The X-Men have created one of the most devoted fanbases in comics. This has been going on since the mid ’70s at least, when Giant-Size X-Men #1 redefined the team and writer Chris Claremont came on board with X-Men (Vol. 1) #94. Claremont revolutionized the X-Men comics, working for 17 years to create a mini-universe inside the greater Marvel Universe. Over the decades, fans have been exposed to the most convoluted stories and ideas ever, and stayed around. The biggest X-Men fans even love stories that are generally considered bad, finding reasons to still enjoy them. However, this isn’t the case with every bad X-Men story; some of them are so terrible that even the biggest fans avoid them.
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It takes an especially bad story to turn off X-Men fans. They’ve dealt with some of the convoluted, complicated stories ever and can usually find something to love in even the worst. However, some deserve to be resigned to the dust bin of history and even the most diehard X-Men fans avoid these ten stories.
10) X-Men Gold
The Inhumans push was terrible for Marvel, especially the X-Men. After it ended in Inhumans vs. X-Men, fans thought that things would get better, but this wasn’t the case at all. The resulting books were mostly bad, but X-Men Gold was especially odious. The 36-issue series tried to bring back a Claremont-inspired team, but writer Marc Guggenheim could never make the series work. However, the worst part came in the first issue, when artist Ardian Sayif snuck anti-Semitic imagery into the art. The series started off on the worst leg you can imagine, and has no stories that anyone wants to read a second time.
9) X-Corp
Despite what a lot of fans say, the Krakoa Era wasn’t actually perfect. It had its share of bad books and one of the worst was X-Corp. It was supposed to be a unique corporate espionage kind of comic, from writer Tini Howard and artist Alberto Foche. The series starred Monet and Archangel, and had a pretty good cast of characters, but Howard never found a way to make them interesting, which became a huge problem surprisingly quickly. This five issue series’s best parts was the back-up story from indie creator Jason Loo, which starred Multiple Man. Howard fumbled the book and Foche’s art was fine, but felt like it was just early Stuart Immonen. It’s not the worst part of the Krakoa Era (more on that later), but it’s close.
8) Astonishing X-Men (Vol. 4)
Astonishing X-Men was a name that meant quality before we got Astonishing X-Men (Vol. 4). The 18-issue series was written by Charles Soule for 12 issues and Matthew Rosenberg for the rest. Soule’s issues were drawn by 12 different artists and Rosenberg’s by Greg Land. The book tried to do what Astonishing X-Men (Vol. 3) did, bringing together superstar writers and artists, but Soule wasn’t a superstar, even though Marvel pushed him as one, and Rosenberg was just getting big. Soule’s run was the worst part of the book, pitting the team against the Shadow King and Proteus, while Rosenberg’s run brought together a new team for a new mission. The 2010s were bad for X-Men fans, and this book is endemic of that.
7) Extraordinary X-Men
Extraordinary X-Men was launched as the flagship X-title after Secret Wars ended in 2016. Fans were quite excited for it, due to the creative team of Jeff Lemire and Humberto Ramos. However, the first issue came out and the new mutant status quo was revealed: the Terrigen Mists had inundated the Earth and mutants were dying, with the X-Men establishing Haven in Limbo. The biggest problem with this 19-issue series was that it was never really allowed to become an X-Men book. Gone were the character interactions or even dealing with the main problem of the book, instead it was just big story arc after big story arc, with no chance to breath. It’s not actually all that bad of a series, but it comes from a time that X-fans don’t want to revisit and isn’t as great as it could have been.
6) “Age of Revelation”
“Age of Revelation” was a disaster, and is the newest story on this list. It took readers ten years into the future, where a mutant virus devastated the world and the United States is under the control of Revelation, who is the Apocalypse-ified Doug Ramsey. The story ran through two bookends and 17 (!) three-issue miniseries. Immediately when it was announced, fans were already talking about skipping it, and it’s rare to find anyone with a kind word about the vast majority of it. It’s the kind of story that no one will re-read because no one has anything good to say about it.
5) “The Draco”
Nightcrawler is one of the most beloved X-Men, and for years fans wondered why he looked the way he did. We learned that he was the son of Mystique, but no one knew who his father was until “The Draco”, running through Uncanny X-Men (Vol. 1) #429-434, by Chuck Austen and Philip Tan. This story introduced the idea of demon and angel mutants in the person of Azazel, who at the time was revealed as Kurt’s father. It comes from that terrible time for the X-Men that was the Chuck Austen run. The story has a cool premise, and Tan’s artwork is honestly pretty good, but Austen can never make it work. It’s a bad comic with very little merit. Even if you hate the Mystique is actually Kurt’s dad and Destiny’s his mom retcon, this is still an all-time bad story.
4) “Day of the Atom”
You can run from the Chuck Austen X-Men run all you want, but it always finds you. After Grant Morrison left New X-Men, Austen was moved to the book, which dropped the “new” from the title, as well as any quality it had as a comic. “Day of the Atom” was Austen’s second story on the book, with artist Salvador Larocca, running through X-Men (Vol. 2) #157-160. It’s abysmal, but that’s normal for Austen’s X-Men. This story revealed that Xorn wasn’t just someone Magneto had killed and replaced but that there were twin Xorn brothers, with the X-Men having to deal with all of the drama that entailed. There is nothing interesting about this story whatsoever. No one ever talks about it, and that’s for the best; that way, new readers will never have to subject themselves to this four-issue snore of a story.
3) Fall of the House of X
Many fans never wanted the Krakoa Era to end, but after Marvel saw the reception of X-Men ’97, they decided otherwise and shaved six months off the already ending “Fall of X”. Most of the line suffered, but the worst part is easily Fall of the House of X, by Gerry Duggan, Lucas Werneck, Jethro Morales, and Stefano Caselli. Duggan’s time on the X-Men wasn’t great and this book was the pay-off to his various storylines. It was bad, with terrible characterization and a predictably rote plot. Werneck’s usually gorgeous art didn’t have its same luster, and he needed fill-in artists to meet deadlines, which took away from the visuals. It was a perfect storm of bad everything, and most X-fans would rather never revisit it.
2) “Age of X-Man”
“Age of Apocalypse” was a groundbreaking story and a massive success, and every decade since it ended Marvel has tried to go back to the well. The 2010s version of this was “Age of X-Man”. It ran through two bookends and six miniseries, and spun out of “X-Men Disassembled”, a story that ended with X-Man merging with Legion and creating a new world for mutantkind. The 2019 story came after an unsuccessful X-Men reboot and fans just didn’t really care about it. Marvel at least didn’t make 17 miniseries for this one, but no one really remembers anything about the story other than that Psylocke and Blob were a couple.
1) “She Lies With Angels”
One of the weird things you realize while reading Chuck Austen’s X-Men is that he was taking big swings with every story, which is something, I guess. A great of example of that is Uncanny X-Men (Vol. 1) #437-441, by Austen and Salvador Larocca. Titled “She Lies With Angels”, it introduced readers to Josh Guthrie, one of the Guthrie clan of mutants, and followed him falling in love with a human. It’s supposed to be a Romeo and Juliet-style story, but Austen definitely doesn’t have the dramatic chops for that. It’s terrible in a car crash kind of way, so it’s better to not even read it to begin with.
What’s your least favorite X-Men story? Leave a comment in a comment section below and join the conversation on the ComicBook Forums!
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