Fill in my Xmen gap without breaking the bank?

I can't help with your question, but I used to collect X-Men for a few years in high school and for a couple of years after. At one point I wanted to be a illustrator for Marvel, but I draw way too slow, and shortly after high school lost interest in comics altogether. I've created my own characters and think every once in a while to use them in a novel. My favorite X-Men are Gambit, Storm and Nightcrawler (before he became a priest, but I don't know if he still is now or not, since I've stopped collecting), and several others. I have a big box full of the comics stashed away under my old bed at my mom's house. Maybe the next time I visit I should did them out.

The public library; read 'em there, and buy the one's you want to keep.

Ebay. That's how I got every Heavy Metal magazine from before I got my subscription.

That's the Age of Apocalypse you're remembering, Fenika.

Check out your local bookstore. I believe it's complied.

Ooh, I's a Gambit girl, myself. I actually got to work a Gambit reference into my superhero story the other day. Woohoo!

Anyway, I haven't read them so I can't fill you in, but I've got a friend who used to buy them from a really low-priced store. I'll try to get you the name. Personally, I like to buy the trade paperbacks used. You can usually get them for a much more decent price that way.

You didn't miss much: an awful lot of junk has been written since the Age of Apocalypse. The Grant Morrison run on X-Men was pretty good, though quite a few hated it. Suddenly there were millions of mutants around the world, and the established ones started developing secondary mutations, which is why Emma Frost now runs around diamond-hard and half-naked (actually, the latter might be because of lustful artists, but what do I know?).

At some point Chris Claremont got brought back, which was exciting till we noticed he wasn't quite his former self.

Anyway, Uncle Joe Quesada got tired of the multitude of mutants by turning Wanda into an uber-powered, spell-casting, half-naked sorceress, and in an enormously dire plot changed reality so there were only 198 mutants left. They're currently building a big base in the middle of the Pacific where they'll presumably sit around playing cards and getting really bored.

The early Astonishing X-Men were pretty good (if you can forgive the resurrection of Colossus), and the Peter David X-Factors remind me each month that it is possible to do this stuff really well.

As for Phoenix being dead, well, who knows? But Scott's saucy affair with Emma Frost has been a highlight of the decade, so they may choose not to bring the terminally dull Jean back for a while.

I actually know that some of the stuff I've heard about that's happened in X-men was very um...yeah I wouldn't want to read it because I'd be really frustrated by it. The only thing is, I don't know for sure if that was in the original run or in one of the alternate realty versions.