Because it's about time someone did!
When did you stop reading X-men, and why?
In the latest episode, the talk about when people stop reading X-men, and why. I think that's fascinating! Did any of you ever stop reading X-men, and why is that the case? Was it some special event that made you stop?
I have my own reason, and it mostly comes down to being a Swede. The X-men releases in Sweden was incredibly spotty. I remember the New X-men Morrison Run in Swedish, and the problem was that no other X-men comics were being published. So when it crossed over with the other x-men titles, It was with a little editors note, "not published in Sweden". But! Someone though it was a good idea to publish some Ultimate X-men in the same magazine. (Long side-rant about the history of swedish comicbooks). That made it really hard to understand, for someone not "in the know".
So I stopped reading for a long time, but read a lot of the compilations when I could find them in libraries and the like. I also gave up on super hero comics for "serious" comics, and I was very much in "They are not Comics, they are Graphic novels!" camp.
I returned to super hero comics when I was in university. Buying mostly digitally, for the lack of local comic shops in small, swedish university-towns. This was like, 3-4 years ago, now.
What's your story?




I read X-Men comics all through the 90's. I stopped around 99 or 2000 during the Revolution / Counter X storylines. There were several reasons that all added up, my comic shop had gotten crappy and weren't pulling all my issues for me so I wasn't getting whole parts of every story, I was in high school so I was focused on music and teenage drama, but mostly the comics just weren't very good at the time. (Though I have a lot of nostalgia for some of the late 90s X-Men comics like road trip X-Force and Mutant X). Ironically I stopped reading right before Grant Morrison which I've since gone back and loved but realistically it was so different that I wouldn't have appreciated it at the time.
Fast forward several years. I kept track of the characters through Wikipedia and by occasionally flipping through trades in the bookstore (the Chuck Austen books didn't make me feel like I was missing much). I got back into comics in 2010 when Stephen King cowrote the first five issues of American Vampire with Scott Snyder. I was back in a comic store and I was hooked again. I picked up the entire Second Coming crossover and that's what got me back into X-comics. Lately the podcast has really gotten me into going back an rereading older X-men.
I stopped a few times in the 80s due to crossovers that resulted in me following too many titles. Instead of trimming down, I just stopped cold turkey. After that, I rarely bought any X-Men books other than Trades until 2012. I loved Wolverine & the X-Men and a couple other X-titles. I was sad that Wolverine & the X-Men ended but Bendis's run wasn't something I was ready to let go of. When they delayed the final issue of his run until after Secret Wars, it left such a bad taste in my mouth that it was going to be hard for any new series to make it up to me. To be honest, even without that marketing nonsense/slap in the face, I doubt I would have loved any current X-Men book as much as Bendis's run. Even worse: several hard-fought story lines were immediately ended or reversed by the new authors and what replaced them just doesn't do much for me. So I am reading Old Man Logan and All-New Wolverine now but still tentatively. They are not on my pull list. I'm still deciding whether to continue after each issue. Secret Wars was great as a series (and many of the mini-series were good) but what happened to the entire Marvel line-up soured a few titles for me. I am pulling about half as many Marvel titles as pre-Secret Wars.
I feel similarly about the way the Bendis run ended and the status quo abruptly shifted. But I do think that Hopeless's ANXM is a worthy successor to Bendis's ANXM. Right now, ANXM is the only X-book on my pull list. I'm tempted by the good things I've heard about All-New Wolverine and Old Man Logan, but I've never been a Wolverine fan (I prefer Cyclops) so I haven't quite gotten over the hump to start reading those books. I won't start reading UXM until I'm 100% certain that Greg Land won't come back. But I'm enjoying a bunch of other current Marvel stuff, and some miscellaneous others.
Dude, definitely pick up All-New Wolverine. It's the only X-title I'm buying in single issues. I'm right there with you on loving Cyclops and not liking Wolverine. I've always found him to be a jerk, and not a fun one. But I always thought Laura was pretty cool. And All-New Wolverine is fantastic. It is, to me, the best of the current X-titles. ANXM is fantastic, as well (I read someone else's copies, because I still hold a grudge against Hopeless over Avengers Arena), but All-New Wolverine is just gold.
I stopped in the mid nineties. I think it was because I had aged out of the era where my parents were willing to give me a couple bucks a week to pick something off of the spinner rack. Once it was MY money on the line my baseball score keeping dollars ($5 a game plus a hot dog and a coke) were being saved up for video-games.
As for what got me back INTO comics as an adult? X3. X3 was SO BAD it made me start reading the comics because there was NO WAY the comics could be THAT bad.
You might be the only person that X3 actually made pick up a comic book.
That's amazing. What comics were coming out around X3? Were they, in hindsight, any good? I hope they were better than the movie.
It was perfect timing really, for me at least. Astonishing was in the middle of the Torn arc, so I quickly picked up all of that. A little later that year First Class started and was everything I ever wanted from a comic. Picked up a bunch of old trades and essential volumes doing a Cyclops fan deep dive.
I first stopped reading X-Men after Uncanny #209 (mid 1986-ish). I remember being annoyed at how Rachel Summers was written out of the book. And I think I was getting into music as an outlet for my collector and hobby time. I re-started X-Men around Uncanny #279 , right around the Muir Island Saga and just before the launch of X-Men v2 #1. I was just starting undergrad and there was a comic shop on campus right by the arcade I spent a lot of time in. Looking at the comics in the shop, it seemed like they were becoming BIG and IMPORTANT again. The art of Lee and Liefeld seemed to really be in the zeitgeist. And after reading #279, I remember being curious about how Charles Xavier was reintroduced and how Muir Island seemed like a fascinating conclusion to events I wanted to read about. I picked up all of the back issues I had missed from #210-#278.
The second time I stopped reading was with issues cover dated January 1998. This was around the time that X-Men v2 #70came out with the homage cover to Giant Size X-Men #1 - with Maggot and Cecilia Reyes bursting through. I was thoroughly unimpressed with both characters at the time. And this was right after the Gambit + Marauders retcon from UXM #350, which seemed pointless and needlessly convoluted. At the time, the LCS I frequented was also inconvenient to get to, and I think I finished undergrad around here too. I was focused on job-hunting, and collecting seemed like frivolous money I couldn't justify spending as much on. My collecting limped along for a while with Ultimate Spider-Man and Ultimate X-Men, but it stopped shortly thereafter. Maybe around Ultimate X-Men #6 or #8 or so? I honesltly forget.
I didn't start reading again until the podcast launched. After listening to a few episodes, I went to a new LCS with a friend of mine who had never stopped collecting comics, picked up a the first trade of All-New X-Men and some of the newer issues off the rack. And have been reading X-titles ever since.
I stopped buying X-books not too long after Claremont left in the early 90s, although I got sucked back in by Generation X, which was pretty much my sole regular X-purchase until Morrison's New X-men got me back on board. Then, Chuck Austen happened, and I went away again for a whle. I've tried to get caught back up via Marvel Unlimited, but hadn't bought an X-book in years until X-Men '92.
I stopped reading when I started high school, just as the Onslaught saga was tying up (so 1996?). I was always more into comics than any of my friends, and after a brief dalliance with Magic: the Gathering, the whole group became obsessed with D&D, myself included. My LCS closed around that time, and I also joined marching band.
I came back around the Danger arc of Astonishing. I was in law school, and stared picking up Mike Carey's Lucifer at my LCS, and decided to check out the X-men book everyone was on about. Astonishing drew me back into Marvel.
It seems like a lot of people picked up comics again in college/university, that's interesting! I know that one reason that I started with X-men again, was to read something that didn't feel like academia.
Good question... I didn't realize it was so common to stop and restart. E is for Extinction around 2001/2002 is when I quit. I had been a long time reader. I started in 1985 with Uncanny 192, and of course collected many back issues before that. I was there for ALL the cross-overs, and I religiously collected every title.
It was a combination of factors. First, it was 2001, the first X-men move was out, and a hit. But Marvel changed everyone's costumes in the books to match the movie. Annoying, but wider audience... okay. By then I was getting tired of all the ret-cons. All the mishandling of characters. Subtle changes to plots and characters to match the movie. I remember feeling confused... The success should have brought new readers on board, and into the X-books. Instead I felt Marvel changed the X-books to acquiesce to movie fanboys.
Second, E for Extinction. I did not like the art. I kind of hated it, actually. Also, in the wake of the 9/11 atttacks, I thought the attack on Genosha was a little too soon. I know comics are a way to reflect and discuss social issues. I dunno, I lost friends that day, so it was just a little too soon. Plus Casandra Nova just seemed like a rehash variant of Onslaught.
Third, I had recently graduated from grad school and moved across country. I was preparing to move overseas, and just decided the dislike, the cost, and the logistics weren't worth it anymore. It had become a chore to keep up with all the X-books, not the enjoyment I once had, like during Inferno, Age of Apocalypse ... heck even Phalanx Covenant. So I quit, cold turkey.
Twelve years later, I got sucked back in. No one ever really leaves. :-) The excitement over the DoFP movie, along with stumbling onto J&MXtX on episode 3 or so, and hearing rumors about another Secret Wars... I started picking up paper comics again. I switched to electonic a year later, and while I don't like them as much, the convenience outweighs my dislike. Cheers!
This is off topic but is your picture the Phantom from "Phantom of the Paradise"? Because I love that movie so much for its amazing aesthetics and style!!!!
Yeah! I like the movie, but mostly I think that picture is an AWESOME avatar. I love it for it's aestethic, and it's weird, and how NOT Lloyd Webber's phantom it is.
I'd never heard of this film, but after scanning the Wikipedia page, it sounds like I've got a movie to watch!
yes watch it!!! :D SRS this is the best Phantom adaptaion!!!!
I can't remember exactly when I stopped. It was in the 90s though, and due to a combination of yet another event crossover, the ever-rising cost of comics in Australia, and the fact that they vanished from newsagents. I didn't go cold turkey though, I did occasionally by individual titles here and there right up to when Morrison was writing. It's only recently that I've started regularly reading X-Men books.
By the way, I'm currently trying to teach myself Swedish. Can you recommend some comics in Swedish, preferably available through Comixology? I think comics would help mn e a heap.
Maybe this would be better to have as an private conversation, but I don't know if you can do that on Imzy.
Strangely enough comixology doesn't seem to have any comics in swedish. The have some comics from Sweden, but no comics in swedish.
Sweden's comic landscape is a strange beast. The fanzine is still really strong, and the superhero genre is nowhere in sight. Most comics are Adult, with themes of betrayal, growing up in shitty situations, and the like. Many are self-biographical, and many are in black-and-white. Female comic creators are over 50%.
BUT! There is an Swedish comic-book movie. I don't know if you can find it somewhere, but check it out if you can. It's a horror movie, (and comic) about bullying, growing up and unhealthy relationships.
I will snoop around, se if I can find anything. But many swedish comic creators make comics in English, for that wider audience.
Happy to take this elsewhere. I'm on Twitter as @fuller_si and my email is si.fuller@live.com, but I don't often look at my email unless I'm expecting something.
I stopped reading X-men twice. I first stopped reading X-men when the Age of Apocalypse crossover took over all the series. I wasn't interested and refused to read any of them. I picked up a few of the books after the crossover, but was dissatisfied by some of the changes in the aftermath. I was also going off to college, so I pretty much dropped comics entirely at that point.
I picked up with Whedon's Astonishing X-men and enjoyed the X-men again for several years, but at some point I started missing issues and losing interest, can't think of a particular cause.
I stopped reading comics around '99 or 2000. I just kinda lost interest in the medium. I started reading comics again with Civil War, because I saw it talked about on a TV show I watched at the time, and it reminded me that I used to love comics.
I stopped reading during Operation: Zero Tolerance (So, 1997? I was in high school.) because I moved across the country, and the closest comic store was further away from my new house than my old store was from my old house, and the guys at the new store were kinda dicks. I basically dropped out of comics altogether, but kept up by reading Wizard, and picked up whatever I could find in quarter bins.
I got back into comics in general in 2002-03, when Mirage Studios brought back TMNT, Dreamwave launched Transformers G1, and Udon launched the Street Fighter comic. I got back into Marvel stuff with the launch of New Avengers #1, and eventually stumbled back into X-Men with TPBs of the Grant Morrison run. And now I'm stuck here.
Having a good store makes so much difference.
It really does. I work at a comic store currently, and I really try to make sure to be friendly to every customer, ESPECIALLY younger ones. I don't want to happen to them what happened to me. :(
I'm so jealous, we don't really have the comic store system here in sweden. We have 3-4 here in Stockholm, the capital.
I read Marvel comics for a bunch of years until early high school. I got slowly turned off them. Three things I remember being big factors were, first, the return of Jean Grey (I had stated reading right after the Dark Pheonix saga, and had read that in back issues, and that plot event Meant Something; to have it nullified (at the time I didn't realize every death would be eventually) was disenchanting; second, Secret Wars II ('nuff said); and third, the price — it wasn't nearly as expensive as it is now, but buying a lot of issues as floppies took a huge bite out of my allowence. I kept going with the X-books for quite a while after I dropped most other Marvel titles. I dropped right after the Mutant Massacre, because a whole bunch of my favorite characters (particularly Kitty & Nightcrawler) seemed to have been written out (as I said, I didn't realize at the time that that was temporary), and it was just a bit dark. If I'd have known that Excalibur was coming up I'd have hung on, but I didn't know. Didn't read the X-books for more than a decade. Still read comics off & on, but mostly Vertigo and Indie stuff. Eventually read Grant Morrison in trades right after it came out, and have read some things in trades or on Marvel Unlimited since (both back and forward, but generally avoiding the time between Claremont's departure and Morrison's arrival, i.e. basically the 90s).
I left when Claremont did. Actually, that's not right I stayed on a little longer trying the Lee/Liefeld/Portacio material until they too left for Image. I think I dropped the two X-Men books and just kept going with X-Force and X-Factor. I dropped X-Factor when Peter David left and X-Force after the Fatal Attractions crossover.
My sister was buying Generation X so we shared and read that though I think we petered out on buying that title towards the end as well.
Because of this I have a hard time acknowledging the subsequent materials and developments as being real or having emotional weight like the stuff I grew up reading.
I quit reading them in 2014. I was bummed that Rogue had been moved to the Uncanny Avengers full-time; I also lost my job and couldn't afford to keep up.
I started reading comics in college and had problems getting hold of issues consistently for a while, but also I have terrible luck with series.
My very first X-Men series was a Nightcrawler solo title I was so excited to read... and that introduced Azazel. (I'm still pretending that one never happened.) I read Uncanny for a while and dropped it when Mystique created a new student persona to seduce Gambit to prove to Rogue that he wasn't boyfriend material. And so on.
I also tend to drop comics every time a big event starts up. I like a narrower focus better.
I'm not following any X-ongoings right now, partly because I'm still half-expecting that if I pick up a new title it'll immediately veer off the rails. As irrational as it is, I don't want to jinx it.