5 X-Men Stories That New Marvel Fans Probably Won’t Find Very Mutant-Friendly

The X-Men are about to go back to being the most popular superteam in comics. You’re going to see your friend who got into the MCU and started telling you how much better the Avengers were than the X-Men tell you that he was always actually an X-Men fan all along and never liked the Avengers. An entirely new generation of fans are going to pop up thanks to the new MCU X-Men movies and some of them (if history is anything to go by, a small number of them) are going to want to read the comics. Luckily for them, the team and their various sibling groups have starred in some of the best comics of all time. However, not every book is right for new fans.

There is no comic hero, villain, or team that has never had any bad stories and the X-Men are no different. Even stories from great creators can end up being not so great. With new readers, you want to put the best foot forward and there are some X-books we should bury in Chernobyl. New readers should avoid these five X-Men stories like the plague.

5) Inhumans vs. X-Men

Once upon a time, Marvel didn’t own the film rights to the X-Men and this made them quite cross. Ike Perlmutter, then more in charge of the company than he would be, ended up deciding that they needed to make Inhumans into the new mutants, all while marginalizing the X-Men as much as possible. This was disastrous Inhuman push of the ’10s. Marvel introduced a legion of Inhumans and fans just did not care whatsoever, all while pushing mutants under the tideline. They even made it so the X-Men would have to leave Earth, thanks to the Terrigen Mists released into the atmosphere, which would lead inexorably to Inhumans vs. X-Men.

This story pit the two sides against each other, as the X-Men decide that they’re going to destroy the Terrigen Mists clouds before they render the Earth uninhabitable for mutants. Somehow, Marvel decided that they were going to be the bad guys of the story, with Emma Frost making secret plans to genocide the Inhumans. It’s a story that feels like it was made in a fit of pique over the failure of the Inhumans push; even with the mutants winning, they were still made to look like losers.

4) “Curse of the Mutants”

The X-Men have starred in every kind of story you can imagine and have a history with a variety of characters that new fans might not guess. Dracula is public domain, so he’s a character that you find in every superhero universe, including the Marvel one. He and the X-Men have had many dealings over the years, with Storm spending a short time as one of the undead (then there’s the whole “Wolverine, Lord of Vampires” thing you got post-“Inferno” in What If… (Vol. 2)). However, it just so happens that one of the worst X-stories also has vampires in it: “Curse of the Mutants”.

This story came out in 2010, as Marvel was coming out of “Dark Reign” and was the opening story arc for X-Men (Vol. 3) from new writer David Tischler. However, fans were turned off almost immediately. It was basically one of those vampire stories that used zombies tropes – you know, a horde of mindless vampires – because The Walking Dead was popular and just sank like a stone. It doomed the series it launched, and Tischler wouldn’t spend a lot of time as an X-Men writer.

3) “Germ-Free Generation”

New X-Men is the best 21st century X-run and is second only to the first Claremont run in quality (I like it more while realizing it isn’t as good, but I’m rare). Usually, it’s a book that I say every new fan of the team should read. It’s a perfect jumping on point and it always finds interesting ways to deal with the tropes of X-Men comics. However, there’s a stretch in the book’s history that I don’t really think new readers need to read, especially “Germ-Free Generation”, which pits the X-Men against John Sublime and his U-Men, a group of humans who vivisect mutants and graft their parts onto themselves.

The story itself is honestly pretty excellent, but the problem is the art. It was drawn by Croatian artist Igor Kordey. Kordey was brought on because regular fill-in artist Ethan Van Sciver was also a slow artist. Kordey sometimes only had days to draw an issue and it shows. There is truly ugly art in the Kordey-drawn issues and it ruins “Germ-Free Generation”. The sad thing is Kordey is actually a great artist, he just was given no time to finish. If you want to see what his work looks like without it being rushed, check out his run writing and drawing Cable in the ’00s.

2) “X-Men Disassembled”

“Avengers Disassembled” came out in 2005 and made the Avengers the biggest team in comics and in 2018, Marvel decided to try the same thing with the X-Men. However, instead of coming up with a quality story, they just copied the naming convention. The group had just went through the disappointing post-Inhumans push period of X-Men: Gold and X-Men: Blue (X-Men: Red was fantastic, though) and they needed yet another shot in the arm. So, the House of Ideas relaunched Uncanny X-Men and kicked it off with this ten-part weekly story. X-Man, the Cable of the Age of Apocalypse Earth, decided to create the perfect world for humans and mutants, whether they want it or not, with the only X-Men able to stand in his way.

I think the best way to describe this story is anti-climactic. It always feels like it’s building up to something big and then it just never gets there. While it does give us a tough guy future version of Glob Herman (something that is irresistible to any true X-fan), the story just never really gets under way. “Avengers Disassembled” actually lived up to its name, whereas this book just ended up sending the X-Men to an alternate Earth, while another team of X-Men took their place. It was disappointing to the extreme.

1) “She Lies With Angels”

The ’00s were great for X-Men fans, full of amazing X-Men stories. However, it also has the run that has gone down as the worst of all-time on Uncanny X-Men. I’m speaking of the Chuck Austen run on the book while ran through issues #410-443, before moving over to X-Men (Vol. 2) for issues #155-164. Austen’s run made some of the most mystifying decisions ever. Even back then fans weren’t happy about it, but they still bought every issue, so Marvel never took him off the book (remember, if you don’t like a book, stop buying it; that’s the only way to change anything). His worst story is “She Lies With Angels”, which ran through issues #437-441.

The story was about Josh Guthrie, the younger brother of Cannonball and Husk. He ended up becoming a mutant as well (I don’t know what was in that Guthrie DNA, but it worked), sprouting wings. He’d eventually fall in love, and it wasn’t with a fellow mutant but a human girl. I’m sure you can see where this is going, as Austen decided to do his own “Romeo and Juliet”. It’s somehow worse than you imagine, all schmaltzy emotion and predictable “tragedy” that never really lands with readers. Wait til you get to the part where Archangel and Husk decide to have sex in the air above her mother. This story has become a legend for all of the wrong reasons.

What X-Men stories do you think that new X-fans should skip? Any you think I should have included? Sound off in the comment section below.