Days Of Future Past

Start w/ The Dark Phoenix Saga. It directly precedes DOFP, and it's as good an encapsulation of What Makes Teh X-Men Grate as there is.

I knew I should never deeceeplusplus w/o checking with ILC.

like my man says above, this is why anyone cares about the X-men. these stories not only set the tone for super hero comics in the 80s, but could be said to have saved the mainstream comic book business. after these issues came the precipitous decline into utter suck-ass-itude, as no one reined in Claremont's indulgences.

but given your interest in the silver age, you might also check out the Essentials devoted to the '60s stuff. You'd dig that, methinks.

& the movie didn't ruin much @ all.

But I wld advise caution w/ regard to the 'original'/silver age x-men issues - after the early Kirby issues there's far far too much Werner Roth artwork and dull stories to slog through before you get to the superb Thomas-Adams run (which is available in other, colour reprint editions too)

This looks pretty cool. Pricey, yeah, but was $100 in the comic shop. Does it cover Days of Future Past?

Also, if you like DOFP, you might want to check out the less good, but entertaining sequels: the Days of the Future Present annual crossover (with some incredible art by Art Adams and a brilliant Fantastic Four cover by I don't remember who) and Days of the Future Yet to Come (an Elseworldy Alan Davis Excaliber arc that involved Rachel Summers and the Marvel UK characters, like Tangerine and Death's Head).

Xpost - Essential vol 2 has the dark phoenix stuff.

Thoughts:

-John Byrne used to be pretty great, huh?
-Dazzler was originally supposed to be black, wasn't she?
-Proteus? Not related to the Legion pet, amirite?
-WOW, everything is so narrated.
-Was this written with the explicit intention of getting folx hooked on X-men and selling back-issues?
-Oh, that Wolverine and his Dirty Harry mugging.
-Krees? Skrulls? I'm gonna have to go back further than old school X-men, right? Don't they trace back to Lee/Kirby Fantastic Four?
-This is so much better than the shitty DC comics I was reading in 1981.

As far as Huk's comment re: TDPS being so much better than its DC contemporaries, I thought it was generally accepted that The New Teen Titans was the one DC title that matched the superfun of the Claremont / Byrne X-stuff.

well, that story the reason that he became the biggest superstar in the field. consequently, after his star faded, he descended into bitterness and pettiness (in which he undid developments made by other creators he was feuding with).

-WOW, everything is so narrated.
yes. I guess the over-narration therein was reacted to by Watchmen and DKR, and it has stayed on that model since.

-Was this written with the explicit intention of getting folx hooked on X-men and selling back-issues?
this stuff came out during the birth of the direct market, when Marvel and DC figured out that such a thing was going on. other than that, what comic book (or any product) has ever been produced that did not have the explicit intention of getting folks hooked?

-Oh, that Wolverine and his Dirty Harry mugging.
only the beginning of the character model that took over the fukking industry. sigh.

-Krees? Skrulls? I'm gonna have to go back further than old school X-men, right? Don't they trace back to Lee/Kirby Fantastic Four?
The Skrulls debuted in FF #2, The Kree in FF #65. both have been all over marvel ever since.

-This is so much better than the shitty DC comics I was reading in 1981.
I can't believe that you were that much of a DC zombie. Its crazy to me that partisanship extends to funny books. Anyway, even tho Marv Wolfman will deny it to his dying day, the success of the X-men led to New Teen Titans, which pointed a way out of the endless doldrums that DC was in (IMHO).

Re DC vs Marvel: Aside from NTT--which, OMG how could it not be a response to X-Men???--nothing DC was doing at that time had the guts to attempt that kind of scale of narrative (and, really, in 1981 I was 4, so the only stuff I was regularly "reading" was Marvel's Star Wars and Indiana Jones comics, with occassional Superman/DC Comics Presents/JLA here and there), but later stuff, especially Omega Men and Legion Schnitzel, were definitely informed by this stuff.

Re X3: There are a few scenes in TDPS that made it onscreen, though the most blatant one, with Phonix telling Volvorine to kill her, obv. had a diff outcome.

why didn't they just call it "Days of Redundant Redundancies"

if anyone is interested, I will post an abridged system that I started when i was 11, in which I line up every significant character in the DC and Marvel universes with their equivalent in the other company.

By admitting that I did this (and have started to think about it again), I have noticed that my penis has disappeared and that God has ret-conned my life so that I've never had girlfriends and have never been inside a woman.

OMG!

The fact that it cuts out right before what many consider the high point of the run is pretty shameful. One bigger volume up to #142 or two smaller volumes would have been a much better way to handle things.

That said, I'll probably get the omnibus, but then I've already got nearly all those issues in the original form (yet I never read them because they date back to when I actually bagged and boarded comics.)

DOFP was one of the first comics I ever truly loved, thanks to my already much praised on this board older cousin.

see also: Age of Apocalypse packs which suggest you wade through turkeys like the Blink miniseries before the actual story starts.

xpost still confused! Tom, what do you suggest then? I read through the second volume of Essentials, and then stopped, but I rilly rilly digged #141 and 142.

http://rowleycorvette.com/cards/pow.jpg

When I'm talking about the packs and say "DOFP related issues", I don't mean "the other Claremont/Byrne stories that lead up to it" NO NO that would be too simple, I mean rubbish later retcons that happen chronologically before 141/142 and so are included before them in the pack by the torrent-making mentalists. (xpost Huk has just explained this)

*(The introduction of Rachel Summers was quite a good set-up and idea but never went anywhere at all really)

I swear, I'm such a moron now. ("Now.")

I think that was the party line at one point. Maybe it still is. I read all the way through Claremont's X-Men for the first time a couple of years ago. I started doing the same with Wolfman's Titans fairly recently. The former was, despite the cheese and general gripes about Claremont's style, mostly surprising and exciting and a lot of fun. The latter has been, thus far, mostly pretty boring and lousy and an obvious, half-assed attempt to do what the former did about 15X better.

Well, after 25-odd years of comics reading, I finally got around to reading DOFP and Dark Phoenix. Should I continue with the reprints, or just leave it at that? Good fun and all ("This Issue: Everybody Dies!" is as cruel and funny as anything 2000AD had out at the time) -- but are any parts of the rest of his run worth the effort?

Ehh...things peter out pretty hardcore once Byrne leaves, and they stay kinda 'blah' for a couple of years until Paul Smith and JRJR come into the fold. Then it's pretty classic again through the end of the 80s. If you wanna skip some, I think you could safely jump straight to Essential v4 or 5.

I thought Paul Smith started drawing X-Men immediately after Byrne left? If not, who was the artist between Byrne and Smith? I don't think I've ever any issues between them.

Dave Cockrum did the issues when it picks up with the Shiar plotline with Professor X.

Yeah, Dave Cockrum was on for...two years? Maybe a little less? Then Paul Smith took over for X-MEN IN SPAAAAAACEEE! The series is pretty good until about #200 or so. It's not as good as 100-142, but still good.

Paul Smith deserves a bigger place in comic history, a very good artist.

Paul Smith was THE X-Men artist for my friends and I growing up. The X-Men artists of my youth: Smith > Byrne > JR jr > Cockrum. Always liked Cockrum as a layout artist but don't really care for his finished work.

You all know he's doing the X-MEN FOREVER series with Claremont, right? I just snagged an issue of it but I haven't given it a read yet. Part of me is deeply, deeply afraid of what I'll find there.

He's still good (the writing, on the other hand...) but not really up to his early 80s form.

I suspected. Will give it a chance, anyways.

I'm giving Claremont the benefit of the doubt for a little while w/r/t X-Men Forever. He's picking up a storyline that was left dangling almost 20 years ago, so I imagine that it might take him a bit to find his feet and get a feel for the characters again. That said, the book isn't as bad as it could've been.

cockrum's 2nd run on xmen def inferior to his first - prob too slow for a monthly comic bk by then, and he was being inked v. unsympathetically by bob wiacek - also, i think claremont prob had a far greater control of the content post-byrne, limiting cockrum's storytelling choices and often smothering the panels w/ dialogue+captions - and, oh yeah, mostly rotten claremont scripts w/ endless fuggin alien knockoffs and ghastly kitty kiddie whimsy ugh

but cockrum's first run is superb conventional superhero comics art stuff, not flashy but graceful figurework and fully rendered costumes all designed by cockrum, w/ no cheatin

I read his second run first so I remember it fondly, even if it's not the ZOMGSUPERHEROESWTFBBQ that 94-107 was.

I've never been a big fan of Cockrum's - his stuff is a bit blocky and inelegant.

+1

Yeah, I didn't want to presume that it was because of Cockrum, but his second run on the book is definitely the low water mark of Claremont's initial run, for me.

it's hard to put into words how much this cover blew my mind when I first saw it on the stand in 81, back when comics was new and anything was possible

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:X-Men_v1_141.jpg

aw...

http://i369.photobucket.com/albums/oo133/avenging_son/xmen141.jpg

It seems that the shadow that the Dark Phoenix and Days of Future Past stories put upon the X-men comics is very, very long.

Even Morrison pretty much did his own sequel at the same time in that last arc on X-men.

There is some pretty good stuff, more in the single issues in the x-men that follows, especially through the Paul Smith and JR Jr issues. The problem is that the title really gets killed by it's popularity and the spin offs I think pretty much watered down the main book. Claremont just kept inventing more and more mutants, no wonder they needed a slaughter house every year or so to get rid of some of them. It just didn't make them that special I think after a while.

For me, as a teenager reading them as they came out, I think it jumped the shark having Prof. X bring in Magneto to take his place. Making Magneto the dad of Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch spawned a bunch of stories, but the constant rewriting of the past in the X-men and Wolverine is pretty funky.

The fans at the time seemed to disagree, as I think over the next couple of years the X-men kept getting more and more popular. Criminy that book used to sell at the store I worked at in the late 80s, like twice as much as the next most popular title.

These are my complaints looking at the X-men now, but I haven't read most of the stuff from the late 80s, just pieced it together.

Didn't Excalibur, especially in the period with the Rachel Summers version of Phoenix, revisit the Days of Future Past scene repeatedly? The X-books are a lot more interested in the Bishop alternative future angle now, possibly because they over-mined the DoFP territory.

FWIW I think Uncanny stays really good for a GOOD while after DOFP; it's hard to say that the Brood arc is exactly better than Dark Phoenix, but it satisfies - nice, long, sustained adventure in space. The Madelyne Pryor story is a little rockier, but Paul Smith is phenomenal and this was the point where the X-Men as globetrotting outlaws started to really click.

Then IIRC there's a small slump as JRJr gets his feet, but it doesn't last long - Nimrod is great, Kulan Gath is a fun two-issue romp, etc. Good pacy comic. I think somewhere in there, the real energy flipped over to New Mutants, which is a fantastic comic from maybe issue 15 (or so? The Demon Bear arc starts in 18, but that seems a tough place for a newbie to jump on board) through 50. It must have been crazy having the JRJr X-Men and Bill Sienkiewicz New Mutants running at the same time - really dark, scrubby, muddy, and beautiful artwork on the two flagship X-books. They were bleak times to be a mutant I guess. But this is kind of the era that really defines the X-Men to me: powerless mohawk Storm leading the team, Magneto struggling to handle the kids, plus Kitty, Wolverine, Rogue, and Colossus - what more does the book really need?

What starts to run Uncanny down is the building sense that a lot of this stuff isn't going anywhere, or is getting sabotaged by editorial along the way - Madelyne Pryor is maybe the clearest example, also Rachel Summers as Tom mentions. She shows up with a lot of great buildup and fanfare, has trouble finding a niche in the title, and then gets kicked out of reality rather abruptly. Lame. The last really compelling thing that happens is probably Colossus going apeshit in The Mutant Massacre. After that things start getting really jumbled and clogged with endless lonnnnng-term villainous plots (the Adversary is a major snore). I think Claremont wanted to shake off the blues by sending the team on the road, but by that point the book was biweekly and things just get....goofy, really. But I think there's a pretty unstoppable chunk of comics that runs roughly from 120 to 220 - wouldn't mind having a record like that to my name.

strongly suspect i have written a really similar post on another x-men thread, sorry guys

I pretty much agree with you, I was too young to read X-Men during the Byrne and most of the Smith era (even though the Finnish X-Men book was a couple of years behind the American titles), so the JRJr. era really feels like the golden age of the era of the title. I think Claremont's writing was top-notch at the time: the various soap opera twists still felt as exciting as the adventure bits, the idea of mutants as a despised minority had become dominant but not overwhelming, and the whole idea of X-Men as the "noble losers" of the Marvel Universe (exemplified by Storm losing her powers but still remaining the leader of the team) worked nicely, IMO. Even though there were several twists that shook the status quo (like Xavier's prolonged absence and Magneto's leadership of the school), but the Xavier Institute still served as the steady anchor of both X-Men and New Mutants. I think Claremont (or the editors) underestimated the importance of the school setting when he decided to send them to Australia after the Adversary battle. The defining aspect of X-Men and New Mutants was not just that they were superheroes, or a despised minority, but that they were also students in a school. I think later writers like Morrison understood that well; I'm not sure why Claremont thought it was a good idea to get rid of the school setting, but that pretty much was the point when I started to loose interest in X-Men.

Because I'm so fond of this era, to me Magneto always worked best as a misguided but ultimately noble character who tried to compensate for the wrongs he'd done in the past. This is why I didn't particularly like Morrison's depiction of him as a crazy mutant fascist, even if Morrison did try to explain his erratic behaviour with the Kick subplot. Also, even if the Adversary was bit of a cliched villain, I did think that the culmination of that storyline (i.e. "Fall of the Mutants") was nicely written. After several years of foreshadowing, the way that story came to its conclusion felt enjoyably grandiose, and after so many defeats and barely-victories for the X-Men (the mutant massacre, for example), it was nice for once to see them kick ass with the whole world witnessing it. Of course that story was also the one that totally shook the status quo for years to come, so in retrospect you could see it as the final glory moment for the classic Claremont X-Men.

Great post - but I'm not so convinced that leaving the school was such a departure for the title. I mean, how much of Uncanny 100-200 actually takes place at the school? Dark Phoenix sees them in NYC, Arizona, and space - the Brood story is in space, actually they're in space all the time (not necessarily a good thing - god, save me from the Shi'ar), not to mention Japan for the Silver Samurai or Scotland for Proteus. It seems actually like Clarmeont was always trying to get away from the school - he liked it as a headquarters and a setting for domestic scenes, but he saved the boarding school adventure stuff for New Mutants. Where it worked really nicely I have to say.

Magneto has never worked for me as anything other than the atoning, maybe slightly backsliding sinner as you outline it. Agreed completely. I think Morrison is kind of right in saying that trying to ennoble a racist terrorist is probably a bad idea, but the story depends on the "crazy Magneto" from Fatal Attractions forward and it consequently lacks a real sense of consequentiality or drama, to me anyway.

Found the other thread though: S/D X-Men Runs And I do the same thing there that I'll do here: recommend the ancient fanfic Kid Dynamo to anyone who adored the Magneto-as-headmaster days and wanted to see them keep going on....great guilty pleasure stuff there, and some of the best scenes imaginable of the teenage superhero teem AS plausible teenagers.

(One of the charms of Claremont's run in general - or annoyances if it's not your thing - is how much of it has NOTHING to do with mutants, mutancy, or any other such "core concepts" - it's just stuff that a nerdy guy like Clarmeont would have thought was cool in the late 70s, like samurais, and Alien, and mystical demons gathering Bloodstones, and Steeleye Span. Over the course of a hundred issues this stuff aggregates itself into teh continuity as part of the mythos, and it also gives a kind of unique texture I think...)

i started reading x-men with the mutant massacre, shortly after i got into comic books, and i still rate it, as an arc. i think the series tailed off badly not too long after that, though i only really have vivid memories of the massacre issues. this arc came around the time of the classic x-men reprints of the claremont era, iirc, which i also adored, so that was a good time to begin exploring the x-world, i guess.

really, really love the original DOFP storyline, Sentinels rool.

I mean, how much of Uncanny 100-200 actually takes place at the school? Dark Phoenix sees them in NYC, Arizona, and space - the Brood story is in space, actually they're in space all the time (not necessarily a good thing - god, save me from the Shi'ar), not to mention Japan for the Silver Samurai or Scotland for Proteus. It seems actually like Clarmeont was always trying to get away from the school - he liked it as a headquarters and a setting for domestic scenes, but he saved the boarding school adventure stuff for New Mutants. Where it worked really nicely I have to say.

Maybe it's got not so much to do with the actual school than seeing all Xavier's students as one big family? Even with the introduction of New Mutants they still occupied the same school, and were frequently interacting each other (in the Asgård crossover, for example, which was one of my favourite stories from that era). I think this is perfectly exemplified by X-Men Annual #7, where X-Men and New Mutants are just having a friendly game of baseball, when the Impossible Man appears to stir up things. Nothing particularly important happens in that issue, most of the story is played for laughs, but it still gives you the idea that here's a small, tight-knit community of rejects trying to get by in a society that doesn't really like them. Whereas after the Fall of the Mutants storyline that community becomes completely scattered: the core X-Men team is presumed dead, Kitty, Rachel, and Kurt (all whom were among my favourite X-characters) go to England to form Excalibur, X-Factor is a completely different entity, and the New Mutants became X-Force or whatever. Of course this has less to do with particular writers than with the popularity of X-Men causing the whole X-Universe to expand so rapidly. It was much easier to make Xavier's students act like a family when it was just one or two titles written by Claremont, than with a dozen different titles with just as many writers. But I do think the uncontrolled proliferation of X-titles was (together with the popularity of the "grim & gritty" style) one of the biggest reasons why 90s X-Men was so much worse than 80s X-Men.

I kicked off my X-Men reading with "The Fall of the Mutants" and it totally dragged me into the X-Men universe. Then a friend lent me something like 200 back issues of Uncanny X-Men and New Mutants and my mind was completely blown... I do think Silvestri/Green art is sorely underappreciated. They were hitting it out of the park every month for a couple of years at least. Claremont moved into his even more prolix phase and the whole Jim Lee thing started and I started to lose interest. Too many books, too many dangling plot threads. And then there was "Inferno" which just killed it for me.

omg Kid Dynamo! I remember that! Cypher as not-totally-useless-in-combat!

Anyone read X-Men Forever? I'm interested as a pure curiosity, though I don't expect much. I have to admit though, what Claremont did with The End series was pretty crazy and mindlessly entertaining, if not what I'd call "quality". Even if it's an "alternate universe", it's a different tack than what he did with The End (which was incorporate all X-Men material up until that point, including the books and characters he wasn't involved with).

If I may expand my X-Men as a family theory a bit more: most other popular superhero groups (like The Avengers or Justice League) only get together when they are needed to save the world. Outside the group, they have their own private lives, even their own solo titles. But the X-Men don't get together only to fight bad guys, they also go to the same school, live on its premises, spend a lot of their free time together, etc. So I think for a kid or a teen who may feel a bít out of place in the world, shunned by his school mates, misunderstood by his real family, the idea of a group of rejects forming a surrogate family, and a school where everyone understands how you feel, probably has a strong appeal. And I'm sure a lot of comic geeks fell into that category, which might explain part of X-Men's popularity.

Marvel already had a superhero team that represented family in The Fantastic Four. The X-Men were about being a minority (and I am not advocating the recreation of the racial vs sexual orientation argument btw).

Yeah, but Fantastic Four is about an actual blood family. X-Men is about a surrogate family formed by society's rejects. I think there's a big difference between the two, at least when it comes to reader identification.

I'd definitely lean towards the minority aspect being more prominent in X-Men, especially by the '80s, and there being so many more mutants and their place in society coming to the forefront (Is Spider-Man... a mutant!?). Also, the surrogate family thing only goes so far, especially with all the love triangles and such and constant conflicts with their evil counterparts, arch-societies, and so on... Definitely right about the contrast of "family" offered by X-Men vs. FF and Avengers, though.

"(One of the charms of Claremont's run in general - or annoyances if it's not your thing - is how much of it has NOTHING to do with mutants, mutancy, or any other such "core concepts" - it's just stuff that a nerdy guy like Clarmeont would have thought was cool in the late 70s, like samurais, and Alien, and mystical demons gathering Bloodstones, and Steeleye Span. Over the course of a hundred issues this stuff aggregates itself into teh continuity as part of the mythos, and it also gives a kind of unique texture I think...)"

I think this is exactly what started to go wrong around the time Magneto was put in charge and Cyclops was turned into a eunuch. Byrne tends to want to lead things back to Jack and Stan or what he did in an earlier title. I think this is why Moses Magnum shows up etc. Claremont as the title keeps getting more and more popular seems to take the title away from the rest of the Marvel Universe and starts creating a new group of 'secret mutants' every month like the Morlocks etc.

Beyond that, I'd almost say the popularity of those huge X-men crossovers pretty much changed comics in some ways for the worse. X-men stories ceased to end and that crap seems to be an infection that has never gone away.

If someone was going to do the Silver Surfer/Galactus story now, it would be setup for six months held through for another six months and end in some indecisive way.

I can't fight it, I was just done with the X-men around the time the Mutant Massacre happened. Then again, there was a whole lot of good stuff happening in comics in 86 or so and to me the X-men books were kind of weak by comparison. The fans disagreed, as those books kept getting bigger and more popular every year or so through the late 80s. Criminy they went from 1 title to 2 titles, to like a half dozen in two years and were publishing X-men like twice a month during the crossovers.

If people like John Byrne's stuff with the X-men, there is other stuff out there that is pretty good. His Fantastic Four is holds up really well and I really liked the stuff he did with The Thing in both Marvel Two-In-One and his solo title. The Project Pegasus storyline in Marvel Two-In-One is one of the comics that got me hooked on comics. Some of the Iron Fist that Byrne and Claremont did was also pretty cool.

I jumped back into comics and fully onto the X-Men bandwagon right when the Mutant Massacre happened.

Really down with Tuomas's "adoptive family" reading - pretty sure this was a huge part of how I related to the books as a teenager, esp. New Mutants. The escapism wasn't all in the world-spanning hyjinks (although I would have loved to be whisked away to Asgard!) (Asgard thing is among my favorite stories as well, esp. thanks to Arthur Adams on art), a lot of it was in this sense of a friendly community among really diverse people, who got each other through the hard times of being freaks and weirdos and even got to feel basically normal together. And yeah, maybe the post-Fall of the Mutants status quo kind of wrecks that.

Question, is this general "feel" something any other X-Men run has managed to nail, despite the difficulty of managing two dozen titles? I felt traces of it in Morrison's run; Whedon's team was too small and closed-off from the rest of the line to really pull it off (despite his obvious love for the source material).

The Lobdell/Nicieza years, for all their ups and downs (and terrible crossovers that make Inferno look like pure genius), were clearly trying to pull off the "classic" style, perhaps under editorial edict, but it kind of worked for a while I think. Some terrible plot ideas bouncing around, but you still got shit like Jubilee and Prof X. having a heart-to-heart when he gets his legs back for a day, and massive page time given to Ororo/Forge and Gambit/Rogue stuff. I think they switch from baseball to basketball though, cause, y'know, it was the 90s and nobody played pickup baseball anymore.

Kid Dynamo: yeah, super-Cypher! And Magneto and Stevie Hunter on awkward first dates! And the kids spending Fall of the Mutants doing relief work in NYC instead of screwing around with Bird Brain! Great stuff. And the author-insert character, despite maybe a few too many touches of awesomeness, basically works for me.

Claremont as the title keeps getting more and more popular seems to take the title away from the rest of the Marvel Universe and starts creating a new group of 'secret mutants' every month like the Morlocks etc.

I think once the idea that mutants are a hated minority became an important theme in X-Men, the X-universe pretty much had to become separate from the Marvel universe. As discussed in this thread, it doesn't really make sense that mutants are hated whereas other superheroes in the Marvel universe aren't, especially when regular human beings have no way of distinguishing between the two groups. I think Days of Future Past (and God Loves, Man Kills) was really the starting point of this trend; it's been ages since I've read this stuff, but I can't remember the "mutants as a persecuted minority" theme being quite as important before DoFP.

I know

[Whoops, the message was cut there.]

I know the "mutants as minority" has been often handled in a cornily allegorical way, but I still think the idea is pretty essential for making X-Men a distinct title. If the X-Men aren't different from humans or from other superheroes, they're just another superhero group with nothing special about them. I think the minority angle still has a lot of potential if handled by a good writer, as Morrison's X-Men run proved. Also, I think being a mutant can be a potent metaphor for the sort of alienation and longing for a new family/community as described above.

could someone possibly explain to me why the marauders were murdering all the mutants in the massacre arc? i don't think essential xmen #6 spells that out, and i can't for the life of remember who was behind it all, or why...

Mr. Sinister was behind the Marauders. But by the time they explained his background in Inferno, things had gotten quite convoluted, so I can't remember if it was ever explained why he sent the Marauders to kill the Morlocks. I stopped reading X-Men soon after that, so I'm not sure if the whole Marauder thing was explained later on.

thanks Tuomas!

I have a vague memory of something suggesting that the Morlocks were actually products of some failed experiment of Sinister's or Apocalypse's, and they were consequently seen as an embarassment? Really weak explanation if so though.

Dark Beast, actually. So Sinister knew someone was appropriating his work and wanted to wipe them out.

Dark Beast is such a weird retcon-explaining loophole for half a dozen things.

better him than Sugar Man

I think I have a soft spot for Sugar Man because he came out of the Chris Bachalo-drawn Generation X. Well, the Age of Apocalypse equivalent, but whatever. He's a dude who looks like a potato!

Yeah, Sugar Man was awesome in "Generation Next"! Potato with mouth and extra spindly arms and stabbing tongue of death, how can you go wrong?

I can't fight it, I was just done with the X-men around the time the Mutant Massacre happened. Then again, there was a whole lot of good stuff happening in comics in 86 or so and to me the X-men books were kind of weak by comparison. The fans disagreed, as those books kept getting bigger and more popular every year or so through the late 80s. Criminy they went from 1 title to 2 titles, to like a half dozen in two years and were publishing X-men like twice a month during the crossovers.

If people like John Byrne's stuff with the X-men, there is other stuff out there that is pretty good. His Fantastic Four is holds up really well and I really liked the stuff he did with The Thing in both Marvel Two-In-One and his solo title. The Project Pegasus storyline in Marvel Two-In-One is one of the comics that got me hooked on comics. Some of the Iron Fist that Byrne and Claremont did was also pretty cool.

Really nabisco-level sustained OTMness here. Project Pegasus ripped!

I just realized that they did "Days of Future Present" at one point, but have not yet claimed the storyline title "Days of Future Future". I think maybe that's what Morrison's "Here Comes Tomorrow" arc should have been called.

sigh i wish the art had been better on that arc