I started unwrapping my oversize hardcover collect on November 1st, and a week from today I will be posting my final unwrapping video. That’s 84 videos and over a hundred books in five months, not including haul videos and the launch of new series like “Book Club” and “This Week In X”!
The end of my unwrapping saga comes with a question: what’s next?
It’s no secret that many comics fans found my site via my X-Men guides and reading orders, and throughout my video series there has been a constant demand for more X-Men. Well, now it’s time to pull out your back issues, because I am introducing a seven week pilot X-Men Epic Re-Read challenge!
Don’t worry – we’re not just going to start in the Silver Age! Inspired by Marvel’s line of Epic Collections, we’ll be jumping around the first 50 years of the X-Men’s history to read brief runs. Some of them will be key issues, others will tie in to new comics or films, while others will be totally random!
For this pilot season, I’ve chosen some of the most widely-owned and repeatedly-collected X-Men stories in existence, along with a few modern tales – all of which are available to read on Marvel Unlimited.
3/19: X-Men (1991) #1-3. These were the highest-selling comics of the modern era, and they marked the end of Chris Claremont’s historic run. They are covered in the Guide to X-Men Vol. 2 (1991).
3/26 – New Mutants (1983) #26-28, which introduced Legion – we’ll read this just before the debut of Season 2 of his show on FX. See the Guide to New Mutants & Young X-Men for collection information.
4/2 – X-Men: Worlds Apart (2008) #1-4, which brought Storm back to the X-Men fold after several years as Black Panther’s co-star. You can find this on the Guide to X-Men Limited Series.
4/9 – Exiles (2001) #1-4 will let us catch up on the debut of the Exiles just in time for Saladin Ahmed’s new Exiles series. Did you know I have a Guide to Exiles? I bet you didn’t!
4/16 – Excalibur: The Sword Is Drawn OGN (1987) was the debut of the classic Excalibur line-up of Captain Britain, Meggan, Nightcrawler, Kitty Pryde, and Rachel Summers – one of my most beloved comics runs of all time. See the Guide to Excalibur for more information.
4/23 – Cable & Deadpool (2004) #1-6 merged these two Rob Liefeld creations for the first time after the cancellation of the short-running sequels to their long-running 90s series. Visit either the Guide to Deadpool or Guide to Cable for collection information.
4/30 – (Uncanny) X-Men (1963) #1-3 is where it all started! Have you ever read Stan Lee and Jack Kirby X-Men before? It’s a wordy ride that can sometimes surprise you with themes that still resonate today. You’ll want to leave yourself some extra time to read these issues; Silver Age comics take me 3-5x as long to read as modern ones. See the Guide to Silver Age X-Men.