The Trouble With the X-Men
The X-Men are a superhero team that feature in Marvel Comics and other media from the House of Ideas. Debuting in 1963, they were not very popular and sort of faded until Chris Claremont began writing their stories in 1975. Since then, the team, and mutant stories in general, have become some of the most popular comic stories in the superhero genre, spawning multiple movies and TV shows (of varying quality), and a plethora of comic titles. And this second bit is what I’m terming “the trouble with the X-Men.”
This is probably a personal issue that nobody else who reads comics suffers from, but I always like to start from the beginning when I’m starting out on a new character. And for the most part I’ve been able to. With characters like Spider-Man and Daredevil, you just start at #1 and work your way down to the current issue. There may be some stories in auxiliary books, but you will get the major character moments with this approach. This is also why I’ve found it insanely difficult to get into DC characters, though that is mostly because of their penchant for resetting the universe every few years. This approach mostly doesn’t work for the X-Men. The stories are spread across a whole host of titles and missing them will mean you miss entire chunks of lore and storytelling. Add to that the tendency for them to be involved in crossover events, whether as a major player (a la Avengers v X-Men or A.X.E. Judgement Day), or as supporting characters (a heavy cross for popular IP to bear), and now you’re very deep in the woods with no compass.
A second problem (that’s closely linked to the first) is that the X-Men are a team and sometimes, those team members will be popular enough to warrant their own books. The major culprit is Logan A.K.A Wolverine, but it’s not always restricted to him. Cable, Magneto, Deadpool, and Iceman. These are characters who’ve gotten their own solo series that adds to the lore of the characters and the general world and may also affect mainline X-Men stories from time to time. It’s just a lot of books to try to follow at any one time and before long, you’re standing in front of a board like a conspiracy theorist trying to get timelines and stories to match up. And this is to say nothing of the naming changes and other fracturings that happen, especially in the late 90s and 2000s. From Uncanny, to Astonishing, to New X-Men, the Raven-like changes that happen to the lines become headspinning.
Lastly, I guess I’ll call this the problem with longevity. When you’ve been around as long as the X-Men (61 years) and have dozens of titles (not including solo series), the sheer size of the “task at hand” starts to seem too large to handle. I started reading Amazing Spider-Man in my freshman year of university and (through no fault of my own) it took me 5 years to read all 700 issues of Vols. 1&2. Could I have gotten that time down? Sure, but that’s one book following one character that’s been running for a comparable length of time as the X-Men. Even if you choose to only follow Uncanny X-Men, it will still take a not-inconsiderable amount of time to chip away at the stories before you inevitably run into the problem of “Which title am I supposed to read next?”
Will I eventually get around to climbing the mountain? Yes. And over the years, various guides and starting points and reading orders and suggested readings have been made by helpful nerds on the internet, like this one from the (sometimes helpful, sometimes hurtful) geeks of the X-men subreddit. And as with all comics, there’s no right or wrong way to read it. Ten comic book fans will tell you ten different ways to read comics, all based on a myriad of things including personal preference, bias for or against certain writers, and the multiplicity of ways our brain works. All this to say, we all have to find our own way to read the books with the drawings of people with weird powers.
The X-Men are an incredibly popular, and increasingly relevant (go watch X-Men ’97, I hear it’s good) piece of Marvel Comics history, filled with brilliant stories and excellent characters. But they have perhaps the largest barrier of entry of any comic book I’ve come across in my many years being a fan of the medium.
