20 Of The Weirdest X-Men Stories Ever

(Image via Marvel)

Here are some of the strangest, most baffling X-Men plots ever put to the comics page.

The X-Men have been through a lot. After all, they’ve been around since 1963, when Marvel publish The X-Men #1. The first issues were written by comics legend Stan Lee and illustrated by another storied comics artist, Jack Kirby.

Even if you’ve been living under a rock for the past few decades, you probably know about the X-Men. They’re a superpowered team of mutants, a subspecies of humans born with fantastic and sometimes elaborate powers. It’s a wonderful setup for one of the most successful superhero franchises in all of comics history. The conceit of the X-Men also lays ground for some pretty powerful stories that tackle issues such as racism, isolation, and resistance.

However, I’m not here today to talk about the best stories in X-Men history. Nor am I necessarily going to list off some of the worst tales put down in X-Men comics. In fact, I’m here to tell you about some of the absolute weirdest, most mind-boggling adventure the X-Men have lived through.

Now, given that this superhero team has been around in various forms and realities for over fifty years, there’s a lot to pick from. At first, I tried to pick stories from across the franchise history. However, I couldn’t help but gravitate to one of the most maligned times in X-Men history – the 1990s.

Likely, you remember at least some portion of the 1990s, if not the entire decade. Among other things, it was a decade of “xtremes”, in which people clad themselves in teal and pink, wrestled with dial-up internet, and forgot how to spell words in their excitement over, well, anything. The X Games, which focuses on, yep, “extreme sports”, were founded in 1995, after all.

This odd thirst for the edges of human ability and fashion sense quickly made its way into comics. Suddenly, the X-Men were all out of proportion, with freakishly tiny waists or improbably large muscles clad in skintight spandex.

This was also the era of increasingly strange new characters, such as Skin. His X-Man power was, uh, having a lot of skin. More interesting was Jubilee (who actually first appeared in 1989), a teenage mall rat who shot fireworks out of her hands.

So, there are quite a few plotlines from this odd era in Marvel history. Maybe it’s just nostalgia on my part, but you have to agree that there was something extra weird going on in the writers’ room during that decade.

As always, these slides contain spoilers. If you haven’t breathlessly followed Wolverine’s exploits or the increasingly complicated lovelife of Cyclops, then pause for a reading break. Otherwise, let’s dive in.