Discover every Marvel comic you need to read before and after XMen 97. Explore the essential storylines, characters, and iconic issues that inspired the series.
If you are currently watching XMen 97 and want to go deeper as it doesn’t come from nowhere. The show’s most exciting moments borrow straight from the Marvel comics, some of them are truly amazing. Writers take a comic arc that ran for a year and compress it into twenty minutes making it the most iconic show ever.
If you want to understand where this version of the XMen actually comes from, follow the list and start reading important XMen 97 comics in order. Everything started to make sense, but you must have patience for that.
This is the most essential comic that builds the character’s arc of Jean Grey, her transformation into the Phoenix that becomes the emotional backbone of the entire show. If you want to know which comic is still considered one of the greatest superheroes then pick Dark Phoenix Saga — Chris Claremont and John Byrne wrote this back in 1980.
The show brings back this story as unfinished business since fans didn’t like the original ending. This is what makes people go crazy about the show so read this first to know what happened to Jean on the moon.
This XMen epic collection is already running and introduced modern XMen before Dark Phoenix Saga even happens. This 70’s comic is the origin of Wolverine, Storm, and the team dynamic arc. Once you read it, you will understand why in the show they talk like they are the real family. Every relationship, joke, and grudge in XMen 97 was built here first.
God Loves, Man Kills is a short comic written by Claremont that actually gave the world the “mutants as a metaphor for prejudice” which every XMen adaptation follows and pulls back this tone and this one becomes a moral spine of the entire franchise from 1982.
XMen 97 pulls directly from this book’s tone whenever it deals with anti-mutant hysteria, and Magneto’s arc across the season only makes sense if you’ve read how his philosophy was originally built here.
The show’s early handling of Genosha as a haven for mutants, and everything that goes wrong there, has roots in a comic arc where the island nation was actually a slave state built on mutant labor. If you are watching the show then you should have been thinking that Genosha’s fate hit hard but if you read the comic the tone is darker.
The massive destruction of thousands of mutants on that island was a heartbroken tragedy that the show didn’t even fully present yet.
Read More 👉 Read Before You Watch: The Official XMen 97 Season 2 Comics Guide
Mister Sinister dispatches the Marauders to slaughter the Morlocks — a group of mutants living beneath the streets of New York City, resulting in one of the bloodiest massacres in XMen history. XMen 97 really doesn’t explain all the reasons why Mister Sinister is so scary. The storyline in this comic will tell you why. It reveals just how ruthless and dangerous he truly is rather than being a mysterious evil.
Take a time for this one because it is the bigger storyline, originally spanning four different comic series. XMen 97 draws on several elements from this crossover, it will help you fully understand about the time travel and Summers family legacy.
This narrative helps explain one of the more bewildering aspects of XMen mythos. If you’re looking for answers on exactly how Cable, Stryfe, Cyclops are related, this book has them. The epic feud between Cable and Stryfe culminates, and the convoluted, time-travel riddled past of the Summers family is revealed.
This story arc shocks everyone because it turned the both character’s arc. Since XMen 97 places so much emphasis on Magneto’s redemption, this arc gives a clear understanding on how low their trust goes that any chance of reconciliation becomes impossible. The moment where Magneto tears the adamantium from Wolverine’s skeleton marks the history in the entire franchise of XMen.
Based on how the first season of XMen 97 ends, everyone can guess that Onslaught will play a role in the future. The 1996 crossover event introduced Onslaught which created Xavier’s suppressed rage and trauma and became one of the most dangerous threats the XMen and Avengers have ever faced together.
If you want to understand how powerful Xavier’s psychology is, this one will surely help you. This is where the show is headed.
The entire essence of Bishop is that he has survived a mutant genocide in the future that hasn’t taken place yet and that fear is exactly what he brings to every encounter in the show. This is the arc where his history, as well as a fixation with stopping a specific kind of betrayal, are first described, and it puts a lot of his paranoia in the show into context.
A quick note for readers confused about Morph — the character barely existed in the comics under that name and role. Most of Morph’s presence in XMen 97 is original to the animated continuity, built from a character called Changeling who died early in Marvel history. There’s no single comic to point you to here, and that’s fine. Not every emotional gut-punch in the show has a comic-book receipt.
Read More 👉 A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Story Fans Didn’t Know They Needed
The show is built to work without any comic knowledge at all. This guide is for viewers who finished an episode and wanted to go deeper, not a prerequisite. The most important comic is The Dark Phoenix Saga which is an absolute emotional and narrative center of the entire franchise.
This XMen 97 Marvel Comics guide will help you understand the deeper narrative that already lived in comics. You can read them one-by-one and they are all available on Amazon.
Stay tuned to Fandomfans for more guides and updates from movies, series, celebrities.
Deadpool & Punisher Big Guns Crossover brings Marvel’s deadliest heroes together in an explosive action-packed collectible adventure.
This September, Deadpool & Punisher Big Guns Crossover bring two superheroes together. This one comic event offers an action-packed performance of two heroes with completely different natures. Dark humour of Wade Wilson who thrives on making his fans laugh, whereas the Punisher barely cracks a smile. A combo of epic collide promises explosive brutal fights and humour that deliver unforgettable moments that marvel fans don’t wanna miss.
Big Guns arrives at a time when both Deadpool and Punisher solo series have trended toward grittier, more grounded narratives, and that’s likely why this collision seems less like a stunt and more like something bigger.
Mark your calendars, because Marvel isn’t dragging this one out. The carnage kicks off September 2, 2026 with Wade Wilson: Deadpool #8, drawn by Geoff Shaw. A week later, on September 9, Punisher #8 hits shelves with art from José Luis Soares, picking up right where Wade left things burning. The story wraps in October with Wade Wilson: Deadpool #9 and Punisher #9, though Marvel hasn’t locked in exact dates for those yet.
Marvel decided to reveal all of this on June 16th — “616 Day,” the publisher’s annual tribute to Earth-616, the main Marvel universe. It’s a small thing but it’s a sign of how much Marvel is playing this as a flagship-style street-level event and not a side story.
Geoff Shaw handles the main cover for issue #8 of Deadpool, while David Marquez takes the art duties on Punisher #8’s cover. Josemaria Casanovas is also doing a four-part connecting variant set across all four issues, so anyone hunting that full picture across covers will want to track down each part as it drops.
Read More 👉 Spider-Man: Brand New Day Official Synopsis Reveals Major Villain Details
This isn’t just a brief cameo of the Punisher or Deadpool. It’s a massive four-part event that weaves directly through the current ongoing series of both characters. The chaos kicks off in Wade Wilson: Deadpool and bleeds over into Punisher.
The story has a classic and exciting setup. Deadpool makes a massive mess because things get out of control on one of the biggest mercenary jobs of his life. It attracts The Punisher’s attention who is brutal and known for his serious behaviour. Both are caught up in a single path that sets the stage for a relentless clash where neither man is walking away without a few extra holes in them.
Benjamin Percy is currently writing for both the Deadpool and Punisher solo series. He perfectly balances the crazy humor with high-stake action in Deadpool & Punisher Big Guns Crossover.
Percy recently noted that putting these two together was simple math. They are two heavily armed, street-level characters with completely opposite personalities. To bring this violent vision to life, Marvel tapped artists Geoff Shaw (handling the Deadpool issues) and José Luis Soares (drawing the Punisher chapters). According to Percy, they are “the best pens drawing the biggest guns.”
Read More 👉 X-Men ’97 Season 2: Marvel’s Legendary Mutants Return
If watching Frank Castle get increasingly frustrated by Wade Wilson’s endless talking isn’t enough to sell you, Marvel has promised some massive additions to the 616 universe in Deadpool & Punisher Big Guns Crossover run.
Whether you are here for the intricate plot or just want to see two of Marvel’s most lethal anti-heroes tear each other apart, the Deadpool and Punisher: Big Guns Crossover is shaping up to be the spectacle of the fall.
Read More 👉 The MCU ‘X-Men Reboot’ is Finally Happening: Major Details Dropped
Deadpool & Punisher Big Guns Crossover has all the ingredients for a classic Marvel team-up – high-octane action, violent slugfests, black comedy, and a mystery with implications that could reverberate throughout the Marvel Universe for years to come.
With Benjamin Percy writing and some of the best artists in the business illustrating the chaos, this four-part event will be about more than your run-of-the-mill hero vs hero skirmish. If you’ve been laughing along at Deadpool’s unpredictable brand of humor, or wondering how things got so dark with the Punisher’s brutal version of justice, Big Guns is lining up to be one of the biggest comics events for Marvel in 2026 and a must-read for anyone who enjoyed explosive superhero storytelling.
Dive into the world of entertainment with Fandomfans to get the latest updates from movies, series, and celebrities.
Discover how Marvel's First Family and Doctor Doom go from uneasy allies to bitter enemies in Marvel First Family & Doctor Doom Are Friends Until Doomsday.
Nobody expects that Doctor Doom, about to threaten every universe in the multiverse in Avengers: Doomsday, isn’t a stranger to the Fantastic Four. He’s family friend material. Reed Richards and Victor von Doom go back decades in the comics, and it’s confirmed after official comments from insiders reveal that it’s the emotional spine of the entire movie.
This isn’t the origin story where Doom shows up as a masked menace on day one. This is a slower, sadder kind of villain arc, and it’s exactly why Robert Downey Jr. signing on to play him made so much sense once you stopped picturing Iron Man and started picturing a man who lost everything and blames the people who once called him a friend.
Long before he was ruling Latveria and building doombots by the thousand, Victor von Doom shared a dorm with Reed Richards at State University. They were rivals in the lab, not enemies in the field.
The accident that scarred Doom’s face and pushed him toward sorcery and tyranny is tangled up with Reed’s own guilt — Reed warned Victor his calculations were flawed, Victor ignored him, and the explosion that followed set both of their lives on separate, colliding paths.
What makes their relationship genuinely unusual in Avengers: Doomsday is that it never fully curdled into simple hatred. Doctor Doom has, at various points, called a truce with the Fantastic Four to fight bigger cosmic threats.
He’s shown up for moments on with Marvel’s first family. Most strikingly, in the comics, Doom personally delivered Reed and Sue’s daughter, Valeria, when a pregnancy complication threatened both mother and child and he later became her godfather. That’s not a footnote. That’s a writer deliberately keeping the door open between a hero and his greatest enemy, generation after generation.
Why this matters for the movie: If the MCU is borrowing this dynamic, Doom isn’t being introduced as a stranger the Fantastic Four have to figure out. He’s someone Marvel’s first family already trusted. That’s a much heavier betrayal to write and a much heavier one to watch.
According to a widely circulated from industry leaker Daniel Richtman, the Fantastic Four’s Reed Richard and Doctor Doom are described as being on friendly terms heading into the film as people who have known each other for years rather than adversaries meeting for the first time.
The same rumor claims the fallout that turns them into enemies is essentially the plot of the movie itself, with Doctor Doom reportedly seen playing with Franklin Richards in a post-credits scene of Fantastic Four: First Steps. Vanessa Kirby’s Sue Storm saw them and tried to prepare to use her power to protect her son but the scene ended.
However, the scene made fans mind that Doom was an enemy, if he’s friendly then Sue may not see Doom as a threat and calm down.
“Doctor Doom is just playing with Franklin, he mean no harm to the kid” — Ritchman Says
Marvel Studios hasn’t laid out the Reed-Doom relationship on record. But it lines up too neatly with six decades of comics history to dismiss, and directors Joe and Anthony Russo have publicly described Doom as one of the most complex characters in Marvel’s library — someone they wanted to explore with “complexities and vulnerabilities” rather than write as a straightforward conqueror.
“He’s not simply a villain; he’s one of the most complex Marvel characters. He’s always three moves ahead.” — Joe Russo, co-director, on Doctor Doom
If there’s one thread connecting the comics history to the reported MCU plot, it’s Franklin Richards. In the comics, Franklin is regarded as one of the most powerful beings to ever exist — capable of warping reality, creating pocket universes, and reading minds before he can properly walk. The Fantastic Four: First Steps already introduced him as a baby who ages into a young child by the film’s end, and multiple reports suggest Doom’s interest in Franklin is central to why he moves against the family at all.
A godfather turning on the family he swore to protect, driven by what a child could become, that’s not comic book villainy for its own sake. That’s a tragedy with body count.
Read More 👉 Marvel’s Amazing Spider-Man #1000: What Fans Need to Know
| Title | Details |
| Title / Event | Avengers: Secret Wars (follow-up: Avengers: Secret Wars — Part II noted as Dec 17, 2027) |
| Release date | December 18, 2026 |
| Follow-up installment | Avengers: Secret Wars follows (sequel/next major MCU event) on December 17, 2027 |
| Main villain | Doctor Doom — played by Robert Downey Jr.; full costume unveiled at CinemaCon 2026 |
| Returning lead cast | Chris Evans (Steve Rogers), Chris Hemsworth (Thor), Pedro Pascal (Reed Richards), Vanessa Kirby (Sue Richards) |
| Fantastic Four presence | Seven characters from First Steps confirmed to appear, including HERBIE (the robot) |
| Directors | Anthony Russo and Joe Russo (returning to MCU since Avengers: Endgame) |
| Setting / premise | Heroes from three separate universes — Earth-616, Earth-828 (Fantastic Four’s world), and Fox X-Men universe — converge to face Doctor Doom |
The trailer shown at CinemaCon and in teasers has already leaned into Doom’s overwhelming power — a scene where he stops Thor’s Stormbreaker with one hand has become the moment fans keep replaying.
But the same trailer reportedly closes on a much quieter, more devastating line from Doom: “One day you will forgive me.” That’s not the sentence of a conqueror talking to strangers. That’s the sentence of someone talking to people he actually cares whether they forgive.
The MCU has struggled with villain motivation before — plenty of Phase Four and Five antagonists existed mainly to be defeated. Doom being a person the Fantastic Four actually liked, trusted, and maybe even loved solves that problem before it starts. They also don’t have to start from scratch in making us feel sympathetic for Doom; they get that from sixty years of history between Reed and Victor, and they get to spend their running time dismantling it on-screen rather than explaining it in exposition.
It also raises the stakes for everyone standing next to the Fantastic Four when Doctor Doom turns. If he’s willing to burn a friendship this old to get what he wants, nobody in Avengers: Doomsday is safe because they’re powerful. They’re at risk because they’re close to him.
Read More 👉 XMen 97 Season 2 Episodes 1-3: Who Really Sent the XMen Through Time?
Doctor Doom isn’t a fascinating Avengers: Doomsday antagonist simply because he’s the most powerful person present. He’s compelling because he’s introduced as someone Fantastic Four already know, trust, and consider part of their lives. That background makes every encounter not just a fight to save the multiverse, but the shattering of a friendship that once felt unshakable.
If Marvel follows the emotional roadmap it set forth in the comics, “Avengers: Doomsday” won’t just establish Doom as the MCU’s next major villain. It’ll show how pride, grief, and unthinkable choices can turn a trusted friend into the deadliest enemy Marvel heroes have ever encountered. And now, with the multiverse at stake and Reed Richards facing the friend he couldn’t save, the conflict is far more tragic than your standard-oh-hero-versus-villain story.
Dive into details of latest movies, series, and characters before watching it on Fandomfans
