Take a dig around Usenet and you'll find it all. Fan fiction. Song parodies. Arguments about the third Summers brother. Moving eulogies to cancelled books.

That was me.

Oh, sure, today I'm a hugely respectable comics journalist with broad tastes and a healthily irreverent attitude, but once upon a time, I was a fearsome zombie. Once upon a time, I was subscribed to a Rogue mailing list, even though I wasn't really a Rogue fan. Once upon a time, I knew no comics but X-Men comics.

In honour of my misspent youth, today's column is all about x-books. It's an x-travaganza. I'll try to make the experience painless.

WORMS SHALL TRY THAT LONG PRESERVED VIRGINITY

First, some news. Frank Tieri has killed Maggott.

I'll give you a moment to recover from that shock.

All better now? Good.

Maggott, for those of you who don't know, was a member of the X-Men during the Joe Kelly run in the late 90s.He was a bloody stupid character. In a world where character names are regularly mis-spelt, so Siren became Siryn and Havoc became Havok, his ignominious extra 't' was the scarlet letter of disgrace on a character churned out by Scott Lobdell in the dying days of his residency.

It was Kelly, though, who defined Maggott's power - possibly the worst mutant power ever committed to paper. His strange genetic quirk, you see, was that his stomach had been replaced by two sentient matter-eating robot slugs.

Nature in all its infinite glory, I'm sure you'll agree.

Maggott was a terrible character, and he hadn't appeared in years, so Tieri killed him. Poor, naive Frank Tieri. He apparently wasn't prepared for the backlash. In the world of x-fans, even the worst characters are fanatically adored, and the fans feel emphatically that the characters belong to them.

As I've mentioned once or twice before, following a comic - or in this case, a franchise - through both its highs and its lows is a little like supporting a middle-of-the-league sports team. When it's bad, you stick it out through blind loyalty, because you believe they've got the stuff to be truly great. And when it's good, you tell everyone around you, "I told you so". Fans claim ownership of their 'team'. They claim a deeper affinity that overrides any transient notions of quality or worth.

It's very easy to sneer at that level of passion - I've been both sneerer and sneeree in my time - but the attitude isn't as poisonous as some like to believe. Yes, there are those fans whose attitudes haven't evolved much beyond adolescence even into their 30s, but you only ever notice the loonies. You don't see all the ones successfully reintegrated into society. I'm one of them, though, and I know the others. They're the majority, and they made it through.

X-books are as good an avenue for adolescent tribal attachments as any other, and they're a perfectly sound starting point for any comic reading habit. If you believe in the value of comics, then people who actually buy the things shouldn't be the targets of your objection.

That said, if you are reading x-books, you should probably stop.

And if you aren't reading them, you should probably start.

Allow me to explain.

GENETIC DEAD END

The curse of x-fans is that they've had a completionist impulse bred in to them by Marvel marketing ploys; crossovers, spin-offs and guest appearances galore. It's been noted that UNCANNY X-MEN will sell no matter who's writing it, and that's because x-fans are frighteningly loyal to the characters, not the creators.

They can hate a creator with a passion and wish him all kinds of painful deaths, and they'll still read his books because they see themselves as the intellectual guardians of the characters. So they'll support financially the continued existence of something they actively despise.

In order to become those healthy, integrated comic readers, and not turn into those scary, manchild comic readers, x-fans must at some point break the chain.

Stopping outright and going cold turkey is too much to ask for most fans. Lord knows I'm still reading several x-books, but I am only reading the ones I enjoy. An important step in my journey from hardcore X-MEN fanboy to renowned and respected comics journalist (ahem) was the day I decided to skip just one issue of just one book.

Once a month had passed, and the 'collection' had been rendered imperfect, I was a whole new reader. I was free to explore my options. I was free to make a judgement on which books deserved support and which did not. I was free to spend my pocket change on books that didn't even have an X in the title, and I've never looked back. Readers of CEREBUS, or of certain Vertigo books, could benefit from taking similar stands.

I must confess, incidentally, that I had a little morphine to wean me off the heroin. Kicking my addiction to X was made easier by a subscription to Ninth Art columnist Paul O'Brien's review column The X-Axis (long before he became a Ninth Art columnist). Paul's uncompromising assessment of the entire x-books line was enough to reassure me that I really wasn't missing anything. It's a nicotine patch for fans.

MUTANT PHOBIA

There was a time when trying to get a person to read x-books was morally equivalent to selling crack to schoolkids, sucking them in to an addictive, expensive world that would screw them up and spit them out. And at least cocaine never needed Cliffs Notes to be considered worth the effort.

These days, though, it's a coward who won't give an x-book a chance just because it's an x-book (though there will always be those who will happily dismiss all superhero books on spec).

There's at least one x-book out there that can stand shoulder to shoulder with the best comics on the market today; Peter Milligan and Mike Allred's X-STATIX (formerly X-FORCE).

X-STATIX is a subversion of serial drama and a satire on celebrity culture, wrapped up in superhero yarns that work surprisingly well even on a straightforward level. Though it plays off x-books culture to a certain extent, and indulges in soap opera plotting to a much greater extent, X-STATIX is at least as cynical about these things as the genre's staunchest critics.

As far as traditionalists are concerned, it's the anti-x-book, as shown by the unrelenting flow of complaints in the letters column, usually reading, 'I hate what you've done to my comic. I've been reading it for a year now, and it isn't getting any better'. The letters are dutifully printed every month, probably because they speak so strongly in the book's favour.

And there are other x-books with broad appeal. The most obvious is Grant Morrison's NEW X-MEN, which, when privileged enough to garner its artist's attention, is superb entertainment, showcasing Morrison's ability to truly excel in the comics mainstream. Books like AGENT X and SOLDIER X deserved to find their audience outside the x-books faithful, but they've been cancelled (oh, sorry, they've been handed to new creative teams) precisely because that audience wasn't willing to give x-books a chance. And as unlikely as it seems, even WOLVERINE may soon become an essential read when Greg Rucka takes over, given the writer's gift for humanity, power plays and violence.

So be brave. Pick up an x-book today. Just because it's not a fringe publication with terrible sales figures doesn't mean you won't enjoy it.

THE OLD MASTER

I can't write about the x-books without mentioning Chris Claremont.

Chris Claremont really was a remarkable writer in his day. Though flowery, verbose, and excessively prone to stylistic tics, he was an inventive, empathic craftsman. Tell people that today, and they often don't believe you, for two very good reasons.

Firstly, the sort of complex extended soap opera plotting at which he excelled is very much out of vogue in this age of collectible arcs and loss-leader monthlies.

Secondly, well, he just doesn't live up to that hype anymore. And it all goes back to that problem of blind loyalty. (Like that iconic X, you will note, all my points meet at the same conclusion.)

Claremont was so revered by X-Men loyalists that it clearly went to his head. Indeed, when he made an unexpected return to the franchise a few years ago, fans reacted as if it were the Second Coming. It really wasn't. Success is a poison pill that convinces too many talents that they no longer need the checks and balances of the very people who put them there in the first place.

It's Claremont's downfall as a writer that he has one of the industry's most loyal fanbases. That fanbase doesn't help him to develop, though, because it won't follow him off the x-books - as demonstrated by the lacklustre sales on GEN 13 - and it won't push him when he's on them.

So long as Claremont is writing mutants, he will be commercially viable, but also critically untouchable. And that's sad, because it means that a once great writer, a writer of historic significance to the craft, a writer whom I honestly respect and admire, has been rendered irrelevant to the creative dialogue of comics. He now writes for a bubble audience that reflects back on him his own belief in his talents.

And the saddest thing is that, in this, Claremont is not unique.

Andrew Wheeler is a London-based entertainment journalist.

This article is Ideological Freeware. The author grants permission for its reproduction and redistribution by private individuals on condition that the author and source of the article are clearly shown, no charge is made, and the whole article is reproduced intact, including this notice.