In Your Face Jam - Sep 23, 2015

[CBR News]

Twenty years later, Brett White recounts how the massive X-Men event forever changed the way he looks at comics.


Full article here.

[AcesX1X]

what the heck is this? damage control?

[Matt D]

I was 12-13 in 1994 and I was horrified by the idea. I was in a club in Junior High on Prodigy called X-Clusive where you had to pass a trivia quiz to get in. This was an unbreakable text of my youth. I got over it, obviously.

It wasn't until Morrison and the Quesada/Jemas era where I really broke my deeply emotional ties to comics and started to appreciate them more as stories and objects created by writers and artists instead of just some sort of canonical mythology where the facts were more important than the quality.

It took me a long time to get there, so I'm at least a little sympathetic when I see others who never quite made it.

[penthotal]

what the heck is this? damage control?

Can't say isn't needed, at least of the emotional stability of lot of fans, that go crazy, once or twice a month, for things that are undone before they even manage to calm down

[FlawedCoil82]

I had much the same reaction as the author (and I too did not know at the time that it was only intended as a 4 month ordeal). But I am not as accepting as he was as quite frankly, for me, the X-Men never fully recovered after AOA. I hated AOA because it REPLACED the main dish I loved. I am only interested in trying "new flavors" if I am not having my main dish (90s X-Men) taken away to try them. As long as I am getting the team I love then I am happy to give other X-books a try, which SECRET WARS has been great for. If the 90s X-Men had not been sacrificed in favor of the AOA versions and instead been released alongside of them as alternate books, I would have had no problem with AOA. But I am someone who knows exactly what I want/need and if I am forced to lose and give that up in favor of changes or replacements, etc. then I will have a bitter resistance towards it.

[twiztor]

i had a much different reaction. i would've been 12ish when the whole AoA storyline happened. i was a huge fan of the 90s cartoon, and was aware of the comics, but had only read maybe a dozen. i had a book that talked all about the x-men, their enemies, all that jazz, and had read it front-to-back hundreds of times.
then i entered a comic book shop. i was mainly looking for 'death of superman' stuff since i was shocked that could've happened (despite being a few years earlier). i saw an Age of Apocalypse trading card that had a checklist on the back of all the new titles, and was ENAMORED. Wolverine only has one hand?!?! this i had to read, and i spent every moment searching for whatever info i could get my hands on.
you could honestly say that AoA is what converted me into a comics reading fan. it will always hold a special place in my heart.

[MarvelMaster616]

Great article. Age of Apocalypse truly was a landmark moment for the X-men. It took place during the apex of the X-men's popularity in the 90s. It effectively created a new world built around the X-men and their greatest enemy. In many respects, it was right up there with Secret Wars in terms of scope, scale, and impact. Even today, it still has a major impact in terms of the legacy it left behind. We're seeing that right now with Secret Wars. And I imagine we'll see others like it down the line.

Now as a whole, I didn't think Age of Apocalypse was the best X-men story. I'm probably in the minority here, but I actually enjoyed the Onslaught Saga more than I did AOA. That's just my own personal preference. But I still appreciate the impact that AOA had on X-men and comics as a whole.

[Ricochet Rita]

I quit X-universe at AoA. Nevertheless, the reason was not mainly the breakdown with the 'old', but my absolute lack of interest about the storyline and my absolute rejection to the esthetic style (to put it somehow...). Actually, I had quitting step by step the X-titles I followed (TNM, X-Men, Excalibur...) 'cause they were disappointing me more and more. I started Generation-X because it seemed something new and fresh, and I kept on it mainly thanks to Bachalo (I can't stand Lobdell's blather), but when AoA came... It simply was enouth for me :/ .

[DaddyX]

BRETT, I love every article you write, but these where you reference Nashville make me smile so hard!! We could have been childhood friends, but for the chance of being x amount of miles apart. I very well could have been at Rivergate that day. jajaja

[mrPizza]

AoA annoyed me. Too many titles to collect. 9 issue arcs were expensive enough for me as I had only intended to buy Uncanny on a regular basis.

[ospfwildcard]

I guess you can say I was on the total other side of the specturm. I had been collecting x-men for almost ten years prior to AoA. I thought it was a ballsy move and looked forward to the event. I appear to be older than brett so i clearly made more money it was nothing to buy all the issues. it did help i actually worked at comic book store where 50% off for employees was not unheard of. I still don't get the facination for the character Blink but I get different strokes different folks as they say. my fondest memory was wolvie popping his claw that was hidden in his stump.

personally AoA was much better than the prior summer cross-overs like x-ecutioner song, acts of vengeance and inferno or fatal attractions that preceded it years before. Only fatal attractions holds a candle to AoA simply because of the significance and setup to onslaught and wolvie losing his adamantium and his nose.