What's the biggest change in opinion you've had upon re-reading a comic?

[Brian Cronin]

Sometimes, when you re-read a comic after a few years, your opinion changes from what you thought at the time.

A lot of the time, it's "Oh man, I liked that? It is do dated now!"

Other times, though, you might have taken a story for granted at the time, but now, it reads better than you remembered.

Have you any notable examples of this phenomenon (either one, change for the better or change for the worse)?

-Brian

[Aaron King]

I can sum this up in one sentence:

For it's first four years, I bought X-Force every month.

(Which means I liked it, and now I can't even get through one issue.)

[Expletive Deleted]

I cringe at a lot of the stuff I read as a teenager.

In terms of books that've grown on me over time . . . I don't know if I necessarily like LONE WOLF & CUB more on the reread (I liked it a lot the first time around), but I think I appreciate it more. If that makes any sense. And I've gone back and forth on DC's sillier silver age books. I loved 'em as a kid, hated 'em as (you guessed it) a teen, and now I'm back on the love side of the fence.

[Tony Bang]

I hated The Dark Knight Strikes Again the first go-round, but I read it a couple of months ago and changed my mind.

I remember loving Jeffrey Brown's Clumsy but on a second read I found it boring.

[Reptisaurus!]

Errrmm... Honestly, about 85% of all superhero comics read better when I was eight.

I liked Fun Home A LOT better on my second read.

[yo go re]

I wanted to like Dark Knight Strikes Again the first time I read it. It didn't quite turn out that way, though. Bit further into the "hated it" camp. I just re-read it over the weekend, and merely found it terrible and childish.

And yes, that really is a change. I appreciated the story more, but my estimation of the art went down. Not way down, but down enough...

--yo
three snaps in Z formation

[dancj]

I find it hard to read most older comics these days. These recent years of decompression (which is a good thing when done right - not to be confused with padding) have lead me to expect stories to flow in a way that very few comics more than about 20 years old do.

The only specific example I can think of is Crisis on Infinite Earths. I still resapect it for what it is, but I really didn't enjoy it the last time I read it.

Dan

[Sean Walsh]

1990's X-MEN. That's when I first got into comics besides GI JOE. Good lord, I can't believe that's how I ventured out into the mainstream comics world....

A lot of Mike Barr's OUTSIDERS comics didn't hold up well over time. Volume 1 still works, but 2 and 3 did not. In fact.......I dare say a lot of Cold War 80's stuff probably doesn't anymore.


I can sum this up in one sentence:

For it's first four years, I bought X-Force every month.

(Which means I liked it, and now I can't even get through one issue.)

Hey, it had Greg Capullo art longer than it had Rob Liefeld art.

And this is pre-Spawn Capullo.....the extra good stuff.

[Agent Helix]

Preacher, I think. I really enjoyed reading it, and thought it was great, the first time I went through all the trades. Recently, I reread it, and I found myself skipping a lot of it, and I found the thematic elements of the book kind of crumbling away given any serious thought about the work. I still enjoyed it, but my opinion of it as a work as a whole was seriously lessened.

[Crash-Man]

Kingdom Come really wasn't all that great the second time around.

[BizarroBeachHead]

I really really really didn't like Grant Morrison's New X-men when it first came out. I had stopped reading comics around the whole Onslaught/Clone Saga/Hero's reborn era and was recently getting back into them when Grant was announced to be on the title. I was pretty excited, because it would be a great chance for me to get reaquainted with the title. I had never read Morrison before, so I didn't really know what to expect. After about seven issues, I just couldn't keep reading. Looking back, I can't even tell you what I disliked about it. That particular period was sort of a coming of age thing for me, I was venturing out into indie books and leaving the mainstays behind. Eventually, after aquainting myself with Invisibles and other works of Morrsion, I gave New X-Men a second shot and now I absolutely love it.

[Greg Hatcher]

Essentially the opposite reaction to the 'decompression' thing Dan mentioned. I look at 70's books and I'm much more appreciative of how tightly crafted they are, how even books from a long arc are more self-contained than today, setting up characters and conflict and getting everyone caught up to speed by the end of page two. I also prefer the density of storytelling style, of getting more on a page.

But those are general things. Specifically, I find I'm much more interested in the non-superhero books from that time now than I was then. I never would have given Jonah Hex or the Haunted Tank a second look in the 70's. But I snapped those new Showcases up the second they hit the stands and enjoyed them more than anything new I bought that month.

[glue]

Couldn't stand WATCHMEN the first time I tried to read it. It's still nowhere near my favorite comic written, but I do enjoy it.

On the other side of things, I loved Ostrander's MARTIAN MANHUNTER, but I recently went back and started re-reading it with plans of buying the issues I was still missing. I'll probably still finish the run at some point, but I'm in no hurry.

[Shadow ES]

I enjoyed UXM quite a bit when it first came out, but now if I try to reread them, it's a chore to make it through a whole volume.

I loved the death of superman story when I was younger, but now I think it's kinda boring.

[Reptisaurus!]

Preacher, I think. I really enjoyed reading it, and thought it was great, the first time I went through all the trades. Recently, I reread it, and I found myself skipping a lot of it, and I found the thematic elements of the book kind of crumbling away given any serious thought about the work. I still enjoyed it, but my opinion of it as a work as a whole was seriously lessened.

I see what you mean. Preacher doesn't really work on that kind of literary-ish level. And I think it's overall inferior to the Ennis stuff that DOES; Unknown Soldier, the end of Fury, Born....

[stealthwise]

The more I read BKV's stuff, the more I appreciate what he does.

Runaways, Ultimate X-Men, Pride of Baghdad, Y the Last Man, Ex Machina, Spiderman/Doc Ock...

[Gingold]

While I appreciated his drawing, I intially thought Dan Clowes's work was just a bunch of hipster whining. The more I re-read his stuff, I realized there was a lot more to it than that.

I thought the Killing Joke was the best Batman story ever at one point. I really like Bolland's art still, but I think it's the worst thing Moore's ever done. Just nasty and dark for the sake of being nasty and dark.

[Reptisaurus!]

The more I read BKV's stuff, the more I appreciate what he does.

Runaways, Ultimate X-Men, Pride of Baghdad, Y the Last Man, Ex Machina, Spiderman/Doc Ock...

Really? Total opposite here. Pride of Baghdad was good. Hope he keeps doin' stories of that length. I can't work around the obvious not-quite-all-there-ness of the narrative structure in his longer works.

(Except for Runaways. Which was great.)



I thought the Killing Joke was the best Batman story ever at one point. I really like Bolland's art still, but I think it's the worst thing Moore's ever done. Just nasty and dark for the sake of being nasty and dark.


I'd agree with worst of Moore's major works. (I still kinda like it, though. It's well plotted and developed nasty and dark with STYLE.) But Moore had a lotta crap when he was workin' with Image. I strongly reccomend never reading that Voodoo miniseries, ferinstance.

[suedenim]

Essentially the opposite reaction to the 'decompression' thing Dan mentioned. I look at 70's books and I'm much more appreciative of how tightly crafted they are, how even books from a long arc are more self-contained than today, setting up characters and conflict and getting everyone caught up to speed by the end of page two. I also prefer the density of storytelling style, of getting more on a page.

But those are general things. Specifically, I find I'm much more interested in the non-superhero books from that time now than I was then. I never would have given Jonah Hex or the Haunted Tank a second look in the 70's. But I snapped those new Showcases up the second they hit the stands and enjoyed them more than anything new I bought that month.

Comics from back then pretty much *all* had a default level of basic craftsmanship that you very well might not find today. For example, you would never, ever see a "team-up" that didn't introduce all the new characters by name and give you a short explanation of who they are and what they can do. But this week's Supergirl, to take just a fresh-in-memory example, seems to assume every reader is intimately familiar with the current lineup of The Outsiders. I think half of them are never even called by name during the story.

[dancj]

But this week's Supergirl, to take just a fresh-in-memory example, seems to assume every reader is intimately familiar with the current lineup of The Outsiders. I think half of them are never even called by name during the story.
I haven't read that Supergirl, but as a rule I prefer the new way. If I don't need to know the names of individual members of The Outsiders, then don't slow down the story to tell me them

[riftt]

this is kind of a sad example, but: The X-tinction Agenda.

When I was young I thought this was the holy grail of crossovers, the most awesome of awesome x-men yarns ever.

Picking it up two years ago and re-reading it I was mortified in regard to how horrible the art was, how bad the dialogue was with a completely corny storyline. Reading them back-to-back it actually made Xecutioner's Song good.

[stealthwise]

Really? Total opposite here. Pride of Baghdad was good. Hope he keeps doin' stories of that length. I can't work around the obvious not-quite-all-there-ness of the narrative structure in his longer works.

(Except for Runaways. Which was great.)

Even Ex Machina? Because that series is frigging brilliant. I understand your complaints about Y, even though I dig that series about 95% of the time, but Ex Machina is just bloody great.

[Dan Apodaca]

I must have been really high or something, I dunno. But when I read the first issue of The Brotherhood the first time, I thought it was the most exciting, bad-ass shit to go down in the Marvel universe in decades.

I bought the next issue and it stank to high heaven. So, I went back and re-read the first one. I thought someone must have switched it out for the comic I loved, 'cause this was clearly a piece of shit.

No, turns out I just managed to miss the stink somehow, the first time around.

[BizarroBeachHead]

I must have been really high or something, I dunno. But when I read the first issue of The Brotherhood the first time, I thought it was the most exciting, bad-ass shit to go down in the Marvel universe in decades.

Hmmmm, I did the same thing, except that I never got the second issue. I was looking through my random comics the other month, debating whether or not I should hunt down back issues and I couldn't believe how bad it was. I can't even understand why I bought it in the first place. Guess I dodged a bullet there!

[TheLazy]

I don't know if this contributes to the thread properly, but I can't seem to re-read things. Once I know the narrative conclusion its like a chore to re-live the process. Im the same with movies and books, and once I've heard a song enough times, the same with music.

A good example would be Infinity Gauntlet. I've tried to re-read it on several occassions, due to the fact that I was just getting into comics when I read it I didn't get half the refferences and knew of even fewer characters. But when I try to read it I end up forcing my self to skip to the end.

Does anyone else get this?:confused:

It's a shame because I read Sandman up until Fables and reflections, then I stopped reading for some reason and picked up about six months later, but I couldn't seem to get myself to go back and refresh my memory on the earlier trades before continuing with the series.

[Nitz the Bloody]

I see what you mean. Preacher doesn't really work on that kind of literary-ish level. And I think it's overall inferior to the Ennis stuff that DOES; Unknown Soldier, the end of Fury, Born....

I'd be curious to know why you think that, because I think that Preacher works very well on a literary level-- there's a lot of depth and weight to the characters and issues discussed admist the plunges into sick humor.

As for stories I've changed my opinion on, put Ultimate X-Men by Mark Millar and the Kuberts in that category; I thought the issues were total crap when I first read them as a 15-year-old fanboy punk, but after a closer look, considered them to be pretty good ( and still do ).

[Reptisaurus!]

I'd be curious to know why you think that, because I think that Preacher works very well on a literary level-- there's a lot of depth and weight to the characters and issues discussed admist the plunges into sick humor.


Specific examples? There was some solid characterization, (And the occasional sequence where the PACING floored we with it's execution) but the theologic core of Preacher reads t'me, like, "I dropped out of Catholic School in eight grade. I'm still pissed, and still Thinking about religion on as an annoyed eight grader. God is teh Suxxxors! Do you hear that father Jimmy? SUXXORS! Also Ass, poot, bum."

Compare that to the end of Fury, where Ennis is dealin' with really important, really BIG questions; How we define our own personal identity and how we're unable to discard our ideas about ourselves, even when those ideas can get us killed. Heavy shit. Much more intelligent and better thought out than anything in Preacher.

[Nitz the Bloody]

Specific examples? There was some solid characterization, (And the occasional sequence where the PACING floored we with it's execution) but the theologic core of Preacher reads t'me, like, "I dropped out of Catholic School in eight grade. I'm still pissed, and still Thinking about religion on as an annoyed eight grader. God is teh Suxxxors! Do you hear that father Jimmy? SUXXORS! Also Ass, poot, bum."


With al due respect, that's not a specific example. I felt that Preacher had a lot of nuance in its handling of God-- the portrayal of God wasn't as an outright villain, but a rather pathetic figure, a needy little man desperately seeking approval and doing whatever it takes to get it. The set-up in the second book where God lets Tulip die then ressurects her to prove a point is the first indication of this; he wants Jesse and Genesis to love him, but goes about it the complete wrong way ( creating a life-and-death scenario for the cast and then " saving " them, a faulty redemption method also used by Yellowjacket and Astro City's El Hombre ).

My one complaint about Preacher is that we didn't see enough of God, as Ennis and Dillon spent more time on the characters themselves ( though given how masterfully he did that, it's hard to fault him for it ). But what we did see of the Preacher God was very interesting, and a far cry from an angsty teenager's anti-religious rantings.

[Reptisaurus!]

It all just strikes me as being really, REALLY angry. And not all that well thought out... Just another one note joke, like, well MOST of the characters in Preacher.

In fact, I can't think of any characters 'cept for the main three who can't be (A) either summed up in either one or two character traits, or (B) can be completely summed up in one or two character traits plus one specific character trait intended for shock value or (C) were just there to hork the plot along. Like God. "God's a pussy." That's his whole character. There's no character development of added nuance provided after you figure that out. It's a character that you understand completely behaving in an expected way throughout the rest of his appearances.

I guess I can kinda see the Loony Tunes style appeal of that, but it just wasn't manic or clever enough to hold my attention.

And, like I said, this wasn't true of the three leads. But stickin' three round characters in a world full of cardboard cut-outs really hurt the consistency of the world and flat-out yanked me outta the story.

Reads other thread: Although the ending WAS really good. I'd forgotten that.

[Nitz the Bloody]

It all just strikes me as being really, REALLY angry. And not all that well thought out... Just another one note joke, like, well MOST of the characters in Preacher.

In fact, I can't think of any characters 'cept for the main three who can't be (A) either summed up in either one or two character traits, or (B) can be completely summed up in one or two character traits plus one specific character trait intended for shock value or (C) were just there to hork the plot along. Like God. "God's a pussy." That's his whole character. There's no character development of added nuance provided after you figure that out. It's a character that you understand completely behaving in an expected way throughout the rest of his appearances.

I guess I can kinda see the Loony Tunes style appeal of that, but it just wasn't manic or clever enough to hold my attention.

And, like I said, this wasn't true of the three leads. But stickin' three round characters in a world full of cardboard cut-outs really hurt the consistency of the world and flat-out yanked me outta the story.

Reads other thread: Although the ending WAS really good. I'd forgotten that.

Forgive me if I sound a bit agitated in this thread, but Preacher is pretty close to me because it was the first Vertigo, nay, first non-superhero comic book series I followed with any regularity. Maybe it's nostalgia, but I credit the work of Ennis and Dillon as what opened me up as a reader, writer, and thinker to a whole realm of new possibilities in comics. It's still my favorite comic to this day; I've read works that are more sophisticated, but none that hit all the right notes of both entertainment and ideology. ( Though Transmetropolitan and the Grant Morrison X-Men come very close ).

But even though the supporting characters ( i.e. those who aren't Jesse, Tulip, or Cassidy ) behave according to type, a lot of nuance was added to their rules. The second trio of important characters-- The Saint of Killers, Arseface, and Herr Starr-- were all great characters, especially in their tie-in one-shots. They have their specific roles ( serious villain, comedy sidekick, comedy villain ), but behind them is a lot of depth honed by the pain all three have been through; the Saint as a good family man before becoming the Angel of Death, Arseface's time as a kid living under an abusive father, and Starr's childhood trauma and cynicism. A lot of little details were added to the characters, and not just shock traits ( like Starr's increasing sexual deviance as he gets raped and mutilated more and more ). I could say the same for supporting characters like Amy, Hoover, Featherstone, Jesse's mother, etc. as well as minor villains like the Good Ol' Boys and Allfather D'Aronique. They all seemed like deep people despite the absurdity of their worlds.

Yes their personalities can be summed up in a few traits, but you can do that for a lot of characters ( Romeo and Juliet= angsty, passionate teenagers, Willy Loman= depressed failiure, etc. ). What matters is that they were written with a lot of care despite their specific roles, and felt real, even if they weren't.

[Reptisaurus!]

Forgive me if I sound a bit agitated in this thread, but Preacher is pretty close to me because it was the first Vertigo, nay, first non-superhero comic book series I followed with any regularity. Maybe it's nostalgia, but I credit the work of Ennis and Dillon as what opened me up as a reader, writer, and thinker to a whole realm of new possibilities in comics. It's still my favorite comic to this day; I've read works that are more sophisticated, but none that hit all the right notes of both entertainment and ideology. ( Though Transmetropolitan and the Grant Morrison X-Men come very close ).


I don't hate it, certainly. I certainly don't have th' same problems with Preacher that I do with "Y," where I think there are seeeerious problems with the mechanics of story construction.

But I'm not sure what the ideology IS, I guess. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to get out of Preacher.

Here's my major problem; I LIKED the anatomy-of-a-relationship stuff between the big three. I thought everything that related directly back to them and the way their relationships progressed and deteriorated worked very, very, well.

But all that was jammed together with the "Western" part of the story, ending with two "showdowns;" Preacher and Starr in the Valley, and the Saint of Killers and God.

And none of that worked for me.

Some of it's that I didn't think the shock humor was all that funny. The only time I laughed was when the humor worked organincally from the three main characters, not when some ugly dude was fucking a dead cow or at the eighteenth "Your head looks like a PENIS!" joke. (Bum, arse, buggery.)

My absolute favorite scene in the whole series was Tulip, Jessie, and Cassady fightin' over the radio. Laughed OUT LOUD at that, in the middle of the library. Kind of embarassing.

So between the cheap humor and the juvenille theology, the whole Western/fight with God element of the story just lost me. And distracted from the GOOD part of the story.


The second trio of important characters-- The Saint of Killers, Arseface, and Herr Starr-- were all great characters, especially in their tie-in one-shots. They have their specific roles ( serious villain, comedy sidekick, comedy villain ), but behind them is a lot of depth honed by the pain all three have been through; the Saint as a good family man before becoming the Angel of Death, Arseface's time as a kid living under an abusive father,


Yeah, I wasn't thinkin' of either of them, and I'm with you up to there. Both good character, no complaints.

But they're not well rounded characters, as I define 'em. In other words they never surprised me, or did anything I didn't expect them to do.

But most every story has these suplemental characters who reflect the main characters more than serve as fully functional characters on their own, and I thought these two were good. The one-shots added a lot.




and Starr's childhood trauma and cynicism. A lot of little details were added to the characters, and not just shock traits ( like Starr's increasing sexual deviance as he gets raped and mutilated more and more ).


Truth-to-tell, I might have started skipping over the parts with Starr in them as I got increasingly annoyed with 'em.

Just got so sick of jokes I didn't find funny, and tired of bein' distracted from the main plot. So there could be stuff there that I missed.


I could say the same for supporting characters like Amy, Hoover, Featherstone, Jesse's mother, etc. as well as minor villains like the Good Ol' Boys and Allfather D'Aronique. They all seemed like deep people despite the absurdity of their worlds.


Welll... Not to me. I was specifically thinking of Amy when I was writing. She seemed like a pure characterization contrivance to get Tulip to open up. And none of the others felt like people who could really exist to me.

I mean, how d'you figure that Hoover and Featherstone are more than one note jokes? Or that the point of the Allfather was gross-out humor fist, characterization 714th, because obviously everyone associated with God has to be a perverted fuck.

I'm not a Christian. But I think that if you wanna deal with the divine you should put some thought into it. And the God stuff was ALL bum, arse, cunt.



Yes their personalities can be summed up in a few traits, but you can do that for a lot of characters ( Romeo and Juliet= angsty, passionate teenagers, Willy Loman= depressed failiure, etc. ).

I don't buy it for Romeo. Or Juliet, for that matter. Both of 'em surprised me. Even Willy Loman had some depth, and he was kind of an archetype.

Similarly, I don't think that any of the main three in Preacher can be easily or succinctly summed up, and they DID surprise me, and they WERE good characters.

But no one else in the book felt real, and I kept having to read about these characters that I don't like instead of the one's I do and then hey! here's another fucking sodomy joke.

No pun intended.

[shyguy]

I loved Kingdom Come.

When I was 13.

I re-read it recently, and yeesh, that thing is awful. Utterly humorless, it comes across and nothing so much as a bitter Mark Waid and Alex Ross yelling at kids to get off their lawn. The pretentious tone of the narration sounds like something out of an Intro to Creative Writing class.

I've also developed a much deeper appreciation of DC's silver age comics since my "Duhhhhh 60's comics were stooopid!" phase as a teenager. Showcase Presents Metamorpho the Element Man is one of the best collections I've read in a while!

[the film freak]

Kingdom Come is a good example.

A lot of early Image books I used to like I'm trying to get rid (if anyone looking for back issues of pre Warren Ellis Stormwatch send me an e-mail).

I like Jack Kirby and Stan Lee a whole lot more then I used to.

[Babylon23]

There are plenty of books I read when I was young that don't really hold up today, so I'll just stick with the books I didn't like, but can appreciate more now.

I didn't like Morrison's New X-Men to begin with, but I recently gave it a second chance. I brought the first 2 HC's, and I enjoyed them a lot more. Unfortunately, Vol. 3 isn't in print anymore, so I don't know how it ends.

I didn't like X-Treme X-Men to begin with, but reread it in trades and enjoyed it a lot more.

I really hated the second half of Ultimes vol. 1 when I first read it. I re-read it recently, and found that it was solid but unspectacular.

[That JonoGuy]

I remember looking fondly on John Francis Moore's run on X-Force, but when I went to go reread it a few months back I found it to be a bit lacking. I loved the story and direction he took the book, but his dialogue seemed a bit more flat than i had remembered.

[That JonoGuy]

One big noticable change was my opinion on Claremont's return to the X-Men with Revolution. At the time I despised it as everyone else seemed to at the time. Rereading it again, it was quite a good run. A lot better than I had remembered it. I think at the time of the that run I got swept up in the Claremont hate to actually take a good look at the work itself.

[Darrell D.]

When I was a wee lad, I remember reading The New Teen Titans and following the book religiously. I can go back and read it now..love the art, but I find myself somewhat wincing at the dialogue and story at times.

I followed Preacher, mainly because I thought Ennis and Dillon were brilliant on Hellblazer. I still think their Hellblazer run is far and away better than Preacher. Preacher has too much of that stupid nihilistic tone that Quentin Tarantino seemed to have popularized. I know Ennis is a fan of Tarantino, which I find odd, considering Ennis is a far better writer. The series ended well, but the journey is bumpy, and at times not worth the effort. The whole 'Arseface' is a good example of this. A one note joke that wasn't that funny to begin with.

A lot of books from the '70's I remember buying at flea markets and yard sales in the early eighties and LOVING as a kid. Now, not so much. But, I think that has to do with how I have grown, not the books themselves.

[Shellhead]

When I was a wee lad, I remember reading The New Teen Titans and following the book religiously. I can go back and read it now..love the art, but I find myself somewhat wincing at the dialogue and story at times.


It's New Teen Titans for me, too. A couple of years ago, I re-read my fairly complete run of the Wolfman/Perez Teen Titans issues, and it wasn't as good as I remembered. The dialogue was just okay, and the stories were okay, but the characters were often annoying. The Perez artwork still looks good, so maybe I was more into art than writing back then.

[Rob on the Job]

This is going to get me hooted off this board, but I no longer am able to read my volumes of either Transmetroplitan or The Invisibles.

[stealthwise]

This is going to get me hooted off this board, but I no longer am able to read my volumes of either Transmetroplitan or The Invisibles.

Really? It took them a while to get to the damn conclusion, but the first couple of volumes of Transmetropolitan are worth their weight in gold. Such kickass science-fiction.

[Reptisaurus!]

This is going to get me hooted off this board, but I no longer am able to read my volumes of either Transmetroplitan or The Invisibles.

Hmmm. Why?

[Dan Apodaca]

One big noticable change was my opinion on Claremont's return to the X-Men with Revolution. At the time I despised it as everyone else seemed to at the time. Rereading it again, it was quite a good run. A lot better than I had remembered it. I think at the time of the that run I got swept up in the Claremont hate to actually take a good look at the work itself.

Really? 'Cause I just recently looked over that stuff and found it to be just as awful as I had remembered it. So fucking bad.

Ransom Sole? Sketch? The Shockwave Riders as one of the X-Men most dangerous enemies?

The fucking excessive dialogue as narration? It's all so generic and cheap. Bottom-of-the-barrel.

[Karl H]

The AOA. I've recently read all 4 trade volumes after an absence of some years. Whilst conceptually it's good - beyond the initial shock of "Cyclops is a villain... Wolverine's only got one hand...etc" I find it doesn't really work for me. Seems very 90's!!!

But, at least it's edited as a coherent body of work... More than can be said for (cough) Civil War!!!!

[brundlefly]

X-Cutioner's Song. I liked it initially, since it was the first big "crossover event" that I followed after I got back into comics after taking a brief hiatus in my soph and junior years in high school. I thought Stryfe's gloriously melodramatic 'Strike Files' included with every issue were laying the groundwork for him to be revealed as Scott and Maddie's son Nathan and to become the next big A-list villain for the X-Men, so I thought it was going to be a significant event. Even with the anticlimactic ending (nothing is clearly answered, plus characters seemingly die in the climax but then all return fairly soon after), I thought it was pretty good at the time. Reread it in TPB form later, though, and it might be that the cop-out of Cable being Nathan and Stryfe being just his "evil clone" made it all seem pointless, but I didn't enjoy it as much. It just seemed disjointed, the changes in art/writing style with each issue making the flow of the story erratic, and the whole thing after Xavier gets shot at the beginning follows a simple action movie "chase/pursuit, then fight scene, then take a time-out, then repeat" format that only leads to said anticlimactic finale. Eh, might just be my perspective at the time that made me even enjoy it in the first place, as subsequent crossovers were a lot worse, but I went into those assuming up front that they would be underwhelming.