• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Comic Book Herald

A Comic Book Reading Order Guide For Beginners & Fans

  • Reading Orders
    • Marvel
    • My Marvelous Year
    • DC Comics
    • All Comic Book Publishers
    • Most Recent
  • Beginner Guides
    • Beginner’s Guide To Comics In 2023
    • Marvel 2023: Where to Start?
    • DC 2023: Where to Start?
    • Best of Lists
    • Tablets for Comics
    • Guides for Digital Readers
  • Reviews
    • Marvel Comics
    • DC Comics
    • Comic Book Movies
    • Comic Book TV
    • Video Games
  • Podcasts & Video
    • My Marvelous Year
    • Best Comics Ever (CBH)
    • CBH on Youtube!
  • About Me
    • My Favorite Comics of All Time
    • Columns
    • CBH Email Newsletter
  • Support Comic Book Herald
    • Ways to support
You are here: Home / Featured / X-Necrosha Overview

X-Necrosha Overview

October 14, 2014 by Thomas Bacon 1 Comment

Every now and again, a comic storyline builds up into something that really needs to have a wider impact.  That’s happening at the moment, in AXIS; it happened in 2009 with the X-Men’s ‘Necrosha’ plotline.

‘X-Force’ writers Chris Yost and Craig Kyle had been playing a long game.  In ‘New X-Men #32’, they’d teased the return of a classic X-villain, the sorcerous Selene.  When they launched ‘X-Force’, they’d chosen to continue her arc, revealing her secret history in X-Force #11 and building up her plans in #18.  Their goal was to launch a plotline that would cement Selene in place as a true threat to the X-Men.  As Kyle put it in an interview with IGN:

“To us, Morrison did such a great job dusting Emma off and pushing her into such an extraordinary place.  We’re still reaping the benefits of that hard work.  We’re not saying we’re going to be able to do for Selene what Morrison did for Emma, but hopefully she has that kind of potential, and that speaks to her personal journey and that she has yet to achieve what she was meant for.”

To my mind, Yost and Kyle succeeded; you can learn more about Selene over in my feature on MahMuseComics.

Selene ascends
The story charts Selene’s rise to godhood…

Essentially, Selene launches her greatest plan ever; using dark magic and a techno-organic virus, she resurrects countless dead mutants.  Her plan is to conduct a ceremony that will enable her to absorb the life-energies of these resurrected mutants, thus ascending to near-godhood.  However, the ceremony requires a sacrificial knife in the possession of Warpath, and meanwhile Selene has the will – and the means – to cripple the X-Men so they cannot stop her.

As they continued to build towards ‘Necrosha’, Kyle and Yost began to realise that the scale was simply too big.  That was when Zeb Wells (then writing ‘New Mutants’) and Mike Carey (of ‘X-Men: Legacy’ fame) stepped in, and offered to weave the arc into their own stories.  So the core storyline would be told in ‘X-Force’, while various side-effects would be explored in ‘New Mutants’ and ‘X-Men: Legacy’.

Support For Comic Book Herald:

Comic Book Herald is reader-supported. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn a qualifying affiliate commission.

Comic Book Herald’s reading orders and guides are also made possible by reader support on Patreon, and generous reader donations.

Any size contribution will help keep CBH alive and full of new comics guides and content. Support CBH on Patreon for exclusive rewards, or Donate here! Thank you for reading!

NECROSHA REQUIRED READING:

The ‘Necrosha’ plotline ran through the following issues:

  • ‘X-Men: Necrosha’ one-shot
  • ‘Necrosha: The Gathering’ one-shot
  • ‘X-Force #21-25’
  • ‘New Mutants #6-8’
  • ‘X-Men: Legacy #231-233’
  • Random tie-in in ‘X-Force Annual #1’

You can purchase the whole arc – and all spin-offs / build-up in a single ‘X-Necrosha’ edition.

Character development was really well-done, with major moments for Warpath (who is central to this arc), Wolfsbane (pregnant and dying as the arc begins), and Elixir (who must make a decision that took him off the table for several years, and is only now scheduled to return).  Continuity was superb, although it’s worth noting that a small number of resurrections conflicted with other resurrections (most notably during ‘Chaos War: X-Men‘).

Elixir and Wither
Elixir got his own personal arch-enemy.

Initial fan reaction was mixed, with the feeling that the main arc stretched out a little too long; and yet, when the storyline was collected into a trade paperback, reviews become far more positive.  It may be that the arc was actually weakened somewhat by being in the standard comic-book episodic format.  The spin-offs were criticised far more, with the resurrection of Cypher in particular garnering some fan complaints; he just seemed superfluous.  Ironically, that particular resurrection appears to have been mandated by editorial, and Cypher became crucial in ‘Second Coming’.

Filed Under: Featured, Marvel Series Tagged With: Necrosha, X-Force, X-Men

Heroically Support Comic Book Herald!

If you like Comic Book Herald, and are able to donate, any small contribution will help keep CBH alive and full of new comics guides and content. Donate here! Or, support CBH on Patreon for exclusive rewards! Thank you for reading!

Become a Patron!

About Thomas Bacon

Tom Bacon is an old-school Marvel fan, a blogger on http://www.mahmusecomics.com and an admin on the popular X-Men Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/groups/XMENFANS/). In Real Life, he's currently working in the field of Knowledge Management at The Co-operative Bank, and is happily married to wife Fiona.

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

The Comic Book Herald Podcast!

Apple PodcastsGoogle PodcastsRSS
My Marvelous Year Podcast and Reading Club 1

Recent Posts

  • X-Men #15-17 in Review—Return to the Vault! March 29, 2023
  • “Mister Mammoth”, “Spy Superb” & “Hairball” with Matt Kindt | CBH Interviews #108 March 28, 2023
  • 2002 Pt. 4: X-Force, Chamber, & Exiles March 27, 2023
  • Pax Americana and The Infinite Loop Of Imperiums March 25, 2023
  • Fall of X Teasers & Al Ewing’s Sins of Sinister | Comic Book Herald Live! March 24, 2023
  • “Sins of Sinister” Part 6: Immoral X-Men #2—in Review! March 23, 2023
  • DESTINY OF X | The Krakoan Empire Divided March 22, 2023
  • “Secret Identity” with Alex Segura | CBH Interviews #107 March 21, 2023
  • 2002 Pt. 3: Daredevil & Elektra March 20, 2023
  • Immoral X-Men #2 and Wolverine vs. Dark Beast! | Comic Book Herald Live! March 17, 2023
  • X-Men: The Animated Series Season 2 Rewatch! March 16, 2023
  • “Sins of Sinister” Part 5: Nightcrawlers #2—in Review! March 15, 2023
  • My Marvelous Interview: Paul Jenkins on Wolverine Origin, Inhumans, Spectacular Spider-Man, & More! March 13, 2023
  • The Dark Knight Trilogy 15 Years Later: Film & Comic Influences! March 11, 2023
  • Sins of Sinister: Nightcrawlers, X-Men #20, New Mutants: Lethal Legion #1 | Comic Book Herald Live! March 10, 2023

Popular Articles

DC Rebirth Guide

Batman Reading Order

DC New 52 Reading Order

Marvel Ultimate Universe Guide

Civil War Reading Order

Marvel Cosmic Reading Order

The Best Comics of All Time!

Deadpool Reading Order

Justice League Reading Order

Complete Thanos Reading Order

X-Men Reading Guide (Modern Era)

Age of Apocalypse Reading Order

Modern Marvel Universe in 25 Trades

Best Tablet For Digital Comics

Is Marvel Unlimited Worth It?

Footer

New to Comic Book Herald?

Hey there - my name's Dave and this is my comic book blog. It's my way of sharing my borderline obsessive addiction to the comic book medium, and I hope you like some of what's going on here.

Most people that come here are looking for my (WIP) Marvel reading order guide. You can probably also get a sense if CBH is for you by taking a look at some of my columns.

If you like what you see, let's connect on Facebook or Twitter. Or, leave a comment on the blog here, I'm always looking for new awesome people in the comic book community.

More on Comic Book Herald

  • Home
  • About
  • Support CBH
  • My Marvelous Year
  • Join!
Privacy Policy
Terms of Service

Recent Posts

  • X-Men #15-17 in Review—Return to the Vault!
  • “Mister Mammoth”, “Spy Superb” & “Hairball” with Matt Kindt | CBH Interviews #108
  • 2002 Pt. 4: X-Force, Chamber, & Exiles
  • Pax Americana and The Infinite Loop Of Imperiums
  • Fall of X Teasers & Al Ewing’s Sins of Sinister | Comic Book Herald Live!

Copyright © 2023 · Metro Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in