Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

New X-Men

Updated: Guide to New X-Men by Grant Morrison

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I’m taking a brief breather from my Indie Comics Month today to continue my weekly series of X-Men guide updates! After last week’s update to my Guide to Uncanny X-Men in the 00s, it’s time to take a look at its sibling title and what might be the most-definitive X-Men run after Chris Claremont’s in my Guide to New X-Men & X-Men Vol. 2 the 00s (AKA Guide to New X-Men by Grant Morrison).

Guide to New X-Men & X-Men Vol. 2 the 00s.
AKA Guide to New X-Men by Grant Morrison

There are two pieces of major collected edition news in this Guide to New X-Men update!

First, there is a new fifth printing of Grant Morrison’s New X-Men Omnibus out in just a few months! This is one Marvel’s most-reprinted omnibuses, which after years out of print is now as close to “evergreen” as any single run at Marvel Comics.

Second, Marvel finally finished their “Complete Collection” reprint sequence of this material last year with their X-Men by Peter Milligan: Blood of Apocalypse, which is effectively “X-Men by Peter Milligan Vol. 2.” The first collection included the volume number in the title, so it’s puzzling that this one does not.

The printing of this collection not only concludes Marvel’s reprint of this period, but finally makes one of the hardest-to-find and most-expensive original X-Men trade paperback collections obsolete!

The original Blood of Apocalypse collection was murderous to find 13 years ago when I started collecting, and it hasn’t gotten any easier since then. At the time it was one of the few collections I had to finally break down and pay over cover price to acquire. I just don’t think that many of them were printed relative to the print runs of collections on either side.

That doesn’t mean I only added two collections to this guide! I added much more detail to the New X-Men section, including breaking the pair of paperback printings into separate sub-sections. I clarified the recollection coverage of the Austen and Milligan period, including how issue #165 is orphaned in a Complete Collection of mostly Uncanny X-Men. I explicitly placed of the two annuals in this run in reading order. And, finally, I added digital purchase links and Marvel Unlimited reading links to bring this guide in line with the new Crushing Comics guides.

That means all of my X-Men team book guides are now up-to-date through 2008! However, there are still several more pages to update to cover the intervening 15 years of titles between there and the present day – plus, several solo guides to update as well. Make sure to keep an eye on the CK homepage each week for my newest guide updates.

Patron’s Choice: Guide to Emma Frost, The White Queen

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Today I’m here with a Patron’s Choice guide for all Patrons of CK that I originally intended to launch back in September, before life got in the way. I always love a deep dive into an X-Men character’s history, and after reading 40+ years and over 1,200 issues of this queen of the X-Men franchise I love her even more than before! I’m happy to share the February 2023 Patron’s Choice: Guide to Emma Frost, The White Queen!

Guide to Emma Frost, The White Queen

Guide to Emma Frost, The White Queen

This Emma Frost Guide was unique for me to put together in a way few other guides will ever be.

That’s because I knew Emma Frost as a villain – or, at least, an antagonist – from my initial comic reading years that ended in 1996. But, at the time I never had access to all of her exploits beyond the Dark Phoenix Saga since back issues were so pricey. I more knew her by reputation – and, of course, from fighting her in the classic X-Men arcade game!

Later, I knew about her as an X-Men from my return to reading Astonishing X-Men in the 00s before diving full-time back into X-Men in 2010 starting from Grant Morrison’s New X-Men. But, I remained ignorant of anything that happened with her in the five years from 1996 to 2005.

That meant my White Queen knowledge was sort of a figure-eight-shaped, with a pair of big holes in the 80s and the latter half of the 90s. And, those are two periods that were huge for Emma Frost!

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Crushing Comics S01E037 – Grant Morrison’s New X-Men (and why he writes the best Jean Grey)

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I start off this episode musing about the skill of talk show hosting. It’s one thing to be able to extemporaneously monologue with coherence, but it’s another skill entirely to be able to do that while doing something with your hands – like unwrapping bricks of comic books.

The books I wind up unwrapping are a major part of the uncanny origin of my now-massive comic book collection. Grant Morrison’s New X-Men were the first trio of books I had delivered to our new house back in 2010. I’ve had a love/hate relationship with them since then, though even from my first read it’s been clear to me that Grant Morrison understood Jean Grey like no writer before him – and, none after have gotten the chance!

Want to start from the beginning of this season of videos? Here’s the complete Season 1 playlist of Crushing Comics.

Episode 37 features Grant Morrison’s complete run on New X-Men, covered in my guide to New X-Men and X-Men, Vol. 2.

Oversize X-Men: A map of every existing omnibus, plus what’s missing (Part 3: 2001 to 2008)

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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.

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New Mutants, Generation X, Academy X, & other young X-Men – Reading Order & Comic Book Collecting Guide

Updated Feb 21, 2025!  Follow Marvel’s youngest mutants in New Mutants, Generation X, Academy X, Young X-Men, Wolverine & The X-Men, All-New X-Men, and Age of Krakoa comic books in a definitive issue-by-issue collecting guide and reading order for omnibus, hardcover, and trade paperback collections. Find every issue and appearance! Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated February 2025 with titles scheduled for release through October 2025.

X-Men launched as a comic book about a school of mutants, but by the early 80s it was clear that a team written by Chris Claremont and featuring the likes of Cyclops, Storm, and Wolverine had outgrown being students.New Mutants (2019) #1 by Rod Reis

While the injection of the occasional teen like Kitty Pryde or Jubilee into the team would briefly 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.

Marvel’s solution to this was to capitalizing on the X-Men’s massive popularity to have Chris Claremont launch a second X-Men series and a third wave of new mutants. The book was called, appropriately, The New Mutants. It launched in 1983 with a prestige graphic novel followed by a series that ran for 100 issues.

New Mutants was meant to bring the X-Men back to their roots – a team of teens who had just discovered their powers, as mentored by Professor Xavier. As it turns out, even though comics characters don’t need to age, comics about teens have the same problem as TV shows about high school students – eventually there’s a need for them to learn something and eventually graduate! The New Mutants transformed into the more-proactive X-Force (see Guide to X-Force), once again leaving the line without a school-based title.

Marvel rectified that in 1994, when the Phalanx Covenant crossover launched Generation X – a fourth generation of new mutants. This generation was based in Emma Frost’s Massachusetts academy as mentored by her and Banshee – long-since retired from active adventuring.

Generation X ran through 2001, when Grant Morrison’s arrival shook up the entire X-Men line. Morrison repopulated the world with mutants, spawning new characters with bizarre powers at every page turn. The concept of the school moved back into their title, the newly-christened flagship of New X-Men. However, that book was mostly focused on the core of teachers at Xavier’s school, so Marvel launched a new volume of New Mutants alongside it where the former New Mutants could find even-newer mutants to recruit to the school.

This was the fifth genesis of new mutants, which became codified as New X-Men: Academy X. Academy X was the first real “school book” that kept the high school experience centered throughout its run and between team adventures. continued through several other flagship X-Men runs and transform into Young X-Men in 2008.

By that point, the effects of House of M meant there hadn’t been any new mutants in several years of publishing, and the X-line was under the direction to keep the mutant population contained. That changed again in 2010 after the end of “Second Coming” with the arrival of Generation Hope – the first of a sixth wave of new mutants.

Generation Hope subsequently was consolidated into Wolverine & The X-Men, which combined Academy X students with members of the new sixth genesis. That continued into Marvel Now, which would add some familiar faces to the sixth genesis – the original five X-Men, plucked from their Silver Age run as teens and brought to the modern day! This familiar cast of old new mutants took the spotlight off of the sixth class, although we’d continue to see new sixth class members as late as 2017 with a revived Generation X (with the original team as mentors).

Finally, the advent of the Age of Krakoa in 2019 began the seventh class of new mutants. This generation of mutants was different than what came before, because they arrived in a mutant society that promised them everything – health, happiness, and safety. However, that brought with it challenges unique to the mutant world, including many old foes intent on corrupting these young mutants to their own aims.

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