I finally got around to bagging all of my old comic books (with acid-free boards, of course), like a good, responsible nerd. I was a big X-Books fan back in high school, so I have a couple of the X-Men #1 variant covers, as well as the final issues of the original New Mutants series and the first few issues of X-Force — and it was interesting to look at many of these comics and consider how much things have changed in recent years.
(I was also a big fan of the various X-artists, like Jim Lee and Whilce Portacio, so I have issues from the earliest Image Comics titles, as well, including WildC.A.T.s, Wetworks, Cyberforce, Deathblow, and Spawn. Gads, it was such a Big Deal when Image Comics launched. What a time to be alive.)
The X-Men and other mutant titles were Marvel’s bread and butter, their most popular titles. But thanks to the MCU, the Avengers have handily eclipsed Marvel’s other teams. And in some cases, that was largely due to Disney/Marvel simply not owning the movie rights to, say, the Fantastic Four. But now that Disney owns 20th Century Fox, that could change quite a bit. (I myself am holding out hope for a proper Silver Surfer movie.)
I also spent the time answering a slew of questions from my kids, including: “That’s Thanos?” “Who’s the Punisher?” “Who’s Nova?” “What’s Deathblow?” And perhaps the most obvious one: “Why do you have so many Silver Surfer comics?”