My best X Men team would have to be the team from Uncanny X Men 200 - 210 (way back in 1986). The team comprised of a (powerless) Storm, Wolverine, Nightcrawler, Shadowcat who had a teenage crush on Colossus and Rachel Summers as Phoenix.

All the stories had top rate artists (Barry Windsor Smith / John Romita Junior) , Chris Claremont was at the top of his game and things were going really well and each issue.

The X Men were pursued by Freedom Force, Lady Deathstrike, Nimrod &The Black Queen and this was the year of the Mutant massacre that lead to half the team being seriously injured.

Back then the only other team was the New mutants and we didnt have what we have now which is the whole brand diluted to a point where i'm now contemplating dropping X Men Legacy as one of my monthly titles.

When did the rot set in for you,and if so what can be done about it?

Whats your opinion?

The Oz gang, Storm, Rogue, Longshot, Dazzler and the rest (who slightly slip my mind right now). It was just fun the same as Excalibur of the time. Lost interest not long after Onslaught when most of the familiar faces split off or died again (Jean) and the X-brand spread out like a radioactive weed.

I still wiki my favourite characters now and then, but I've never really been tempted to go back

New mutants were excellent, more daft fun and Karma dropping all that weight and still looking svelte makes me shake my head to this day. Things are too serious now, alas.

Just a thought....

I was having a boxing day look through my old marvel comics and i came across a true classic story - The Asgard War (1985) from X Men Annual 9 & New Mutants Special Edition 1.

Both comics were illustrated by Art Adams and written by Chris Claremont and they knock spots off some of the latest 'efforts' by Marvel.

For me, probably the original team as I grew up reading the sixties stuff in British reprints. Of the later teams though, it would be the original 'all-new X-Men' from the 1970s: Cyclops, Storm, Wolverine, Colossus, Nightcrawler, Phoenix and Banshee. I tend to regard any character post Kitty Pryde as being 'new' and haven't much inerest in them.

Cyclops, Phoenix, Angel, Iceman, Beast, Storm, Nightcrawler, Colussus, Shadowcat, Rogue

Plus Wolverine, Havok, Psylocke and, later, Jubilee... that was my first X-Team, I got into the X-comics around the time of the "Inferno" storyline. Loved all that. As well as the "Meltdown" mini featuring Havok and Wolverine... brilliant artwork!


Personally, I think Mike Carey is one of the best things to have happened to the X-comics in a looong while, unfortunately editorial is VERY strong on the X-comics at the moment.

It's swings and roundabouts... I dropped all comics around the time of the "Phalanx Covenant" and "Onslaught" storylines but I picked up X-Men again in about 2001 when Grant Morrison led the way. Unfortunately the rise in popularity conflicted with his way out ideas and they parted ways... hit some doldrums but Milligan did his best however, yeah, i think the recent storylines have been quite confusing (Vampires, Utopia, Dark Goddesses, dead mutants alive again... erm... en masse, for a change...). Stick with Legacy, I think Marvel are giving Carey a chance to run with it for a bit, just a pity Uncanny is a bit hit n miss...

Yes, I forgot Psylocke *l*. She was much more fun before the whole body switcheroo caper, sadly, most characters are and then writers can't help but meddle

Shout out to Gateway, too, though he wasn't on the team as such

Wasn't Maddy Pryor down there with them? Or am I getting mixed up with something else?

Madelyne was indeed with the X-Men when they were based in the Outback.

Yup, until the whole Inferno shenanigans... she was having an affair with Havok, too...

Also agree about the Psylocke body-swap malarky... way too confusing and the retcons to fix it made stuff even worse!

Damn Claremont and his Ninja fetish.

I've never actually read an X-Men comic, but I'm about to get started on X-Factor (The Longest Night), which I got for Christmas. I've been wanting to get into X-Men for a while, looked like a good place to start. I've got the next 3 books after it on the way, so fingers crossed.

My preferred line-up was around the time Rogue joined the gang up until just after Dazzler joined. I stopped reading after Mark Silvestri joined as resident artist. When I read comics then, they had to grab me artistically. I was also traumatised (hey, I was a kid!), when Shadowcat & Nightcrawler left to join Excaliber. After Rogue, they were my favourite team-members.
The whole Genoa storyline left me bored and it only picked up when a new artist joined and Psylockes character underwent a change.
I much preferred that time, when Bill Sienkiewicz was the artist for New Mutants and you'd get both teams mingling in either comic. Its a shame Sienkiewicz never was artist in residence for Uncanny Xmen, though his art isnt always embraced by younger comic readers.
Alpha Flight was gr8 until John Byrne left it too.

This latest X-Factor series kicks off quite differently from other X titles. It starts out as very much in the noir style but then, as the artists and members change (X-Factor was being used very much as a pot for unused characters until they tied into more popular storylines on other books, unfortunately Peter David had to play with the cards dealt after the initial arc) I felt it dipped as a book and became more like everything else, losing some of it's own identity.
I actually stopped picking it up last year, around the time they renumbered the book to 200 or something... it's a pity as I really like Peter David as a writer and the comic deals with some pretty powerful themes. It just got a bit watered down, I felt.



Loved the original Alpha Flight! I used to read them at a mates house when I was younger but picked up the series for a snip off Ebay a few yrs back

For me its the Grant Morrison "New X-Men" team, from the early part of the decade.

My comic buying days started in the early 90's, and for me that run was the highest quality X-men books released while i've been buying comics.

Strong line up of characters, good stories and excellent Frank Quitely art work. My favourite X-team would be the Mike Alred X-factor/X-statix.

When I used to live in London, I used to pop into Forbidden Planet, and catch up on the Xmen, as I'd stopped collecting comics. It was a 'guilty pleasure'. But very soon, with all the x-men affiliated comics, it got really confusing! It diluted the brand.
Last edited by mr muggles : 05-01-2011 at 12:50

I'm about halfway through the first book and really enjoying it so far. The main trouble for me has been remembering who everyone is - outside of the big name X-Men from the films, I really don't know much about the group, but I'm happy to keep going! I'll definitely be getting more anyway.

The Team from the 90's cartoon
Storm
Cyclops
Gambit
Wolverine
Jubilee
Rogue
Beast
Jean Grey

I thought it all started going down hill when they killed off Cypher. I know thats New mutants but thats when (in my book) the quality dropped big time. The variety was lost and all the female characters became the same "hard-bitten warrior" types that Claremont likes to write but can't.

And Excalibur went to pot when they tried tweaking Capt Britains powers and his relationship to Megan.

Ack! All that childish angst returns to haunt me

*waves fist at thread*

Agreed!

Peter Milligan and Mike Allred's X-Statix team.

I like the 150-175 team Ororo, Scott, Wolvie, Kitty, Kurt, Peter. later came Rogue.

I loved paul Smith's Japan stuff, the Brood, Kitty's Dragon, Storm's Mohawk.

Perhaps we all prefere the team that featured in our salad days.

I like the team for the Proteus stuff with banshee (sans sonic scream) Havoc, Polaris and Phoenix too.

My motto was the more superheroes on the cover, the better.

I read the X-men between 1979 to about 2002 and the period between issues 150-250 was still argueably the best of the entire run. They had far too many crossovers and events and extra books with the X logo which is why I eventually gave up. Now I don't care!

I would have said either the period between #49 and #66 (most of which had beautiful artwork by Steranko or Neal Adams) or #94-168 (the immediate aftermath of the first Brood storyline). After that, it all got needlessly complicated and Claremont's writing became increasingly pretentious.

Another vote for the Eighties!!!

Loved the pre-Mutant Massacre and pre-Inferno teams.

I gave up on the regular comic about 10 years ago when the multiple X-everything comics launched... Especially as every damn one of the featuring Wolverine. Poor Wolvie was totally overexposed and diluted.

i loved the Havok lead X-Factor from the ninties too, but that was a comic that was too good to last sadly.

1. Cyclops, Phoenix, Colossus, Wolverine, Storm, Nightcrawler, Banshee
2. The Gold Team
3. The Blue Team
4. The New X-Men