I’m back with a third installment of the ultimate X-Men omnibus mapping, finding a way to squeeze just about every issue of X-titles into a cohesive bookshelf of handy omnibus volumes.
Okay, they’re not actually all that handy. Most of them could probably be wielded as a deadly weapon.
Today’s era begins with Grant Morrison’s run on New X-Men starting on #114 in 2001 and ends with the final issue of Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men, which is the last thing that happens to any X-Men prior to Messiah Complex. Of course, there are a lot of other series contained in that material – you’ll immediately note that neither of those historic runs address a single issue of Uncanny X-Men!
Every one of those issues is covered in this post. Why? To give you ideas for the The Most Wanted Marvel Omnibus Secret Ballot, where you vote for the comic runs you’d most like to see in an oversized format. Monday I covered all of X-Men from 1963 to 1991, and yesterday I covered 1991 to 2001.
There are 25 potential omnibus volumes in this material! Many of their contents are high debatable, but that’s part of the fun – collected edition mapping is a contentious pastime. Heck, I don’t even agree with how Marvel does things half of the time! If you have a correction or disagreement don’t hold back – sound off in the comments below.
Now, prepare to be fully educated in the seedy underbelly of this period of all-star X-Men writers, including some books I am sure you never knew existed unless you are a superfreak of a walking Encyclopedia-X like I am.
- Flagship X-Men Teams
- 2001 – 2004: New X-Men, Uncanny X-Men, and X-Treme X-Men
- 2004 – 2008: Astonishing X-Men, Uncanny X-Men, and X-Men (1991)
- Cable & X-Force
- Excalibur (2004) & New Excalibur (2006)
- Exiles (2001)
- Weapon X (2002)
- Wolverine (1988 & 2003) and Wolverine Origins (2006)
- X-Factor (2006) #1-23
- X-Men-in-Training: New Mutants (2003), New X-Men: Academy X (2003), and Young X-Men
- Miscellaneous Solo X-Men
X-Men launched as a comic book about a school of mutants, but by the early 80s it was clear that a team featuring the likes of Cyclops, Storm, and Wolverine had outgrown being students. While the injection of the occasional teen into the team would revive the scholastic concept, there was no getting around that Xavier’s School For Gifted Youngsters was neither a school nor filled with many youngsters.