Once I’ve comitted to buying a series, I think it’s reasonably hard to stop me buying it. If I’m reading a superhero series monthly in the first place, it’s often because I’m interested in the characters, not the creative team – and creative teams come and go. A bad story today can give rise to a good story tomorrow, and the serial nature of the medium does encourage you to read it in an unbroken fashion. But even I have limits. And this is the explanation of the very first time I hit one.

The year was 1998. Larry Hama was writing Generation X, and I was buying it – the first ever series I added to a pull-list. But within a few issues, it went from being my favourite comic to… well, unrecognisable might be a fair description.

To illustrate, let me tell you about Elwood. Elwood the Pooka. A giant talking fairy-tale weasel that appeared in Generation X’s Danger Terrarium. Elwood was added to the cast for reasons that, thematically, escape me. I read all of Elwood’s appearances and I have no idea why Larry Hama felt the need to introduce this element, aside from the fact that he had maybe read about Pookas somewhere. Worse still, Elwood brought with him a whole host of pseudo-fairytale creatures, called Tokens and Half-Snarks, which replaced the series regular, mutant/X-Men-related villains for the best part of a year.

And as if adding one character with no relevance to the X-Men wasn’t enough, Hama then immediately brought a character called Gaia into the series. She had pink hair, nebulously-defined “reality warping” powers and no discernable personality. Synch, one of my favourite characters and possibly the most well-adjusted teenager comics has ever seen, instantly became her lapdog, making him completely tedious as well.

Despite being the least interesting character ever, Gaia stayed in Generation X until… well, I don’t know, because between talking weasels and pink-haired ciphers that the author inexplicably loved, I realised that Generation X wasn’t the book it was when I started buying it. The original concept – teenage mutants training to be X-Men – had taken third place to Hama’s interest in mythological creatures and his own poorly-described characters. It hadn’t so much come off the rails, as it had been taken apart and reassembled as a pogo stick. That was enough to make me realise that the time had come to drop it, and issue #42 was my last, when it revealed that the coming arc’s antagonist was Biana LaNeige, a former business rival of Emma Frost who had returned from space with new psychic powers and an entourage of insectoid aliens that had been forced to shapeshift into evil parodies of the 7 dwarves. I wish I was joking.

A quick check online reveals that the first thing Jay Faerber (Hama’s replacement) did when he took over as writer was jettison Gaia, which suggests I’m not the only person who didn’t know what she was for. I eventually returned to Generation X when it was revamped under the purvue of Warren Ellis. Brian Wood, the incoming writer, wrote the best bunch of issues the book had seen since it launched (and indeed, sowed the seeds of books like Local, Demo and New York Four in the “Four Days” arc) just in time to have it cancelled from under him. Ah well.

One of the stranger things about comics fandom is that a lot of people expect you to remember your first comic. For many, it’s like the time they bought their first album, or the time they first went to the cinema – they’re always ready to go all misty-eyed about the time their parents randomly pulled a Lee/Ditko Spider-Man, or a Kirby New Gods off the shelf or spinner-rack at a drugstore in exchange for their silence on a shopping trip. Or to eagerly recount the moment someone pulled them aside at University and put a copy of Sandman, Watchmen, Preacher or Transmetropolitan into their hands after years of comics-abstinence as the point where it all changed for them.

For me, though, the question is hard to answer. It’s like asking whether you remember the first TV show you saw, or the first song you heard. Does anyone remember that? TV and music aren’t special occasions, like buying an album or oging to the cinema – they’re part of the background of your life. That, for me, is what comics are. They’ve always been there, in the background. From The Beano, to Sonic the Comic, to Marvel’s UK reprints. I’ve just always read them.

That said, the way I normally answer this question is to reveal what my first ever US comic was, because that answers the spirit of the question, if not the letter of it. The comic in question was Weapon X #3, released in March ’95 (cover dated May). Technically, it’s an issue of Wolverine, retitled because the entire X-Men line was smack bang in the middle of a massive and complicated crossover called the Age of Apocalypse. I found it in a newsagents on a trip to visit my grandparents in Clacton-on-Sea, and I remember puzzling over it. I knew from the X-Men cartoon that Weapon X was Wolverine’s code-name, but I wasn’t sure if it was his comic. Until I noticed the signature claws on the cover. I was actually shocked to see him using them on a person, because in the cartoon he could only use them to cut through doors, fences, pipes and robots, lest children’s fragile minds be violated. With the promise of all that and more, I had to have it.

I don’t remember what I left on the shelf. I definitely picked up X-Men Adventures Season III #3 at the same time, though, which was an adaptation of Part 3 of the Phoenix Saga from the cartoon. I was so pleased to own them that when I got back home, I displayed them on top of a chest of drawers in my room like they were trophies I’d won. Immediately, there was something special about them. They weren’t just comics, they were *American* comics. Back then, aged only 12, I thought those comics were incredibly rare and special things to own, all the way from the other side of the Atlantic, and I treated them with astonishing reverence.

Of course, as an issue, there’s nothing particularly interesting about Weapon X #3. It’s the third part of a 4-part story, by Larry Hama and Adam Kubert, neither of whom were particularly in their prime. I spent ages reading and re-reading the Bullpen Bulletins pages to see what else was going on in the other series, longing to read them too, amazed at their interconnectivity. Weapon X #3 might not have been my first ever comic, nor even the first ever Marvel comic I read – but it was the one that made me into the fan I am today. It was what gave me my first undiluted taste of US comics, and it caused something inside me to click. There’s no doubt in my mind that if it hadn’t been Weapon X #3, it would have been something else – but for whatever reason, that’s the way it happened.

Every Wednesday we take turns to delve into our trusty longboxes, pluck out a dusty back issue, and give you our thoughts. We’ll also try and place it in the context of the time it was originally published.

These days, Wolverine’s solo title is a bit of a mixed bag, offering rotating creative teams telling self-contained arcs. Fair enough – it’s not like you can’t get plenty of Wolverine elsewhere. Still, back in the day, Wolverine’s solo title actually felt like a solo title. It had its own supporting cast, and a long-term creative team, and it was generally pretty good.

Back in 1993, the Fatal Attractions crossover had left Wolverine stripped of his adamantium skeleton by Magneto. After taking an absence from the X-Men, Wolverine had finally come to terms with his new situation, which included not-quite-indestructible bone claws and a healing ability that was now working at full-pelt, no longer having to deal with having a metal skeleton. Unfortunately, a side-effect of this was that his unchecked mutation was now causing him to become more and more animalistic, and he found his humanity harder to hold onto than ever.

All of which made for fairly entertaining reading. Of course, fans knew that the adamantium was coming back one day, and Wolverine #100, complete with holographic foil cover, seemed to be the place. Cable’s wayward son, Genesis, hoped to return the metal to Logan, then brainwash him to serve as a disciple of Apocalypse. With the help of the latest X-Men graduate, Cannonball, Logan manages to escape the bonding process, rejecting the adamantium. Unfortunately, as a side effect, his healing factor fully mutates him into a barely-human animal, who kills Genesis then leaves, even as Cannonball discovers that Genesis’ other project – the resurrection of Apocalypse – might just have succeeded.

The artwork comes from Adam Kubert, who was always one of the better 90s superhero artists, and the series clearly benefited from his involvement. While Larry Hama’s writing took a serious downturn in the late 90s, here he shows a good grasp of the serial medium, bringing together several long-running plot threads and offering a remarkably satisfying alternative to “Wolverine gets his adamantium back” (which he eventually would, as depicted in flashback in Wolverine #145.) The ending was, at the time, quite an unexpected twist, and it’s almost inconceivable to imagine Marvel sending one of their most bankable properties on such a strange personal journey – although back then, he wasn’t quite as ubiquitous as he is now.

The title would eventually see Wolverine gradually regain his lost humanity, and it turned out that Apocalypse was indeed back. The focus on Cannonball is quite odd for an anniversary issue of Wolverine’s solo title, but when the lead spends most of the issue strung up and dehumanised, it makes sense to provide a POV character. Despite the gimmick cover, the banner proclaiming “Anniversery Event!” and the fact that it appeared smack-bang in the middle of one of comics’ weakest periods ever, the issue was actually quite a decent event for Wolverine readers, tying up a large number of plots, but launching as many – it’s something you don’t really see these days, thanks to the current trend of trade-focused pacing. For better or worse, they don’t make ‘em like this anymore.