Post on X-Men

Some guy named Shoegaze99 posted the following at the message boards at COMICON.com. I had to chime in.

I used to be a major X-Men fan back in the day (the day being the 1980s, as well as those 1970s books), and then again for a short stretch in the early 90s (until I realized I wasn't liking what I was reading). The X-Men books were always dense with characters and ongoing subplots and lots of history, one of the things I liked most about the book. I really like most of who I consider to be the "core" X cast.But having been away for more than 10 years, is it even possible to jump back into the fray? Some podcasting talk about this House Of M thing kind of has me interested in seeing what's happening with my old mutant friends ... but trying to sort out the different X-books on the rack, seeing which I need to follow and which I don't - well, no thanks. That's one of the major reasons why I dropped the mutants in the first place. WAY. TOO. MUCH. Seems to be that even if I put in the effort to navigate that web (and I'm not so sure I'm inclined to), there is 10 years of history I'd have to educate myself on so I could catch up. And the 18 X books to sort through, of course.

MY ANSWER:
I was the same way: a big fan of Uncanny X-Men from about issue #190 to about #300. There were too many friggin X-Books to follow and when my subscriptions came up for renewal, I just didn't have it in me to renew.

I did manage to get into the New X-Men in trade paperback form. But after Volume 2 I just don't see the point. And I did manage to read the first 13 of Astonishing X-Men and was very pleased. It was great. But there was too much history that I just didn't understand. How could Emma be a good guy? What the hell happened to Colossus? And I realized quite quickly that if I hadn't known anything about X-Men, I would have been simply lost beyond belief.

Remember when X-Men had text boxes? Remember reading the same lines over our characters time and time again, like Wolverine's "He is the best there is at what he does, but what he does isn't very nice." Do you remember text boxes that explained a character's powers?? Over and over, ad nauseum, to the regular reader but completely necessary to someone who has no idea how or why Emma looks like a diamond? I had no idea that she had this power or what it did/does.

X-Men? I couldn't jump back into that ocean. Not unless it is in an easily digestible trade paperback form anymore.