BloodnoseThePirate said:

Okay, now that I've read a bit of the x-men I thought I'd give a few words about what I thought of the story arcs.

I've found myself reading more of the newer issues maybe just because of the faster pace and they're just quicker reads in general.

There's a lot less text in modern comics. And a lot more splash pages. Depending on the kind of reader you are, they can be much quicker reads. I tend to read the text and let my eyes sort of pick up the pictures in periphery. Actually, I'm sure when I turn a new page, my eyes do a quick one-over of the pictures and then I read the text. The less text there is, the less time I spend on that page.

Then there are people (I've heard of them) that will stop and look at the pictures for several minutes. And read the text as an afterthought. These are the people that know the pencilers better than the writers. The amount of action, detail or pure awesome in a picture is what lenghtens their visit to each page. Potentially their reading time has gone up, what with modern comic art being much more sophisticated than it used to be.

Then, The Rise and Fall of the Shi'ar Empire. I just finished it and I have mixed feelings. Has the X-men always been this... Spacey? I mean it was a fun ride but it felt like a little too much Star Trek in my X-men. I guess its just me.

X-Men is almost never that Spacey. That storyline eventually gets picked up by the Annihilation Crossover and the X-books more or less completely ignore it.

As I keep mentioning, the Cosmic (spacey) stuff at Marvel is some of my favourite. So I really enjoyed Rise/Fall. But it sort of goes nowhere if you don't start reading Annihilation. It's kind of odd that they ran that story through Uncanny X-Men for a year. The sequel to Rise/Fall is, if I'm remembering correctly, Emperor Vulcan.