There’s a maxim in the comics industry that every writer, artist, editor and reader is supposed to keep in mind: every comic is someone’s first. Makes sense, doesn’t it? The industry always needs new readers, after all, so it needs to be accessible to anyone who gives it a try, and everyone is going to remember what story it was that got them really, truly addicted, so shouldn't we make sure it's a good one too?

For some people, that story is going to be Spider-Man fighting Venom. For others, it’s Batman and Superman teaming up. Unfortunately, we can’t all be that lucky. For me, it was an alternate-universe version of Wolverine visiting Wundagore Mountain in an attempt to help correct the timeline. Hardly a traditional Wolverine yarn they were spinning, there…

Let me set the scene. It’s 1995. Jacques Chirac became President of France and immediately resumed the testing of Nuclear Bombs in French Polynesia, inadvertently providing the perfect excuse for an execrable Godzilla remake some years later. Guitarist Richey Edwards of the Manic Street Preachers walked out of the London Embassy Hotel and into Britpop immortality. OJ Simpson was found not guilty of murder, and – if you believe Wikipedia – loads more interesting stuff was going on in the world.

Of course, in 1995, I was barely twelve years old, and didn’t really care about most of that. Instead, in a newsagent in Colchester, I was picking up my first ever American comic. I was fascinated by the size of it – small and oddly proportioned compared to what I was used to, but man, was it beautiful. I’d read some comics in my time - even some of the X-Men cartoon adaptations - but this? This was something on an entirely different level.

That comic was called Weapon X. It was published by Marvel, it was issue number 3, and as I read it, I barely had a clue what was going on. I knew, due to my love of the X-Men cartoon, that Weapon X was Wolverine, so despite the fact that he wasn’t wearing his familiar yellow and black costume and appeared to be missing a hand, those Adamantium claws on the cover were iconic enough that I knew I’d picked up a comic with Wolverine in. But that was about all I could figure out. After I finished, I was left with a huge number of questions.

There’s a good reason for that. What I had picked up was, really, an issue of Wolverine set in an alternate reality. In X-Men issues published during the summer of 1995, Professor Xavier’s wayward son Legion travelled back into the past and accidentally killed his father, drastically altering the timeline. This story showcased a violent future where Xavier hadn’t lived long enough to form the X-Men, and the mutant demi-god Apocalypse now ruled the planet. Marvel re-titled and re-numbered all of their X-Men books for a four-month period showcasing an amazing, inter-locking mega crossover called the Age of Apocalypse, and to this day I consider it to be of almost unparalleled genius.

Not that I knew that at the time, of course. I had picked up but one issue of but one title in this sprawling epic which I had never heard of. My first comic was almost impenetrable. This was exactly the situation the industry is supposed to be avoiding. And yet, here I am. Thirteen years later, I’m as obsessed with the X-Men as I ever was. Clearly, despite ignoring all the conventional wisdom, that comic snagged me. But why?

Well, besides the amazing production values, and the sheer novelty of holding an imported comic in my hands for the first time ever - the violence on the pages, as depicted by Adam Kubert, utterly stunned me – unlike the cartoon, Wolvie wasn’t afraid of using those claws to cut more than robots. Hama’s dialogue was gritty and realistic compared to the anachronistic children’s humour comics I’d been used to, but the plot? Well, who cares!? I eventually pieced much of it together by reading the letter columns and in-house editorial pages, but I was well hooked by then, a comics-reader for life.

Which brings me back to that maxim: every comic is someone’s first. Is it really as important a consideration as it’s made out to be? Dropped in the middle of a story I couldn’t hope to understand, if anything I became more interested in what was going on, scraping together all the information I could find. With the industry once again in the grip of crossover-mania – Civil Wars, Secret Invasions, various Crises going on – the worry is back that somewhere out there, a kid is picking up Spider-Man or Superman for the first time and then putting it back down because he doesn’t immediately understand what’s going on with this super-hero registration, or why Superman doesn’t have any powers.

Perhaps we shouldn’t worry at all though, and simply give that kid a little more credit. I should know – I used to be him!

James will be back with more comics talk next Monday.