I confess... I sortof glossed over my first experience with a backup story. It's true. I didn't read what I'm sure were great stories in the Batman: Black & White backups of a few years ago. I didn't really follow Josie Mac's backups... in fact, if it was a backup in one of the Bat-books at DC, I ignored it for a long time. I was reading the books for the main story, right?And, gentle reader, this is where I pay for my errors in judgement.
When I first started getting into comics about seven or eight years ago, I burned myself out fast on X-Men titles. I bought almost anything with the letter 'X' in the title, convincing myself it was a mark of quality. Poor deluded fool that I was. So to this day, I'm still not usually keen on the X-Books. There have been gems, like New X-Men: Academy X... then they stripped all of the charm from the book, injected a female Wolverine clone, making the book (now just 'New X-Men') dead to me, for all intents and purposes.
Which is why I feel rather disturbed that I purchased it this week for the first time in 18 months.
Why would I knowingly purchase a title that I know is nowhere near something I would enjoy? Because the Endangered Species backup story has me hooked.
I'd stopped buying 'adjectiveless' X-Men a year ago, mostly because Chris Bachalo's art made my eyes want to bleed. (Hey, personal taste here. I'm not trying to say his art is bad, just that I don't care for it. What do I know, I liked Kia Asamiya's 'manga-ized' art.) I bought #200 because it seemed that the comics world would come to an end unless every comic book reader bought it. The issue was alright, and the art wasn't quite so bad as I remembered back in #188 but the part that stood out the most for me was the backup story with Beast. The next two parts were in titles I was already subscribed to, Uncanny X-Men, and X-Factor so I got those auto-magically. But now it seems I'm going to be roped into continuing to purchase X-Men. I don't mind that one so much... but I feel dirty, or guilty for having purchased New X-Men.
Maybe next time around I'll remember just to ignore the main story and go straight for the backup. That is, unless Endangered Species gets a lot worse than it looks like it will.
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2 comments:
I seem to recall the Jacobian backup circa Detective 750 was pretty good. Might be worth checking out.
-phillip
I've got Detective #750 - 755, so maybe I'll have to dig them out. I've been meaning to go back and re-read that general area in Detective anyway. I loved the art style, and that was the story that introduced Whisper A'Daire if I recall.
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