Brian Michael Bendis

Uncanny X-Men by Brian Michael Bendis Omnibus is the Cyclops outlaw-school half of the Bendis mutant era. After AvX, Scott Summers stops asking for permission and builds a revolutionary team with Emma Frost, Magneto, Magik and new mutants like Tempus and Goldballs. Chris Bachalo's jagged pages make the book feel like a movement under surveillance.

X-Men: Decimation Omnibus is the aftermath volume where three words turn mutant history into a survival problem. After House of M, only a tiny population keeps its powers, Xavier's school becomes a guarded refuge, and the government's Sentinel protection feels uncomfortably close to imprisonment. It is a bridge volume, but a crucial one between M-Day and Messiah Complex.