My first job at like 15 or 16 was in a Comic Shop. I was like the worst employee casue I didn't really read the damned things. People would ask me questions and get all bent out of shape when I didn't know what the fuck they were talking about. So in effect the cientelle of comic shops turned me off from comics. I'll still pick one up every once in a while if the cover is interesting though.
I forget exactly what they called it but the alternate X-Men universe books from the late 90's were killer. I think the premise was that Xavier was dead and that Magneto was the leader of the X-Men. Wolverine was a bad guy and Sabretooth was good and so forth.