Reddit reviews X-Men: Dark Phoenix Saga

Get this guy: https://www.amazon.com/X-Men-Dark-Phoenix-Chris-Claremont/dp/0785164219/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1500996981&sr=8-1&keywords=x-men+dark+phoenix+saga

Starts at a great point and the writing style of the time explains everything thoroughly. Awesome stuff in this trade although it's a little wordy with some cool first appearances of key characters that are still very relevant today.

There are some before and after things not included in this trade but this is the main story.

• The Dark Knight draws heavily from The Long Halloween and plenty of the Joker's lines are taken straight out of a prose issue collected here. There's also the obvious influence of The Killing Joke and The Man Who Laughs. The Killing Joke was also the primary influence on Tim Burton's Batman.
  
  
• Batman Begins draws from a number of stories include Year One, Blind Justice and The Man Who Falls which is collected here.
  
  
• Captain America: The Winter Soldier was based on the fairly recent Ed Brubaker run which is phenomenal.
  
  
• The Dark Knight Rises combines elements of Knightfall, No Man's Land and The Dark Knight Returns. The Dark Knight Returns is also a major influence on the upcoming Batman V Superman.
  
  
• The Avengers mainly draws from the original first issue of The Avengers, which is collected here and retold again here in a modern setting, as well as The Ultimates. There are plenty of shots that feel like they were lifted right out of The Ultimates. On a side note, Joss also wrote the introduction to the book years ago and it was through doing this that he figured out exactly why the Avengers work.
  
  
• The X-Men movies tend to draw more from the 80's, especially Chris Claremont's run. X-Men 2 draws heavily from Gods Loves, Man Kills. X-Men 3 is loosely based off of The Dark Phoenix Saga as well as Joss Whedon's relatively recent Astonishing X-Men. The Wolverine draws from Chris Claremont and Frank Miller's [Wolverine mini-series] and Days of Future Past is based on, you guessed it, Day of Future Past. Even though X-Men: First Class takes it's name from the comic of the same name it has more in common with the early Stan Lee stuff. X-Men Origins: Wolverine draws from several comics include Wolverine's Origin mini-series and Weapon X. The first X-Men movie isn't really based off any particular arc although it did heavily influence Ultimate X-Men.
  
  
• The upcoming Daredevil TV series seems to be drawing heavily from Frank Miller's run, particularly his origin story The Man Without Fear. While Miller's main run took place in the late 70's/early 80's The Man Without Fear came out in the 90's.
  
  
• Guardians of the Galaxy takes its line-up from the 2004 series but the plot of the movie is all its own.
  
  
• Avenger: Age of Ultron seems to be an original story that's taking it's cues, at least in part, from Ultron Unlimited which is collected here.
  
  
• Man of Steel was heavily influenced by John Byrne's 80's reboot although its structure is heavily modelled on the 2010 graphic novel Earth One. There are also bits and pieces taken from Birthright, Secret Origin and All-Star Superman.
  
  
• Iron Man 3 certainly takes its cues from Extremis but a lot of it is just pure Shane Black. The first Iron Man isn't based on a particular storyline but Tony's origin stuff in Afghanistan is almost identical to the flashbacks in Extremis that revamp Tony's origin for a modern context. Iron Man 2 borrows a little from Demon in a Bottle and Armor Wars but ultimately does its own thing.
  
  
• The writer of the Fantastical Four reboot has mentioned that they've been influenced by Ultimate Fantastic Four.
  
  
• Ant-Man follows an original story but is primarily influenced by the Scott Lang Ant-Man books from the late 70's/early 80's.
  
  
• The Thor movies aren't based on any particular storyline but they are vaguely influenced by Walter Simon's run as well as J. Michael Straczynski's run
  
  
• Green Lantern draws heavily from Geoff John's run, especially his near-perfect origin story Secret Origin
  
  
• AKA Jessica Jones is based on the incredible Alias.
  
  EDIT: Formatting

The Dark Phoenix Saga by Chris Claremont and John Byrne - Uncanny X-Men (1963) #129-138

Coming from a Marvel Cinematic background, I would recommend:

• The Ed Brubaker Captain America line, as this will most likely play heavily into the upcoming Winter Soldier film. The book continues well after the initial Winter Soldier storyline, and it's all really good.
  
  
• The Warren Ellis Iron Man: Extremis storyline, as this covered a decent amount of the major concept from Iron Man 3, as well as the origin from Iron Man
  
  In addition, since you've already read Whedon's Astonishing, I have to recommend Morrison's New X-Men, the storyline that Astonishing builds heavily from. Claremont's Dark Phoenix Saga is a great classic story, if you're unfamiliar.
  
  As for Wolverine, a recent favorite of many is Old Man Logan. This is a self-contained 'future' story, so it's not canonical, but it's good. The Claremont/Miller Wolverine is always a classic, and heavily influenced The Wolverine.

Here's some of the best and most essential stuff that you should read, in my opinion:

• X-Men: The Dark Phoenix Saga
  
• X-Men: Days of Future Past
  
• X-Men: God Loves, Man Kills
  
• New X-Men by Grant Morrison, three volumes
  
• Astonishing X-Men by Joss Whedon, two volumes
  
• X-Men: Messiah Complex
  
• X-Men: Second Coming
  
• Uncanny X-Force: The Dark Angel Saga, two volumes

Here’s the first volume of Ultimate Spider-Man
Ultimate Spider-Man: Ultimate Collection, Vol. 1 https://www.amazon.com/dp/0785124926/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_Lqj9AbHJ48NEE

For X-Men: Ultimate X-Men is pretty good but there isn’t a lot of Phoenix stuff. The Dark Phoenix Saga Book X-Men: Dark Phoenix Saga https://www.amazon.com/dp/0785164219/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_Jrj9Ab7013Q43
is here though

Hi there. It's great that you are getting into the comics. I would highly recommend the 'X-Men: Dark Phoenix Saga' trade paperback which I feel is the best X-Men story. You can find it online at Amazon, Book Depository etc.
The "Epic Collections" are a cheap way to get a stack of comics. The book "X-Men Epic Collection: Second Genesis" comes out in April 2017 and begins Chris Claremont's iconic run.

Claremont's Uncanny run from Giant Size #1 to #131

Then follow it up with The Dark Phoenix paperback

If you want to start from the start from the beginning of the X-Men, then they were first introduced back in 1963. [This should be the start of the original X-Men.] (http://www.amazon.com/X-Men-Masterworks-Vol-1-Various-ebook/dp/B00AWR06DC/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1414333610&sr=1-1&keywords=x-men+stan+lee)

However, there's a lot of reading to do to get up to date - about fifty years, and the X-Men have a huge variety of different books from X-Men to X-Force, X-Factor and... Well, there's a lot. If you liked the movies, I'd say start with the classic [Dark Phoenix Saga] (http://www.amazon.com/X-Men-Dark-Phoenix-Chris-Claremont/dp/0785164219/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1414333888&sr=1-1&keywords=x-men+dark+phoenix), probably one of the best comics ever. If you'd like something more recent, [Joss Whedon's Astonishing X-Men] (http://www.amazon.com/Astonishing-Whedon-Cassaday-Ultimate-Collection/dp/0785161945/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1414333970&sr=1-1&keywords=astonishing+x-men) is also one of the best. Both are fantastic. If you want to jump right into today's X-Men stuff, check out All-New X-Men. It's a really good place to start, in my opinion.

As for condensed versions, the internet's pretty good for this stuff, and really helped me to figure out some plots and where to start. Wikipedia and the Marvel Wiki are useful resources.

If you've any questions, I'd be glad to answer them!

(As a side note, Matt Fraction's run on X-Men is generally disliked due to a lot of bad art and so-so writing. I haven't read much of it, but I'd say give it a miss)

EDIT: About the volumes thing: When comics are originally published they're published as numbers in a volume of the book: Uncanny X-Men Vol. 1 #1 is the first one, for instance. Later, when they're collected together to form a trade paperback/graphic novel, they're published as volumes in the story: For instance, All-New X-Men Volume 1 is the start of the All-New X-Men story, followed by Volume 2, et cetera. One way to think of it is like this: Issues are like episodes in a volume/season of comics, while graphic novel volumes are like the box-sets.

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