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Another healthy chunk of the sixteen year Claremont-era, this section is less beloved than the previous one. Magneto gets some evolution as a character, Kitty Pryde continues to change costumes every issue or so, The New Mutants debut, and we spend a lot of time in either space or Japan. I think the previous Claremont books were more fun while this one is more focused on telling an epic scope story with a revolving cast of supporting characters. It works really well, I just don't enjoy it as much. Also, you don't see as many of these stories translated into The Animated Series, and the villains aren't as beloved to a wide swath of X-fans. Oh, and I firmly believe Kitty's exclamation below should be on a t-shirt that says "Kitty Was Right." All numbered titles in BOLD are those I'd consider part of the Headcanon of X-Books I recommend. Anything not boldfaced or numbered is a book I read but will probably skip, should I ever do another readthrough. Understand MOST books will not be numbered or boldfaced. There are going to be at least 500 books on this readthrough. At most, 50-100 will make Headcanon. At most. I hope.   X-Men Epic: I Magneto by Chris Claremont, Dave Cockrum, Michael Golden, Jo Duffy, Bob Layton, Brent Anderson, Paul Smith, Jim Sherman, Bob McLeod, John Buscema, and George Perez X-Men: Prof X, Cyclops, Angel, Wolverine, Storm, Colossus, Nightcrawler, Kitty Pryde 1st Appearances: Wolfsbane, Spider-Woman, Carol Danvers, Rogue, Jacosta, The Badoon Also Featuring: Magneto, Man-Thing, D'yspare, Stevie Hunter, Miss Locke, Arcade, Dr Doom, Beast, Havok, Banshee, Iceman, Candy Southern, Amanda Sefton, Magik, Dazzler, Capt America, Spider-Woman, Thor, Scarlet Witch, Beast, Wonder Man, Hawkeye, Peter Corbeau, Akron, Invisible Woman, Mr Fantastic, Thing, Human Torch, Sauron, Ka-Zar, Spider-Man, J Jonah Jameson, Robbie Robertson, Brainchild, Amphibius, Vertigo, Zabu, Emma Frost, Sebastian Shaw, The Sentinels, Harry Leland There are a few misfires in this collection that keep this from being as iconic as X-Men Epic Proteus and X-Men Epic Fate Of The Phoenix but this is still a blast to read. Claremont keeps heaping storyline on top of storyline, pulling parts of the entire X-Men run from issue #1 all the way through his last collection. These epic versions are also preferable to earlier collections as they pull from other titles in a sensible and narratively satisfying way. I don't know of other X-Men collections that thought to include the Avengers annual that introduces us to Rogue and pulls some of the X-Men into a battle with The New Brotherhood Of Evil Mutants (Destiny, Mystique, Pyro, Avalanche, and Blob). There's also a great run of Marvel Fanfare where Spider-Man, Angel, and eventually the X-Men voyage down to the Savage Land. The plot isn't any better than any of the other Savage Land stories but Claremont is constantly improving his character work (often with a billion thought balloons) so the story seems more intriguing. I also enjoyed the explanations for Kitty Pride's increasingly awful costumes, and how much better her age discrepancy is handled here than Jubilee's will be in another few years. The Storm/Shadowcat dynamic is much more logical than the Wolverine/Jubilee. There are tons of other great moments in this book that excuse the silliness of the Kitty Pryde fairy tale issue or the rebuilding of The Danger Room after Kitty's adventures in X-Men: Days of Future Past. I also appreciated that they acknowledged the expense of the repairs and that it took months of issues where the repairs happened in the background. There are also conversations between Nightcrawler and Wolverine, Professor X and Angel, and Storm and Magneto that seem deeper than previous X-Men conversations. Claremont was really hitting his stride. Plus, artist Brent Anderson seems to have a blast on the Fantastic Four/Arkon storyline, posing Wolverine like The Marlboro Man and other cheesecake poses that sexualized him in a manner most artists of the time reserved exclusively for women. Whether intended or not, it felt queer coded. I didn't imagine putting this in my Headcanon, as this makes three volumes in a row but I think it's solid enough that if you enjoy X-Men this is a great non-classic run of comics to experience.  X-Men Epic The Brood Saga by Chris Claremont, Terry Kavanagh, Dave Cockrum, John Byrne, and Paul Smith. X-Men: Professor X, Cyclops, Storm, Wolverine, Colossus, Nightcrawler, Kitty Pryde 1st Appearances: Araki, Deathbird, The Sidri, The New Mutants (Cannonball, Dani Moonstar, Sunspot, Karma, Wolfsbane), The Brood, Sikorsky, Warstar, Belasko, Hydra, Belasco, Lee Forrester Featuring: Carol Danvers, Corsair, Gladiator, Tigra, Jarvis, Chod, Hepzibah, Lilandra, Raza, Oracle, Moira Mactaggert, Robert Kelly, Polaris, Havok, Rogue, Mystique, Magik, Gabrielle Haller, Magneto Most of this collection is the cosmic war against The Brood, who are essentially xenomorphs from Alien but more bug-like in appearance. Much like the xenomorphs, they lay eggs inside of hosts but instead of bursting out their chests and killing their human hosts, they possess them so that the host morphs into a new xenomorph queen. Carol Danvers is still with the X-Men from the last story, and she ends up joining the Starjammers and becoming a new superhero, Binary. Like Kitty Pryde, she ends up with a bunch of hero names over the course of her career. I'm going to always list her as Carol Danvers because her main hero names (Captain Marvel or Ms. Marvel) are each shared with other characters who are going to end up in this continuity. This volume also brings about one of the complications of reading the whole X-verse as a reading project: overlaps. There's a crossover with The New Mutants in this story, who we haven't met yet. This same issue is in our next collection which will introduce us to The New Mutants. I chose to put this volume first because most of that collection is dependent on knowing who The Brood are, and that the X-Men are gone, which all happen here. This is a thoroughly skippable book for X-Men chronology. I would probably put it in a Carol Danvers Headcanon, but the only major thing covered in this book that is Important To Chronology and not covered somewhere else is that Colossus's sister Magik is aged-up, living many years in Limbo while only days pass in the real world. Unfortunately, the story is just cluttered with misogyny, sexual assault, and other things that Chris Claremont didn't have the skill to make non-traumatizing.  New Mutants Epic Renewal by Chris Claremont, Frank Miller, Bob McLeod, Sal Buscema, Paul Smith, John Buscema, Bill Mantlo New Mutants: Prof X, Wolfsbane, Karma, Dani Moonstar, Sunspot, Cannonball 1st Appearances: Sage, Demon Bear, Silver Surfer, Viper, Dark Rider, Team America, Magma, Selene Featuring: The Brood, Donald Pierce, Stevie Hunter, Moira MacTaggert, Magik, Gabrielle Haller, Peter Gyrich, Sentinels, Cyclops. Wolverine, Colossus, Nightcrawler, Kitty Pryde, Carol Danvers, Storm, Corsair, Sikorsky, Lilandra, Gladiator, Axe, Sebastian Shaw The third generation X-Men team (I'm counting Gen 1 as the 1963 lineup, and Gen 2 as The Uncanny lineup introduced in the mid 1970s) has a bizarre but interesting first set of adventures. While the X-Men are presumed dead during the previous story, the Brood-influenced Charles Xavier recruits a new team of mutants, not to act as superheroes but to learn to defend themselves and help rescue other mutants. While they are about the same age as both original teams (except for Wolverine, of course) were when they were recruited, Claremont does a better job of writing them as teens, so they feel younger than any of the X-Men we've experienced besides Shadowcat (who was going by Ariel during this period). Apart from the crossover with the X-Men from the previous collection, and the first story, which was originally one of Marvel's first set of graphic novels, none of these stories are going to blow you away. The circumstances are often as silly as some of the silver age X-Men stories, especially the existence of Nova Roma, a Roman Empire offshoot that exists in the 1980s Amazon Rain Forest. It's sort of a Less Savage Land. The character work in this book is really solid, though. While we saw how willing Claremont was to immediately remove when he killed off Thunderbird in the X-Men, he removes a New Mutant member from the team after a few issues here but while their disappearance is suggested as a death, anyone who's ever read a story before, particularly a comic, can tell that they're keeping the character alive for future use. We not only didnt see a body, we didn't see the incident where they might have died. I think this is a fun book, even for the casual X-Men fan, and if you're going to read one or two hundred X-books in your life, you should definitely make this one of them but it's not quite Headcanon.  5. X-Men Epic God Loves Man Kills by Chris Claremont, Frank Miller, Paul Smith, Bob Wiacek, Walt Simonson, John Romita Jr
X-Men: Cyclops, Storm, Wolverine, Colossus, Nightcrawler, Shadowcat, Rogue 1st Appearances: Madelyne Pryor, The Morlocks, Callisto, Yukio Also Featuring: Magneto, Lilandra, Stevie Hunter, Binary, Magik, Silver Samurai, Viper, Carol Danvers, The Starjammers, Mystique, Destiny, Candy Southern, Amanda Sefton, Angel, Lee Forester, Mariko, Mastermind, Sebastian Shaw, Tessa This book mainly makes the Headcanon for the title story. Despite it having its own issues with institutional racism, the story presents Claremont's anti-bigotry themes in clearer and more nuanced ways than his usual hammer-to-the-head delivery. It has many strengths, one of them being the evolution of Magneto from villain to anti-hero. We also see Wolverine's first solo outing which will lay the template for decades of dull rehashes of the formula: Wolverine goes to Japan to check in on the love of his life only to find himself embroiled in yakuza clan warfare. What follows is one of the weaker parts of Claremont's run on X-Men. It has some important plot points but to get to them, it asks the reader to immediately care about new characters as quickly as it introduces them. The biggest ask is that the reader cares about Madelyne Pryor, a woman who Cyclops meets and immediately falls in love with because she looks like Jean Grey. But is she Jean Grey? Is she The Phoenix? Not enough time or story is included to make her a fully fleshed out character. Also, Scott just slowly fell in love with another character we didn't know much about, and she is quickly discarded for this new Jean Grey fill-in. We're also introduced to Callisto and The Morlocks in a decent story that will continue to bubble under the surface of X-Men comics for decades. The Rogue story is interesting but not given enough time, and the Wolverine material would probably have been better without editorial interference. Reportedly, Jim Shooter, the worst person to ever stain the Marvel masthead with his name, wouldn't allow Claremont or any other writer to portray any queer relationships. Claremont had intended on having Storm fall in love with Yukio, a Wolverine side-character. Instead, Claremont writes Storm so that she meets Yukio is enamored of her, then cuts her hair into a mohawk and starts wearing leather, which is about as obviously coded as you can get. Cheers to Claremont on that. May Jim Shooter trip today, chipping a tooth and having one of his eyes fall out. The entire comic industry would rejoice in the news.
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