This was one of my favorite Classic X-Men stories when I was a teenager—right up there with "A Fire in the Night". I'd been reading collections of the first Uncanny run (mostly black-and-white Essentials), and finding the Classics to go with that was a delight. This story defined John Proudstar for me—not that there's a whole lot of competition—and I loved for that.

In retrospect, though, this was a lousy place to meet James; even though he comes off better in New Mutants, I was grumpily bored by him for years before I admitted that no, he's a perfectly sound character and actually does have more character development than his brother. Just... not in this story.