No More Invisible Girls

In June of 2006, I went with some friends (two of whom were comic book fangirls) to see X-Men: The Last Stand.  That film, as everyone knows, was terrible, but it did succeed at rekindling my childhood, cartoon-fueled love for the X-Men.  I figured there had to be comics that were better than the movie had been, so I started asking for recommendations.  Back at home, a third friend jumped on board and began to lend me comics, starting with Joss Whedon’s “Gifted” arc of Astonishing X-Men and Chris Claremont’s Dark Phoenix Saga — a.k.a. the two stories that were the basis for X-3.  I loved both, to my surprise (since I’d never been able to get into comics before), and I asked him to lend me some more. 

Over the course of that summer, I read over 300 Marvel comics, including Brian K. Vaughan’s Runaways, Peter David’s X-Factor, Grant Morrison’s run on New X-Men, Brian Michael Bendis’ New Avengers, and Ed Brubaker’s Captain America.  By the next fall, the start of my junior year in college, I found myself with a lengthy pull list and a hungry appetite for comic book storytelling, and I started shifting my academic work toward comics studies.  Five years, one Captain America senior thesis, several grad school papers, and one Marvel internship later, I can’t imagine my life without comics.