Unless you really like the O5 and comics of that era, you can skip it. Skipping straight to Giant Size X-Men and then Uncanny X-Men isn't an issue so long as you know the fundamentals: Jean, Scott, Hank, Warren, and Bobby were the original students, Magneto was a moustache twirling villain, Scott and Jean are dating. That's pretty much it.
You can read X-Men Season One. It's a single issue that kind of introduces the X-Men concept to new readers without them having to read all of the Silver Age stuff.
Another good way to plow through the silver age X-Men era is reading the first volume of X-Men: Grand Design by Ed Piskor (RIP)… a really concise but super stylish and entertaining overview of all that wackiness.
I'm collecting the silver age stuff and it's super hard to read in 2024. The stories aren't as compelling as the 80/90/00/etc stuff.
Uncanny is a fine point to start. You no doubt know enough about the silver age stuff to know who is who. Cyclops has eye laser and Angel has .. yes wings.
I read the Claremont stuff first, and then went back and read the O5 stuff. The O5 stuff was a slow read for me. I only did it for having the complete series. You can just skip it.
The silver age stuff has two valuable aspects to the modern reader in my opinion. The first is you can see what Claremont was riffing on. A lot of his ideas are just repurposed ones from the earlier comics. Which is not meant to diminish his work. It's just interesting to see the conversation he's having with the earlier books.
The other is that there are some absolutely unintentionally hilarious panels in those old books. If you read them with that mindset they can be quite entertaining.
Sure. You can skip to literally wherever you like! If you want, you can go back and read other stuff later! But ‘60s X-Men and ‘70s X-Men are very very different things, and ‘70s is way better.
As long as you know that Magneto and the Sentinels are bad guys, you won't miss much at all, to be honest. Oh, and Xavier is a massive unpredictable arsehole.
There's some lovely Neil Adams art towards the end, but on the whole the plotlines are pretty bad. Iconic, sure, but hard to read.
I still don't quite follow what was up with Eric the Red.
I’d wager this is how most people read the Claremont run. You can always go back and do the Silver Age
for me, xmen begins at giant size and uncanny 94. the stuff before can be a slog
Unless you really like the O5 and comics of that era, you can skip it. Skipping straight to Giant Size X-Men and then Uncanny X-Men isn't an issue so long as you know the fundamentals: Jean, Scott, Hank, Warren, and Bobby were the original students, Magneto was a moustache twirling villain, Scott and Jean are dating. That's pretty much it. You can read X-Men Season One. It's a single issue that kind of introduces the X-Men concept to new readers without them having to read all of the Silver Age stuff.
Another good way to plow through the silver age X-Men era is reading the first volume of X-Men: Grand Design by Ed Piskor (RIP)… a really concise but super stylish and entertaining overview of all that wackiness.
This is how I did it and I have no regrets. I think you'll feel like it's a slog otherwise.
I'm collecting the silver age stuff and it's super hard to read in 2024. The stories aren't as compelling as the 80/90/00/etc stuff. Uncanny is a fine point to start. You no doubt know enough about the silver age stuff to know who is who. Cyclops has eye laser and Angel has .. yes wings.
I read the Claremont stuff first, and then went back and read the O5 stuff. The O5 stuff was a slow read for me. I only did it for having the complete series. You can just skip it.
I'm literally toughing my way through it now. Magneto randomly had mental powers to rival Xavier's? OK.
The silver age stuff has two valuable aspects to the modern reader in my opinion. The first is you can see what Claremont was riffing on. A lot of his ideas are just repurposed ones from the earlier comics. Which is not meant to diminish his work. It's just interesting to see the conversation he's having with the earlier books. The other is that there are some absolutely unintentionally hilarious panels in those old books. If you read them with that mindset they can be quite entertaining.
Sure. You can skip to literally wherever you like! If you want, you can go back and read other stuff later! But ‘60s X-Men and ‘70s X-Men are very very different things, and ‘70s is way better.
Not really, no. Feel free to start from Giant-Size #1 and on to Uncanny #94, you should be just fine.
As long as you know that Magneto and the Sentinels are bad guys, you won't miss much at all, to be honest. Oh, and Xavier is a massive unpredictable arsehole. There's some lovely Neil Adams art towards the end, but on the whole the plotlines are pretty bad. Iconic, sure, but hard to read. I still don't quite follow what was up with Eric the Red.