Fell behind with X-Men comics... help?

[Kury Wagner]

Hiya, I've got a few annoying questions/wondering your opinion on the recent X-Men comic titles... bear with me, if you could.

Okay, so I've gotten really behind in the X-Comics. Back about a year ago, I was trying to finish up what was left of X-Men before diving into New X-Men, so I did, and then I read the first trade of New X-Men, but started reading a lot more Spidey after that (I love that buggy boy).

And then over autumn/winter I just stopped reading comics altogether, for no real reason other than I just didn't keep up -- I had far too many other things to read. And more recently I've been reading a ton of manga but still no comics. Actually, New Comic Day was the first time I had been in a comic shop in over a month... I can't believe how much I missed the atmosphere. :anime:

So I'm still behind in New X-Men, but today I wanted something to read, so I decided to read part of the first Astonishing X-Men trade only to find out it seems to be connected to New X-Men. Am I correct in thinking this? 'Cause I saw super-mutated Beastie, no Jean, and Scott with Emma just by reading the first ish, and I was kinda bummed. I figured it was a new title, not just another name-change. Or is it? I'm so confused right now... there are too many titles. X-Men turned into New X-Men, right? But then what did it turn into? What happened to Uncanny X-Men, (wasn't that another separate title, or did it turn into something else also) is that still going? When did Rogue get new solo title?! And who is Cyclops? (threw that one in for a joke) I can't believe I got this behind! >_<

Another question I had was, should I just back-track and read the other New X-Men trades while reading Astonishing, or would it be okay to just read Astonishing without knowing about the recent past? I've heard that the Astonishing title was quite, well, astonishing, so I don't want to miss out on that, and I want to know the best way to go about reading it. I'd be very thankful for any clarification.

[Ed Liu]

Howdy,

When you say "New X-Men," do you mean the Grant Morrison New X-Men comic title (that used to be the unadjectived X-Men title and then turned back into the unadjectived X-Men after Morrison left), or do you mean the New X-Men: Academy X title (which used to be the new New Mutants title that got launched in the Tsunami imprint and got soundly ignored until it put an "X" in the title)?

(Snide side comment: Hey, Marvel, that reboot you did a year or so ago to clear the decks and streamline the X-books? The one that now requires a paragraph to ask "which New X-Men book do you mean?" Don't streamline anything else for a while, OK? )

I suspect you mean the Grant Morrison New X-Men book. If you did, then Astonishing X-Men relies on back-story that was in Grant Morrison's New X-Men, but I don't think reading Morrison's New X-Men is essential to enjoying Astonishing X-Men. I stopped reading Morrison's X-Men after the first trade paperback, and didn't have much trouble jumping into Astonishing. The summary that you need to know walking in is that Jean's dead again, Emma Frost's on the X-staff but nobody likes her, apparently Scott and Logan hate each other again, and the Beast looks different now. Whether or not Magento is dead or how he came back doesn't factor into Astonishing, which is good because I have to use that brain space to store on-line passwords and my shoe size and stuff .

If you want to know far more about any given character or what happened in a specific issue of any of the X-Men comics and don't want to spend the time/money on the comics, uncannyxmen.net should have you covered.

-- Ed/Ace

[Chad Bonin]

Astonishing X-Men had an incredibly good first arc, and this is from someone who hadn't read X-Men in years.

All you need to know is that Emma and Scott are a couple, Jean's dead, and Kitty's not been on the team for a while.

Go pick up the first volume; you won't be disappointed.

(I'm still undecided on the second arc)