Hey everyone.  This is Jon Wilson from Amazing Spider-Man Classics.  One of the things that I wanted to do, when I was playing around with the idea of a Spider-Man podcast, was an X-Men podcast that would be like a sister show.  The two would follow each other along and keep pace chronologically with one another.  But the sad truth is I just don't have the time or energy to manage a group for such a feat.  And I'm not sure how successful I would be as a solo podcaster.  (You should hear my early attempts at solo Spidey and X-Men shows back before ASM Classics got up and going.  And by should, I mean shouldn't.)

But I thought, hey, maybe I don't have to do audio.  Maybe I can do a text blog instead.  Actually, I literally had this idea two minutes ago, opened a window, and started typing.

So the first thing to say is why?  Why is doing an X-Men journey so important to me, and why is it lumped in my head together with Spider-Man?  Well, probably the easy answer is that I was a child of the early 90s.  And that meant some really good (imo) animated series for both Spider-Man and the X-Men.  When that opening music came on, I knew I was in for some good times.  And though I probably had vague notions in my head of who and what the X-Men were before that cartoon, it was that series that cemented the concept in my brain.

Interestingly, I never followed X-Men comics as a kid.  I always felt like there were so many books with so much back story that I didn't feel confident jumping in.  You had Wolverine with his Weapon X story, with the goggle helmet and all the wires plugging into him.  You had Cyclops and Jean and the Dark Phoenix story.  Angel and Archangel.  And the list goes on.  These characters have gone on so many journeys over the years, and even now, I'm only just getting to know some of those stories.  Since getting back into comics a couple years ago, I've been trying to read every Spider-Man and X-Men book from the beginning.  And since I've been reading lots of other books along the way, I've so far only managed to make it to 1981.  On the one hand, that's almost 20 years of comics.  On the other hand, I wish I'd gotten farther by now.  Especially for the X-Men.  Since the X-Men we know and love today didn't really have their genesis until 1975, I haven't actually read that much.  (As opposed to Spider-Man, where I feel like I've already seen at LEAST a couple major eras for the character and am coming up on something of a second golden age for him with the 80s.)

So yeah, I want to give the X-Men the same treatment I'm giving Spider-Man, but sadly I don't have the resources to do it.  So I'm gonna try to do a second best thing with this blog.  I feel I express myself better in text anyway.  Unfortunately, I'm starting out behind.  I wish I'd had this idea back around episode three of the show.  So, give me a little wiggle room for catch-up, and then I'm going to do my best to have X-Men blog posts published around the same time as the Spider-Man books that were published at the same time.  So we can see how the characters developed at the same pace.

Some of you may want to read the books before I blog, so I'll always try to let you know what I'll be discussing next time.  And of course, this one's a no-brainer.  First book up is The X-Men 1.  See you soon.