- ComicsBackIssues.com’s Complete X-Men Reading Order
- Before my site existed, this is the site I would say has the best and most complete X-Men Reading Order on the internet. In some ways, you could still say it is more complete than mine, because it actually does include all issues of X-Factor, Excalibur, and the various X-Men solo titles, as well as flashback issues (most of which I do not include unless they are part of the mainline books or are very important). However, the order is not as accurate as mine, especially in the 2000’s and later, which is understandable since there is just so much going on. Many continuity errors are relatively small and you would absolutely miss them if you didn’t read each comic yourself, and even then, you might have trouble. This site helped me immensely in building my own order, and I imagine it will continue to do so as it is also still being updated.
- SuperMegaMonkey’s Marvel Comics Chronology
- This site is awesome. The man who runs it (or used to run it?) did the same thing as me – he read every issue himself. But he did this for ALL Marvel comics, not just X-Men. On top of that, he created a page for each issue which summarizes the plot, reviews the story, and gives notes on continuity and publishing, as well as having a comment section and other interesting tidbits of info! I am in absolute awe of the work done here. That said, it only goes up to 1997, and it is unclear at this time how far beyond that it will continue. The 90’s was the beginning of a period when the amount of comics being published at any given time would be absolutely insane to keep up with if you were really trying to read everything. I had enough on my plate with just X-Men, so I cannot even imagine what it would be like to try to tackle something like this. As such, it makes sense that SuperMegaMonkey gave up trying for awhile. As of my most recent check, it appears that he has tentatively started up again (woot woot!), but even if he stopped for good today and never did any more, he would have already done a great service to the world of Marvel Reading Orders and continuity.
- The Complete Marvel Reading Order
- This site is the largest in scope of them all when it comes to just listing issues and providing an order to read them in. Created and maintained by author Travis Starnes, this site aims to give a reading order for every single Marvel comic ever published. It is ongoing and consistently updated. Starnes relies on submissions from readers to assist him in creating the order. As such, it is also the most innacurate of all the sources I have listed, and sometimes things are very clearly in the wrong place. Nevertheless, it is an extremely useful resource because of it’s comprehensiveness (it is incredibly rare for a comic book issue not to already be catalogued on this list somewhere) and because of the ability to search by character or team, which quickly allowed me to see which issues had three or more X-Men and exclude anything that was irrelevant to me. This feature was also immensely helpful in untangling the continuity of individual characters because it allowed me to see which issues each character was in at a glance. Using Starnes’ site by itself would not be recommended if you are going for a project as large as this, but in combination with one or both of the two sites above, it is invaluable.
- Marvel Chronology Project
- This site is not one I personally used very much, however, it was used by some of the others I have linked to here. They could not have done it without the MCP, and I could not have done it without them. So it seemed right to list the MCP as a sort of grandfather to this project (which can still be useful, as the MCP also has a search-by-character function).
- Comic Book Herald
- The Comic Book Herald is one of my go-to guys for reading large events. He will give reading orders for events that are usually more accurate than orders you will find elsewhere because he, like myself and SuperMegaMonkey, reads all the issues himself. He also writes explainers that allow you to see different ways to read (graphic novels, individual issues, essential issues only, etc) and often gives brief commentary on each issue. Sometimes, he even provides a rating as to how relevant each individual issue is to the overarching event, which is very helpful when you want to get the best version of the story without reading 80 issues that don’t directly (or even slightly) impact the X-Men.
So these are the main folks who helped me create this project. I don’t claim that’s an exhaustive list of every resource I ever used, but these are the main ones and they deserve more thanks than I will ever be able to give.
The Ultimate X-Men Reading Order 