Where to Start with The X-Men by Jay Edidin Originally appearing in our inaugural Quarterly Almanac, Where to Start with The X-Men is the first in an ongoing series of essays detailing where one can start with any number of SFF/popgeekery topics. For this round, we tapped Jay Edidin of Jay and Miles Xplain The X-Men. Enjoy! MY NAME IS JAY EDIDIN, and I explain the X-Men. Professionally.1 Don’t laugh: it’s a living. Even in the sprawling landscape of superhero comics, the X-Men are notably unwieldy: fifty-three years, thousands of comics, dozens of spinoffs, three animated series, and two cancelled pilots (not to mention the brand-dubious Mutant X). And then there are the movies: once the X-Men’s most accessible point of entry, the feature-film franchise now spans sixteen years, eight installments,2 and a tangle of branching timelines and contradictory continuity that would do the comics proud. Last month,3 the eight chapter of Fox’s X-Men franchise hit the theaters to baffle and bewilder a whole new generation of fans;4 who will then—Xavier willing and the creek don’t rise—find their way back to the still more convoluted world of the comics, where a rival generation of long-term X-Men readers will be waiting […]