5 Great X-Men Rosters Nobody Talks About

Nowadays, most people talk about the Avengers like they are the most popular Marvel team, and there’s a lot to that, but let’s be real: the X-Men have been much more popular than the Earth’s Mightiest Heroes over the decades. The men and women of X have been having the greatest adventures in comics since the late ’70s, and a big reason for that is the teams themselves. Marvel’s merry mutants have combined in rosters that have allowed creators to tell amazing stories. The X-Men’s Blue Team has been a huge part of pop culture since the ’90s, and even beyond them, there are other rosters who have become super popular.

Looking over the history of the team, there are some amazing X-Men rosters that don’t get nearly as much credit as they deserve. They’ve spearheaded runs that are the best of the best, and gave creators so much to work with, leading to the best stories possible. These five X-Men rosters are the ones that no one talks about, and they deserve way more credit than they get.

5) The Ellis Astonishing X-Men Team

Warren Ellis’s Astonishing X-Men doesn’t get the credit it should, and one of the best part of the short ten-issue run was the roster itself. It kept Cyclops, Emma Frost, Wolverine, Armor, and Beast from the Whedon/Cassaday run, and added Storm to the team. The group had it all — Wolverine and Armor as the gruff mentor/sarcastic learner, Emma and Storm sniping at each other constantly, and Beast and Cyclops as the “adults in the room”. It was a perfect mix of personality and power, a team that could handle anything thrown at it, and entertain readers with their interplay. I love this team, and you should too.

4) The Faulty and Students of Wolverine’s Jean Grey School

Wolverine and the X-Men gave readers some of the best quirky X-Men stories since Morrison’s New X-Men, and a big reason for that was the massive cast of characters. Wolverine formed a truly entertaining school; the faculty included Beast, Kitty Pryde, Iceman, Husk, Toad, Doop, Rachel Summers, and Dani Moonstar (although she didn’t really appear in WatX), with students like Temper (then known as Oya), Quentin Quire, Broo, Kid Gladiator, Evan Sabah Nur, Anole, and several others. The book worked so well because of the cast of characters; writer Jason Aaron knew how to play all of them off each other in the most entertaining ways, and it paid off for the readers.

3) Rogue’s Rapid Response Team

Rogue’s rapid response team was one of the most fun ideas of the post-House of M era. The Southern mutant formed a very interesting team, with X-Men stalwarts like Cable, Cannonball, and Iceman along with villains like Mystique, Lady Mastermind, and Sabretooth, along with Omega Sentinel. This was such a cool team idea, one that gave readers a lot of great drama. The various members of the group had a lot of history with each other, and it gave writer Mike Carey, at the time helming X-Men, a lot of cool story opportunities. Of course, the team was full of enemies and the whole thing eventually bit the X-Men in the butt, but that was part of its charm.

2) The Joe Kelly/Steve Seagle Run

Joe Kelly and Steve Seagle took over the X-Men books in 1997, inheriting the large X-team of the day. However, ten issues into their run, they created a great roster of X-Men out of the sprawling mass of members. Colossus, Kitty Pryde, and Nightcrawler, who had been with Excalibur together, joined Storm, Wolverine, Rogue, and Marrow, with Gambit joining the team down the road. This eight-person team was all killer, no filler, a group of heroes who had worked together for a long time, with Marrow as the wild card new girl. The group lasted as the main X-team until the end of the ’90s, and starred in awesome stories like “Hunt for Xavier”, “The Magneto War”, and the entire Alan Davis run though late ’98 and ’99. No one ever thinks of this team anymore, and that’s a shame because they were awesome.

1) Morrison’s New X-Men Team

New X-Men is the pinnacle of 21st century X-Men, and the roster is a key reason for this. The book kicked off with Xavier, Cyclops, Jean Grey, Beast, Wolverine, and Emma Frost, a perfect storm of conflicts and personalities. As the run went on, Beak, Angel Rodriguez, Xorn, and Fantomex would all join, bringing in all new angles and sending the book in new directions that Morrison used to enthrall readers. It was a perfect roster; it allowed the scribe to use classic plot lines in new ways, and play with the soap opera feel that always made X-Men books so much fun to read. This is an amazing team, one that was formidable in battle and also massively entertaining.

What’s your favorite X-Men roster? Leave a comment in the comment section below and join the conversation on the ComicBook Forums!

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