When I was a kid I read comics constantly. For a while I was completely stuck on Darkhawk, although I can't figure out why. After that I was into the New Warriors and Ghost Rider (the Dan Ketch version) and Venom (once he started being a good guy). I wasn't really a collector at that point, those were just the comics I bought when I had the moneys for it. Eventually I came to X-Men. It's not like I didn't know about them. I had all the comic cards so I knew of them, I just didn't exhaustively follow them.

What did it for me was Bishop. I don't know why but I thought the guy was so cool and Whilce Portacio's art was so awesome and Jim Lee was working on the Blue team and all of a sudden I was in love with the X-Men. Now I still didn't have a lot of money so I was constantly struggling to to keep up with current issues, which meant back issues were a pipedream. I learned a lot from context clues, but there was a ton I didn't know or understand. Everything about Madelyne Pryor and Jean Grey dying (the first time) and obtaining her Phoenix powers was a little confusing. Mister Sinister and Genosha and a secret base in Australia and Gambit joining the team and Storm being a young girl and various bits about Magneto (like getting turned into a baby??) were all parts I missed and had trouble picking up on. Back then there was no Wikipedia or ComicVine so I was left to figure it out on my own, needless to say I didn't figure out much.

Eventually I grew up a little bit and got tired of comics. I remember the Joe Mad era in Uncanny, but backed off right after Onslaught. I had some friends that still collected so whenever I saw them I could dive back in and see what's happening now, but I was never getting a very comprehensive picture. For years that was enough for me but I recently realized I wanted to get back into comics, X-Men specifically, and I decided that if I did I would do it right and start from the beginning. No more secrets. No more confusion. No more wondering what event or past relationship so-and-so character was referring to. I'd get everything cleared up simply by starting from the beginning.

So I got on my favorite bittorrent site and downloaded X-Men chronology packs that come with all the issues in order, sorted by story*. Now this isn't strictly an X-Men chronology, it's an X-books chronology so it's got all the other X-teams and related comics that feature X-Men in them.

*I didn't really steal all those old comics like I just said I did. That's illegal and I would never do that. Dear Marvel, you guys should totally put your back catalog online for free. Obviously new issues shouldn't be in there, but I would think anything over five years old isn't selling so good anymore. Just a thought. Maybe even charge an extremely discounted subscription to all of it and make some dough off of it instead of forcing people (not me, though) to torrent it.

What I didn't realize is that there's a lot of books to make it up to what I last remembered, but even more to bring up to 2012. What I'm saying is that this is going to be a ridiculously long project and why not have some fun with it and blog a little while I'm at it.

Now to be perfectly honest with you, I've already started. In fact, I'm about 180 issues into Uncanny already. No big deal though because my next blog post is going to recap as much of what's already happened as I can remember.

Stay tuned.

Also, I'd love to encourage comments from you guys but be careful about posting spoilers please. I don't know how the moderation system works on here. I want to participate in conversations and there's a lot I already know about what's coming ahead, but I don't want story lines ruined for me or anyone else who decides to join me in starting from scratch.

Edit: foul language. Sorry mods and readers.