Favorite Marvel Comics Story/Graphic Novel

Okay, maybe it's just the fact I've recently turned thirty, and I'm a bit older than most comic readers... but personally I really can't get into marvel comics these days. There have been far too many resurrections, too much writer overlap, too many halfhearted attempts to shake up the status quo (jean is dead again, and cyclops is shacking up with emma frost) and if civil war was any indication, marvel has lost the ability to fill their "Epics" with a sense of consequence and drama.

So what bygone stories of yesteryear, or even today, from the house of M that you find most awesome. Heres a list of mine...

X-Men: X-cutioners song (cables, apoccalypse, and sinisters, Oh my)

The Onslaught saga: There is so much I could say about this series, and the ending made me a bit misty eyed

Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix: Nice little time travel story that gives Cyclops and Jean some family time with a younger cable.

Dark Phoenix Saga: Just awesome. Incredibly, utterly, thoroughly, awesome.

Deadly Relations: A dramatic and shocking storyarc that literally, tore certain key characters apart.

Hulk: The End: this recent graphic novel is two storylines in one. The Awesome Future Imperfect where the intelligent hulk from the ninties is brough from to the future to fight his greatest enemy ever. The Maestro. Who is a future, and irrevocably insane, Hulk with all the intellect of bruce banner, the hulks might, and none of the humanity. The second is the one shot, The Last Titan, which is a psychodrama in which Bruce Banner is 200 years old, and the last man alive, with only the hulk inside his head for company.

Wedding of Scott Summers and Jean Grey: An awesome X-men one shot that very heartwarming and uplifting with hardly any of the angst that X-men is known for.

X-men: God Loves, Man Kills: The best X-men story ever. I dunno what Chris Clairemont was eating, drinking, smoking, or injecting when he wrote this story, but I wish he'd do it again. It's just... wow.

Also worth mentioning is the Twelve storyline, Mutant Massacre, and Mutant Genesis.

Anyone else got any favorites?

I've not read any Marvel comics for years, so right now I can't really remember which were my favourites. I'm seriously thinking about reading this when it's released, though.

I dunno, maybe it's just me, but it looks like absolute rubbish. Spider-Bitch? Hawkeye as a drug pusher? A whole clan of redneck hulks with Bruce Banner as the Redneck daddy? Is it just me or does that sound like less of a character driven story then it does a pop culture derived, focus group inspired, lowest common denominator cowing, rubbish rag?

Let me add one more title to my list that I forgot. The Original Wolverine Miniseries, by Chris Clairemont and Frank Miller.

I think the most amusing part was that in the forward, we learn that frank almost didn't work on the story because of wolverines prior rep as a stone cold killer. He wanted to work on, and draw characters that had more depth and complexity. Fortunately chris came up with a script that had wolverine become the worst that he was, literally become absolutely broken and a wreck, and have to climb back up to becoming a heroic character. Now writers and revelling in wolverines psychotic tendencies, and pushing them harder than before.

I do recommend that particular story, as it really does have a legendary status for a reason.

Spider-Man Blue was pretty great.

Gaiman's 1602 and the whole Marvel Zombies thing were both pretty great.

Ultimate Spider-Man.

No, I mean the whole thing. It's been awesome right from the start. There have been a few bum notes on occasion, but it's still motoring along and kicking the arse of every other Marvel comic being published at the moment. I especially recommend the Clone Saga, showing how it really should have been done in the 616-verse.