I love ranking things. Everyone loves ranking things. We’ve built a social media empire around the idea of ranking things. So lets rank all the X-Men titles in the Dawn Of X era, shall we?
This is not just one opinion, this is the definitive opinion. We polled out writing staff and got twenty members to rank every ding dang book. So that’s what this is, you don’t care about this copy do you? You have already scrolled down to #1 haven’t you?
12. Fallen Angels
Total: 240 Average Rank: 12.00
Listen, we don’t want to be mean. Both Bryan Edward Hill and Szymon Kudranski have done much, much better in the past. There was no disagreement among our twenty voters that this was the low point of the Dawn Of X. The gulf between the quality of this book and any of the others is so wide that it’s hard to imagine how it came out so badly when everything else worked. It will end up being forgotten, and we’ll be better for it.
11. X-Men/Fantastic Four
Total: 210 Average Rank: 10.50
The only book on our list not to come out of the X-Office, X-Men/Fantastic Four is a story of missed potential. Chip Zdarsky has been on fire the last few years and the Dodson’s are fan favorite X-artists. The rift between the X-Men and Fantastic Four in House Of X #1 launched one thousand clickbait articles. This should have been a smash hit! However the book we got was uneven, with the last three issues never living up to the potential of the first. More than anything else, it felt disconnected in an era of increasing connectivity. There’s a spark of something here, but the bar has been raised so high that missteps like this hurt hard.
10. Wolverine
Total: 195 Average Rank: 9.75
Logan’s at a disadvantage. The population surveyed here is made up of X-Men fans, like, the weird ones who have more than one framed picture of Glob Herman at their desk. And if there is one thing that group hates, it is Wolverine. To be fair, everyone acknowledges that Benjamin Percy understands the character, however his plotting has not been as engaging here as some of his other work. That combined with mixed reactions to Adam Kubert’s art drops this one to the bottom half of the list.
9. Giant-Size X-Men
Total: 182 Average Rank: 9.10
Artists don’t get enough credit in comics. For the creators who stage, pace, and emote the stories being told, artist get relegated to one line in a review without any real substance. That’s part of what the Giant-Size X-Men books were trying to fix, they are artist spotlights. They allow Hickman to load up some Chekhov’s guns while letting fantastic collaborators like Dauterman, Perez, and Davis show off their skills, not just at drawing, but storytelling as a whole. Unfortunately this experiment in the Marvel method suffers a bit from underwriting. The issues so far have been slight, opting for beautiful vistas over plot progression. These are fantastic artists, but that alone is not enough to elevate this over other titles.
8. New Mutants
Total: 143 Average Rank: 7.15
This right here is the first real step-change in the rankings. While it has been inconsistent, New Mutants, ranked two spots higher than the next book on average. It’s a book with a lot of divisiveness from fans, partly from the bizarre trade-offs between Ed Brisson and Jonathan Hickman early on in the series. Unlike other books, it suffered from a lack of identity out the gate and has slowly started to build that back up over the last arc. There’s potential here, and a lot that people enjoy, but early missteps give it a big hurdle to overcome.
7. Cable
Total: 134 Average Rank: 6.70
It’s the strangest vestigial limb of the Krakoa era isn’t it? Cable isn’t the rough and tumble mercenary he always was, but instead a teen boy who’s bitten off more than he can chew. It’s hard to imagine any fan would be too excited for more of this version of the character. However what Gerry Duggan and Phil Noto have done in two issues is transform the despised into the beloved. Making Cable an action comedy was an inspired choice. Noto is flexing his comedic timing muscles and Duggan is having a blast throwing this kid into situations you wouldn’t dream of. It’s been an unexpected joy and only has room to get better from here.
5. Tie! X-Men & X-Force
Total: 97 Average Rank: 4.85 First Place Votes: 3
This is the next of the step changes as both X-Men and X-Force tied in total score and first place votes. These are both series with soaring highs, like The Crucible or The Green Lagoon, and crushing lows, like Hordeculture or reverse Domino. They are both a little uneven, but with a ton of love. They also have a more limited appeal than some of the other books in the line. Not everyone adores Hickman’s methodical style of sowing story beats to reap later, or Percy’s insistence on relegating key emotional beats to data pages. But it’s like candy for the people this works for. These are great books, they just might not be your cup of tea.
Going to jump in here to tell you the next four comics on this list had a total spread of 4 points. Literally change out one reviewer and you have a totally different top four. So if any of you come into mentions saying any of these are “too low” you can go into that same hole Sabretooth lives in now.
3. Tie! Hellions & Marauders
Total: 67 Average Rank: 3.35 First Place Votes: 2
We’ve got another tie and it’s a doozy. Hellions and Marauders both do different things. One is a story of betrayal and identity and what it means to be a mutant in this world. The other is introspective, about personal growth. Both stories have resonated with our writers and have taken characters in directions we never imagined. Oddly enough, both got less first place votes than any other title. Which may point to these being the most universally “liked” of the books, while not being the most “loved”.
2. Excalibur
Total: 65 Average Rank: 3.25 First Place Votes 5
Witches and himbos and swords and druids and dragons and magics and intrigue and multiverses and blue dads and secret plans and hostile takeovers of nations and charts and war wolves and all things good. This is what so many people want out of X-Men. It is the only book that seems to want to expand the world of Krakoa instead of playing in that sandbox even more. It’s a riot and a blast and if you aren’t reading it, what are you even doing with your time.
1. X-Factor
Total: 63 Average Rank: 3.15 First Place Votes 5
Yes only one issue is out. Yes Leah is on good terms with our team. Yes our sample size is very queer. Doesn’t matter, this series rules. Leah & David have taken the good from Peter David, like the detective stuff and the team kinda hating each other, and strained out the problematic stuff. It’s a legitimately fresh tone for the line and it’s something a lot of readers have been looking for. People love this and they have reasons to.
Do you agree? Can you not believe how good we got this? Isn’t it incredible how there is no arguing about this? Let us know how you think we got all the best comics on this list in the right order. Because we did.
Zachary Jenkins co-hosts the podcast Battle of the Atom and is the former editor-in-chief of ComicsXF. Shocking everyone, he has a full and vibrant life outside all this.
