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Topic: Fans are spoiled—and not in a good way! Post Reply | Post New Topic
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John Byrne

Grumpy Old Guy

Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 137324
Posted: 18 October 2026 at 5:51pm | IP Logged | 1 post reply
A recurring and depressing theme I am seeing in posts about ELSEWHEN—and this applies generally—is people asking where they should start reading.

My instinct is to say PAGE ONE!! But then I remember shop managers and retailers tellng potential readers that they HAD TO read GENERATIONS before they could read GENERATIONS II , and a concerned father at a con asking what needed to be read before starting NEXT MEN.

We did this to them. Generations (ahem) of readers being trained to believe no one could simply step into our fantasy worlds, as I did with Superman and Batman and the Fantastic Four, and START READING. That copious amounts of “homework” is necessary. I recall an early WHAT IF? where a footnote advised readers to “check out”’a book published in 1940!

Madness.

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Mark Haslett
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 19 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 6972
Posted: 18 October 2026 at 9:21pm | IP Logged | 2 post reply
If Elsewhen was the first X-Men book a person read, it would be a great
place to start! I actually started with a friend’s battered copy of UXM 122
and ran out to get what I could from 7-11– which turned out to be UXM 145
and What if Phoenix Had Not Died. From this weird first encounter, I
became an X-Men fan obsessed with the John Byrne issues. Elsewhen as a
starting point would not really be that different
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Evan S. Kurtz
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 04 July 2022
Location: Canada
Posts: 474
Posted: 18 October 2026 at 9:25pm | IP Logged | 3 post reply
Truth be told, before I read Elsewhen I WANTED to go back and refresh myself on your X-Men run ahead of the divergence. But I think it's critical that you do what you did -- make it unnecessary. It should be a hard rule that comics do that! 
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Petter Myhr Ness
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 02 July 2009
Location: Norway
Posts: 4311
Posted: 18 October 2026 at 10:08pm | IP Logged | 4 post reply
In the early 2000s I became aware of the phrase "Jumping on point" in comics. The publishers advertised this as a good thing.
But that used to be every issue. 
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Darren Taylor
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 22 April 2004
Location: Scotland
Posts: 6099
Posted: 19 October 2026 at 12:03pm | IP Logged | 5 post reply
I subscribe to the "Every comic is someone's first introduction to a title/comic" (Sorry I butchered that - but I am sure you get the reference)

But I do like a special event. Wouldn't it have been cool if the events were the point of inquiry rather than trying to find your way into a regular title? I'm sure that was the function of annuals.

I see a great trend on TikTok and social media where young (twenty-something) readers are getting omnibus' and doing a full read through to better understand where their favourite titles have evolved from. In some cases feeling like the core things they loved about the characters were there, evident from the start.

I love getting to see reactions to some of the comics that influenced me, through the eyes of some of these young comic readers. 
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