When I was fourteen, my family went on a long vacation. I checked out some books from the local library to take with me, and one of the ones I picked was Essential X-Men vol. 2. We were away for about two weeks, and I read that comic over and over and over. I think it's still engraved on my brain.
I was already vaguely familiar with the characters—I'm not sure if I had seen the movies, but I'd definitely read Chris Claremont's novelizations, and the couple of other X-Men books I'd been able to find. (In retrospect, the Legacy Quest Trilogy was an excellent primer to the villains active in the 90s, if nothing else!) But I had a bit of trouble reading color comics in those days, so a black-and-white edition was a perfect place for me to start—and I still think the lineart looks great on its own!
There were about twenty issues in that collection—Proteus, the Dark Phoenix Saga, Days of Future Past, Kitty fighting demons and Wolverine mending fences with his old friends in Canada. There was even a helpful summary of the X-Men's entire history, courtesy of a bereaved Cyclops! It was a great primer to what made the team and the era so great, the characters and relationships and lovely art, and a good taste of how many different places the book could go.
I think it was the Proteus saga that really hooked me—I loved the combination of quiet moments (cocoa after a fight!) with high-stakes superhero battles, and the surreal and terrifying nature of Proteus's powers. And I imprinted hard on Moira. I loved her brilliance and ruthlessness, that she was the top scientist in this 'verse and that the most prominent human supporting character was a middle-aged woman (not that the artists often drew her that way, but still).
My other favorite arc was Days of Future Past. I loved Mystique and Destiny—their devotion to their cause and to each other, the tragedy of them creating the future they meant to avert (especially given Destiny's powers). And I immediately liked Pyro for his loyalty to Mystique and the creative, if sometimes nasty ways he used his powers. And meanwhile we had Kitty's badass future self, and Storm as a brand-new leader in a crisis, pulling through and doing splendidly. It was great.
I adore the characters in that era, and their relationships. I loved that Jean and Ororo were the strongest members of the team, their friendship, and Storm beginning to be a mentor for Kitty. I had an immediate crush on Nightcrawler, too.
And so much glorious weirdness. Canadian wendigo law! I loved how strange and out-there the X-Men's world was, how anything was possible, from space opera shenanigans to high fantasy interludes.
From there, I went through the rest of the library's X-Men collection. Ultimate X-Men wasn't my thing (though I liked the art in the Magnetic North storyline), but I loved the enthusiasm and tragedy of Age of Apocalypse (despite being confused all the while by all the skipping between titles and storylines in the collections I read). And I dipped my toes into then-modern X-Men—I loved the Academy X kids, still do—before being scared off by Decimation. But the Claremont era has always been the core of the X-Men for me—there's stuff later on that I love, but this era is what I always come back to.
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Date: 2018-12-19 12:07 am (UTC)I was already vaguely familiar with the characters—I'm not sure if I had seen the movies, but I'd definitely read Chris Claremont's novelizations, and the couple of other X-Men books I'd been able to find. (In retrospect, the Legacy Quest Trilogy was an excellent primer to the villains active in the 90s, if nothing else!) But I had a bit of trouble reading color comics in those days, so a black-and-white edition was a perfect place for me to start—and I still think the lineart looks great on its own!
There were about twenty issues in that collection—Proteus, the Dark Phoenix Saga, Days of Future Past, Kitty fighting demons and Wolverine mending fences with his old friends in Canada. There was even a helpful summary of the X-Men's entire history, courtesy of a bereaved Cyclops! It was a great primer to what made the team and the era so great, the characters and relationships and lovely art, and a good taste of how many different places the book could go.
I think it was the Proteus saga that really hooked me—I loved the combination of quiet moments (cocoa after a fight!) with high-stakes superhero battles, and the surreal and terrifying nature of Proteus's powers. And I imprinted hard on Moira. I loved her brilliance and ruthlessness, that she was the top scientist in this 'verse and that the most prominent human supporting character was a middle-aged woman (not that the artists often drew her that way, but still).
My other favorite arc was Days of Future Past. I loved Mystique and Destiny—their devotion to their cause and to each other, the tragedy of them creating the future they meant to avert (especially given Destiny's powers). And I immediately liked Pyro for his loyalty to Mystique and the creative, if sometimes nasty ways he used his powers. And meanwhile we had Kitty's badass future self, and Storm as a brand-new leader in a crisis, pulling through and doing splendidly. It was great.
I adore the characters in that era, and their relationships. I loved that Jean and Ororo were the strongest members of the team, their friendship, and Storm beginning to be a mentor for Kitty. I had an immediate crush on Nightcrawler, too.
And so much glorious weirdness. Canadian wendigo law! I loved how strange and out-there the X-Men's world was, how anything was possible, from space opera shenanigans to high fantasy interludes.
From there, I went through the rest of the library's X-Men collection. Ultimate X-Men wasn't my thing (though I liked the art in the Magnetic North storyline), but I loved the enthusiasm and tragedy of Age of Apocalypse (despite being confused all the while by all the skipping between titles and storylines in the collections I read). And I dipped my toes into then-modern X-Men—I loved the Academy X kids, still do—before being scared off by Decimation. But the Claremont era has always been the core of the X-Men for me—there's stuff later on that I love, but this era is what I always come back to.