X-Men is a giant clusterfuck that you kinda only read after you get attached to the series.
I'm just here for the characters and the soapy drama/dynamics between them. I don't really give a fuck about the continuity or high-concept aspects like "muh mutantphobia" or all the "Shiar Empire/Multiple Edgy Timelines" shit.
I wanna see characters I like fighting cool shit and engaging in cheesetacular but compelling melodrama.
From what I've read so far, the Claremont/Byrne stuff seems to be the creative peak of those desired elements.
I've been doing the same and that's pretty much where I planned on ending it, too. I might go a little further to finish up Mike Carey's stuff but I think Second Coming is the real climax of his run, so I may end up just stopping there as well.
I read synopsis of stuff like
Schism, AvX, and
Death of X, and nearly vomited in my mouth.
The only post
Second Coming things I might read is
Mr. and Mrs. X (mostly because the wedding stuff between Gambit and Rogue looks cute), and whatever that storyline with the X-Men fighting vampires is called....mostly out of morbid curiosity.
For the first time? With you name and avatar?
Believe it or not, yes. I had no prior experience with X-Men growing up (outside of the hot sweaty clusterfuck that is the Fox movies), and around the time
Dark Phoenix was coming out--which I didn't see--I decided to get a taste of what the Dark Phoenix Saga by trying out the 90's X-Men cartoon I'd been neglecting for years. That ended up becoming my crack, and I decided to watch all the cartoons, all of which became the window to my obsession with the characters (and one in particular). So with Marvel movies getting shittier, and with my gradual acclamation to reading comics with older art and dialogue, I decided to take the plunge and read a condensed, vertical slice of X-Men stuff as my one and only jaunt into capeshit.
And yes, Rogue pretty much embodies everything I like in my comics. She's not some uber-complex character--she's just a cool girl with a gorgeous design, that beats the fuck out of villains and has a cheeky attitude. She feels like a rare Western equivalent to the kind of fun that Japanese creators have with their tough-but-sexy heroines.
The kind of characters we really don't get anymore.
Do you have a reading guide?
Yeah. Used
this chart as a jumping off point, and
Crushing Krisis for where I'm at now.
I have a cardinal rule when it comes to starting any long-running, neverending shitstorm like superhero comics: I don't start it until I've determined
exactly where I'm going to stop reading.
If I don't have a spot where I can disembark, I'm not reading it.
1. It doesn't ever really get better than OG Claremont '91 and X-men #3 is a nice coda.
The post Claremont '91 books in my head canon are apocrypha. They make confusing retcons, undermine Claremont's work. To the point that it cheapens prior deaths and story arcs. The sole redeeming quality of the X-books in the 90s is the art. Even ignoring the Image guys. Terry Dodson, Ian Churchill, Jeff Matsuda. Tons of beautiful comics, that sadly are tied down to an ever weakening story thread.
Speaking as a new reader, I concur that the OG Claremont/Byrne stuff is where all the good shit is. That seems to be the unanimous assessment of X-Spergs the world over, and for good reason: that's when the drama was the best, the characters were at their peak, and the story arcs felt consequential. Not just the no-brainers like
Dark Phoenix or
Days of Future Past, but even later stuff like
Mutant Massacre, Fall of the Mutants, and
Inferno. Sure, you had some goofy shit like the deafening BDSM undertones, Claremont's Storm Worship, and the Weeb levels of Japanese shit with Wolverine, but there were enough redeeming qualities elsewhere in the writing to help ignore it. Everything still felt impactful and significant in how it affected the characters.
I think that's my major problem with the 90's era: it has a cool aesthetic, but it feels like anime filler. You have these giant fights with throwaway villains like Trevor Fitzroy, Shinobi Shaw, Onslaught and Stryfe, and there's very little compelling drama or character interactions. There's a lot of dry speeches and giant splash pages, and nothing the fuck else.
The only two parts of the 90's hailstorm of art and fight scenes that I can even remember are
Fatal Attractions and
Age of Apocalypse. I literally don't remember anything else that happened.
None of the Godawful nihilism and deep throated contempt that becomes the norm after Morrison.
Not gonna lie, I'm enduring Morrison's run right now, and it's making me want to shove a power drill into my mouth. I don't know why people keep recommending this run to new readers--the art is shit, the characters have zero agency outside of carrying out boring high-concept nonsense and being pretentious mouthpieces for a postmodern hipster garbage, the costumes are utter ass, and no one from Jean Grey or Cyclops or Magneto is acting like themselves. Plus, from what I'm told, half of this shit is retconned in Whedon's run anyway (which I'm not looking forward to reading either).
I literally have to duck back to Claremont's
X-Treme X-Men issues to retain my sanity. His stuff around this time maybe dated and schlocky (I mean, there's literally a diamond heist, a mutant gang war, and a fucking Mutant Spaniard Nobleman as a recurring antagonist), but at least I'm having some modicum of fun while reading it.
Plus, Storm, Rogue and Sage are drawn nice and pretty, in spankin' red and black uniforms, so there's something nice to look at. Which is more than I can say for Frank Quietly's butt-ugly melting wax characters.
