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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 137329
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| Posted: 18 October 2026 at 5:51pm | IP Logged | 1
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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: 6973
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| Posted: 18 October 2026 at 9:21pm | IP Logged | 2
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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: 476
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| Posted: 18 October 2026 at 9:25pm | IP Logged | 3
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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
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| Posted: 18 October 2026 at 10:08pm | IP Logged | 4
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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
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| Posted: 19 October 2026 at 12:03pm | IP Logged | 5
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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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Joe Smith
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 29 August 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 6796
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| Posted: 19 October 2026 at 2:51pm | IP Logged | 6
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Somehow, when I read ASM 144, it seemed like they were saying what was
going to happen next issue would be of WAY more importance than what
came before.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 137329
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| Posted: 19 October 2026 at 4:50pm | IP Logged | 7
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Too many fans on the pro side. Writing for fans, not readers. Go read how Stan handled it. We’d never see a negative word in the letter columns or, later, his Soapbox. But as the old pros dropped away, we saw more and more pitched directly to the ennui engorged fanboys. The exclusive clubhouse mentality of too many early comic shops. An elitist mentally that actually drove new readers away. And then came the speculators…….
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Tom French
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 07 January 2005
Location: United States
Posts: 4177
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| Posted: 19 October 2026 at 9:37pm | IP Logged | 8
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Small minority and dangerous confession time: I never read your run on X-MEN. I didn't see the light from your star until SUPERMAN and have followed you since.
However, I did collect HIDDEN YEARS and enjoyed it, so I bought ELSEWHEN.
Fair to say, I loved it! Now, do I know all the subtleties and nuances you other readers know, probably not, but I was never confused or lost, or, more importantly, left out, either.
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Eric Jansen
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 27 October 2013
Location: United States
Posts: 2588
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| Posted: 19 October 2026 at 9:52pm | IP Logged | 9
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I don't know. So many of the writers I dislike (or they write things I dislike), I find it hard to believe they were ever fans.
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Michael Penn
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 April 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 13402
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| Posted: 19 October 2026 at 10:08pm | IP Logged | 10
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> I never read your run on X-MEN <
I knew some other comicbook readers back when the run first ran who simply weren't into the X-Men or -- believe it or not -- weren't fans of young JB. Mostly these were DC guys into stuff like Sgt. Rock and Jonah Hex. And when they quit comics, they never read again. (I was like that, myself, the quitting part only, to be precise.)
Were you a DC guy, Tom?
Edited by Michael Penn on 19 October 2026 at 10:11pm
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