If you read comic books in the 90s you’ll know exactly where this is going, even if it didn’t read the X-men titles. I’d argue they were the worst offenders, but it seems like everyone was suffering this same malady back then. Onslaught, Offslaught; Distraught, Dattraught. Po-tay-to; po-tah-to.

While hunting for and putting together what few all ages Fantastic Four comics I could find together for my son’s birthday, I started thinking more about when I first started reading comics. At least when I started reading serial stories and not Archie’s Double Digest that my mother picked up next to the checkout counter at the grocery store.

I had to do some seriously sleuthing on back through the years to try and figure out how things went the way they did and a rough timeline of how it happened. I finally think I have it cinched down at least to a plausible, if not logical, chain of events.

There was a time I didn’t know what an X-man was and the only mutants I knew were the teenage ninja variety. I did have a few of the Archie ninja turtles issues. I wasn’t even tuning in to the Animated Series when it aired in 1992. That changed during Christmas Break in 1993. For a Christmas gift exchange in Sunday School (of all places) I received an X-men action figure. Some day I will do a lamentation post about how I had to get rid of all my Ghostbusters toys in order to get any Ninja Turtles toys and I had yet to branch out for fear of losing them too.

The figure I got was Gambit because, I was told, he seemed to be the one I would like. It was a neat little figure with “Power Kick Action” and a terrible vinyl trench coat. First thing I did was make a new one out of brown felt on my grandmother’s sewing machine and replace it. Some (other) day I will find the box they are all stored in and add the photo, because I do still have that.

There was a languishing period of “well that’s neat I guess” or something similar as I went about my business. It wasn’t until Summer of 1994 that I happened to catch an episode of the animated series while at my grandparents house. Luckily, we were always prepared to record things from television so I was able to grab a blank tape and capture the second part of “Out of the Past.” I tried to catch it every week on Fox after that. I can’t remember when but sometime after that we found the black case VHS copies of “Night of the Sentinels” and “Enter Magneto.” There was enough space left on the end of my X-men tape to catch the ending of The Sixties miniseries from 1999. Which is a much more interesting pairing now than I would have considered then. It’s first on the title strip so it could be next to the first half and easily found.

I noticed when I got these out to take the photos that there are short (five minute) round-table discussions on each of them. I never did watch those. Guess I’ll dust off ye olde VCR and see what they have to say that isn’t already blurbed on the slipcase. By the by, and since we are on a station break for the show, if you are at all interested in the animated series, or animation in the 90s, or even TV networks and children’s programming in the 90s the book Previously On X-Men is a must. Not only are there interviews with show runners, writers, and cast but also network execs, standards and practices reps, and critics. It’s fascinating beyond the scope of the show itself. I wish every animated series had a companion book like this.

This is all rolling along while I am in upper elementary school, and the only comics besides books of single panel Heathcliff and such I had were a few old Harvey comics from flea markets or garage sales and a copy of CRACKED from the 70s that was missing its cover. It featured among other things “A Short Look at a Long Gas Line” and “If We Didn’t Have Hair” (“Tiny Tim would look even weirder than he does now.”) At some point in fourth grade or so one of my classmates brought some comics to school and all I remember about it was there being quite the to-do about the fact that one of the panels had someone calling someone else non true Romans. I wasn’t even getting Fox Kids Club Totally Kids Magazine (some available on internet archive) which ran a three page comic intro to the show in Autumn 1992.

Part of not being up to date was due to the fact that we lived hours away from places that sold monthly comics. At least those with options. I didn’t realize the grocery store even sold magazines other than the ones by the registers until around this time because we always went in the same way and followed the same path through the store. The other part is that my family didn’t consider comics real reading.

I bought the 1995 Gambit trade paperback from WaldenBooks in the Mall sometime before Books-A-Million opened there. BAM!, in addition to being much, much larger had the added benefit of being on the perimeter of the mall so you could park in front of it and go in and leave. You didn’t have to go through the mall to get to it. Like Sears on the other side. We were never much for the mall experience and I remember going to Sears, leaving Sears, driving around to the front of the mall to Book-A-Million and then going in there.

You can imagine my surprise the day I discovered the periodical section in the grocery story with an end cap of maybe six comic titles. If I remember correctly there were two shelves on the bottom and there were three titles on each shelf which included X-Men and Wolverine. Now this may have included Uncanny X-men, too, but as fate would have it, it was years before I realized they were two different titles.

It’s basically been thirty years since I started reading comics, but there was a rather long break in there due to not being able to keep up with everything that was going on. It was nice to see when I started working on backtracking this that the internet was full of people complaining about the same thing and more than a few people stopped reading them at the same time I did.

My run was fairly short and, as I discovered putting this together, even more disjointed. Incidentally, though, it lined up perfectly with the years I was in Junior High School. Which maybe says more than it should upon deeper reflection. I also was never involved enough to know who was writing or who the artists were from one issue or arc to the next though there are recognizable style changes, when it went from Jim Lee for instance.

I started back through the covers on MyComicShop listings to see which ones I remembered and finally pieced together that I started somewhere around Uncanny X-men #322 –released in May 1995 with a July Cover date (this also complicates matters),

and X-men (Vol 2) #42–released in May 1995, dated July,

and Wolverine (Vol 2) #93 released August 1995 dated September.

Now, you may have gotten this far and wondering why I didn’t just look back through my issues and see which ones I had instead of trudging down the dark alleys off memory lane to figure this out. Well, that is because in late spring 1997 my father deemed my comic books a “fire hazard” and I was made to rid myself of the liability. So I gave them all (saving my stash of CRACKED and MAD which I kept in a box under my bed) to a friend at school. This was another reason my reading tenure ceased at the end of Junior High.

What I remembered most about these runs was how every issue seemed to have more and more notes to read the rest of this story or the backstory to this or the beginning of this story in something else. X-factor, Cable, or whatever, and I still thought X-men and Uncanny were the same but with different title designs. To be fair, though, there was a lot of crossover there, too. It was hard enough to keep up with the titles I had, much less be spending 3x as much to stay in the know. And then something would come along like X-babies (#46 Sept 95 dated November), which I remember seeing in the store (Books-A-Million had a LOT of comic options in 1995 and 1996) and not getting because I wasn’t following anything well enough to want to get into the Flintstone Kids version of X-men.

What these covers did though was reveal something about my reading that I hadn’t actually realized. Mainly because I was getting three titles across the story I thought I was caught up. But, when I started scouring the internet to figure out what I was missing I had a huge realization. I didn’t know any of the major arcs. I hadn’t read LegionQuest, I read right up to Onslaught, but had never actually seen him on the page, I knew Beast was working on the Legacy Virus (and dark Beast showed up–I have a LONG rant about Beast’s fall from grace that grew long enough for its own post), and I didn’t see the issue where Magneto removed Wolverine’s adamantium but I did read through him going more feral ( and losing his nose?) but never read how he got it back. All the things that were collected in trades and omnibi were completely foreign to me, I might as well not have been reading them at all.

This recent omnibus seems to collect most of what I actually read including the three or four other titles I should have been reading to keep up. I am glad they are collecting them like this, but I am not sure about the ease and comfort of use in reading a 1000 page omnibus (this one is 912).

Why on earth was what I was reading so disjointed? We went to the grocery store once a month and I know they had at least two of the titles, and then eventually just Wolverine, I should have been keeping up, just not the offshoots. But I wasn’t. And I was confused. I think I still might be.

When I plotted the issues I had and looked up the release and cover dates for them, I noticed a glaringly obvious pattern. My copies were bimodally distributed. We only went to the mall about twice a year, once during summer (usually for school clothes) and once during the winter (Christmas shopping). That’s when I was able to get comics. Because Books-A-Million had so much room they could keep older issues out longer (or until they sold, I dunno). I had clumps of issues in the summer and the winter with nothing going on in between.

One of my favorite issues that I had was Uncanny X-men #325 featuring the X-men playing baseball at the mansion. I didn’t know it at the time, or really until a few (10ish) years ago that this was a running theme. I was just really happy to see Beast playing the same position I did.

You may also forgive my ignorance, too, as this was the first time I learned that Beast had been an avenger.

I had exactly one Avenger’s comic. It was an Avengers Spotlight my cousin bought for me at a flea market. It feature Hawkeye getting shot and, once he recovered, redesigning his costume.

I recently found a single lot of most of these comics for sale on ebay. They looked to be many of the ones I had had to get rid of almost thirty years ago so I picked them up and went through them, fondly, and remembering–realizing–that I hadn’t read all of them. There was one I knew I had read, and it wasn’t in any of the lot so I had to look at the numbers missing and dig back through those online so I could find it.

This one was important for the bizarre reason that I had used a quote by Beast in my salutatorian address at 8th grade graduation. I wish I could find someone who had recorded it, I know there were several video cameras there so I could watch it again and hear the speech. Lord knows I wasn’t saving stuff like that at the time. But I know it was in there, and now that I know who was writing it, I probably should thank Scott Lobdell for my using it. Because I couldn’t figure out what the big deal was about graduating junior high just to go to high school and do it all again. Like, this wasn’t the end of anything important, and it surely wasn’t going to get easier from that point, and I say this now coming down on it with two Master’s Degrees and a Doctorate. It still doesn’t matter. You’re never entirely out of the woods.

The other realization here, when I finally found this panel, was that I never followed this story out to completion either. It was released in January 1997 (we must have went back to the mall for Christmas returns) and dated March–months before I would use it in my speech, and closer still to the fated day I brought all my comics to school and gave to Carl. Luckily the fire hazards didn’t pose much of a threat on the bus rides or while we were at school. I’ve also heard they’ve yet to cause a conflagration with their current owner.

Thus ended my tenure as a comic reader. I just couldn’t keep up with the crossovers the constant launching and advertising for new Adjective X-Titles I should be reading. Although I am sure Unfettered X-Men #1 would be worth some money. There were several distinct bits that I remembered vividly and perfectly. Rogue and Iceman’s road trip after she kissed Gambit. Wolverine standing on the bar threatening Juggernaut while Cannonball was sick-drunk in Wolverine #93. Gambit confronting Sabretooth.

And this bizarre splash page from the same issue:

Other pieces just weren’t there. I didn’t remember Juggernaut running from Onslaught or Emma Frost possessing Iceman. Plus things started to get spacey with more Shi’ar stuff involved and I generally stay out of the stars. I did remember Avalon, but as Asteroid M, I think, and had the cloned good Magneto (Joseph) back at the beginning of that. And I completely missed the Trial of Gambit, even though that had been hinted at for years (even outside the comics back in Disney Adventures in 1995. It had the whole Bishop meeting the “Traitor” setup as one of their “mysteries” along with fancasting for a live action movie) as they were developing his character while pushing it out on the animated series to give him more back (and future) story(ies) at the same time. Eric Lewald covers that in his book. Talk about building the plane in the air. There was only about two and a half years between the Disney Adventures (many available on the Internet Archive) and the Trial, and only four between the first Gambit mini series in 1993 (collected in the 1995 trade paperback I mentioned earlier).

I guess I say all of that to say this: when you read something, or experience something, might be as much a part of how you remember it or identify with it as whatever it is. I loved the episodes of the animated series I saw, though I haven’t seen all of them. I enjoyed X-men 97 up to the point(s) where they made sure things were actually a risk and characters could die. I mean characters die all the time in comics, but the only person who to my knowledge has ever stayed dead has been Uncle Ben.

I didn’t read comics for almost twenty years after this. I was drawn back into comics just ten years ago following a tweet about the loch ness monster, or, rather the ghost of the loch ness monster. Caught up on the then ongoing Ghostbusters series that IDW came in, which in turn thanks to a crossover got me back into the IDW Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles which I had a few Archie versions of. Archie gets a lot fo flak for being too silly (remember Cudley?) But it ran some dark arcs too, like when all the mutanimals were murdered.

The IDW run was great, up until it wasn’t. Early on it dealt with a LOT not just action, but metaphysics and philosophy. It eventually ran long enough to be Turtle Adventures in FurryTown. It also tried branching out to release a Universe title that was eventually folded back in and is being released in reading order with the collected hardcovers. They’ve rebooted it now, and after major success with the Shredder in Hell and Last Ronin series (and now turning it into an R-rated feature film,) with the more dark and gritty™ feel which I know is how the property started, but it was the Fred Wolf years that made it into a global phenomena. Either way I hope it runs its course out pretty soon.

It looks like that’s where all things are headed though. Unfortunately. The difficulty finding runs of age appropriate Fantastic Four for my son was enough to further my annoyance with the medium. But, hey, the kids don’t have the money to spend or the freedom to ride their bikes to the comic shops anymore so they aren’t the target audience. I picked up a few recent issues of things, even going back to look at the 2000 story arc of X-men or one of the many new titles and realized that they were all damaged heavily by Y2K.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again (and likely again) that I’ll take my escapism light and fluffy. I’ll take ridiculous over realism any day. There were some good lines for adult or heavy themes in both Batman and X-men animated series, which did have comic (“Adventures”) tie-ins, (or versions), but this modern paramilitary paranoid Batman is too much. I’ve stepped out of most comics again, and realized I probably would have fizzled out in the 90s anyway even if I hadn’t been force to give up the issues.

There are still a few that I am reading, and a few more announced that sound like they’ll be fun, but this was about the X-men and the craziest time to fall into reading (or partially reading) the titles. We’ll get to the other ones, later.

I am going to end with this recent (last week!) cover for Giant Sized Amazing Spider-Man because it illustrates the point of the title, if not the tenor of the post, and it made me laugh out loud when I saw it in the shop. It’s also crazy for me to think that the time between reading those 1995 comics as a kid to now is nearly the same amount of time between the first issues of X-men and then. Longer if you start counting