10 Best Comic Books Of 2019

2. House Of X/Powers Of X - Jonathan Hickman, Pepe Larraz & R. B. Silva

House Of X
Marvel Comics/Pepe Larraz

Before a little movie called The Avengers came around in 2012, the X-Men were largely considered Marvel's greatest ever super-team. Sure, they lacked some of Marvel's more iconic characters, but there was no underestimating their popularity - either on or off the page.

Despite that popularity, the X-Men had been on a period of decline since the start of the decade. There were a myriad of reasons behind said decline (most of them to do with the rights snafu surrounding the X-Men and Fox), but the point is that the X-Men deserved more. They persisted... just about, but it was only when Jonathan Hickman was given the reigns to reboot the series in 2019 that Marvel's uncanny group at long last announced their formal comeback.

And what a comeback it was! Hickman worked the same magic he'd used on the Avengers years earlier and took the X-Men in a new direction, starting with House of X and Powers of X (pronounced 'Powers of Ten'). Central to the reboot was Moira McTaggart, whose mutant power of reincarnation fundamentally rewrote the X-Men's entire direction, inspiring Charles Xavier and Magneto to unite in a bid to avert mutantkind's seemingly inevitable march towards extinction.

Hox/Pox was a true comics event, and one that boldly declared the X-Men's return. Boasting a genius mystery, gripping drama and a wonderful usage of the mutant metaphor, Marvel's latest relaunch is one for the ages.

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Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.