A friend of mine asked me how to get started reading the x-men, and I recommended to start with New X-men. I got into the X-men a long time ago, and I don't even quite remember where and when I started, sometime during '98 or '99.
Anyways, I heard New X-men was a good place to start and, thinking back on it, I also felt like it was. But immediately I get messages from him like:
>What the fuck is Genosha and did they seriously just kill off Magneto? >Who is Emma Frost? >What the fuck is the shi'ar empire? >Who is Lilandra and why is she married to Xavier? >What the fuck is the Phoenix and why is it in Jean Grey?
and it went on like that. Feel like I had him start in the wrong place. Honestly, I know X-men continuity is all kinds of fucked, but, how DOES one start reading X-men these days?
X-men starts nowhere. It ends nowhere. Everybody dies. Everybody comes back to life. Everybody has had sex with each other. It just 'is'.
Jose White
Giant Size #1 by Len Wein and Dave Cockrum, followed by Claremont's run starting at X-Men #94 after that you can stop, except maybe Claremont/Miller's Wolverine, Windsor Smith's Weapon X, God Loves, Man Kills GN, Remender's X-Force and maybe some of Spurrier's stuff
Grayson Thomas
Yeah, true. But now I almost feel like Astonishing would've been better. Except not really.
Camden Nguyen
I was like your friend, but I opened google. If you look up backstories, you'll manage. Hell no I dont' wanna read 40 year old stories and Austen. If I really care about a character, I'll go read back later.
Jaxon Fisher
>What the fuck is the Phoenix and why is it in Jean Grey? >Who is Emma Frost?
How casual is he
Asher Watson
Even though I love Claremont's run, it's huge, 70's style of writing isn't for everyone, no seriously, it isn't. A new reader might be overwhelmed and turned off of X-men if the first recomendation is a Claremont omnibus. I went back and read through it all years later when I had been reading x-men for years.
Nolan Campbell
Literally just getting into comics and starting with Batman and X-men.
Austin Perez
then your SOL because everyone since Claremont has been referencing and aping him
Xavier Hill
>Giant Size #1 by Len Wein and Dave Cockrum, followed by Claremont's run starting at X-Men #94
I'd personally say read X-Men from 1975-1995, and then if you want to check out "recommended" runs from 1996 and on, do it at your discretion. The early 90s storylines weren't Onslaught-level as a whole. AOA and Fatal Attractions were solid, and X-Cutioner's Song had it's strange, edgy charm.
Julian Sanders
F
Jack Gutierrez
I mean still people know about Phoenix and Emma Frost at least. Give him Young Avengers and JLI
Lincoln Morales
>What the fuck is Genosha and did they seriously just kill off Magneto? >Who is Emma Frost? >What the fuck is the shi'ar empire? >Who is Lilandra and why is she married to Xavier? >What the fuck is the Phoenix and why is it in Jean Grey? Real answer is of course, starting at Claremont; Giant Size X-Men and Uncanny X-Men 94 and onwards. >why did Magneto want to take revenge at the start of the story >who the fuck are the original five X-Men? >who is this Xavier bloke >what's a Juggernaut >what are these killer death robots? Oh fuck off already. If you are that fucking bothered by it, the only answer is (Uncanny) X-Men #1 by Kirby and Lee (1963). Sure it's not any good until Claremont shows up, but you'll never be blindsided by any continuity ever again.
The reason I'm upset is, that New X-Men establishes all of this and if you're a new reader, you should be lenient towards just accepting the world building instead of asking for the precise issue numbers of everything that gets mentioned immediately, then claim it's confusing when you end up with a laundry list of comics you never actually had to read in the first place. Fuck.
David Baker
>A friend of mine asked me how to get started reading the x-men, and I recommended to start with New X-men. You're a bad friend, user.
David Cruz
>>why did Magneto want to take revenge at the start of the story >>who the fuck are the original five X-Men? >>who is this Xavier bloke >>what's a Juggernaut >>what are these killer death robots? You'd know those from watching the movies.
Jacob Campbell
Okay, first of all - starting a potential X-fan out on Morrison is like starting out a potential recreational drug user on mainlining black-tar methamphetamine, maybe just one joint would have been better? And the comic equivalent of that one joint is the fluff books that are out today: Extraordinary', All-New, Uncanny with Magneto if you think you're up for it. There's no need to push the stuff that wows the hardcore fanbase, just something passable will be enough.
And second - Did someone miss an issue or two? Did they read the books out of order? The story explains who Lilandra is in the issue that introduces her as they explained what those big alien spaceships from another planet are all about. It's not hard to just read the text and absorb the information.
Levi Garcia
start at Claremont yah dingus
Aiden Rogers
You should have given him Astonishing X-Men instead.
Ryan Sullivan
Of all the decades spanning franchises X-Men has the easiest and most well known starting point. Giant sized and go from there. Anything else is inherently wrong.
Jason Flores
I dunnoe, I started on the Lee run and wasn't left confused for too many years.
Nicholas Jones
Claremont.
The dude is the father of X-Men essentially. Literally all the best characterization and plots of the series came from this guy. Plus he wrote SO MUCH X-Men. He was a monster, and so fucking good.
Claremont all the way.
Josiah Sanchez
I get this, but if you want to get into X-Men this is where you go. Anything else is just going to be built on or referencing things that started here.
Justin Brown
>It's not hard to just read the text and absorb the information.
This. Unless he's thick, he'll get this eventually and ask a lot less questions about every character or place that pops up.
Levi Moore
When my friend asked how to get started with X-Men, I told her to just go watch the 90s cartoon. It's an easy introduction to things without having to read hundreds of issues.
Nathan Brown
I started will all new x men
Wyatt Miller
The trouble is a lot of normies are confused by continuity or the very concept of "in media res" and want to start at issue #1 but they don't want to read 70+ years of stories. This is what the Ultimate Universe and the New 52 were supposed to fix. They largely failed.
Aaron Baker
Just tell him to read the fucking wiki of characters if you want to catch up. Either that are read through thousands of issues to know each character's entire history.
Tyler Foster
>normies are confused by continuity or the very concept of "in media res" This is so true and it's hilarious.
Adrian Walker
OP here. You know, that wouldn't have been such a bad suggestion.
This. And my friend is the ultimate normie who suddenly just wanted to start reading comics. I asked him this morning if he actually even LIKES New X-Men, and he said he does. Of course, he's already all infatuated with Wolverine, but also likes Emma.
James Johnson
>This. And my friend is the ultimate normie who suddenly just wanted to start reading comics. I asked him this morning if he actually even LIKES New X-Men, and he said he does. Of course, he's already all infatuated with Wolverine, but also likes Emma.
Would googling for the wikis of his confusions a hard thing for him to do? It's not like a library of information is a click away. I'm a 4month old newfag. I literally started reading my first comics 4 months ago and I started with Stan Lee's Uncanny Xmen 01 - the O5 at it's O5est. Am still at the Claremont Era UXM 220 but I've read Morrison and Whedon and Remender's XForce, New Mutants, New Xmen - Academy X, XFactor, Excalibur. I've finished House of M and the Messiah Arc. What kept me informed and less confused with the changes and additions was googling them.
Daniel Butler
Welp, it's his problem he doesn't even know whoe Lilandra is, he at least could've watched cartoon first.
Michael Nguyen
i started with watching the 90s cartoon and reading age of apocalypse.
Leo Perez
So, the general consensus for starting X-Men is at Giant Size and then X-Men #94-300?
I heard Giant Size has the old generation as well as the new one, does it do a good job of introducing and re-introducing the characters?
Alexander James
Yeah I've told him about to do that and it's working. He says he's mostly interested in Genosha.
Jason Evans
at least two of us have said start with watching cartoons. i would say the 90s is the better choice to start with.
Jason Ward
>continuity I'll admit I'm casual as fuck, but a lot of these fucking stories disregard shit that happened, change characterization, wipe characters out of existence at the drop of a hat, and tons of other shit. Then there's the shit that spans more than one book so you got to go through and frankenstein different issues together. Since some continuations have different names and again with a lot typically acting like shit in the previous issue diddn't happen (where the fuck is X? How did they get to Y? How is the situation with Z doing?) It's very disorienting.
Julian Sullivan
All that reading in 4 months. How's life, user?
Jack Evans
Tell him to watch Epic History X-Men documentaries on youtube.
Chase Bennett
Yes but it might be overwhelming if your new because there's a lot of issues to catch up on to know about each character. I'd say Astonishing is a better start for the modern comics.
Sebastian Moore
>I started with Stan Lee's Uncanny Xmen 01 - the O5 at it's O5est. Am still at the Claremont Era UXM 220 but I've read Morrison and Whedon and Remender's XForce, New Mutants, New Xmen - Academy X, XFactor, Excalibur. I've finished House of M and the Messiah Arc.
>4 months
Do you even sleep or eat or just read X-Men all day everyday?
Alexander Evans
I lost my job, got depressed, read the shit out of it rather than self destruct.
Aaron Butler
I eat my comics after I finish reading them.
Isaiah Williams
Saw your post after I replied to the other user. Like I said I had time to waste. Wasted it on Marvel and DC comics with Xmen being my main readings. I was at an awful low and reading actually saved me from doing something stupid.
Wolverine and the X-Men is probably not too terrible an introduction to 2000s era X-Men. The themes and basic characters, even if the details differ far more than with TAS.
It also doesn't have all the PREVIOUSLY ON X-MEN ultra cheese.
Colton Hall
>Poor baby needs everything spoonfed to him immediatelly instead of using wikipedia on his smart phone like an adult if he has questions
Back in my day you went and read back issues and learned it through osmosis, but apparently that's too hard for kids these days
Grayson Bell
>Shiar Empire >Phoenix inside Jean Grey
This shit was in the old saturday morning cartoon, your friend is a tard.
David Price
Even people who don't know anything about X-Men at least know about the Pheonix saga, it's one of the most famous Marvel stories.
Adrian Johnson
As I said, he's the ultimate normie and 7 years younger than me, he was 3 when they aired X-men:TAS in our country.