First, I need to get something off my chest here: I'm a DC guy. If you look through the boxes upon boxes upon boxes of comics stored in my attic, in a local storage facility, as well as in my uncle's basement, you're going to find that the vast majority of books to be found and read are DC Comics. Sure, I have several Marvel, Image, Dark Horse, and other company brands I don't remember. But, DC's been my go-to company for a long time. Batman has been where to go for good detective stories and action. Superman has been the book for fun stories and villians. The Flash, always my favorite since I was a child, was the one I'd read faithfully and I'm proud to say that I own every single issue of The Flash in all its incarnations over the years. The Marvel Comics properties you'll find in my collection are some Spidermans, Iron Man(the 80s), a few Hulks, and that's about it. I'm a DC guy, but lately I'm curious about what there is on the other side of the fence at Marvel I may be missing.
When I go to the comics store, The new releases shelves are stocked with an almost equal split of Marvel/DC, and a few shelves for independants. I've picked up a few of those, mainly because my 10 year old daughter loves some of the titles there. I pick up almost every DC issue available. However, Marvel comics seem to intimidate me, mainly because the covers do little to me to explain what the issue(s) can be about, and the selection can be a confusing mix because of so many titles of the same characters there are.
After all that, here's my question: What would you suggest to me, and any others out there wanting to jump into Marvel waters, as a good starting point within the Marvel Universe? Both of the Big Two have ongoing storylines and jumping into the middle of one after being away from the Marvel Universe can lose one within the worlds of multiple storyarcs and series spanning events. Which title or titles would be good starting points to get back into that universe?