Originally published October 14, 1994, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1091
Marvel wants us to know that its plans for the mutant books in 1995 (which involves a murderer disrupting the fabric of time and causing bizarre shifts in reality) is not at all a copy of Zero Hour (which involved a murderer disrupting the fabric of time and causing bizarre shifts in reality).
In a way, Marvel is correct. It’s not Zero Hour precisely. First, it’s got “X’s” in it. (X-Posse? Factor-X? Please X-cuse me while I X-pectorate.)
Secondly, Zero Hour is itself a copy of something else, which was a copy of something else in turn. Which would make this latest X-citing development a copy of a copy of a copy. No, not X-actly Zero Hour.
More like “Xerox Hour.”
What are the events that have led us to “Xerox Hour”?
Well, in the beginning, there was “Crisis on Earth-One” and “Crisis on Earth-Two.”
It’s kinda gone downhill from there.
Back in the 1960s, DC was busy giving readers the new Flash, new Green Lantern, etc. (One wishes there had been computer bulletin boards back then. Just imagine the thread headings: “Hal Jordan Must Die!” “Barry Allen Must Die!” And just think: if angry users had waited 30 years, they’d have gotten their way. But I digress…)
Fans still wanted to know what happened to the original Justice Society of America. The precedent had been set, after all, when upstart Flash Barry Allen had met original Flash Jay Garrick in “Flash of Two Worlds.” If Jay was still up and running (so to speak), where were the other guys?
So, lo and behold, in August and September of 1963, Justice League of America #21 and #22 contained comics’ first multi-part, inter-universe, inter-reality crossover. It wasn’t polybagged, up-priced, cover enhanced, renumbered, or set off by itself in a pocket reality. It was simply there: an entertaining two-parter that gave fans exactly what they wanted. And a good time was had by all.
Flash forward (so to speak) 20 years.
“Crisis” stories have become an end unto themselves—no longer so much because the fans demanded it, but because they expected it (always a dangerous editorial move.) Plus, the nice, tidy, parallel earths explanation which had facilitated “Flash of Two Worlds” had grown into something of a monster. The DC universe was lousy with Earths. It required a massive amount of explanation for any newcomer. And it served to undermine any reason to care about what was going on on “our Earth.”
This begat Crisis on Infinite Earths. Twelve issues were required to sort out the mess and narrow the DC universe to one earth. From the end of Crisis, the newer, friendlier DC universe was supposed to commence.
Except no one could quite figure out what that was.
The result was different versions of characters co-existing with no explanation. The “stitch in time” of Crisis had, instead of saving nine, necessitated nine more.
Or—to be precise—five more: the five issues of Zero Hour. Plus a month’s worth of “Zero” issues, guaranteed to botch up comics filing systems everywhere. (Wouldn’t it have been neat if, the following month, the next issue had been #-1, followed by #-2, and so on?)
So Zero Hour was created to clean up the mess left by Crisis, which in turn was developed to mop up after 20 years’ worth of being flooded with multiple Earths.
Which brings us to X-Men.
One upon a time, there was one X-title. Just one. Hard to believe, I know. The stories were sophisticated and complex, but fairly clear.
Now there’s—what? Ten? Eleven? Some with different casts, some with overlapping casts, with good guys indistinguishable from bad guys (because they pretty much talk the same, act the same, and change places on respective teams as frequently as we mere mortals change socks.) There are people from a variety of alternate futures which may or may not be alternate futures, and the people may or may not be related to one another.
As all Gaul could be divided into three parts, so, too, can X-Men readers be split into three general types:
1) Those who can keep all the continuity straight and are proud about it.
2) Those who cannot keep the continuity straight, but are continuing with the various titles in hopes that they’ll figure it out. (In some instances, such readers are fearful to drop a title because there’s no going back; they can barely remember who’s who now, and if they change their minds six months later and want to get back into it—there’s no way.)
3) Those who are looking for an excuse to give up the mutant books altogether, because their tolerance level has been reached.
Notice that the above scenario doesn’t really leave room for newcomers to the mutant comic books. There’s a reason for that. Anyone coming in cold faces a prodigious task. I mean, to me many X-characters blend one into another for me, and I wrote one of the dámņëd titles. Hëll, I had newcomers to Incredible Hulk asking who the Pantheon was, and that’s only half a dozen characters. Can you imagine trying to understand the convoluted interrelationships of mutant mania?
Fans prompted to check out the comics as a consequence of the animated series are far more likely to buy X-Men Adventures, or even Classic X-Men, than they are to try and make the mental (not to mention financial) investment in the X-titles.
And Marvel faces other problems. Over the past year, fans and retailers alike have been voicing annoyance over various Marvel marketing decisions. Decisions ostensibly are being made to elicit information from the marketplace, and yet the market feels as if it’s just being taken for a ride.
Marvel Mart has been well- (if not over-) documented. But then Marvel announced that it would “experiment” with two versions of the X-titles: $1.95, followed two weeks later by $1.50. Audience response will decide which will become the permanent format.
Now if Marvel wants to change formats and raise prices, that’s fine. But let’s not kid a kidder. Readers want to know what’s happening now, not two weeks from now. They’ll buy the $1.95 version because it’s there. I know it, you know it, everybody knows it—so if Marvel claims not to know it, either Marvel is disingenuous or just thick as a brick.
One fan pointed out that if Marvel wanted a genuine experiment, unprecedented in this marketplace, the $1.50 titles would be published first, with the up-priced versions two weeks later. That would be a genuine experiment. Perhaps Marvel doesn’t want to know how that one would turn out.
Then there’s the great Marvel survey, in which readers’ opinions were solicited in a recent spate of issues.
Now—I’ve received the occasional survey that was accompanied by a dollar or two, as an inducement for me to respond. But Marvel’s put an interesting twist on it with the “First Annual Marvel Survey.” To wit:
“Carefully…place [the survey] in an envelope with payment of $2 to cover the cost of processing your survey & shipping you your free items.” The free items (emphasis theirs) are a poster, newsletter, and the results. Hey, Marvel Survey, here’s a newsflash: If people have to send $2 to get something, then as far as they’re concerned, it’s not free (emphasis mine.)
One looks at moves like this and is put in mind of Casey Stengel shouting at the hapless Mets, “Can’t anybody here play this game?”
So into this skewed marketplace rolls “Xerox Hour.”
The comparisons to Zero Hour come not so much from story specifics, but rather because Marvel seems to be trying to deal with particular problems that are similar to those which spawned DC’s various continuity-cleansing efforts. Toss continuity into the air, see what adheres to the ceiling, and that’s what you stick with.
And Marvel has to do something to get people talking, if the company has any intention of drawing in new readership. There’s a problem with old readership: the readers leave. Sooner or later, from boredom, economics, or death, they eventually will go away. A comic book line needs new readers.
DC has managed to reinvent itself by breathing life into its icons, plus producing other comics geared towards fans who want stories that are overwhelmingly intellectual (i.e., incomprehensible.)
Then there’s Image, picking up the younger fans who might view DC or Marvel as too much akin to their father’s Oldsmobile.
Meantime, Marvel has made tremendous strides in television and ancillary merchandise. But merchandise ain’t comics.
When I first saw the press release for “Xerox Hour,” my immediate thought was that this was going to last precisely four months: a decision that smacked of marketing savvy rather than creative concerns. Four months would be just long enough for all four issues to be solicited before the first issues would come out. A minimal amount of time to keep the X-titles out of commission but the maximum amount of time to milk the new line of books.
I learned shortly thereafter that, indeed, this was a four-month gig. Crossovers through the mutant books are nothing new, heaven knows. But Marvel has come up with a new wrinkle: a title-wide crossover that, like the cheese, stands alone.
There are two problems that come to mind: one creative, one business.
The entire storyline hinges on the death of Charles Xavier changing the future. But in past Marvel stories, such actions have resulted in alternate universes, not variations in already-established continuity. So either the Marvel editorial braintrust is unaware of this, and continuity is shot—or else (more likely, is my guess) is that Mutants, Uncanny Mutants, et al., are in a different universe.
Of course, perhaps there could be an intersection between “real” and “imaginary” timelines. Heck, I’ve done a couple of stories like that myself: Future Imperfect comes to mind, and a Star Trek novel or two. (And if there is some shakedown, some impact in the “real” Marvel universe as a consequence of “Xerox Hour,” I would not be at all surprised if the result is a line of titles that bear a stronger resemblance to the animated series: a simpler, gentler, more accessible mutant universe—which, let’s face it, ain’t exactly a bad thing.)
But I cannot help and consider that Future Imperfect costs $12—and the Trek hardcovers cost $20 each (less in most stores.)
“Xerox Hour” is eight monthly titles. Four months. Thirty-two issues at about $2 a pop. That’s $64 for what could possibly turn out to be a “What If…?” with a hyperactive thyroid.
Which brings us to the business problem: How the hëll do retailers order this thing?
Let’s take Mutants #1, which is the nominal replacement title for X-Men. You’re a retailer. Do you order it the way you’d order that month’s regular issue of X-Men? Do you order it the way you’d order an X-Men #1 (or, for better or worse, the way you wish you’d ordered it)?
Do you treat it like a limited series and go for numbers similar to—say—the Cable limited series? Except it’s not really analogous—is it?—because Cable was a known quantity. But these aren’t the “real” X-Men, and for all you know they’ll be vapor mist in four months.
Actually, ordering #1 is a cakewalk compared to #2. Do you order that as you would a #2: cut the orders by a third or more? Or do you go for numbers similar to what you would have ordered for X-Men that month?
Good lord, what about X-Calibre? Do you order that along the less-than-sterling numbers of Excalibur or go for numbers similar to Mutants, in the hopes that readers will buy into the whole shebang? (And don’t even get me started about New Mutants #101, which defies any rational attempt at ordering—or even comprehension.)
Looking to me for answers?
I regret to inform you that I have no dazzling insight, no inside information. I do not envy retailers their task here. Nor Marvel’s, for that matter. This is a company (which has not engendered retailer affections lately) asking for a major leap of faith. How many retailers are likely to feel as if they’re bungee jumping with frayed cords?
My guess?
A significant amount of buzz will be generated by “Xerox Hour” so that the new titles will sell fairly strongly across the board—higher than the corresponding X-books would have in some cases. However, orders on other Marvel titles are probably going to suck ditchwater to make up for it—and, if that happens, the all-important bottom line would be unaffected.
In fact, it could conceivably hurt in the long run. Because if people who were buying the X-titles decided to skip the entire “Xerox Hour,” then that gives them four months to break the habit. And once a habit has been dropped, it’s very easy to leave it lying there. Marvel could conceivably be providing marginal fans with the excuse they’ve been seeking to get out of the mutant titles—and no guarantee that any newcomers will jump on board.
In a way, what Marvel is doing is admirable: No guts, no glory, as they say.
I just wish that—when Marvel goes out on a limb, as it is here—they didn’t have to bring so many people out along with them. Because if the limb gets sawed off, we’re all going to hear the crash.
(Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705. Also, in the future, he will be going by his newly chosen Native American name of “Runs With Scissors.” More on these major changes as they develop.)
• 
Funny thing. Though a bit derivative, the Age of Apopcalypse is considered one of the better X-Men “events” in recent history.
I really enjoyed AOA. It’s interesting that with the similar “reality changing” House of M, they put the stories in the regular issues of the X-Books (and of course some other Marvel titles had HoM stories in thier own titles, while others had special mini-series).
As for Zero Hour botching up filing systems, it’s easy to put them right at the front. It was DC’s issue 1,000,000 a few years later which really screwed things up.
I get a big kick out of reading these 17-year-old columns. A lot of them are just as relevant today as they were when they were written (for better or worse). And then there’s ones like this one, which is quite obviously a product of its time. Obviously, our host couldn’t know that the Age of Apocalypse wasn’t intended to be a continuity patch (since what was actually published clearly differed greatly from the promotional materials at the time it was written). Nor could he know that the AoA would be more-or-less fondly remembered by X-fans (for relative values of “fondly”). Comparing it to Zero Hour was probably perfectly reasonable at the time; now, it just looks a bit funny.
Funny as how I read this I keep thinking “Flashpoint”.
.
The more things change…
When AoA hit, I was already down to only a few X-books, and I wasn’t exactly champing at the bit to read those each week either. So I decided to treat this as a case of all the books I did follow being cancelled and replaced by books of roughly equal quality.
But since my standards for picking up a new book are considerably higher than what I’m willing to “coast” on for an existing title, that meant that I dropped every single X-book at that point. And as I saw the unholy mess that AoA ended up causing on the racks, I felt no pangs at all about not picking back up on the “cancelled” titles four months later.
Ironically, had they gone ahead and published New Mutants #101-104, I would have picked it up under the same logic. At the time, I still had #1-100 in my longboxes, and it seemed like just an interesting enough idea to get by on the coasting philosophy. But then they chickened out and made it a new #1 like all the others, and that was it for me and the X-books for a few years.
Since then, I have get to regularly buy anything that could be considered a core X-book. Just fringe cases like Ellis’s Excalibur, Cable & Deadpool or the current X-Factor run. Just enough connection that I could get a glimpse into that corner of the Marvel U, without having to drown in it.
I also fondly remember the AoA when it came out. I tried getting as many of the titles as I could, but, as pointed out early on in this column, there were so many X-titles and all of them got AoA equivalents. I don’t think my dinky comic shop even got all the issues, much less did I have the funds to get them all.
.
In the end though, I didn’t bother with any of the more recent follow-up stuff Marvel has done with AoA. Much like the mini-series with House of M and even Onslaught (*shudder*) the last few years, my real interest in the AoA has long passed.
I never had any problem understanding the DC multiverse in those pre-Crisis days. Your “present day” characters lived on Earth 1. The older versions from the earliest days of comics lived on Earth 2. Captain Marvel and the Marvel family lived on Earth S. And villainous counterparts of our familiar heroes lived on Earth 3.
.
What’s more, in stories in which characters from one Earth met those from another, it was clearly explained to the reader (either in narration or via dialogue between characters) what was going on. Also, to the best of my recollection, these “meetings” were A) relatively rare; and B) usually involved characters from just two universes coming together.
.
So I’m not sure how “necessary” Crisis on Infinite Earths really was. However confusing things may have been before Crisis, since then, they’ve gotten even more confusing. Just ask Hawkman. While I’m not fond of the idea of re-numbering long-running series, maybe Marv Wolfman’s idea to have re-numbered every title to #1 after Crisis might have been a good idea.
.
In Crisis, those characters who fought the anti-Monitor at the dawn of time remembered the pre-Crisis realities, while those in the present didn’t. Eventually most everyone seemed to forget, but how soon after Crisis #12 was published varied depending on the book. It might have been better if everyone had forgotten by the end of book 12. To use an analogy, imagine if both the Doctor and Amy forgot Rory by the end of “Cold Blood.”
.
I bought Infinite Crisis, and have read the trade paperback versions of 52 and Final Crisis, and understood what was going on (though that may or may not be true for a new reader). However, I’m not reading any DC books at the moment, so I have no idea how often characters from different universes are meeting each other, or how many at any one meeting. For the sake of new readers (real or potential) I hope it’s not too many. Otherwise it would likely be analogous to PAD’s description of the various X books.
.
With the exception of a few issues, I’ve never read the X books, so I’m not familiar with Age of Apocalypse. Maybe it was a great story. Or maybe it was a “What If… with a hyperactive thyroid.” But good or not, $64 does seem a bit steep. Of course, it’d be even more now. I don’t know if this applied to Age of Apocalypse, but I don’t like “crossover” or “event” stories where you need to read some of the ancillary titles to know what’s going on. At least with Crisis, those 12 issues worked as a stand-alone story. You didn’t need to read a particular issue of say, Batman in between issues of Crisis..
.
These days, with the publication of trades, you might not think that would be a problem. Just include those issues of the ancillary titles in the trade collection, right? Sure. Except if not enough people read the individual titles, there might not be any trades. Plus, it’s hardly friendly to new readers to make them buy more than just the mini series or maxi series out at the moment.
.
Rick
I never read DC pre-Crisis, and even I understood how it all worked. I was far more confused when I started reading JSA and discovered that these characters existed in the same world as the JLA (even though I knew about the Crisis, somehow the main purpose and result of it was not something I ever learned about until way after the fact).
Infinite Crisis was pointless because DC had already brought back the Multiverse in The Kingdom (IMHO done in a much better way) and Infinte Crisis (along with Green Lantern: Rebirth) RUINED the DCU for me and I feel like DC told me F*** Off and gave me the finger. I haven’t read a DC comic since and have no plans too.
I liked the Age of Apocalypse for the most part it, I didn’t care for X-Man because after AoA it seemed to be a series that no one could figure out what to do with the character.
“So either the Marvel editorial braintrust is unaware of this, and continuity is shot—or else (more likely, is my guess) is that Mutants, Uncanny Mutants, et al., are in a different universe.”
.
Or, they knew they were violating the rules and just didn’t care (which IIRC turned out to be the case). I think this was at the time of the 5 EiCs, so Mark Gruenwald would have had no say over the matter.
Or they were aware that the rules had changed. In Walt Simonson’s run on the Fantastic Four, Reed Richards came into conflict with the Time Variance Authority (the cosmic agency that controls whether a particular event causes a divergent reality or not.) The TVA decided that Earth-616 was becoming a pain, and wanted to delete it altogether…
.
…so Reed basically introduced a “computer virus” into their reality-tracker that made it invisible to them, instead. May be a coincidence, but ever since, time travel in Marvel has altered history instead of creating a divergent reality. Perhaps it’s just that they can’t control what happens to time anymore?
AoA really didn’t get into all that, it was the classic version of “change history, create an alternate reality.”
I did enjoy it. As for the filing of the zero issues. Some were stand alones so I filed those along with the annuals section for that particular title. Some actually flowed from the previous month’s story so I just put it after that issue.
And and thanks for this work of genius between you and Larry Stroman, Mr. David.
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y180/Zevad/HavokPAD.jpg
y’know, it’s funny, I didn’t read AoA when it first came out. I had just gotten into the X-Men books and when AoA came out I was pìššëd that they were changing the whole X-Men line, especially after they had just launched Generation X. You see, I thought it was going to be permanent. I wasn’t plugged into the whole comic book community and all its news sources back then. I just had a subscription to Uncanny X-Men. All my news came from those editorial promotional pages the books had back then that said stuff like “The X-Men as you know them are gone!” and other hype stuff. They never specified that it would be for four issues only. Beware the power of unspecific hype.
That was a weird time period for me. I was still buying new comics occasionally, but not really often. (Most of the series I traditionally liked were at a very low point, quality-wise.) Mostly I was buying back issues which were on sale very cheap for about two years. I guess that was the time when the market was collapsing, and the store was trying to get rid of a lot of excess stock, especially the unsold issues from the previous two years (that was how I discovered New Warriors was good– I bought a bunch of them for 20 cents each).
.
Anyway, I wasn’t buying any mutant books on a regular basis, but I would pick one up now and then. They were good some of the time, but not enough to buy regularly, particularly since I had little money at the time.
So I didn’t even know Age Of Apocolypse was happening until it was under way.
I’d heard about Generation X, and I really wanted to check it out, but I couldn’t find. All I ever saw was something called Generation Next. I thought maybe they’d just changed the name at first, but then I noticed all the mutant titles were different, so it was clear something was going on. I flipped through some issues and was able to figure out it was some sort of alternate version, and I completely lost interest right away.
.
Then the comic-book store closed down. I did pick up one issue of Generation X a few months later (from a regular bookstore, I think), and then I didn’t buy another new comic book for the next eleven years.
It was a combination of lack of money, loss of interest, and lack of a nearby store that did it. And then, when they had Heroes Reborn a year or so later, I read a news article which made it sound like Marvel was starting over permanently, and I definitely didn’t want to go through the hassle of learning an all-new history for everything.
I truly believe that big events like these tend to lose more readers than they gain.
.
It’s funny that you mention the expensive deluxe editions, followed by the cheaper regular books, that the Mutant titles were doing at the time. I only just found out about that a month or so ago, when I bought an old X-Men that explained the new system in the back. Up until then, I’d only seen the fancy expensive issues from that time period, so I assumed they were all like that.
Back then, I tended to avoid series that cost more (I still do), although I would make an exception if it was good enough. So if I’d kept buying books then, I probably wouldn’t have bought many mutant issues, even if I’d really liked them, if the store only carried the expensive version.
Oh. I have absolutely no intention of buying any of this new Age Of X stuff, either.
(Unless you’re forced to include X-Factor, in which case I will get it, but only because I already have the subscription.)
“I truly believe that big events like these tend to lose more readers than they gain.”
.
Then publishers wouldn’t do them. That simple.
I meant long term. I know the sales are good (at least for some of the events), but I think they only attract experienced readers who are already somewhat familiar with the characters and world. But I suspect they keep away new readers.
I know when I started buying comics again, I intentially avoided anything that said Civil War on the cover, because I didn’t want to jump into a complex story I knew nothing about.
Uhm, no. Heroes Reborn is actually where I started reading Fantastic Four, and gave me an appreciation for the Avengers, Captain America, Iron Man and Thor that resulted in my picking up those series off and on since then. Without Heroes Reborn it would have been a whole lot longer before I stepped out from the X-Men family of books into the rest of the Marvel Universe.
So, long term, it worked.
Despite the critics and complainers, they sold.
What I find funny is that back then there were fewer events and they still got the ire. Now, every time you turn around there is a new “world shattering event” because they can’t figure out what else to do. People say they want well written, character driven stories… and then those sorts of things don’t actually sell and so they get canceled.
Yes, regardless of what you think of the quality, Heroes reborn definitely worked in making characters that had been struggling for a while cool to a new set of readers and made them cool and relevant again.
While folks are busy joking about DC’s #0 issues, it seems they’ve forgotten about Marvel’s own little “screw up the filing system” ploy. Anyone else remember the “Flashback” month where everything got numbered with a NEGATIVE number (ie, # -1)?
Indeed I do. There’s also an “Avengers 1-and-a-half” issue that was done sometime in 1998. On the GITCorp DVD I have, with all the Avengers issues on one DVD, right between issues 1 and 2, there’s this issue written by Roger Stern and drawn by Bruce Timm. All the ads look nearly authentic; you have to look close to see that they’re parodies. The only thing ruining it is the gigantic “Fast Lane” anti-drug campaign stapled into the middle, which is done in a very 90s style.
Oh yeah, that was one “gimmick” that backfired on Marvel big-time. In many cases, the book wasn’t even done by the regular creative teams. and, being a flashback, had NOTHING to do with current storylines. Toss in that the gimmick meant missing the issue wouldn’t mess up ypur collection and – voila1 – many readerssimply chose to skip buying comics for a month and save money. Since even the lesser books were part of this, it also prevented most of the impulse from readers to try something different instead of their regular books as well.
.
Which is why in the end, the gimmicks don’t matter. The stories do.
Marvel loves gimmicks, and they never seem to end.
.
#0, #-1, #1/2. They’ve done one-shots like Deadpool #900 and Wolverine #1000.
.
Not to mention, one of the several unnecessary Deadpool titles is Deadpool Team-Up, which counts DOWN from #899.
Ignoring the stupid countdown numbering, Deadpool Team-Up has actually been my favorite DP title since the Nicieza Cable & Deadpool series. With a different creative team every issue it stays fresher and more fun than any of the others.
So, of course, it’s getting canceled.
Are any comic book titles really “necessary”? Marvel has/Had? a hot property and were trying to ride it as best they could. Seeing how it is hard for any book tp attract attention or sales, offering more titles of characters with the best chance of getting someone to fork over their three or four books only makes sense.
.
That said, I hate the numbering games. Books like “Batman” and “Action Comics” each earned big numbers as a testament to their unique longevity.
.
I can even stomach the renumbering of books like “Amazing Spider-Man” and “FantasticFour” because they likely would have hit those numbers if the decision had not been made to emply the other overdone gimmick of giving them a new #1.
.
But books like “X-Factor” and others that were canceled for long periods of time? Ridiculous. And the “Deadpool countdown numbering IS silly.
.
I am starting to think it’s a conscious effort to purposely make following the singles confusing so more people picl up the trades or get them digitally.
I liked the concept of AoA, and while the only thing I bought was the “Collector’s Preview” (I eventually got the whole run read in those “Complete Editions”, that I got from my local library.), the storyline fascinated me because here was a different kind of X-Men story than what had come out Post-Claremont.
Which is why I’m surprised Peter was critical of the idea at the time.
While I do agree that Marvel, DC, and Occasionally, Image, would at the time get multi-title, multi-part, crossover happy, AoA actually made you look at the characters differently. And it also felt like a story with a geniune A to B plot.
Xerox Hour? No, to me it was not a copy of something, but rather, and unfortunately, an original document that would be Xeroxed
To be fair to Peter, when he wrote that he had little to go on besides really vague house ads.
But, yeah, AoA was really one those alternate reality things that worked. Not all the series were as good as others, but the good ones did make you look at the classic characters from a different angle, and that new perception followed afterwards. And you didn’t have to read the entire thing to get it, they explained what was going on, filled things in that were needed, left some things vague, intentionally so, and did a good job of allowing you to read each miniseries individually. The only ones that were really wrapped around each other were Amazing X-Men and Astonishing X-Men, the replacements for X-Men and Uncanny X-Men, two books that were already written hand-in-hand.
House of M was a poorly executed, pale imitation.