If you want to read and understand storylines like "House of M" and "A vs. X" do you need to be an X Men fan for the most part?

Question

I am a little newer to comics and i'm going to start from Disassembled up. I think I am going to like the Avengers more than the X Men (not because of the movies but because the characters have a wide variety of backgrounds imo). So... if I do not want to read X books, but I am following Disassembled and up (because of the Avengers), should I skip HoM and A vs. X?

Answer 1

Comic books are designed so that one can jump in at any time and read on with no prior experience of the characters. You might have trouble if you jumped into a storyline in progress, but if you start at the beginning of a new story arc you should be fine. It's a pity Marvel no longer has the opening flap with a little character history, as they did in the late-'90s, but even without that you shouldn't need to read earlier storylines to understand one in progress.

Crossover events happen fairly often in comic books, and can be slightly frustrating for someone who only reads one of the titles involved in the crossover. I remember many years ago, as a Spider-Man reader, being confronted by a Spider-Man-Gen-X crossover and not having a clue who anyone on the Gen-X side was except Jubilee, as I did not read the Gen-X books. If you're really having trouble, you can always simple Wiki the HoM and A vs X storylines to find out the key details.