Recently, I did something that I have not done in many, many years.

I bought comic books.

I used to read comics a long time ago. I was always a fan of the X-Men family of books. The biggest problem was that the books got too numerous and convoluted. Uncanny X-Men, X-Men, X-Force, Excalibur, X-Factor, Generation X, X-Man, Wolverine, Cable… when you’re 14, it’s not quite so hard to follow them all and keep things straight, but eventually it seemed like even more books were being added and it just became a whole mess.

Today, it appears a lot less complicated. There seems to be a small core of “main continuity” books and some popular “alternate timeline” books. The most popular of the main timeline books appears to be Astonishing X-Men, written by Firefly creator Joss Whedon. Over the past couple of days, I picked up a paperback book containing Astonishing X-men #1-6 as well as individual issues 9-12 (couldn’t find 7 and 8 ). I also picked up the three Serenity comics that Whedon wrote to bridge the time between the TV series and the movie (though, in reality, it doesn’t focus much on doing so). And a couple of weeks ago, I bought a “Marvel Masterworks” paperback that chronicles the end of the original X-Men team, and the formation of the “newer” squad (Wolverine, Colossus, Storm, etc).

I’m not collecting comics like Derek, but just maybe I’ll find a place for a regular few to read.