I'm in the UK, so my gateway into X-Men was through 1) the black and white Essential reprints, starting with Giant Size, and 2) the Essential X-Men anthology book that Panini put out monthly (not confusing titling at all, Marvel UK). It would collect 3 issues in a really affordable package, so I was reading X-Men at a year-or-two remove, always behind the events going on in the USA.
I got started around the Davies / Kelly era, post-Zero Tolerance, so it was this massive, homogeneous thing with so many moving X-Parts, and at the point the reprints were doing The Twelve (Wolverine is a Skrull! Wolverine is Death! Apocalypse wants Nate Summers! Cyclops is Apocalypse!) I began to transition to the USA titles-- which was New X-Men. And my God, what an experience that was. I barely survived it.
New X-Men was X-Men-As-Vertigo. It was horrid and big and fun and horrid and just so good. Morrison is a favourite, they knew exactly how to key into their target audience, and I absolutely adore their proposal-as-mission-statement that was reprinted in the E4E TPB. I managed to find one of the HC omnibus fairly recently-- signed by Frank!-- and it's a prized possession.
And you know what? I was reading Chuck Austen's Uncanny alongside this... and at the time, I had no complaints.
You're absolutely correct. I've been an X-Men reader since the late 70s & agree with you. What Morrison did in very few issues was like the Sex Pistols--a complete shift in the landscape with a minimum of content.
I'm in the UK, so my gateway into X-Men was through 1) the black and white Essential reprints, starting with Giant Size, and 2) the Essential X-Men anthology book that Panini put out monthly (not confusing titling at all, Marvel UK). It would collect 3 issues in a really affordable package, so I was reading X-Men at a year-or-two remove, always behind the events going on in the USA.
I got started around the Davies / Kelly era, post-Zero Tolerance, so it was this massive, homogeneous thing with so many moving X-Parts, and at the point the reprints were doing The Twelve (Wolverine is a Skrull! Wolverine is Death! Apocalypse wants Nate Summers! Cyclops is Apocalypse!) I began to transition to the USA titles-- which was New X-Men. And my God, what an experience that was. I barely survived it.
New X-Men was X-Men-As-Vertigo. It was horrid and big and fun and horrid and just so good. Morrison is a favourite, they knew exactly how to key into their target audience, and I absolutely adore their proposal-as-mission-statement that was reprinted in the E4E TPB. I managed to find one of the HC omnibus fairly recently-- signed by Frank!-- and it's a prized possession.
And you know what? I was reading Chuck Austen's Uncanny alongside this... and at the time, I had no complaints.
You're absolutely correct. I've been an X-Men reader since the late 70s & agree with you. What Morrison did in very few issues was like the Sex Pistols--a complete shift in the landscape with a minimum of content.