Hey guys,

I've been a looong time X-men fan. Always have and always will. I've been out of comics for about 15-20 years thanks to having to grow up lol. Marriage, mortgages, kids etc. have kept me from buying comics. Now that my sons are into comics, I've convinced the wife that reading comics with my boys is considered bonding and will also help out their imagination and reading skills. She didn't buy it one bit but she's not complaining either lol.
So now I want to get back into my beloved team of mutants and catch up as quickly as possible. I want to stick to TPBs for the time being if possible. I own the compkete Avengers vs X-men hardcover TPB but that's about it.
Basically, I need a list of good/important X-Men related TPBs worth buying and reading. If possible, can you give me a quick review of why I need to read it or what you liked about the book. I probably won't be able to buy every book suggested so I'd like to be able to narrow it down to what I think is worth reading.

Thanks ahead of time for the help!
KidSinestro

Well then.

If you don't mind dipping your toes out of modern continuity, check out the first dozen or so Ultimate X-Men. Some good stuff there, even if it's not the 616 band.

Other advice, no particular order. Also, most of these ended up entirely collected in 5-6 issue trades:
Morrison's New X-Men run
Whedon's Astonishing X-Men (personal favorite)
Second Coming
Dark Avengers/Uncanny: Utopia
Messiah Complex
House of M (kind of sets the stage for everything else, so technically it could have been first up)

Final, tangential plug. I highly recommend Marvel Unlimited. It's a subscription based service not unlike Netflix. The cost is $10 a month, or $60 a year, and it's pretty much the entire catalog of Marvel comics. You could literally read every issue you missed. Granted, you wouldn't own them, but it's hard to beat the price/selection option. I'm doing it myself now, and I love it.

Welcome back again to the merry Mutants. Hope this helped.

Are you looking to catch up on modern stuff or are you looking for all around classic X-men stories?

The recent stuff basically centers around a three part story (Messiah Complex, Messiah War, and Second Coming) which is complicated, long, and involves too many characters for my taste. Still, that's really what you would want to catch up on if you want to understand why Cyclops is the way he currently is. It also has X Force on the side, which is pretty good if you like grittier stuff.

The obvious one people are going to recommend is Astonishing X-men issues 1-24. They hold up pretty well without much outside X-men knowledge as far as modern stuff goes and is easy to find in trades.

Honestly, most of the X-men stuff I'd recommend is 15 years old or more. Ever since the early 2000's (When the movie came out) there's just been so many characters for any real focus.

One series I really liked was X-men First Class, which was just light-hearted stories about the original team. They probably aren't canon, but they were fun and had an old school feel where everything wraps up at the end of the issue.

If you like really silly stuff you can also check out Wolverine and the X-men, which is about Wolverine running his own school and the wacky hijinx that ensue. I don't really like it, but it's a nice change of pace from the grim atmosphere that is current X-men.

Joss Whedon's Astonishing X-Men run
Grant Morrison's New X-Men run
Kyle/Yost's X-Force run, followed by the Rick Remender Uncanny X-Force run.
Ed Brubaker's Uncanny X-Men run, including Messiah Complex.

Those are the most memorable X-men stories in the past 15 years. Some of the mini-series spinning out of the Brubaker run, Deadly Genesis & Kingbreaker, got me into Marvel Cosmic via the third Summers brother.

I had very similar story to yours. Some trades i picked up and enjoyed were

Blinded by the light. Build up to messiah complex.
End of greys. Shiar decide to wipeout anyone related to jean.
Blood of apocalypse. Follows the gambit, sunfire, polaris and gazer horsemen

I'm mainly looking to catch up on the Modern stuff but if there's a good classic story I might've missed, please feel free to suggest away. I've always loved Cyclops as a character and in reading AvX, I realized I missed a ton in recent years.

I am reading house of M and its great so for.

Definitely get the Astonishing, Utopia, and Messiah stuff then. Fraction and Whedon do a lot to get Scott past the bland boyscout label he's held for years.

Cool, I'll start there then. Thanks guys. If you can think of anything else worth reading I'm all ears.

I actually know one classic x story (1982) all mutant fans should read once in their life time. X-Men: God Loves, Man Kills, Marvel has it to read if you have a digital subscription.