10 Best Things to Happen in the X-Men Comics

The X-Men have a reputation for constantly suffering nearly as much as Spider-Man does. It seems like every other event has the mutant heroes going up against some kind of man-made horror hellbent on wiping them out for the crime of evolution. Attempted mutant genocides are a dime a dozen, but that doesn’t mean that nothing good ever happens in these comics. At the peak of their popularity, the X-Men were Marvel’s number one superhero team, and they have the single highest-selling comic issue of all time, X-Men (1991) #1, under their belt. You don’t get that popular being nothing but a misery-festival.

So today, we’re going to go through the X-Men’s history and take a look at ten of the best things to ever happen to the team. Everyone can use more positivity, after all, and that goes doubly for our favorite X-Men. We’re checking out the biggest, most important events that have the most positive impact on the team, whether emotionally or in a metaphorical sense. Without further ado, let’s check them out.

10) The Krakoan Era

This entry takes last place on our list because it’s very much a double-edged sword. On the one hand, Krakoa exists on a foundation of out-of-character choices and a dark narrative that was never fulfilled. On the other hand, this era of comics singlehandedly revived interest in the X-Men after over a decade of them floundering, in no small part driven by movie licensing. Krakoa united all the disparate X-Men groups and gave them a shared identity and goal. It created a new mutant community with an identity, something the X-Men had been lacking for years. Certainly, not everything about Krakoa or its end was perfect, but it was exactly the type of reinvention the X-Men needed at the time.

9) New Mutants are Formed

The original New Mutants roster is especially important for the X-Men because of how many doors it opened. It was the first additional X-team created, which introduced the idea of multiple teams of mutant heroes operating at the same time. Secondly, it showed that Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters wasn’t going to stop at just one generation of mutants, promising more X-Men and X-related teams for the future. The New Mutants team itself also brought back the teen drama that the original X-Men comics had in spades, and honed in on what being a teen mutant whose power awakened felt like. It steeped the X-Men in narratives of adolescence, which they had practically lost before this, with some exceptions. 

8) Kitty Pryde Joins the Team

Speaking of stories for and about young adults, Kitty Pryde joining the X-Men not only brought teen drama back to the team in the best way, but it also set a precedent for tons of great things to come. As a character, Kitty offered a younger perspective that beautifully contrasted with the older, more experienced X-Men. She grew with the audience, giving fans a character to view the world from in a very unique way. That’s not even mentioning how great Kitty is as a character. I mean, she gave us the amazing “Professor Xavier Is a Jerk!” issue and reaction image, which alone is worth its weight in gold. 

Kitty also set a precedent of having a younger, almost sidekick-like character in the X-Men that would go on to be as competent as any one of them. We wouldn’t have Jubilee without Kitty, after all. Kitty is a great character and represents a fantastic part of X-lore that we would all absolutely hate to lose.

7) School Expansion in Morrison’s New X-Men

Grant Morrison’s run on New X-Men is legendary for very good reasons, but perhaps the run’s biggest contribution to the greater X-Men mythos was expanding Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters from a training ground to an actual school. Instead of one or two teams’ worth of people, they hosted hundreds of students. This had the X-Men step in as actual teachers, showing how much they’ve grown, and forcing them to mature in even more ways. The X-Men had always been steeped in education, but it had always been on the periphery of superhero adventures. This change let the X-Men actually explore the education part of their pitch and continue superhero adventures in one wonderful move.

6) Cyclops’s Development

If Professor X is the brain that dreams of a better world and guides the X-Men, then Cyclops is the hands that are building the best version of that ideal he can in his complicated world. Cyclops started as the Boy Scouts-style field-leader of the X-Men, but over time grew into the beating heart of the mutant community of Marvel. He’s the realist who still fights for an ideal long after he stopped believing in it, unwilling to stop carving out a place for mutants in the world. His character has evolved to be one of the greatest tacticians and leaders in the Marvel Universe, and that’s to say nothing of his thematic evolution.

Cyclops has always sat at the center of everything involving the X-Men and mutantkind. Not only is he the person that everybody turns to, but his character has adapted to whatever he needs to be for the situation. He’s been the straight-laced leader, the extremist pushing for revolution, and Krakoa’s own version of Captain America. Cyclops is the backbone of the X-Men, and his evolution as a character is truly one of their greatest achievements.

5) God Loves, Man Kills

This is the quintessential X-Men story, capturing everything the team stands for and all of the franchise’s most important themes. This is a story you can show anyone, even non-comic book fans, to explain exactly what the X-Men are about. It is the thesis statement for who they are and how they should be, and having a comic that you can point to that perfectly captures the team is one of the greatest things you can have for a long-running comic series. This comic was mature and nuanced in a way that was revolutionary for its day, and continues to be relevant to this day. The X-Men’s struggle against Reverand Stryker is a timeless battle that captures everything the X-Men are.

4) “The Dark Phoenix Saga”

More so than anything else, this event is what put the X-Men on the map. This single event redefined the landscape and set a new standard for the team, and to this day, it is regarded as one of their best events. Even disregarding the insane quality of this story, it took the X-Men from an Earth-based team to a cosmic scale, forever tying the team to the Shi’ar Empire. The impact the Phoenix Force had on the Marvel Universe can’t be understated, either, as this story introduced one of the most powerful entities in the entire cosmology. This storyline was cinematic, emotionally resonant, next-level in scale and imagination, and truly timeless in its impact. What else do we need to say?

3) Giant-Size X-Men #1

Up until this single issue, the X-Men were a floundering team. Their comic had all but been written off, relegated to reprinting older issues. Then this issue dropped, replacing the old team with a diverse, interesting, and sensational new team of adults. This is still one of the most popular incarnations of the team, and almost every X-Men comic since then has included at least some of the characters included here. This issue breathed new life into a dying team, setting the stage for a new generation of X-Men to truly dig into the allegory that existed but was never explored to its full potential. This was the birth of the X-Men as we know them.

2) Magneto’s Origin Retcon

Today, Magneto is regarded as one of the most nuanced characters in Marvel, often riding the line between misguided hero and noble villain. However, when he first appeared, he was your run-of-the-mill supervillain, intent on world domination and human eradication. The revelation of his origin as a Holocaust survivor forever changed his character and brought him from a monster to possibly Marvel’s most sympathetic villain. The Master of Magnetism has stood at the center of the X-Men’s best stories ever since, and that is only possible because this change allowed him to flourish as a character.

This retcon tied Magneto to Professor X and turned them into parallels of each other, with Charles fighting for coexistence, and Magneto fighting to rule before they are ruled. This moral conflict was the core of X-Men comics for decades, and continues to elevate the two as some of the most influential pillars of mutantkind. Magneto is one of Marvel’s deepest characters, and while he didn’t start that way, this retcon paved the way for the magnificent transformation he’s undergone.

1) Chris Claremont’s Run

Claremont already has two stories as entries on this list, but his entire run takes the top spot, because it’s truly impossible to separate his original run with the characters from who the X-Men are. His foundational run lasted over fifteen years, and beyond giving the X-Men some of the most important and best-written stories in all of comics, he defined who the X-Men were. Claremont took a team that nobody cared about and had them standing at the very top of popularity before he was done. The X-Men became the most popular team in comic books, and that is all because of this run.

I could go on for hours about the impact that Claremont had on the X-Men, but to keep it concise, we wouldn’t have the X-Men without Claremont. Even if the team had survived to the modern day with a different writer, they would be completely different, and almost none of the aspects we love about them would be present. For over fifteen years, Claremont decided what the X-Men were, and every run after relies on that groundwork.

So there we have ten of the best things to ever happen to and in the X-Men comics. Which of these entries is your favorite, or would you have a different event take out top spot?

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