When I was a young'n, I was an avid X-Men reader. Basically, I stopped reading X-Men about the time that Inferno was about to begin, so I have read basically all the X-men stories through Mutant Massacre and on, so I think I stopped reading X-men in 1989. I have read the Whedon Astonishing run, the Brubaker Rise and Fall of Shi'ar Empire run, but I haven't really read much else X-Men in between nor after.

What are the best X-Men stories I need to get my hands on that seem to be missing in my experience here?

Start with Fatal Attractions you can pretty much skip all the whining Woverine does about not having Adamantium. Next on the list Legion Quest which gives rise to Age Of Apocalypse once this event ends it almost imediately gives rise the specter of Onslaught. Onslaught is really a masterpiece of story telling, great art, and the bold direction the writers took at the end deserves some praise. That direction was to split the Marvel universe The Avengers, the FF, Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, Bruce Banner, and Dr. Doom all got placed in to a pocket dimension. Created by Franklin Richards the dimension appeared to the outside world as a little blue ball Franklin was the only one who knew about the pocket dimension everyone else thought those heroes had died. The Dimension created by Frankin could be called a prototype for the Utimates Universe with one exception NO MUTANTS EVER EXISTED. The Heroes Reborn universe gave the charactors a fresh start with revamped origins, beautiful artwork, an authentic feeling unified universe, and more importantly NONE OF THE BAGGAGE they possessed before. This remained Franklin's secret for close to a year until a Celestial came and told Franklin he had to choose which universe will die. The Celestial visited the pocket dimension he told the Marvel heroes "Reborn" there that they had to leave and if they did he would preserve this universe. Dr. Doom was the only one who failed to ecape because of actions taken by Thor. Doom however struck his own bargin and became ruler of the Earth in that dimension. Which lead to his own Doom Returns miniseries when Marvel decided the world needed Doom again.


During "The Year Without Hereos" we get operation Zero Tolerance as direct result of the Onslaught incident all the mutants are being rounded up and put into camps. The leader of the operation is Bastion he hacked Cerebro and gained possession of the Xavier Protocals which contains information on how to defeat every mutant in Cerebro's database. In addition he's built a new kind of sentinel that can appear human untill given a signal then nanobots transform these poor people into deadly cyborgs under the control of a satilite. These people had no knowledge of what was being done to them they would get some letter annoucing the openning of a clinic or an offer to get a new artificial limb. We had been left to believe that Onslaught being removed from Xavier's psychie left Xavier powerless. But at the end of this story we find out the distrust in his own mind prevented Xavier from being able to use his powers. Although freed from the government run prison in the end of the story Xavier goes into hiding. The biggest shock came from finding out Bastion was none other than MASTER MOLD warped by time and space into a sentient being but still bent on destroying mutantkind.

Someone impersonates Xavier and gathers mutants from a sort of "do not call" list these mutants are basically the antithisis of the current X-Men each one the has a power meant to counter the power of the current group. They're called The All Deadly X-Men the villain behind this threat is THE DANGER ROOM after bastion's attack "Danger" (as it is now called) felt Xavier's dream was over and his past mistakes needed to be terminated before "the dream" could live again. It's after this story arc Xavier returns and Xorn joins the team Xorn turns out to be MAGNETO. He then tries to take over what he calls Planet X because those with the X Gene are going to be the only ones left alive when he's done. Magento up untill this point was believed dead as a result of E Is For Extinction. He pretended to be Xorn for MONTHS to see if there was a chance Xavier was right. However Magneto made up his mind and Xavier couldn't have been more wrong.


The Twelve is also pretty good it chronicles Cable's final battle with Apocalypse (yeah I know nothing is ever final with that guy) give's us Wolverine as the horseman Death and has a conclusion you'll never see coming.