I grew up watching the 90s Spider-Man and X-Men animated series. They may well have been my first exposure to the very concept of superheroes. As I recall, however, I was too busy reading Sonic the Hedgehog to be very interested in the comics themselves.

Regardless, as I grew older I remained interested in superhero-related goings-on, and was especially excited when the X-Men and Spider-Man movies came out. Even without reading the comics, through hearsay and the internet, I became fascinated with the way the Marvel universe reacted to current events and evolved over time.

This is kind of a really long way of saying "Though I haven't read them a whole lot, I've always thought comics were cool."

Somehow, last Tuesday, I ventured out and found a comic shop. Now, that's not entirely accurate, I already knew it was there. But I actually went inside with the intention of possibly buying a comic. I looked over the books and was quickly overwhelmed. There was a lot of stuff, Marvel and otherwise, that I'd never heard of, and I knew just enough about alternate-universes to be confused about most of the subtitles. I was drawn to the X-Men books, and knew that Uncanny X-Men was the main storyline, but after I saw the series just called X-Men I had to ask the clerk a question.

Me:"(Some babbling)...Is this Uncanny, or...?"

While I'm still a bit confused about where chronologically "X-Men" actually takes place in the grand scheme of things, I give that guy a gold medal, because he pointed me right where I wanted to be. He explained the changes that were coming up in the way Uncanny was being published, and recommended I pick up what they had of Schism, issues 3 and 4.

They were great. All the familiar characters in a weirdly not-how-I-left-it universe were just awesome to see. The story drew me in and though I pretty much knew what was going on, I felt the urge to track down Schism 1 and 2 as well. Cue an extraordinarily fun hunt which took me to another very cool but somewhat distant comic shop, and I decided this was something I'd like to keep doing for a while. I want to keep dropping by comic shops and seeing what's new. I'm excited for the upcoming changes to the X-Men. I'm excited to have at least half a clue what's going on with them.

And after a long time of occasionally glancing this way from the sidelines over at Giant Bomb, I'm excited to delve into Comic Vine.

@Renchamp: Haha! And then she would proceed to read them all and tell me I was the best husband ever...right?

Thanks for the welcome!

I'm glad someone's enjoying Schism. Hell, if it gets more people reading comics, why the hell not?

The irritating thing about the world of comics is that after a while it tends to become a really expensive hobby. Public libraries tend to have a surprising amount of comics on hand, so that's a nice place to start, but it takes forever for them to get new stuff in. Either way, there's a lot of stuff to read through- the X-men have been around since the sixties, after all- and it's kind of overwhelming at first, so starting off with reading the new series that are coming out is definitely a good idea.

@Squares: I've noticed that even those $2.99 books can cause the overall price to sneak up on you pretty quickly, so I've been spending some time figuring out what exactly I want to read. That alone is proving expensive enough for me now but I can see how once I really get into it, it could be tempting to pick up some back issues or trades for those "legendary" story arcs.

And hey, I read your Schism 4 review; it was cool to see it from the perspective of somebody who's been reading for a while. Are you still planning on reading any of the new X-books/series or do you think it's all going downhill after Schism?

@truespark: Sometimes with older issues you can pick them up on sale for a pretty reasonable price. I picked up most of Phoenix Warsong for twenty five cents an issue a little while back.

Yeah, it might go downhill after Schism, but I'll be reading it irregardless.

Welcome to the site and to comics!!!

@blur1528: Thank you, sir! I've been enjoying the ride!