http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2013/07/05/vote-for-the-50-greatest-x-men-stories/comment-page-2/#comment-3838619

Brian Cronin, who is pretty awesome as I can only imagine that these events take like ten hours to complete, is requesting people sumbit their Top Ten X-Men stories.

What I like to do with Brian’s Lists is to imagine what the top ten are, and even if I agree with them, I like to make those the bottom of my list as I know for a fact the people are going to be giving those the top spots so I can play with my suggestions a little more.

Brian states that you can’t just consider collections as the full “story” such as Paul Smith’s run (Uncanny X-Men 165 through 175) as they are several stories and not one whole story.  Which I’m fine with as it made my creating a list easier.  What made it not easier was me deciding to only do issues from Uncanny as (I’ve already submitted my list like a fool) I thought it would be more of a challenge and it wasn’t until later that I thought about throwing a mini series or an Ultimate storyline into the mix.  I also kept it to just issues that I actually own as well.

My Submitted List is:

1.  The Mastermind/Phoenix story from Uncanny X-Men 175, I’m hoping Brian comes up with a better name for this, its officially titled “Phoenix!” but I wanted to be clear on which one it is.  That is one of the fun things about these is that you find out what other people refer to these titles as.  For me, Paul Smith’s nine issues (171 is drawn by Walt Simonson) is the be all of X-Men runs.

2.  Wolverine’s Failed Wedding, Uncanny 172-173, whenever you see Rogue/Wolverine as friends, its all based on these two issues where their friendship began.  It also gave us 80s Mohawk Storm.

3.  The First Appearance of the Morlocks, Uncanny 169-170, gave us the awesome Callisto/Storm battle and the Kitty/Caliban … let’s call it friendship, begins here.

4.  The Brood Saga, Uncanny 165-167, the ending of it, I guess, the beginning has the incredible Dave Cockrum pencils but I don’t recall those as well.  167 has the X-Men meeting the New Mutants for the very first time, and 166 gave us Lockheed!

5.  Days of Future Past, Uncanny 141 & 142, a story so amazing its going to be the basis of a feature film next year and a lousy two part episode back for the 90s X-Men cartoon.  Kate Pryde goes back in time and switches bodies with a young Kitty Pryde, who just successfully completed her first Danger Room session.  What I love about this story is that the characters in the past are so quick to go along with Kate Pryde’s story, they don’t waste a bunch of time making her prove herself.  A quick mind read and they are off to Washington DC.  Kate Pryde is going to be part of the Future X-Men in the upcoming 50th Anniversary story, Battle of the Atom, so I’m very excited about that.  This is also why Brian is doing the Top 50 X-Men Stories as CSBG is celebrating the 50th anniversary of both X-Men and Avengers this year.

6.  Dark Phoenix Saga, I noted Uncanny issues 129 through 131, though they really are just the Hellfire issues of the story, its mostly Hellfire Club then the Space Opera from Uncanny 132 to 137.  Kitty only shows up in the first half of the story and then at the end of 138 but people don’t usually include 138, which is odd as that’s the funeral issue and Cyclops leaving.

7.  Hunt for Xavier, Uncanny 362 to 364, to celebrate the X-Men’s 35th Anniversary, Marvel cancelled Excalibur and brought Kitty, Kurt and Colossus over to the main title.  Hunt for Xavier was the first storyline of that era.  The other members of the team were Storm, Wolverine, Gambit, Rogue and Marrow.  Which is not a bad classic team.  Seven to eight members makes for a good cast.  I would prefer one of the original five X-Men being on it  as well but that’s okay.

This is where I was just looking at what multi-part stories did I own from Uncanny X-Men.

8.  Quarantine, Uncanny X-Men 530-534, humans are trying to give themselves the X-Gene.  The mutants on Utopia are getting sick and must pull it together to attack the humans.  Not my strongest moment adding it.  If I was going to add it, should have made it number 10 and given it one vote.

9.  Breaking Point, Uncanny X-Men 535-538, now this story is the direct sequel to Unstoppable, Kitty becomes tangible again (which was silly in the first place as they already did that to her during the 80s) and The Dodsons did the artwork, which is never bad.

10.  Mutant Massacre, Uncanny X-Men 210 to 213, the original story where Kitty becomes intangible, Colossus kills for the second time (he killed Proteus much earlier) and falls into a coma, Kurt can’t teleport due to injuries, X-Men are beaten, the Morlocks are practically killed off, some intense moments here.

That was my submitted list, I should have swapped out Quarantine with Ultimate X-Men: Hellfire Club arc that gave us Ultimate Kitty Pryde.  That’s what I should have done.

Be curious to see which Paul Smith stories make the cut, hopefully at least two.