THe X-Men In Five Seasons Worth Reading, Season 4: False Utopia

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 few months, I've read nearly 150 X-Men and X-Men adjacent books including spin-off titles such as 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.

It has taken a long time to figure out a season four. I read so many books in the last couple of months that raged from terrible to absolute masochism. Part of the problem is the art direction for this time period in Marvel is atrocious. Everything is dark and muddy. In some books, particularly the X-Force run, which I've excluded completely, you often can't make out which character is which because it's SO DARK. Eventually, though I found some great stories, particularly the Peter David X-Factor run. Most of this season will center around Hope, the first baby born after the Decimation, and how her existence changes everything for the mutant future.

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Season 4:
False Utopia

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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 pefrectly, 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.