If you were worried that my weekly series of X-Men Guide updates would go on hiatus during my Indie Comic Month, have no fear! There’s no higher priority for me at Crushing Comics than getting every one of my X-Guides completely up-to-date! However, it turns out there wasn’t too much to update in this guide, which is for the first era of Uncanny X-Men to be completely collected in color. It’s my guide to Guide to Uncanny X-Men in the 00s – The Trade Paperback Era!
Guide to Uncanny X-Men in the 00s – The Trade Paperback Era
I titled this guide “The Trade Paperback Era” because it picks up Uncanny X-Men in the 00s as Marvel began to transition to the standard practice of issuing trade paperback collections of almost every series as their story arcs completed.
The trade paperback era represents a massive shift in the comic industry. Not only did it change the way comic stories were structured as authors began “writing for trade,” but it created an entirely new market of readers! Readers who might previously drop into a comic store only a few times a year no longer had to suffer for their lack of a pull list. And, whenever a series started to accumulate a critical mass of popularity or acclaim, it could be easily ordered by book stores.
Previously, regular trade paperback releases were mainly reserved for prestigious, adult-oriented series like Sandman, whose readers might never venture out of a bookstore and into a comic shop. A key story arc or crossover from a superhero comic might see trade release, but Marvel and DC weren’t in the practice of collecting every issue of every title.
Suddenly, everything was recollected. [Read more…] about Updated: Guide to Uncanny X-Men in the 00s – The Trade Paperback Era
X-Men (1991) was rechristened New X-Men in 2001 when Grant Morrison took the helm with issue #114, indicating their radical (and sometime controversial) departure from X-Men status quo.