Those who belong to popular comic book fandoms, such asX-Men, can be rather picky when it comes to their favourite media. Ask any one of them what their favorite era of Marvel's Merry Mutants is and the disparate answers one will get is quite surprising. That's because the X-Men have had so many great times. It helps that they are the best selling Marvel franchise of all time.

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The '00s were a time of restructuring for Marvel. They'd bring in new talent and start concentrating on fixing their biggest brands and this included the X-Men. The '10s would see the X-Men go through a lot of changes, not all of them for best, but would include some stellar work by big creators. This list is going to lay out reasons the '00s were the best decade for the X-Men... and reasons why the '10s were.

This might seem like a weird thing to see as a pro that would make one decade better than another, but anyone who has read a Chuck Austen X-Men comic will vouch for it. Many fans believe that the work created under/by Chuck Austen was some of the worst work produced for the X-Men series. None of his stories are remembered fondly and even the ones that aren't completely terribleare still not looked upon fondly.

For some reason, DC and Marvel put Austen on multiple books in the early '00s off the strength of his War Machine mini series. Beyond that series, everything he did was not a big hit with fans. He wrote X-Men books, both Uncanny X-Men and X-Men, for years. No one knows how he was on the books for so long.

In the early '10s, after the Avengers Vs X-Men event, Brian Michael Bendis was given two X-Men books, All-New X-Men and Uncanny X-Men. Both started off pretty well, if a little verbose and tedious, but eventually they became drawn out and disappointing. It felt like he had lost interest eventually.

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No one looks back on the Bendis era of X-Men fondly. It wasn't terrible, but it went on way too long and fans got tired of it all rather quickly. It's strange since Bendis's style, a lot of soap opera drama and dialogue, should have went well with the X-Men. However, it didn't. Fortunately, there were much better X-Men books at the time anchoring the line.

Schism was an X-Men event that focused on an ideological divide between Wolverine and Cyclops and would change the status quo of the X-Men for years. The two men came to blows over Cyclops ordering a teenager to kill. Wolverine was against this, arguing that children shouldn't be soldiers while Cyclops said that the X-Men had always done this sort of thing and that he had no choice.

This divide would split mutants into two camps- the ones who followed Wolverine and the ones who followed Cyclops. It led to two of the best X-Men comics of the decade, which will be showcased later in this list.

House Of M was a 2005 Marvel event. In it, Scarlet Witch changed reality, creating a world where mutants were the dominant species and all of her heroic friends got their heart's desire. Eventually, the heroes would realize this and try to get the bottom of why she did it, demanding that she change the world back. At the end of whole thing, she would utter some fateful words: "No More Mutants."

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All but 198 mutants would lose their powers and no new mutants would be born for years. This changed the storytelling paradigm that every X-writer after had to follow until it was undone years later and would present mutants an endangered species, opening them up for all kinds of new stories.

As things got worse for the shrunken mutant race, they all went to San Francisco, setting up a new home there. Norman Osborn, at the time head of H.A.M.M.E.R. and the leader of the Dark Avengers, would try and bring the X-Men under his thumb. He'd fail and the X-Men would take over Alcatraz Island, renaming it Utopia and making it into a new homeland for mutants.

Utopia would become basically an autonomous entity, a place for the beleaguered mutant race to gather and lick their wounds. Talents like Matt Fraction and Kieron Gillen would work on the books during the Utopia era and tell some great stories.

In 2005, writer Peter David would relaunch a book he hadn't wrote since the 90s- X-Factor. Focusing on Jamie Madrox and his detective agency, X-Factor Investigations, the book would also star Siryn, M, Strong Guy, Wolfsbane, Rictor, Shatterstar, and Layla Miller, a character introduced during House Of M.

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David would use this team to tell different X-Men stories than were being done in the mainline X-Men books. It had a humorous and irreverent tone, but still had hard hitting stories and even got David nominated for a GLAAD award for his treatment of the same sex relationship between Rictor and Shatterstar.

Jason Aaron, fresh off Schism, would launch Wolverine And The X-Men. The book followed Wolverine and his faction of mutants starting a new school in the ruins of the old one in Westchester, calling it the Jean Grey School. Fan favorites like Beast, Iceman, Kitty Pryde, and Rachel Grey would teach new mutants, and it introduced a whole new Hellfire Club.

Aaron took elements of Morrison's New X-Men run and brought them back to the fore. He played up the school aspect that Morrison had set up so expertly while also throwing in his own touches. In a time when mutants and the X-Men were at lowest, he brought humor and fun back into the franchise.

After Grant Morrison left the X-Men franchise and Marvel for DC in 2004, Marvel had to do some serious retooling of the X-Men line. They did this by starting a whole new flagship book called Astonishing X-Men and got Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Firefly, to write it and superstar artist John Cassaday to draw it.

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What followed was twenty-five issues of X-Men greatness. Focusing on Kitty Pryde, Whedon and Cassaday knocked it out of the park. The book had a very Claremont feel and introduced all kinds of new threats for the X-Men to deal with.

X-Force was restarted in the Utopia era as Cyclops's personal hit team. The book would be relaunched in 2010 with writer Rick Remender and artist Jerome Opena. It would star Wolverine, Psylocke, Archangel, Deadpool, and Fantomex as they went after the biggest threats to mutantkind with extreme prejudice.

Remender would tell the best X-Men stories of the decade in this book, pitting the team against Apocalypse and his Final Horsemen, the World, throwing them into the Age Of Apocalypse, battling a betrayal of one of their own, and so much more.

In 200o, superstar writer Grant Morrison left DC and came to Marvel. He worked on two mini series, Marvel Boy and Fantastic Four: 1234, before being given the reins to the X-Men. He would relaunch X-Men as New X-Men, with his frequent collaborator Frank Quitely. He would revolutionize the X-Men.

He would focus on the Xavier Institute, making it actually feel like a school. He would finally make mutants feel like they were the future. He introduced new threat Cassandra Nova to the X-Men and tied his entire run together expertly. Marvel would pretty much throw away everything he did when he left, seemingly out of spite, but it was a golden age for the X-Men, one that hasn't been rivaled until Hickman came along.

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5 Reasons The '00s Were The Best Decade For The X-Men (& 5 It's The '10s) - CBR - Comic Book Resources