Uncanny X-Force: Gateway to Marvel

I'm not generally a big Marvel guy. Once in a while I'll read some Marvel, though. World War Hulk was awesome and I was reading the Red Hulk stuff for a while. X-Men, however, I always find hard to get into because the continuity is almost prohibitive. Back in the day, I was all into it, though. Mutant Massacre, Days of Future Past, Dark Phoenix Saga, Age of Apocalypse, all that stuff. But at a certain point, having to read 15 different X-books to be able to understand what was happening was not something I wanted to do. The solution to this is Uncanny X-Force, written by Rick Remender. It's about as close to a stand alone X-book as Marvel can offer. After recent events, Wolverine and Archangel form a team in secret to do what the X-Men won't do. Rounding out the team are  Psyloche, Fantomex and Deadpool. Normally, I'm not a fan of Deadpool (understatement alert), but here, he really works well.

Uncanny X-Force #4

This month, Marvel put out Uncanny X-Force 5.1. The .1 books are supposed to be jumping on points for people who haven't read the books. While this works well in this case, I still HIGHLY recommend reading from issue 1. For starters, it's extremely well written. I hadn't read these books in years and I never felt lost. Also, the characters are spot on and you feel like you know them from the start. I've heard a lot of buzz on Remender in the past few years, particularly about his book Fear Agent, although his credits are pretty extensive. Been meaning to check out Fear Agent for some time and I definitely will now.

Another reason to start from the beginning is the art by Jermoe Opeña in the first 4 issues. His style is a perfect balance between realistic and darkly surreal. This is an all around great book and one I look forward to reading. Who knows, it may lead to me into more Marvel books. In any case, jump into it now. It's the perfect time.