Why do people say to start with Giant Size X-Men when the new team was introduced?
I get it's generally consider a great run, fine. But like, who the fuck are half the villains? Like lilandra had me confused as fuck.
So what's the problem with starting at the start? I get it's outdated but other than that?
Stan and Jack's X-Men is just bad, man.
If you're willing to bore yourself that's fine, but it may as well have started with Giant Size. Just pretend they did a bad job introducing the cast.
it just isnt good.
Actually, X-Men gets good with Neal Adams art, when Havok and Polaris join the team, and we have Sauron, the living Monolith, Magneto and the mutates, Scott sending the Sentinels into the sun.
And then it gets good again with the Claremont Byrne run.
If you don't want to read everything, skip Stan Lee. Read the Roy Thomas X-Men, and jump from there to the Byrne/Claremont run.
Dude, like, being confused is part of the game. Like, that's comics, you use context to like fill in the blanks dude like. You can pretty much read Grand Design for the early days.
>You can pretty much read Grand Design for the early days.
It's unironically better to read a wiki than Piskor's lifeless retcon-filled trash
>Like lilandra had me confused as fuck.
Lilandra wasn't created before Giant Size X-Men though.
>Lifeless
I bet you thought that sounded scathing in your head. Cute!
If Lilandra had you confused then you're reading it right. And if you hate her, just skip to War of Kings.
Ok but that entire island that I'm supposed to believe is a mutant? The fuck was up with that?
It was an entire island that was a mutant. What more do you want?
Yeah that was fine when it was for Knightfall. I did a small bit of searching for who Amygdala was for example. But in the Claremont run it seems weird since I have no idea who she is or what the fuck the shi-ar empire was or wahtever.
That... kinda helps but they acted like Charles and her were fucking before or something
Wha?
user, what? It makes sense on the fact it's a fucking giant island.
There are constantly tales of stuff like that.
Look at what the fuck Galactus is
You seem to be confusing abrupt introductions with continuity issues.
Some comics are just like that. You miss nothing by skipping to Giant Size.
>That... kinda helps but they acted like Charles and her were fucking before or something
MAYBE THEY WERE, user.
MAYBE YOU SHOULD READ ON TO FIND OUT.
Read a pretty good article a little while back from someone who was reading through the original Silver Age X-Men stuff for the first time:
>adventuresinpoortaste.com
I kinda agree that it was "classic" during the Lee era (most of the important, long-lasting stuff was introduced in those issues but had the usual Lee-style dialogue and narration redundancy), the middle stuff was awful and inconsistent (I liked some of it, though, even if most of the new villains stank), and the end was the best run (Adams' art was great, but the stories were on the same level as what Thomas had been writing beforehand).
I did and it's still weird to me.
I read up to Jean going firebird mode and said "fuck it".
Like, I get it it's good but it's like half the fucking things are "back in issue that you didn't read" continuations
Silver Age Screaming Maniac Magneto is Best Magneto.
>Like, I get it it's good but it's like half the fucking things are "back in issue that you didn't read" continuations
But most of it isn't. It's just framed en media res.
The original run sucks is why
I like that.
Hell, I liked the first essentials volume of Fantasy Four (albeit it was in B&W) and it was hilarious seeing the difference in culture then.
I think I'll stick with the first issue actually.
Is he waiting for a dick in his mout?
What's that mean?
>I read up to Jean going firebird mode and said "fuck it".
But that has absolutely nothing to do with pre-Claremont X-Men.
>Sauron goes full Lord of the Rings Autist in his origin story
The art in that last run of Silver Age X-Men stuff was so fucking good, but the writing was so fucking bad.
Come again?
Uncanny Xmen, it was like 10 issues into when I started from 96 and she went firebird in space
You have a couple of classic villains, Magneto, Juggernaut, the Sentinels, and the Neal Adams run with Sauron, all the Savage land is there too, but that could be 15-20 numbers, all the others are a waste of time
Roy simply can't get over being a trivia maniac.
>A wooden gun?!
Now that I think about it, are most of the stuff that started in the '50s/'60s from Marvel/DC the same sort of "cringy as fuck" deal like Xmen/FF?
>Come again?
It has nothing to do with pre-Claremont X-Men. You missed nothing. That is exactly how the Phoenix Force was introduced. Stan and Roy's run have nothing to do with that.
Lykos is a fake Tolkien nerd. He probably never even read the Silmarillion. Everyone knows Melkor/Morgoth was the "personification of evil" and Sauron was just his stooge
>The art in that last run of Silver Age X-Men stuff was so fucking good, but the writing was so fucking bad.
Maybe, but the stories could be so funny. Like when the X-Men trick the Sentinels into thinking that the only way to destroy all mutants on Earth was to go fight the sun. So the Sentinels all fly into the sun and explode.
It was Stan Lee-tier stupid writing, but with Neal Adams-tier artwork and it's amazing. The Magneto in the Savage Land arc was pretty legit good, though, and probably the best portrayal of Magneto during those early years. He wasn't quite so goofy in that story.
>talking shit about classing Fantastic Four
>talking shit about Otto Binder, Bill Finger, Sheldon Mayer, etc
Underage please go.
Um, I think you missed my post saying that I enjoyed it
>Silver Age
>"cringy as fuck"
I want millennials to leave
>adventuresinpoortaste.com
Interesting read. So Lee introduced Mutants as celebrities popular with the general public and treated no differently from most of the other superheroes in the Marvel universe at the time... then 3 issues later was like "Naw, they black people now".
Sounds about right. Though I do with the Blob/Unus duo would come back at some point. They seem like they were fun villains back in the day.
A few good things doesn't redeem a decade of trash, idiot
You are a millennial
You're right.
Which is why comics are shit. Every decade was mostly trash.
You know other posters can't read your mind, right? You're anonymous. All anyone has to go off of is that one post.
Oh, sorry. Well the post about liking the original F&F was me - I think it's cringy with the whole "Sue is a gril, get her to safety" thing compared to how if that was written it'd be cringy nowadays.
I mean if the rest of the comics are like that I'd start with the first issues desu
>Which is why comics are shit
this is objectively true. For every one Miracleman there's ten Marvilles
X-Men was Roy Thomas learning how to write comics and you can see it when you read his run. He introduces character arcs for drama (Angel/Cyclops/Marvel Girl love triangle, Marvel GIrl going to college and having to leave the team on a regular basis) and then discards them without saying a word about them once he grows board with them. You can see him trying to plot longform arcs, like the year-long storyline with the Mutant Master, but they're real sloppy. And he has to start pumping in retcons to undo unpopular decisions on his part (the X-Men graduate from the Xavier Institute on 2 separate occasions like the first time never happened, "uh, that Magneto in the purple helmet was a robot all along", or "Changeling became a good guy and joined the X-Men between issues and then died pretending to be Professor X and that's how I came back from the dead". It's reeeaaaaalllllllyyyyyyy rough to read, but he gets better along the way.
By the time Roy was writing Conan the Barbarian, he'd gotten pretty good. Conan's probably his best stuff and one of my favorite runs of Marvel comics from the 70s. But his X-Men stuff is amateur hour for the most part.
people didn't find things out quickly without the internet. the silmarillion came out in 1977 but it's not like it was in the news.
>That... kinda helps but they acted like Charles and her were fucking before or something
They weren't. They just gained this weird telepathic connection before meeting. The comic establishes this itself.
>I read up to Jean going firebird mode and said "fuck it".
>Like, I get it it's good but it's like half the fucking things are "back in issue that you didn't read" continuations
Honestly, Phoenix is probably the turning point where you stop having weird plots from the old books pop-up repeatedly.
Most of that stuff is thoroughly dealt with at that point.
That's the problem when I start from recommended runs - half the time I wonder "do I need to know who the fuck these people are" or is "these are new" so yeah
Literally nothing wrong with starting with the beginning.. Bendis, Adams, Thomas, Byrne, Gillen, Busiek, and etc. are fans of O5.
Also, that era was revisited numerous times in first class, hidden years, and now with the all-new
Kirby / Lee issues are good, but not great, but then again, only good Kirby / Lee stuff is FF. Literally.
There are many problems with Piskor's mini, but it's certainly worth checking out
Silver Age X-Men being bad is a meme. There were worse comics than X-Men, like Daredevil, Human Torch feature, Hulk, etc.
Also, Avengers were selling as badly as X-Men, but because they had b-listers from other books, it wasn't discontinued
Silver age Daredevil being bad is a meme. There is some good stuff there, but after issue 50 or so it's not till Frank Miller is back that it gets amazing.
Question: let's say I start reading from the issue with Batman's first appearance, how do I know when to branch into other comics for a storyline?
That pic is very menacing. I like how X-Men look like some villains from some sci-fi movie
For the most part, you're not wrong, but the robot Magneto thing was Roy retconning Arnold Drake's use of Magneto in the story that introduced Polaris, while the Changeling being used to undo the death of Professor X was written by Denny O'Neil.
Comic Sauron was introduced in 1969, so there's no way he could have known about The Silmarillion before it was published in 1977.
Its not good. why do you think Marvel let a 21 year old unknown Chris Claremont come in and use an almost completely different cast?
Issue 64-93 were just fucking reprints.
Outside of setting up the core themes, characters and some key villains, silver age X-men sucked ass through a straw
Most of the characters introduced in Claremont's run were created during his run. Silver Age X-Men is generally bad until Thomas' second run with Neal Adams on art. I'd argue the first few bits of the revived X-Men (Giant-Size and the Count Nefaria story) that were co-written with Wein are skippable too since they're not that good either. UXM #97 is Claremont's first real solo issue and immediately lays the groundwork for the Phoenix stuff and is the best place to start IMO.
Silver Age X-Men wasn't anyone's best work, but there's nothing wrong with it, unless you just don't like Silver Age comics in general.
It's odd that X-Men gets singled out for "being bad". Is it just that it doesn't have the "popular" X-Men characters, and has a version of Magneto that's unrecognizable to readers from the 1980s onwards? Is it that Silver Age X-Men disproves the idea that X-Men was always mainly about the minority-metaphor? It's in there occasionally, but not a main theme of the book.
Nah, it's pretty bad. There was worse, sure, but it sucked.
You'd have over 30 years of Detective comics and Batman to read first.
I love RT on Conan, but I can’t stand his stuff otherwise. It’s weird.
It's the same issue with any characters or team that has a 'definitive' run (like Swamp Thing, Doom Patrol, Animal Man, etc). Everyone assumes that since the best version came later that anything that came before it (and sometimes even after it) must of sucked.
Thanks; I forgot that though Thomas wrote 90% of the run after Lee, there were a few other short term scripters.
>why do you think Marvel let a 21 year old unknown Chris Claremont come in and use an almost completely different cast?
Who was Len Wein?
>They just gained this weird telepathic connection before meeting.
Yeah, back when Xavier connected every mind on Earth when he faked his death so he could make some alien invaders commit suicide and later banish their planet to the shadow realm.
COLAN
And here's the follow-up from X-Men: Hidden Years.
>Actually, X-Men gets good with Neal Adams art, when Havok and Polaris join the team, and we have Sauron, the living Monolith, Magneto and the mutates, Scott sending the Sentinels into the sun.
My mugga, that run gets overlooked so often when people praise Claremont and the new team, but that Sentinel story is what really IMO introduced the idea that mutantkind was "feared and hated", since the first story made Trask out to be a crank.
No-one seems to know what was so bad about Drake's Magneto story that Roy decided to retcon it into being a robot.
>adventuresinpoortaste.com
>First time I've ever seen a picture of Silver Age Banshee
Holy shit.
To be fair, this is one thing that may be more clear if you've read the earlier X-Men comics - the original versions of their origin stories have the X-Men's parents (including Xavier's dad) being exposed to radiation through one contrivance or another, so they're really just *atomic* mutations like every other Marvel superhero, just one generation removed. The idea that atomic energy and pollution could trigger a mass mutation of future generations was a legit concern at the time, that sorta fell by the wayside as the sliding timescale and increasing retcons meant that mutants had just sorta always been around.
TL,DR: Krakoa was a mutant island because at the time, "atomic energy = mutant" was pretty much the understanding.
>What's that mean?
It means that the story was written for people in the 70s who didn't have the internet and weren't autistic enough to go "I DON'T UNDERSTAND, WHY ISN'T THE BACKSTORY BEING SPOONFED TO ME?"
Like, the original Star Wars just starts with the rebellion already being a thing, already on the run from the Empire who've already finished their latest superweapon, it works just as well if you don't know about how the Republic fell, what exactly the Galactic Empire is, why Darth Vader betrayed the Jedi, etc. Or are you the sorta person who thinks you should watch the prequel trilogy first?
Dude, fucking old comic books weren't shy about continuity. If something is meant to reference an older issue, you'll see a little yellow box that goes "As seen back in UXM #69 - Courtesy of Cunning Linguist Stan "The Man" Lee!" or some shit.
They didn't have the internet back then, so instead of assuming people could look up characters on Wikipedia or whatever, they had to go out of their way to explain stuff via editorial notes or, usually, full-on flashback panels that retell anything they're referencing.
And most fans didn't read the original X-Men run even back then, that's why it was cancelled, the Claremont run was the original "jumping-on-point-for-new-readers" revamp before that kinda shit was in vogue.
web.archive.org
It's not that the prequels were a bad idea, it's that George needed somebody to say "No" to him every so often.
I'd argue that SOME of the classic pre-ANAD X-Men needs to be read/has merit.
#1-16 introduces a lot content/villains for the franchise and explains some background (how Xavier got crippled for instance).
#28-38 (the Factor Three Saga) is worth reading since it's the first real "epic" X-Men story plus has Roy Thomas addressing some things (how to the X-Men pay for shit finance flying back and forth for adventures) that later writers would handwave glibly
#44-46 and Avengers #53 was the first "proper" X-Men/Avengers X-Over, which makes it worth checking out
#49-52 have great Steranko artwork and introduce Polaris
#54-66 meanwhile has Neal Adam's artwork, introduces a bunch of new shit to the franchise, retools the Sentinels to be legit threats, along with a couple of classic arcs (the second battle with the Sentinels and the Savage Land Mutates arc, which was loosely adapted as the plot for the first X-Men movie)
yes! my dramaaaaaamamaaaaaaaa Silver Age Magnetohs had no cool at all
Id say read the first 8ish of the first gen, then skip directly to the Giant Xmen reboot/Gen 2. Chris' run is just unquantifiably better then Stan's run.