Welcome!

[sheliak]

Welcome to X-Men Classic!

This is a community dedicated to the classic Claremont-era X-Men! Related titles very much included. If you want to talk about New Mutants, X-Factor, Excalibur, the Magik miniseries, the Fallen Angels or anything else X-related from this time period—go right ahead! We hope you’ll have fun here.

To get the discussion rolling, tell us about the comic or arc that got you hooked on the era, or X-Men comics in general!

Comments

[teshumai]

So my classic x-men story is a bit round about. I didn't start reading comics and x-men until the 90s after the Claremont era had ended and I kept reading them for a long time. But I never really went backwards, until recently when I got marvel unlimited and decided i was going to read the entire 500 something run of Uncanny X-men starting in 1963. The move from Thomas to Claremont is sort of staggering in just how much better Claremont is. His voice is so distinctive and really gripping.

I have made it to 1985, and just met Madelyn Pryor last issue and i think it is time for me to decide if I'm just going give my life to the x-men and start reading new mutants and x-factor as well or stick to uncanny.

[rachelmanija]

New Mutants is great. The Magik miniseries is one of my single favorite comics. You need Illyana Rasputin in your life.

[sheliak]

You should definitely read New Mutants! It's a fantastic series with a lot of really great characters—Illyana and Dani are two of my favorites. And it has some great stuff with Magneto.

New Mutants also ties in much more closely with X-Men than X-Factor does—for a long time the New Mutants and the X-Men are living in the same house and storylines can start in one book and finish in the other. X-Factor does its own thing, and the characters don't even talk to the X-Men for a very long time. (Which gets awfully silly, to be honest—I think the editors wanted the books to stand on their own, but there were a lot of melodramatic misunderstandings that could have been solved if someone had just picked up the phone. And X-Factor surely had the mansion phone number!)

I don't think you have to read New Mutants to understand what's going on with the X-Men—my library only had the X-Men half of things and I managed—but it does help a lot. And it's a really great series, so it's well worth reading in its own right.

(I'm not as fond of X-Factor—never really forgave it for what happened to Madelyne as a result of its existence—but it does have its moments, after the very rough first few issues. I really liked the Judgement War storyline, which has kind of a TOS Star Trek feel.)