That seems to be the jumping off point for a lot of CCF members, along with JRjr's first run. 

In contrast, the first issue of Uncanny X-Men I ever bought was a Romita issue (#195). I didn't really read it until my school library started carrying comics during the Australia period of the Silvestri run. Then, I actually started reading it after one of my brothers bought #248 at the supermarket. It was Jim Lee's first issue, but the following issues that I started buying were mostly Silvestri. I stopped reading first during Joe Madeuria's run, but have come back at various times.

Flash #242 and #243

Thought the concept of the Electric Gang was neat. They're a threesome who moonlight as a cleaning crew that use the electric charges from hapless bystanders and a special floor coating to nab loot. They can also make quick getaways through telephone lines and various other wires. Also all the Rouges are gathering in Central City to pay respects to the Top who died while both trying to increase his brain capacity and from being around the Flash too much. He's left a deadly surprise in Central City

We could be friends. I am a big Don Heck fan, and he was my #1 Avengers artist for a while. 

I read New Mutants Annual #7, New Warriors Annual #1, Uncanny X-Men Annual #15, and X-Factor Annual #6. The lead story in all four is a crossover called Kings of Pain. This falls during a gap of a few months between New Mutants #100 and X-Force #1. Although the X-Force team name is introduced in NM #100, I don't think it's used at all in the New Mutants Annual's lead story, but it is in the others. Fabian Nicieza (scripter on Liefeld's plots from the last few issues) writes, with a different penciler in each volume.

Proteus has been dissipated as energy after his seeming death during the Claremont/Byrne run of X-Men. Apparently, there are two different groups vying to recreate Proteus. There are interludes with Gideon and the Toad, unnecessarily cloaked in shadows, playing chess and plotting. They call themselves the Kings of Pain, but they might be rivals. It's confusingly plotted, because I don't see any conflict between rival factions of villains except the scripting tells me there is. The early part is slow-moving. The last two chapters, with a sort of resurrected Proteus are better (even the original Proteus story should stand alone).

There's not much in the way of interesting character or other developments with X-Force, aside from Cable himself. Chord (apparently an older member/mentor of the New Warriors knows Cable from back in the 1970s. Cable's time traveling back story hasn't been revealed yet, but that suggests he's been a long time. Cyclops suggests convincing Proteus to commit suicide, because that would save the world and his former death-like state was when he felt at peace. Cable is very opposed. There are subcurrents of the Moira/Proteus mother/son relationship as well as a mother/son pair that has revived Proteus. If you do know that Cable is actually Christopher Summers sent to the future to save his life, the resonance makes sense. The story is a little crowded with characters, but the X-Factor chapter is the best. This is the period when the X-Men were in space rescuing Professor Xavier, so the "X-Men" we get here is Moira MacTaggart's Muir Island group, secretly controlled by the Shadow King. But the Shadow King basically fades into the background; there's nothing in the story to suggest he's making an effort to save his pawns or acquire new ones. And Polaris is fighting with the team even though at this point in Uncanny I think she was locked up because she was resistant to the Shadow King's power.

A back-up featuring Freedom Force on a mission to Kuwait while Iraq occupied it runs through all the annuals except New Warriors. The action has a strange flow, as an Iraqi super-team we've never heard of (except for a blackmailed Arabian Knight) called Desert Sword kicks the crap out of Freedom Force, killing one of them. Then, the tables turn and despite grave injuries and previously seeming outmatched, Freedom Force kicks the crap out of Desert Sword. Some escape, but Blob and Pyro get capture. It sort of terrifying and devastating, but the flow of combat doesn't make sense. A one-off story in the X-Factor annual features Mystique mourning Destiny. It's both poignant and funny. All this, plus the lead story seems to be setting up the future X-Force story with a new Toad-led Brotherhood of Evil Mutants that includes some, but not all, of Freedom Force. We also get a Taki/Leech/Artie story that sets up their current circumstances and a series of brief New Warriors origins that don't pique my interest in New Warriors as much as they were probably supposed to.

One feature in the New Mutants Annual is a bar chart that's supposed to show which issues every member of the New Mutants was on the team. There's no credit writer for the chart, which is a shame. Then, I would know who to blame for depicting Mirage's tenure on the team as ending earlier than Magik's and for claiming that Sunspot left the team to run his father's business in Argentina (instead of Brazil).

I also read Cloak and Dagger #4, which is an Inferno post-script involving three demons, including Crotus who played a big role in the X-Terminators mini-series. I'm reading it at the end of my New Mutants binge, because I didn't own it when I was at that part of the timeline. The portion of the New Mutants team (Mirage, Sunspot, Boom Boom, Warlock, and Gosamyr) doesn't show up until the last few pages, but it's fun to see Mirage as an active part of the team and Warlock still alive. Also, Terry Austin puts together an interesting scenario with the travails of the blind Dagger.

If anyone's interested, my main guide in my New Mutants binge-read was this chronology: cmro.travis-starnes.com/groups.php?page=6&list_type=1&limit=30&order_listing=1&group_name=98
The criteria for inclusion seemed to be an appearance by two or more characters who were then currently part of the team, so guest appearances by a single member weren't shown, Karma's guest appearances after she quit weren't included, and Fallen Angels wasn't there after an issue or two. I was trying to do a comprehensive read-through, though, so I included those things to the extent that I was aware of them. To that end, I also looked a bit at the Marvel Chronology Project entries for some individuals (including solo guest appearances by Sam, Illyana, and Shan), and I also looked at a printed X-Men index a couple times. A few times that indices were in conflict with each other or the order seemed wrong. I read most of the issues in the index through the end of New Mutants volume 1, although I did miss a few (the only ones I remember off the top of my head are one of the guest appearances in Power Pack and Wolverine: Rahne of Terra).

I forgot to mention a couple things in my previous posts. Lila Cheney returns in the pages of Uncanny X-Men during the X-Tinction Agenda story and teleports the X-Men to space in UXM #273. She previously seemingly died in the pages of New Mutants when teleporting villains into a sun, but she has no interaction with Sam Guthrie here. Also, #273 has one of those weird examples of Claremont trying to write arguments. He has Scott and Jean on the same page about something, then Scott takes the opposite side for no apparent reason so there will be a conflict. Also, the changes in Rictor's hairstyle was an ongoing saga in later New Mutants issues.

Edited to add: the New Warriors Annual also has an interesting instance of Marvel Time. There's a computer screen indicating when Proteus's physical body died and when his energy was dissipated. Both dates are in October 1987, but the Proteus arc was published in 1979. So we have an in-story revision in this 1991 annual so that a prior event only happened 4 years before instead of 12 years ago as it was in real-time at that point.

I finished Terry Moore's Strangers in Paradise (and amazingly managed to do spoiler free.) Despite the fact that I hated a lot of the prose text and song lyrics, completely skipped the Molly and Poo stuff, disliked many of the plot turns, and even some of the characters, and wasn't 100% satisfied with the final issue, it was still a hell of a journey with two incredible central characters. There was one issue during the final stretch that was so amazingly well told that it had me in tears. Moore poured 14 years of his life into SIP, which is impressive given how so many creator owned series wind up abandoned and left to collect dust. Thanks for the ride, Terry!

This info and Foster's comments make a lot of sense. I've tried getting into Prince Valiant a couple of times and I've always found the storytelling to be lacking and the art, gorgeous though it is, to be very static. It's nice to look at, but I can't really read it.

I re-read the Marvel adaptation of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom this week...




It's a pretty solid re-telling of the film and is certainly superior from an artistic point of view to the earlier Raiders adaptation. Butch Guice's pencils (with inks by Ian Akin and Brian Garvey) are much more to my tastes than the blocky, ink-heavy work of Klaus Janson in the earlier adaptation. Guice's art has a pleasing level of background detail to it too, while his panel-to-panel flow captures the excitement and energy of the film's many action sequences and its darker, more brooding character moments with equal effectiveness.

The scripting is handled by David Michelinie, who was also writing Marvel's ongoing The Further Adventures of Indiana Jones comic book at this point. One of the things I really like about Michelinie's adaptation is that some of the film's schmaltziness has been toned down, which makes it seem a little more in keeping with the slightly grittier nature of Raiders of the Lost Ark or the on-going Indiana Jones comic book. On the other hand, I notice too that some of the film's more graphic moments – such as the scene in which Mola Ram tears out a terrified villager's heart – have been removed, presumably because editor Tom DeFalco thought that they were unsuitable for younger children?

Like the Marvel adaptation of Raiders, this was based on the film's shooting script and, as a result, it's fun to spot the little differences between the comic and the finished film. For example, there's a scene in which heroine Willie Scott flees back to her room after Short Round is captured by a group of Thuggee guards, only to run into the Prime Minister of Pankot, Chattar Lal, who reveals that he is also a member of the Thuggee cult. This small scene explains how Willie was captured and also reveals Lal's allegiance to the Thuggees earlier than in the finished movie. There's also a scene later on in which Lal dies in the sacrificial lava pit below Pankot Palace after a fight with Indiana, which was cut from the finished film.

Another difference to the movie is in a scene where Willie is attacked by a large python, while bathing in a pool during the journey to Pankot Palace. Humorously, Indy is much too afraid of the snake to be able to rescue her, so he instead stays on the bank and tells her to pet and stroke the reptile, which causes it to fall asleep and release her.

There's also a scene in which Short Round sees a Thuggee guard burned by molten lava, which snaps him out of the "Black Sleep of the Kali Ma", and that's how the youngster realises that fire will do the same for Indy. On a related topic, when Mola Ram burns his hand on the flaming Sankara Stone, while he's hanging onto the damaged rope bridge, it breaks the spell of the "Black Sleep" and he momentarily returns to his normal self, before plummeting to his death.

All in all, this is probably a better and more satisfying comic adaptation than the Raiders one and is interesting and probably worth your time if you're a fan of the film.