Kings of Pain is one of those X-Men crossovers where the issue order only tells you part of what’s going on. You’ve got four annuals, two ongoing stories, and a bunch of shorter…

Kings of Pain is one of those X-Men crossovers where the issue order only tells you part of what’s going on. You’ve got four annuals, two ongoing stories, and a bunch of shorter pieces in the same books. It can be a little confusing when you’re trying to follow everything. Here’s how the 1991 annuals fit together, without spoiling the endings. The main Kings of Pain story goes like this: 1. New Mutants Annual #7: Part 1, “Pawns of Senescence.” 2. New Warriors Annual #1: Part 2, “Errant Knights.” 3. Uncanny X-Men Annual #15: Part 3, “Queens of Sacrifice.” 4. X-Factor Annual #6: Part 4, “King of Pain.” The final chapter is singular, even though the crossover is Kings of Pain. Also, make sure you’re looking for Uncanny X-Men ANNUAL #15, not the regular issue. That’s the main story involving Cable’s emerging X-Force, the New Warriors, the Muir Island mutants and X-Factor. But there’s another ongoing story sitting in the backups: The Killing Stroke. That one follows Freedom Force on a mission in Iraqi-occupied Kuwait. Its order is: - Part 1, “The First Cut,” in New Mutants Annual #7. - Part 2, “The Razor’s Edge,” in Uncanny X-Men Annual #15. - Part 3 in X-Factor Annual #6. Notice New Warriors is missing from that list. It has Part 2 of Kings of Pain, but no chapter of The Killing Stroke. So one storyline runs through all four annuals, while the other runs through three of them. Then you’ve got the shorter stories mixed in: New Mutants Annual #7 has “Close Encounters of the Mutant Kind,” with Artie, Leech and Wiz Kid. New Warriors Annual #1 has origins for Night Thrasher, Marvel Boy, Speedball, Firestar, Namorita and Kid Nova, a short team-origin piece, and the Speedball story “To Bounce or Not to Bounce.” None of those is another Kings of Pain chapter. Uncanny X-Men Annual #15 also includes “The Origin of the X-Men” and the Wolverine story “The Enemy Within.” X-Factor Annual #6 has “Tribute the Third,” a Mystique-focused short. That title can make you wonder where the first two parts went. They were in the previous year’s X-Factor Annual #5 and New Mutants Annual #6. They’re Peter David’s separate Tribute pieces, not missing chapters of this crossover. You can read the four annuals straight through in the main-story order and read the backups as you come to them. Both ongoing stories will stay in order that way. If you’d rather finish one story before switching to another, read the four Kings of Pain lead stories first. Then go back for the three Killing Stroke chapters and the remaining shorts. That’s the bit I wanted to lay out, because the annuals have more going on than the crossover name on the cover suggests. You can finish Part 1 of Kings of Pain, turn the page, and find yourself starting Part 1 of a completely different story in the same book.