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Updated: Guide to Exiles

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This week I have an X-Men guide update that’s not for an X-Men guide, although it’s actually an extremely X-Men guide. Confused yet? Hopefully this update will help alleviate your confusion, because today I rebuilt my Guide to Exiles!

Guide to Exiles

Here’s my simple pitch for Exiles: Imagine if Marvel’s What If? had a single team visiting all of the many realities it explored, and most of them were mutants.

(Or, if you’re as old as I am, picture Sliders, but with mutants!)

That aptly describes Exiles as it was originally launched by Judd Winick and Mike McKone. It was anchored by the beloved Blink from Age of Apocalypse and featured a version of Morph who resembled his X-Men: The Animated Series incarnation, but all of the other characters were alternate versions of Marvel-616 mutants. Or, in one case, a potential next generation of mutants with the introduction of Nocturne – Nightcrawler’s daughter!

Part of the enduring charm of the original 100-issue run of Exiles is that it’s a straight sprint that isn’t involved in any Marvel-616 mutant shenanigans. It included mutants, but it was NOT an X-book tangled up with the rest of the line. Other than a single story in X-Men Unlimited and a three-issue dalliance with House of M, Exiles was 100% self-contained from issues #1-99 & Annual 1.

Then, Chris Claremont happened. [Read more…] about Updated: Guide to Exiles

This Week in X: Excalibur Returns (sort of) in X-Men Gold, X-Men Blue climaxes, and more!

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It’s the second week of new comics in 2018, and that means a whole new batch of X-Men comics books to help you catch up with!

This week brings five books with it – mid-arc issues of the two Ed Brisson old guy books in Cable #153 and Old Man Logan #33, the middle installment of Matthew Rosenberg’s Phoenix Resurrection, a climatic turn of events in Cullen Bunn’s X-Men: Blue #19, and an adorable pair of standalone stories in X-Men: Gold Annual #1.

None of these books are a must-read, but it’s nice to read a week of X-Men that’s solid across the board… well, except for one book, as you’ll hear in just a minute.

Don’t feel like reading right? You can watch the video version of This Week in X! This is not the same material as the full post below, although some of my opinions in the video overlap with the post.

Love the video? Love this post? Please let me know, because “This Week In X” is a pilot right now – there is no guarantee I’ll continue it past the end of this month unless folks are clamoring for more! [Read more…] about This Week in X: Excalibur Returns (sort of) in X-Men Gold, X-Men Blue climaxes, and more!

Exiles – Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order

The Exiles comic books definitive issue-by-issue collecting guide and trade reading order for omnibus, hardcover, and trade paperback collections. Find every issue and appearance! Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated April 2023 with titles scheduled for release through August 2023.

The launch of Exiles in 2001 by writer Judd Winick with penciler Mike McKone was Marvel’s first long-running ongoing with a continuously-told story combining reality-hopping and alternate versions of heroes.

Exiles (2001) - 0001

Prior to the launch of Ultimate Comics in 200o, Marvel Comics had a slim list of ongoing titles that lived permanently in alternate continuities. Exiles was nothing like Ultimate Comics.

Ultimate had the goal of the alternate universe as verisimilitude – the same main Marvel Universe only more modern, and the fascination was watching it splinter.

The pitch for Exiles followed the debut of Ultimate Comics and swiped the title of a 1990s Malibu series, but it had much more to do with Marvel’s classic series What If. What If never told a consistent story – in fact, there were hardly ever two issues which focused on the same tale! Each one-shot issue hopped to a new reality to imagine the most twisted possibilities.

Exiles combined that reality-hopping approach with a somewhat consistent team, much like Chris Claremont’s classic Excalibur story “The Cross-Time Caper.” Instead of starting with a team of known 616-reality heroes, Winick & McKone drew inspiration from Age of Apocalypse.

Age of Apocalypse had presented four months of an alternate reality full of X-Men reimagined to take advantage of their best and worst qualities. Exiles would do the same, only with a palette of infinite realities from which to choose.

Lead by the short-lived but hugely-popular X-Men character Blink (from Age of Apocalypse – not the main universe version!), the adventures of these alternate-reality X-characters had no impact on the main X-continuity (though Nocturne, a founding member, would briefly cross over to main 616 continuity).

Despite that, the book is regarded highly by fans – at least, it was when it was helmed by creator Judd Winick. By contrast, any issues penned by Uncanny scribes Chris Claremont and Chuck Austen aren’t as popular. [Read more…] about Exiles – Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order