10 Marvel Graphic Novels You Must Read Before You Die

7. X-Men: Dark Phoenix Saga

X-Men Dark Phoenix Saga
Marvel Comics

No other comics property exemplifies just how inaccessible the medium is than the X-Men. Everyone's favourite mutants are literally drowning in decades worth of convoluted cosmic storylines, and while the Dark Phoenix does little to amend such problems, it is definitive, and undoubtedly one of the finest X-Men tales ever told.

The subject of next year's suitably titled X-Men: Dark Phoenix, Chris Claremont and John Byrne's seminal X-Men text is everything fans of the nineties cartoon want to see in a comic book. Although adapted for that very series, the actual comic itself is far more ambitious in scope, bringing together the two biggest cosmic forces in the Marvel Universe (the Kree and the Skrull) as the X-Men face an uphill battle to save Jean from the Shi'ar Empire and, more importantly, from herself.

The book, following on from the original Phoenix Saga, takes place as Jean finds the Phoenix Force inside her impossible to control, curtesy of the villainous Mastermind, who'd psychically manipulated the X-Man into thinking she was the aristocratic ancestor of the Hellfire Club's most famous patron, the Black Queen. Imbued with this newfound dark personality, the force inside Jean bursts free and sends her careering across the cosmos... until she annihilates an entire planet full of people (on accident).

It's tragic, iconic, and a brilliant X-tale all around. Don't let the films tell you otherwise.

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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.