudice that having the disease brought, was a major plot point in all of the X-books for years, and here, it's done away with after a character is martyred. This volume isn't focused on a single X-Team, rather it travels across the vast array of X-characters to show them all this pivotal time in their continuity. This collection also features the best art Rob Liefeld has ever done.

Fans of this book should check out X-Men Legends 4: Feared & Hated, which takes an anthology approach to showing the world that the mutants inhabit around the changeover from the Lobdell/Nicieza era to the Morrison  relaunch.


Episode 3: Exiles Complete Collection Volume 1
(written by Judd Winnick, art by Mike McKone and Jim Calafiore)

I avoided including the Age Of Apocalypse because it's a long trudge through an alternate universe that mostly doesn't matter at all to continuity. And it's exhausting. The Exiles is a book that takes a bunch of mutants from alternate dimensions and teams them up to stop a "massive ripple" that threatens the the destruction of all universes. This is a silly concept, but what it does is give us a team of lesser-known mutants and sends them to pivotal points in various timelines and allows us to see stories like The Dark Phoenix Saga, Wolverine's escape from Weapon Plus, and The Phalanx Covenant from different perspectives. It's mainly fun, although the misogynist Morph character is excruciating.

Exiles Complete Collection Volume 2 is not  quite as good, but is worth reading if you really like these characters.


Episode 4: New X-Men By Grant Morrison Ultimate Collection Volume 1
(written by Grant Morrison, art by Frank Quitely, Ethan Van Sciver, Leinil Francis Yu, Igor Kordey, and Tom Derenick)

This is the X-Men run that changed the entire direction of  how Marvel presented its mutant books. Morrison focuses on making the school a larger priority, inventing secondary mutations for long-time characters to keep them fresh, re-examining interpersonal relationships, and evolving the team from tights to leather. There is a lot of story packed into this volume, and it's all great.

Joe Casey was writing the other major title during this era and the collection X-Men X-Corps seeds some interesting ideas into the universe that, sadly, ended up not going anywhere. But the setups are all interesting enough to check out.


Episode 5: Mystique By Brian K Vaughan Ultimate Collection
(written by Brian K. Vaughan, art by  Jorge Lucas, Manuel García, and Michael Ryan)

Morrison's run really has changed the face of the entire franchise. Now that Professor X has gone public and corporate, he can't be seen doing controversial things. So he rescues Mystique from the consequences of her life of crime and sends her on missions the X-Men can't be seen being involved in. It's a fun espionage book by one of the better comic book writers of the modern era. 

Brian K Vaughan also did a Wolverine story called Logan, if you find yourself jonesing for more Vaughan X-titles, but I'm not a huge fan. Instead, I'd recommend his run on Runaways.


Episode 6: New X-Men By Grant Morrison Ultimate Collection Volume 2
(written by Grant Morrison, art by John Paul Leon, Igor Kordey, Phil Jimenez, Ethan Van Sciver, Keron Grant, and Frank Quitely)

While not as strong as the beginning of his run, this volume deals with the massive fallout from the first volume, introduces some more fantastic characters, and majorly develops the biggest and most important romantic shift in the history of the X-books.

I can't stop you from reading New X-Men By Grant Morrison Ultimate Collection Volume 3. Many fans love it. It does wrap up Morrison's run, and has earth-shattering plot reveals and a death that they didn't undo for well over a decade. But, personally, I hate it, and think it undoes all of Morrison's work on the first two volumes, exposing Marvel's editorial overreaches, and Morrison's flaws when it comes to completing his vision.


Episode 7: X-Force Famous, Mutant, And Mortal
(written by Peter Milligan, art by Mike Allred and Darwyn Cooke)

This is probably the weirdest book I'm going to include in continuity.It's a collection of characters who you don't ever really see again, who serve as the capitalist media front for the obsession with mutant superheroes that Professor X's public relations stunts thrust into the public. They're a team of fame hungry pseudo-heroes, and they die on a fairly regular basis, only to be replaced with other temporary heroes. The story is just okay. But Allred's art, as well as Cooke's fill-in issue are gorgeous. It also does work as satire of turn of the century media.

If you want to find out how things pan out for the characters that survive this volume, the title changes to X-Statix and includes art by other indie luminaries not often seen on mainstream books, including Paul Pope! But I actually think that if you like the art, you should take a vacation from the X-Men and check out any of Allred's superhero title: Madman.


Episode 8: Nightcrawler Guardian Devil
(written by Robert Aguirre-Sacasa, art by Darick Roberston)

While Morrison changed the face of the X-Men for the better on his New X-Men run, Chris Claremont attempted a series of misguided side-stories called X-Treme X-Men, and Chuck Austen flung bags of wet diarrhea and flaming turds at readers under the guise of them being Uncanny X-Men issues (poor Austen gets a lot of flack for being The Worst Writer In X-Men History, but having read nearly 100 X-books in the past month, he has earned that title with his consistent inability to understand characters and the microphone feedback that he mistakes for dialogue composition). The Absolute Worst of Austen's run was called The Draco, and focused on Nightcrawler being fooled into believing he was a priest by a mutant hating church group that planned to make him The Pope and then...umm...well...then something was going to happen damn it. It's impressive how awful it is. This is a counterpoint to that storyline, as Nightcrawler and his faith are pitted against horror and mythology. It's sort of Nightcrawler as Hellboy.

If you're in the mood for more Nightcrawler, go back and check out the beginning of Claremont's  Excalibur run in  Excalibur Epic Collection: The Sword Is Drawn. I don't recommend the second volume of Aguirre-Sacasa's Nightcrawler run.


Episode 9: X-23 Innocence Lost
(written by Craig Kyle and Christopher Yost, ar by Billy Tan)

A series about a Wolverine clone sounds boring. And by all rights, this book should be awful. But Kyle & Yost had an understanding about the X-Men universe that few 21st century X-scribes could achieve. Rather than just another Feral or Wolfsbane or Sabertooth or Wildchild or Wendigo or Dakken or Raze or Native or Romulus or...you get the idea, they build a soap opera revolving around a Weapon Plus scientist who decides the most efficient way to create a new Wolverine is to use his DNA but make a female version. The villain is pretty flat and predictable but everything else about this story works really well and has some satisfying consequences for the coming seasons.

Need more Weapon Plus mutants who like to stab things? Sabretooth Open Season is a surprisingly well-put together collection worth your investment.


Episode 10: Exiles Vol 6: Fantastic Voyage
(written by Judd Winnick, art by Jim Calafiore, Tom Mandrake, Clayton Henry, and Mizuki Sakakibara)

There were some absolute stinker stories of Exiles that I've left off the list, but this may be the most satisfying story of the entire Exiles run. We close the season to find Mimic has been put in charge of the team, and they are at odds with a team of Vampire Avengers. The first arc is a little hokey, but it propels the story in new directions as everyone gets separated during transit, and has their solo adventures in different realities which all feed into massive consequences once they're finally united. I think this was the last thing Winnick ever wrote for Marvel, and it serves as a cool swan song for the series (though the series went on and on and on and on after this volume until it was struck dead by the barbed pen of Chris Claremont).

If the lack of Blink on the team is getting you down, go back and check out her adventures in X-Men The Complete Age Of Apocalypse Volume 1​.