rick
Junior Member
Why yes I am.
Posts: 40 
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Post by rick on Jul 19, 2014 23:10:43 GMT -5
So I sat back recently and re-read in its entirety for the first time in ages the classic run of Uncanny X-Men beginning in Giant-Sized X-Men #1 with Len Wein and Dave Cockrum and ending in X-Men #143 with Chris Claremont and John Byrne. It's stunning just how well after almost 40 years that these comics hold together.
It's funny, but GS-X-Men #1 made such a memorable impression on me that I can tell you the exact 7/11 I bought it from off the spinner rack when it first hit the stands. I was a kid in Colorado and in those days before the web when comic stores were few and far between, finding out about upcoming comics was sort of hard, and as such I had not heard one thing about this new X-Men series. In fact just a couple of months before I had picked up a run of the first 50 issues for something like $25.00, including the first issue. Before the New X-Men, the original series had a couple of Adams and Steranko issues that people wanted, but the early books were so much quarter bin material, much like Daredevil at the time, one of Marvel's few failures.
So I go into the store to get a slurpee (DC Superhero Cups) and a couple of books, I see this thick comic with a bunch of new characters bouncing out of it. I saw Cyclops was there, and so was the Canadian superhero that had shown up in the Hulk a year or so before, Wolverine, plus Sunfire and Banshee, both of whom I seen before, but didn't know much about. Plus there were these new guys, with one of them looking just a bit like the devil. The cover was by the guy who drew the Legion and the characters looked really cool, so I spent the fifty cents and grabbed one.
Sitting back and meeting Nightcrawler, Storm, Thunderbird and Colossus for the first time was one of those seminal comic fan moments, and the X-Men were suddenly my very favorite book. When Giant-Sized X-Men #2 came out and was a reprint, I was really not happy, that was until X-Men #94 showed up and the new team began to solidify.
I really liked Nightcrawler, and Thunderbird, thinking both were just incredibly cool characters, so you can imagine just how stunned I was when at the end of the second adventure, John Proudstar dies for some very badly thought out reasons. I had never seen a comic character die before, and that certainly pulled the rug out from underneath me.
There was only one thing to do, and at that point I did something I had never done for any other comic before. I got a subscription. To this day I have all these classic X-Men comics with folds in them from mailing.
Anyway, I don't really need to retell the stories, I don't think most of you would be here if you were not at least familiar with the team. But man I loved that team. Looking back it was cool that of all people Banshee was consistently treated in the early days as the most dangerous X-Man, the fun of seeing a totally evil, totally re-powered Magneto explode onto the scene, the moment when we first see that Wolverines claws are connected, the birth of the Phoenix, the death of the Jean Grey, it's all just an incredible run.
I really am not a fan of the modern version of the X-Men very specifically because we never, ever, see this combination of X-Men as a team. The characters have been so wrecked by decades of "events", that the Uncanny X-Men are as much a memory of the past as Herbie, the Spirit or the THUNDER Agents.
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Post by berkley on Jul 19, 2014 23:46:07 GMT -5
Looking at the comics.org gallery, I think I came on board with X-Men 99. I was definitely a fan, especially for the first couple years after that. I kept reading up to around X-Men 150, but thought the series had been tailing off a little for some time by then - or maybe it was just my own interest that was fading.
I liked the international flavour of the team, although the Canadian member, Wolverine, has never been a favourite of mine. My favourite team member was actually Nightcrawler, though I can't remember exactly why that was after all these years. I'd like to re-read the run myself sometime, though I seem to have lost a lot of those issues somehow or other and they're stupidly expensive as back-issues.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 20, 2014 0:12:24 GMT -5
The earliest issue I had owned was issue #43, but of course that came from a back issue bin. I can't remember when I started reading the comic on the stands, but I think around issue 240 or so, I know I bought all the recent back issues I could find for cover price at the time, so my collection started a bit earlier. I just know I was reading since before the Inferno crossover, but irregularly. At the time I didn't know comics were released weekly, what day they were released on, anything like that. And I went to the 7-11 far more often than the LCS, and would just spend my money on what was at the stand the day I showed up with money. So I had a lot of gaps in my current as well as my back issue purchases.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 20, 2014 0:21:01 GMT -5
Giant-Size X-Men #1 to Uncanny X-Men #143 are still cutting edge after all these years and are the definitive X-Men to me. They represented the best in comics of the day imho.... There were other teams - Avengers, Defenders, Invaders, Champions etc...but this was the team I instantly loved. Visually stimilating in every way. Got to love Phoenix. And after 20 odd years, the stories still resonate, they still stick, hell, the last X-Men movie sorta relives Days of Future Past  berkley...the original comics are pricey, but the two Omnibus volumes are great alternatives. I own both, including the actual comics. |
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shaxper
CCF Site Custodian
Posts: 22,864
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Post by shaxper on Jul 20, 2014 0:22:42 GMT -5
I stil think the X-Men didn't truly hit their stride until after the Dark Phoenix Saga, when they had to begin carrying around the repercussions of their adventures in a way far more real and lasting than the death of Thunderbird, and that experience of carrying grief inevitably forced them to grow and to grow together.
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Post by coveredinbees on Jul 20, 2014 0:46:14 GMT -5
I'm very slowly rereading this run right now!
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shaxper
CCF Site Custodian
Posts: 22,864
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Post by shaxper on Jul 20, 2014 0:48:12 GMT -5
I'm very slowly rereading this run right now! I'd originally been planning to start a review thread on it come August. Now, with the move to the new site and all the work that has entailed, I still haven't made up my mind whether I'm going to go for it or not. We'll see how I'm feeling once I've accomplished my next big task for the site on July 23rd... |
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Post by BigPapaJoe on Jul 20, 2014 0:54:52 GMT -5
Cool. I have yet to get there as I'm stuck on the first few issues of X-Men. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's run, which is kind of a chore to get through right now. Storm is one of my favorite characters along with Colossus. So I'm anxious to get to that point and finally read all of their wonderful stories together.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 20, 2014 1:05:35 GMT -5
My first exposure to the X-Men was #1 in Son of Origins when I got that in or around '76 or '77. The first issue of the All New All Different X-Men I read was #105 that my cousin owned, and the first I bought off the stands was #108, John Byrne's first issue. The next I bought off the stands was #150. In between I read all that my friends had, and while not having read every issue, I was able to mostly follow along while I was living in Maine, but when we moved back to Connecticut when the school year ended in '82, I had no friends who read comics and no means to buy my own until I got a part time job. I started following X-Men again when I did, along with other comics. It wasn't my favorite, but I liked them well enough to follow the story, but even then back issues were to of the question. When Classic X-Men started a year and a half or so later, I started grabbing that and filling in the blanks I had missed along the way for the first time.
I continued to read X-Men and the offshoots all through college and stopped just about the time Claremont left the first time, came back when I had a better job and could afford more comics a couple years later and at that point started buying up back issues as I had completed Avengers except for #1 and 4 at that point ad was expanding what I was getting back issue wise. About the time of the Phalanx Covenant cross-over and all that lovely joy joy in the mid to latish 90's I stopped reading pretty much for good though I check out an odd issue here and there or trade from the library.
The Claremont/Cockrum/Byrne stuff is a seminal run in comics. There are a whole lot more seminal runs in comics I like better and even a lot of non-seminal runs I like better, but I do like it. My wife on the other hand, is the big X-Man fan in the house. She didn't discover them until the animated series, but the summer after it debuted borrowed and read the whole run form 1-up from one of her close college friends, and bought everything X-related until shortly before we started dating when she stopped for budgetary reasons. When I moved out here, pulled out the issues of mine she didn't have and added them to her run, and sold off the rest of mine. I tried reading the run once since I moved out here, via the Essentials format, and I got about halfway through the second volume before I gave up. While I still like the run, it had lost its magic for me, and I had other things I would rather spend my time reading. The reading of it again did not live up to the discovery of it the first time and I found rereading it was lowering my estimation of the run, so I stopped rather than further diminish my otherwise fond memories of those books.
-M
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Post by hondobrode on Jul 20, 2014 1:07:29 GMT -5
Very inexpensive ar Comixology @ $ 2 ea.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Jul 20, 2014 7:33:04 GMT -5
I was late coming to the party as my first issue was #114. The adventures of the X-Men (who at the time were traveling around the world to get back home) were fun, but what really distinguished the mag from most others at the time was how Chris Claremont wrote the female characters. They weren't damsels in distress and they weren't guys with boobs. I don't think any comic-book lady at the time felt as authentic as Jean, Ororo, Moira or Heather Hudson.
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Post by Cei-U! on Jul 20, 2014 8:00:22 GMT -5
My first exposure to the new X-Men was Nightcrawler's guest shot in Amazing Spider-Man #161-62 where he instantly and permanently became my favorite Marvel-style mutant. Not long after, a copy of X-Men #101--the debut of Phoenix--found its way into my collection but it wasn't until #117 that I began buying it regularly. The Alpha Flight two-parter were my first subscription issues and I didn't miss another until I dropped all the X-titles during the Mutant Massacre fiasco. The Claremont/Byrne team were definitely the high point of the run. After Byrne's departure, the book was never the same. None of the succeeding pencilers meshed as well with Claremont and his later editors seemed reluctant to rein in his more extreme affectations or give shape to his meandering plotting. Like Rick, I consider that initial roster--Cyclops, Storm, Wolverine, Nightcrawler, Colossus and Banshee, sometimes joined by Sunfire and Phoenix--the definitive X-Men. I was not happy when they dropped Banshee, whose age and world-weariness helped ground his teammates, though like most folks I found plucky Kitty Pryde delightful. I can go back and re-read the entire run through #143 (the two fill-in issues excepted) and enjoy them nearly as much as I did when it was all fresh and new but it takes a work-related justification to revisit the later material (the New Mutants grabbed my attention for a while, especially the Sienkiewicz issues, but by the time of Secret Wars II they'd paled on me too). Too much soap, too many lamoid new Xers, waaaaay too much Claremont.
Cei-U!
I summon Cerebro!
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Jul 20, 2014 8:19:02 GMT -5
I took a 2-3 year break from comics and when I jumped back in during the summer of 1976, the Xmen was the most in demand book.It was intially hard to find copies of the Giant-Size edition or # 94. Had to wind up paying about $10 for each. Outrageous. Got around to reading them by the time Byrne arrived and became a fan. Started losing interest during the Australian period
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Post by adamwarlock2099 on Jul 20, 2014 10:35:46 GMT -5
I was late coming to the party as my first issue was #114. The adventures of the X-Men (who at the time were traveling around the world to get back home) were fun, but what really distinguished the mag from most others at the time was how Chris Claremont wrote the female characters. They weren't damsels in distress and they weren't guys with boobs. I don't think any comic-book lady at the time felt as authentic as Jean, Ororo, Moira or Heather Hudson. Well of you were late to the party, that must have been why no one was there when I arrived with #320. I started right before AoA which stands as still my favorite story of the X-Men. I read for about 3-4 years after that following Uncanny and X-Men V2. The first year to two it was a monthly purchase but then I just started buying stories that caught my eye. (I'm a big sucker for Strom no matter what it's about.) I've gone back to back issues. I stumbled on the Broods second encounter with the X-Men when I saw the transforming Wolverine to Brood cover. I bought a lot of mid 200's to the present (at that time) and went back to the 160's to get the Broods first appearance but I've never read anything older than those issues. I am curious on how well the Essentials might read (I'm asumimg Marvel did one for the title) as that would probably be the only format the library seems to have of comics that old. I like me some X-Men in doses but I've never lasted very long reading them steadily. Even the supposed much different Ultimate title didn't appeal long enough for me. And I've read most of Xtreme X-Men, but that was more due to the artist and being a sucker for Storm. |
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Post by Pharozonk on Jul 20, 2014 10:58:57 GMT -5
Started losing interest during the Australian period Heh, that's when I got into the X-Men, around UXM #219. |
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