I have decided upon undertaking a massive X-cursion...

[anarky]

...but I might need a lot of help.

I've been in and out of comics for decades. I've subscribed to Marvel Unlimited, mostly so my kids can read older stories and I can read old Dark Horse Star Wars comics that I missed and don't want to take out a second mortgage to read. Almost everything Marvel has published is there. What isn't, well, there are not so legal ways to find them online, and it doesn't even take much effort.

It would, at this point, probably take a couple of lifetimes for even the most avid reader with all the spare time in the world to cover the entire Marvel Universe.

I got into X-Men with Uncanny X-Men #258, mostly because of that absolutely fucking incredible Jim Lee cover of half-nekkid Wolvie beating the living shit out of Mandarin. (Coincidentally, a new member is considered to have officially joined the team in that issue, which is most of the reason I have a soft spot for the little mallrat.) Like I said, I've been in and out. And, as I'm pretty obvious about, I've gotten really hooked on X-Men '97. I know most of the stories, even from issues I never actually read, but even in this remix form, there are things that are a mystery. (I had no clue who the fuck Bastion was and had to look him up.)

So it occurred to me that I can totally read every single X-Men story that Marvel ever officially published, even if only digitally. The good, the Austen, and the Liefeld. In logical chronological order starting with the OG X-Men #1, and with stories set prior to that sprinkled in where it makes the most obvious sense. Including all crossovers and Wolverine solo and unnecessary guest appearances. Totally doable, mostly in a single app. (Leaving out Namor, though. Love the guy, but Wolverine, Deadpool, and Cable are already a damned huge undertaking. Might include Cloak & Dagger, though, as I understand they eventually joined up.)

Only thing, where the hell would I find a good list of this sort? Ideally I want something that leaps back and forth between titles, even dropping the Classic X-Men backup stories in during the pre-Giant Size #1 era. I found a site where it looks like someone started to make such a list, but it's spread out over several dozen pages, only goes through 2012, and I noticed problems from just a cursory glance (and comments seemed to indicate there were many more).

Any of you know of such a resource? Or a few different resources I can cobble together? I'm totally cool with chronicling this undertaking to help out the next sick masochist.

[anarky]

I forgot Captain Britain and Ms Marvel, who also will be major chunks of story. So no real reason to leave out Namor, especially with him kicking ass and all.

If there's no easy way to determine a full chronological list, I could work from publication order and compile a master list. Trying to come up with a master list of ongoings up to about 2000. Ill work on minis and everything beyond 2000 later. (That's a bit before Marvel goes nuts with resetting at #1.) What have I missed?

[Uncanny] X-Men
Namor, the Sub-Mariner
Captain Britain
New Mutants
Cloak & Dagger
X-Factor
Classic X-Men
Wolverine
Marvel Comics Presents
Excalibur
X-Force/X-Statix
[New] X-Men
X-Men Unlimited
Generation X
X-Man
Exiles
X-Treme X-Men

Pretty sure Cable and Deadpool had ongoings during this time, as well as a team-up title and that weird period where they were renamed Mutant X and Soldier X. I think there were also separate ongoings where Bishop and Havok were separately trapped in alternate universes.

Can't recall because I never got into it, but were the members of Power Pack mutants? And X-Terminators was only a one-shot, right?

Aside from miniseries, there'd be assorted issues of other major ongoings not directly X-Men related, including Fantastic Four (Namor... please tell me Franklin never becomes an X-Man), Avengers (Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, Rogue), Incredible Hulk (Wolverine), and Iron Fist (Sabretooth). And that's not counting guest appearances.

[anarky]

Fuck me, Wolvie and Hank were both Avengers, weren't they?

Goddammit.

[Tom Foolery]

Fuck me, Wolvie and Hank were both Avengers, weren't they?

Goddammit.

Several of the X-Men have been Avengers at this point. Rogue. Havok. Sabretooth. Cannonball. Hell, Sunspot led his own Avengers team for awhile.
Deadpool was funding the team for awhile.

I would also suggest that even if a later story is retconned into an earlier chronological order, it’s usually read better contextually around the time it was published. It can make unfair connections between characters that will later have decades of history between them, but stuffed into the ACTUAL story order where it won’t strengthen the non-existent relationship between those characters at the time will just be confusing.

I will give a random example. You can be reading old issues with Magneto and Toad where Erik is just being a total douche to Toad all the time. Then there’s a short snippet some writer added several decades later where they had a nice bonding moment or whatever. Then you go back to reading the 60s stuff and he’s being a complete dickwad like that moment never happened. Sure, it’s in chronological order, but it doesn’t fit and doesn’t serve the character arc. They(whichever character it was) would just be moving forward and regressing constantly. It makes every single one of them look bipolar or worse.

Power Pack were NOT mutants.
Cloak & Dagger are also not mutants.
Annnnd…Wanda and Pietro are also also not mutants…. SURPRISE! [paper party horn noise]

[anarky]

Annnnd…Wanda and Pietro are also also not mutants…. SURPRISE! [paper party horn noise]

Now that everyone, including Marvel, have been reminded which team is Marvel's true crown jewel, I fully expect an "EVERYTHING YOU THOUGHT YOU KNEW IS WRONG!" issue retconning them back to being Erik's kids long before I get to the present.

Yousa point about retcons is well seen. I actually thought later that it might simply be easier to stick entirely with publication order, maybe recording where they fall since I can't find a good, truly complete chronology anywhere. Plus it would potentially undermine twist reveals, like watching the SW Prequels first.

[Tom Foolery]

I would also suggest you not get too hung up on the continuity porn and the sliding timescale and whatnot.

It was fine for the first 20-30 years, and they had guys like Gruenwald and Thomas who were serious about making sure all the jigsaw puzzle pieces fit together. But we are sixty+ years in and…some shit’s not gonna jive. You’ll either explode at all the minor glitches you notice, or you can take a deep breath and pull an Elsa. Let it go.

I’ll give you one example. Remember the infant baby Logan rescued while they were in Japan for his wedding to Mariko? Not sure the exact issue, but early ‘82-‘83 ish publishing wise. Infant baby. Younger than many other children in comics around the same time frame; Franklin, Power Pack kids, Normie Osborn was probably born around then also. So, that baby is now twenty something in the books and was dating the Silver Samurai’s son. Franklin and the Power Pack kids, while having aged, are now younger than her, by like, a lot. And Normie is like ten.

Or like when Kitty Pryde was in Excalibur for so long, that the writers assumed she had been aging enough that she began a relationship with Pete Wisdom(who was older than her, but she was in her twenties) but then Claremont came back and was writing her as if she was barely 19, which retroactively made her younger than that(or legal) during the Excalibur stuff, which retroactively made Wisdom..gross.

Basically(and this makes zero sense) anything that happened in the last ten years of publishing, happened in the last five years continuity, and everything that happened in the previous 10-60 years before those ten years, happened like 5-10 years ago.

[Diabolical]

I recently saw somewhere (on TikTok, I think) that explained how Marvel has a sliding timescale, where the start of the 616 as we know it from Fantastic Four #1 is always about 13 years ago.
Naturally, this doesn't always work, especially when it comes to real world events, and the amount of stories told, but all this shit is made up anyway.
I'll try to find the video later.

[jjreason]

Use this guy's resources. He has done all the work. This is just one example:

https://www.comicbookherald.com/chris-c ... der-guide/

[Tom Foolery]

I recently saw somewhere (on TikTok, I think) that explained how Marvel has a sliding timescale, where the start of the 616 as we know it from Fantastic Four #1 is always about 13 years ago.
Naturally, this doesn't always work, especially when it comes to real world events, and the amount of stories told, but all this shit is made up anyway.
I'll try to find the video later.

I’ve seen that “13 year” theory several times. When you start thinking about all the mega Events and world ending crises that have been averted by the various heroes it begins to look like shit happens every ten days. There’s barely enough time for normal people to process almost having died from an alien invasion or Hell making mailboxes come alive and try to eat you, let alone repairing all the calamitous damage, before the next world ending event happens.

They should do a comic series about that.

“On Monday, a Giant Purple Man with antennas on his head tried to eat the planet. And yesterday my next door neighbor blinked out of existence, but came back a second later. They said it was some giant alien Grimace dude wiping out half of existence. Now, today, all the superheroes are in Central Park fighting what looks like kaiju-Magneto. But my boss said if I try to take a ‘me’ day, I’ll get fired. FML.”

[Tom Foolery]

Sorry to keep hijacking the topic, but another sliding timescale issue is the ever widening gap between the “Golden Age” set during the immovable WWII era and the ‘Modern Age” which is everything from “13 years ago” up to the present. Which wasn’t a large gap of no discernible super hero antics for less than a couple of decades back in 1961.

But now it’s 80 years. I find it hard to believe there was a surge of super powered people, then NOTHING(or nearly nothing) for 80 years, then the FF flew into space and there was another giant surge. To put 13 years into perspective, the first MCU movie, Iron Man, came out before the current Fictitious Four would’ve made their initial flight. Miles Morales, Kamala Khan, Kate Bishop, and several other notable young heroes were born AFTER 9/11.

Like, when and for how long did Team X operate? When they were first mentioned, it was easy to infer they were active in the 50s and 60s. But now? The 50s up thru the mid 2010s? Or is it post-2000 up to the 2010s? Which is more likely/believable?

[anarky]

I said 23 years ago that this was one of the two big problems with Marvel having the characters react realistically to 9/11. I get that it was a major event in the real world, but was Peter Parker even born yet according to today's view of the sliding timeline? (Not to mention the other issue that knocking two buildings down seems trivial if fucking Galactus shows up and trashes New York weekly.)

Never mind Reed and Ben fought together in WWII. Or, in another universe, Snake Eyes is still a spry young deadliest motherfucker alive despite fighting specifically in the Tet Offensive, which was 1968, making him AT LEAST 74, and probably older since I think he was a Sergeant so probably not just 18.

[Tom Foolery]

I said 23 years ago that this was one of the two big problems with Marvel having the characters react realistically to 9/11. I get that it was a major event in the real world, but was Peter Parker even born yet according to today's view of the sliding timeline? (Not to mention the other issue that knocking two buildings down seems trivial if fucking Galactus shows up and trashes New York weekly.)

Peter was probably 4-5 years old. But give it a few more years, and then, yes, Peter Parker will have been born after 9/11.

I can see Kingpin getting emotionally worked up, because it’s his city after all.
But Dr. Doom shedding a single tear is retroactively super extra cringe. Get the fuck outta here with that shit.

[anarky]

But Dr. Doom shedding a single tear is retroactively super extra cringe. Get the fuck outta here with that shit.

If it happened in Latveria, yeah. I can even see him saying that this was the work of cowards and agreeing to put aside any differences to enact switch retribution.