Here is an archive of all the past top five lists I've one over the years.

In looking at the best X-Men crossovers, I'm not talking about stuff like quick two-title crossovers, like when the Avengers and the X-Men had a crossover back in Roy Thomas' run on each book. I mean big "event" crossovers, stuff that involved at least three titles. So here are my picks for the top five X-Men crossovers...

5. "X-Tinction Agenda" New Mutants #95-97, Uncanny X-Men #270-272 and X-Factor #60-62

This was pretty much the first modern day X-Men crossover (where each individual book worked as part of an overall narrative instead of individual books having their own separate story that tied together on a larger scale - Inferno was almost there, but New Mutants was a bit divergent). I liked how organically that the story seemed to flow out of Chris Claremont's strong earlier work with Genosha, a stand-in for South Africa, where mutants are the majority but are ruled over by humans.

Genosha has now become more aggressive in their attacks, as they are now associated with the evil Cameron Hodge (one-time ally of X-Factor). A team of Genoshan magistrates, led by a brainwashed Havok, show up and kidnap a group of New Mutants as well as a de-aged Storm. The remaining New Mutants, Banshee and Forge hook up with X-Factor to go rescue their friends. Meanwhile, Wolverine, Jubilee and Psylocke make their way to Genosha on their own. By the end of the storyline, New Mutant Warlock was dead, Wolfsbane was trapped in wolf form, Storm was re-aged and the X-Men were finally reunited for the first time in over a year. Plus, the world learned that the X-Men were actually alive. This storyline also saw the New Mutants' roster so decimated that they would soon reform as X-Force. Chris Claremont and Louise Simonson wrote it and Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld and Jon Bogdanove (plus a bunch of inkers) drew it.

This turned out to be the only major X-Men crossover event Jim Lee was a part of and he really killed it on it...

4. "X-Cutioner's Song" Uncanny X-Men #294-297, X-Factor #84-86, X-Men #14-16 and X-Force #16-18

This epic crossover began with Cable seemingly shooting Professor Xavier with a bullet containing the techno-organic virus. The X-Men naturally headed off to hunt down Cable and X-Force, as well. Eventually, the X-Men discovered that "Cable" was actually Stryfe. So now their mission involved hunting down Stryfe while also contacting Apocalypse to acquire a cure for the virus (as Apocalypse created the virus). Mister Sinister kidnapped Cyclops and Jean Grey in the middle of the chaos and essentially sold them to Stryfe. The finale involved Cyclops and Jean Grey realizing that either Cable or Stryfe was Cyclops' long-lost son!! Fabian Nicieza, Scott Lobdell and Peter David wrote the story and a variety of artists drew it.

This was perhaps the crossover that broke people's backs in terms of taking the idea of each book being the chapter of an overall narrative and going perhaps TOO far, as the lesser titles essentially gave way to the main narrative (with the infamous issue of X-Factor that had nearly no members of X-Factor IN it). However, Nicieza, Lobdell and David combined for a story that held together remarkably well for being thrown together essentially on the fly. I still can't get over how well it holds together. It's a mess, but it's a beautiful mess. I've highlighted it before, but I really like the work Nicieza does with Apocalypse, Stryfe and Archangel...

First, Stryfe get revenge on Apocalypse in X-Force #17 (art by Greg Capullo and Harry Candelario) in an awesome fight sequence...

Then Apocalypse has a few plots in the other books as he helps save Charles Xavier's life. He is very weak, though, and his own minions decide to finish him off (since he is no longer fit, after all). This leads to a great death sequence in X-Force #18 (by Nicieza, Capullo and Candelario) where Archangel doesn't even give Apocalypse the dignity of a quick death...

There were a lot of cool little moments like that throughout the storyline.

3. "The Age of Apocalypse" X-Men: Alpha #1, Amazing X-Men #1-4, Astonishing X-Men #1-4, X-Men: Omega #1 plus a bunch of tie-ins

In this alternate universe storyline, Charles Xavier's crazed yet powerful son, Legion, went back in time to kill Magneto, figuring that he'd put a stop to the Magneto/Professor X feud before it ever started. A group of X-Men went back in time to stop him, including the X-Men's resident time-traveler, Bishop. They fail to stop Legion but young Charles Xavier DOES stop Legion, but only by sacrificing himself to save Magneto. This, as you might imagine, throws the whole timeline out of whack. First of all, no Xavier. Second of all, Magneto now has to vow to take up Xavier's dream for himself. Third, and perhaps most importantly, this big mutant battle years before mutants were supposed to be up and around at this level woke up Apocalypse earlier than the world was ready for. So Apocalypse proceeds to pretty much take over the world, as no superheroes were yet around to stop him. Magneto, for his part, puts together a ragtag group of mutants known as the X-Men to fight against Apocalypse. Sott Lobdell, Mark Waid, Fabian Nicieza, Andy Kubert, Joe Madureira, Steve Epting, Roger Cruz and a pile of other artists and writers show the adventures of the X-Men as well as every other X-related character, with the titles of each book being changed for four months (X-Factor became Factor-X, X-Men became Amazing X-Men, Excalibur became X-Calibre, X-Force naturally became...Gambit and the X-Ternals?! Okay, not all changes made sense). Bishop, being out of time already, retained his memory of the changes and he eventually helped the X-Men to get him back in time to put right what once went wrong. This was a tremendously fun and very well-coordinated crossover and the idea of actually stopping all of the books for four months (and then return them to normal) was a shocking move at the time, especially because most of the books ended on some dramatic cliffhanger before the timeline shifted (Wolverine had just popped a third claw into Sabretooth's brain, Rogue had just kissed that slimy Gambit, etc.)

The alternate timeline stuff also allowed the writers to try some dark stuff, like when Scott Lobdell had Colossus (who is the head of a young group of heroes in Generation Next, basically Generation X) essentially say "screw it" and lets his charges die to protect himself, his wife and his sister...

Go to the next page for the top two!

2. "Fall of the Mutants" (The Uncanny X-Men #225–227, X-Factor #24-26, and The New Mutants #59-61)

Fall of the Mutants was an interesting approach to a crossover in that the crossover was more THEMATIC than anything else. Each of the three-part stories that made up the crossover involved death of mutants in some manner.

In perhaps the most acclaimed of the three stories, the X-Factor one, they deal with Angel being turned into Death by Apocalypse by being given metal wings...

(he ultimately fights Apocalypse's control and becomes the dark but heroic Archangel).

The New Mutants suffer a great tragedy when Cypher is killed protecting his teammate, Wolfsbane. Magneto, the headmaster of the New Mutants, flips out and blames humanity for the death of Cypher. The New Mutants decide to leave the school and go off on their own.

Finally, the X-Men are caught in a battle in Dallas with first Freedom Force and then with the evil magical being Adversary. Ultimately, the X-Men must sacrifice themselves to stop the Adversary. As it turns out, though, the magical being Roma saved the X-Men and the world just THINKS that they are dead. They are now also invisible to cameras and machines so that they can continue doing good while the world thinks that they are dead. Chris Claremont and Louis Simonson wrote the storyline and Marc Silvestri, Bret Blevins and Walter Simonson did the pencils for it.

1. "Mutant Massacre" (Uncanny X-Men #210-213, X-Factor #9-11, Thor #373-374, New Mutants #46 and Power Pack #27)

While it is a part of comic book reality nowadays, back in the mid-1980s there had never been a crossover between the popular X-Men related comic books. So they were treading on new ground with the Mutant Massacre in 1986, and a result, I think they ended up with the best of the bunch.

The Mutant Massacre featured the Marauders, a team of vicious killers employed by the newly introduced X-Men villain Mr. Sinister, going into the New York sewers, where a community of mutants known as the Morlocks lived (the Morlocks were mutants who tended to be disfigured or were otherwise unable to fit in living with "normal" humans). At this point, the Marauders proceeded to murder as many Morlocks as they could. The X-Men entered the tunnels to save the Morlocks, and engaged in a dramatic and deadly battle that lasted from Uncanny X-Men #211 to #213 (all three issues were written by Chris Claremont, with John Romita Jr. and Bret Blevins drawing the first issue, Rick Leonardi the second and Alan Davis the third).

The X-Men suffered critical injuries soon after entering the battle, when the teleporting X-Man Nightcrawler, who was recovering from a recent injury and had only recently regained the ability to teleport, used his powers to disable one of the Marauders. However, he was unable to use his powers once he was finished, leaving himself vulnerable to the Marauder Riptide, a mutant whose power involves sending barrages of razor sharp blades flying people at high speeds. Nightcrawler was severely injured by Riptide.

This led to one of the most dramatic moments of the war when the X-Man Colossus determined that the only way to stop Riptide was to use deadly force.

An iconic moment.

At this point, Colossus collapsed due to the wounds he incurred during his fight. As it turned out, he was so injured that while he could survive in his metal form, he could not transform back to his human form. Meanwhile, the X-Men suffered another casualty when Kitty Pryde was injured and trapped in her intangible form.

While the X-Men return to their home to recover with the Morlocks they manage to save, the deadliest of the Marauders, the evil Sabretooth, makes his way to the X-Men's home. During the course of his journey, Sabretooth tangled both with Wolverine and ultimately with the telepathic Psylocke, who was staying with the X-Men at the time.

In the end, the X-Men managed to save many Morlocks (X-Factor also saved some, in a separate excursion into the Morlock tunnels), but the team was forever changed, with longstanding members Kitty Pryde and Nightcrawler leaving the team and new members like Psylocke joining the group. The most important change for the team was that they no longer had any illusions of safety at their home, and soon left the X-Mansion entirely.

X-Factor, similarly, were changed forever by Angel being brutally assaulted during the event, which ultimately led to him becoming Archangel. The New Mutants weren't AS affected, except that they ended up losing any stability in their lives due to this heinous attack.

The full creative team for the crossover was Chris Claremont, Louise Simonson, Walt Simonson, John Romita Jr., Alan Davis, Rick Leonardi, Sal Buscema, Terry Shoemaker, Jon Bogdanove and a host of inkers.

HONORABLE MENTIONS

The last one cut was Inferno, which I think was a bit on the sloppy side but still had a good hook to it. Other ones that came close were Avengers vs. X-Men, which I thought also had an excellent hook, but had some strange story beats (a good third of the 12-issue series was filler), Fatal Attractions (some memorable moments, to be sure, but also a surprisingly large amount of cheesy ones, too), Phalanx Covenant (the main storyline was very good but the secondary and tertiary stories were not nearly as good and that dragged the story down), Messiah CompleX (some excellent use of the secondary storylines, like Madrox's journey to the future, but not as strong of a main narrative) and Second Coming (a good idea for a story but not for a story as big as it turned out to be). I don't count Asgardian Wars as a crossover.

If YOU have an idea for something you'd like to see as a top five list, drop me a line at bcronin@comicbookresources.com!