If everything plays out according to plan, it's 10:00 AM on May 31st, and I'm reading the Uncanny X-Men Omnibus Volume 1, with a Firefox window open on the browser, preparing to update whomever has taken some summer weekend time to read my thoughts/reviews/complaints/missives on this, Oh Holiest Of Holies, incredibly long and extraordinarily large volume on mutants, spandex, overly serious meditations on racism, irritable psychopathic Canadians, etc.
Let's go over background information and some of the arbitrary "regle de je," eh?
-This was an impulse purchase made solely on the basis that, when preparing for a gigantic wedding to the woman of your dreams, one feels the need to spend money on something that's totally selfish and completely unnecessary. As soon as this weighty hardcover arrived, all desire to own and or read it completely evaporated.
-The idea to live-blog while reading it came about while in conversation with Matt Brady, the one who doesn't hate cats.
-As much as I like to complain that the X-Men are a bloated, over-published franchise, I've never actually read any of the stories or issues that are ported to be "classics." Except for the final two issues reprinted in this book, which I believe is available in the Dark Phoenix Saga trade paperback, I've never read any of these comics before, and I'm not aware at all what happens in them from any other sources. My dislike for the X-Men solely stems from the arbitrary nature of how people end up reading, and liking, spandex super-hero comics in the first place--my first forays, and eventual dismay and exhaustion with long-running and repetitive super-hero comics was in the DC realm because that was what was immediately and easily available. Recent, vaguely adult based attempts to "explore" the X-universe has resulted in a lack of desire to become enmeshed in the world of a title that has such an extensive backstory: simply put, i'm not interested in doing a bunch of catch-up on a comic book about super-heroes, in hopes that the more recent stories will be more comprehensible and, hopefully, entertaining. I fully acknowledge that this is in a sort of contradiction with the argument that the majority of long-running super-hero comics is repetitive. Basically, the seed was never planted for the X-gang.
-I don't really know what live-blog means. I plan to update this post, all day, every time something comes up that I feel must be recognized, and after, of course, every single issue. I will not stop until I am all the way through to the end. I will read every single one of Chris Claremont's scripts, and will look at every single panel. I will only stop to wallow in the art and moon around like a tour guide if, and only if, the work itself is so striking that it forces me too. I'm not going to magnify glass this thing looking for tiny clues and mild drawing mistakes: if there's glaring shit, I'll probably point it out, but I have no intention to memorize the colors of belt buckles and keep a running total of when the coloring is off. I will, probably, post some updates on what food I'm eating, how much coffee I've drank, whether or not it's cold outside, what the bathroom looks like, how comfortable my chair is, what song is playing, whether I like the song, something about my mother, about how she always told me I was special, more special than anybody else, so special she just had to kiss me on the mouth, and then I will probably do something, or say something, that is really over-the-line, and you'll feel like you did when you found out that your uncle collects troll dolls and writes racist jokes on their bellies with a silver Sharpie.
-Art wise, the reader is going to have to make do with covers of the issues--while this process will certainly take a few hours, scanning in images of panels will take far too much time for it to be enjoyable in any fashion whatsoever. So, covers only, and some of the ones I've found have been less than stellar.
Let's do this thing. You can talk back in the comments of the post following this one. Yes, I'll probably incorporate comments into the posts, especially the ones where you feel the need to tell personal stories about how much the X-Men "meant" to you.
-Tucker Stone, 2008
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