Welcome!

[sheliak]

Welcome to X-Men Classic!

This is a community dedicated to the classic Claremont-era X-Men! Related titles very much included. If you want to talk about New Mutants, X-Factor, Excalibur, the Magik miniseries, the Fallen Angels or anything else X-related from this time period—go right ahead! We hope you’ll have fun here.

To get the discussion rolling, tell us about the comic or arc that got you hooked on the era, or X-Men comics in general!

Comments

[rachelmanija]

I'm not 100% sure, but I think the issue that got me hooked was the one where Psylocke, still not a team member yet and with broken ribs from an earlier fight, is left in the mansion alone except for non-powered doctors and severely wounded team members in the infirmary, and Sabertooth attacks! She has to buy time in a physical fight with a man with super-strength who wildly overpowers her - and she does. And then Wolverine arrives and buys time for her to mind-read Sabertooth. And then she's welcomed to the team.

I read that without much background - it was one of a pile of unrelated comics - and absolutely loved this woman in her pink princess outfit who manages to stand her ground against overwhelming odds, fights hard and cleverly and too the utmost of her abilities, and triumphs. I loved that her broken ribs keep coming back into play, the glimpses of the courage of the doctors (I think it's Moira and someone else?) in their locked room who are also hugely outgunned but not leaving, and the neat parallel of her fighting to buy them time and then Wolverine fighting to buy her time.

I think that was Alan Davis's first issue drawn in a regular run - he might have done an annual first. I loved how he drew Betsy and her telepathic butterfly eyes. She has such a lovely, radiant smile at the end. And her hair and ribbons always look great.

[sheliak]

Early Psylocke is fantastic! I love her pink butterfly appearance (especially her telepathic butterfly eyes--so distinctive, and a fun effect when they were layered over someone else's face) and her core of steel, how she keeps getting back up and doing what she has to, no matter what.

[julian]

That one really struck me, when I was first galloping through Haverford's collection. She was exactly the sort of character who might annoy the hell out of me, except she went and did *that*. I mean! What?

[alchimie]

Goodness, yes, that issue -- there I was at my friend K's house post-sleepover, age roughly 12, and she had an early morning soccer practise, so she left a pile of comics for me to read when I woke up. She had tried to get me hooked on X-Men before, with no luck, but the top issue in the stack was that particular one (#213!) where Psylocke deals with Sabertooth, and I was absolutely sold and devoured the rest of the stack, feeling vaguely disappointed that not every single issue was Psylocke Handles It All.

[sheliak]

It's a fantastic intro to both Psylocke and the title as a whole! But especially Psylocke.

[sheliak]

When I was fourteen, my family went on a long vacation. I checked out some books from the local library to take with me, and one of the ones I picked was Essential X-Men vol. 2. We were away for about two weeks, and I read that comic over and over and over. I think it's still engraved on my brain.

I was already vaguely familiar with the characters—I'm not sure if I had seen the movies, but I'd definitely read Chris Claremont's novelizations, and the couple of other X-Men books I'd been able to find. (In retrospect, the Legacy Quest Trilogy was an excellent primer to the villains active in the 90s, if nothing else!) But I had a bit of trouble reading color comics in those days, so a black-and-white edition was a perfect place for me to start—and I still think the lineart looks great on its own!

There were about twenty issues in that collection—Proteus, the Dark Phoenix Saga, Days of Future Past, Kitty fighting demons and Wolverine mending fences with his old friends in Canada. There was even a helpful summary of the X-Men's entire history, courtesy of a bereaved Cyclops! It was a great primer to what made the team and the era so great, the characters and relationships and lovely art, and a good taste of how many different places the book could go.

I think it was the Proteus saga that really hooked me—I loved the combination of quiet moments (cocoa after a fight!) with high-stakes superhero battles, and the surreal and terrifying nature of Proteus's powers. And I imprinted hard on Moira. I loved her brilliance and ruthlessness, that she was the top scientist in this 'verse and that the most prominent human supporting character was a middle-aged woman (not that the artists often drew her that way, but still).

My other favorite arc was Days of Future Past. I loved Mystique and Destiny—their devotion to their cause and to each other, the tragedy of them creating the future they meant to avert (especially given Destiny's powers). And I immediately liked Pyro for his loyalty to Mystique and the creative, if sometimes nasty ways he used his powers. And meanwhile we had Kitty's badass future self, and Storm as a brand-new leader in a crisis, pulling through and doing splendidly. It was great.

I adore the characters in that era, and their relationships. I loved that Jean and Ororo were the strongest members of the team, their friendship, and Storm beginning to be a mentor for Kitty. I had an immediate crush on Nightcrawler, too.

And so much glorious weirdness. Canadian wendigo law! I loved how strange and out-there the X-Men's world was, how anything was possible, from space opera shenanigans to high fantasy interludes.

From there, I went through the rest of the library's X-Men collection. Ultimate X-Men wasn't my thing (though I liked the art in the Magnetic North storyline), but I loved the enthusiasm and tragedy of Age of Apocalypse (despite being confused all the while by all the skipping between titles and storylines in the collections I read). And I dipped my toes into then-modern X-Men—I loved the Academy X kids, still do—before being scared off by Decimation. But the Claremont era has always been the core of the X-Men for me—there's stuff later on that I love, but this era is what I always come back to.

[rachelmanija]

I need to get that collection! I don't have it and I missed some of those issues. Like, I am 90% sure I never read most of the Proteus saga and Kitty fighting demons doesn't ring a bell, but I love that time period. I also think I missed Canadian wendigo law, what was that?

Nightcrawler would definitely be the best boyfriend. Can you imagine how fun a date with him would be?

I also love how huge and wild the universe was, and the tonal variance. You have space opera and swashbuckling and high tragedy and basically everything.

[lilacsigil]

Canadian wendigo law! In the Marvel Universe, if you eat human flesh while in Canada, you become a wendigo. Only the modern-day boundaries of Canada, if you head over into Michigan or something you're fine. I can't remember if you can secretly feed someone human flesh and make them into a wendigo though.

[sheliak]

I want to say that you can, indeed, wendigo-fy people by secretly feeding them human flesh, but think I osmosed that rather than actually reading the storyline.

[rachelmanija]

LOLOLOL.

[sheliak]

I recommend it! (I think technically it was one demon, but she faced it all by herself!)

Canadian law stipulates that, because a particular character became a wendigo of his own free will, he is culpable for crimes commited as a wendigo. Although to be fair I don't think it's ever established if Canada has wendigo-specific legislation, or more general "if you enter this altered state willingly you are culpable for actions taken while in said state" laws.

I definitely stand by my teenage taste in X-Men crushes! I still think he'd be delightful company.

It felt like a world where anything could happen, and nothing would feel out of place.

[sholio]

For me I'm pretty sure it was the punk!Storm arc where she's depowered. I got into Marvel comics when I was pretty young, about 8 or 9, I think. I already loved comics (we had a bunch of my mom's old comics from the 50s and 60s from when she was a kid, mostly stuff like Superboy, Legion of Superheroes, and Classics Illustrated) and for Christmas I was given a "grab bag" gift set of Marvel comics that included an issue of all their currently running titles. I know this was what hooked me on X-Men, but while I remember specific issues of some of the other comics because they were first of all so memorable (the Thor issue where he turns into a frog was one of them, and an Iron Man one in which he got shrunk to microscopic size and attacked by computer viruses that looked like alien fighter planes) and second because they were the only issue of most of those titles that I had for most of my childhood, with X-Men I got into it enough to start collecting it, so I'm not sure of the specific issue. But it was definitely in that arc because I absolutely loved depowered Storm so much that it's the defining arc for her character for me, and I was disappointed when she got her powers back.

... NO WAIT, I just remembered the issue #, it was 202 - this one. (Thank you brain for storing useless trivia like that. Where are you when I need useful information like people's names or remembering appointments?)

I haphazardly collected X-Men and a couple other titles (Power Man & Iron Fist and Alpha Flight were the other ones I was mainly into) but it wasn't until I started getting the collected volumes in the late 90s that I ever had a clear idea of what happened when, because the comics I bought were so completely out of order - it was a combination of buying whatever was cheap in back issue bins and occasionally picking up the latest issue when I could get my folks to take me to the comic store, which was in a big city not very close to the small town we lived in, and therefore was a once or twice a year thing).

What I was really into, though, was the team stuff overall (especially those parts of it involving various combinations of Storm, Rogue, Wolverine, Kitty, and Nightcrawler), and especially the times when the team would just hang around together in their civilian clothes and do normal-person things, which was something I loved and could never get enough of. I also got into Rogue/Gambit later on, but he wasn't around yet in the time period when I first got into them.

[rachelmanija]

Oh! I just remembered that the first X-Men issues I read were the one with Psylocke AND the one where Storm and Rogue are swimming together and bonding and then Storm gets shot with the de-powering ray!

I love the depowered Storm arc so much. Normally female characters get depowered in order to make them, well, less powerful. And also to shove them into the background. And typically make them more stereotypically feminine. Depowered Storm became MORE badass, kept on being LESS stereotypically feminine (not that she really ever was, but...), and became EVEN MORE prominent, oh and also the team leader of a team of superpower mutants where she was the only non-powered one and it didn't matter. That whole arc could not have been more my id (among other things, I love "badass normal" and it's almost never written with women. It's probably my all-time favorite single X-Men arc.

[sheliak]

I loved how without her powers Storm was just focused and distilled--not a lesser person or hero, but more stripped down to her core. And that entire storyline was about her, about how losing her powers made her change and grow and rise to new challenges, not about anyone else. It was great.

(There's this one scene I particularly love—the X-Men are in the middle of a nasty fight, and one of their enemies can cancel people's superpowers. So he thinks he's cancelled Storm's and starts gloating, and she says "Such a pity I have none," and punches him. I just loved that bit.)

[jedishampoo]

I think I got in right around there, too -- early 200s, when Dazzler et al join the team. Dazzler was my fave then and she still sort of is?

I had never really read comics but my brother gave me some and said "there are girls in the comics too," so I picked up a couple. Next thing you know I was at the comic store buying all the backissues. ALL THE BACKISSUES.

I gotta admit, I really like some of the Claremont/Lee issues as well as the Davis and Silvestri ones. Oh, and while most of Australia was a mess, I still have a huge soft spot for it. I still in my heart ship Longshot/Dazzler.

[rachelmanija]

LOL, Claremont X-Men was the most "there are girls in the comics too" comic ever. Good for your brother.

I love Dazzler and I also really enjoyed Longshot/Dazzler.

[sheliak]

I'm really fond of a lot of the Australia era—it was weird in a lot of ways, but I loved the art and the characters (Maddy as mission control!) and the Genosha arc was excellent.

And yes, the X-Men comics are great for female characters!

[teshumai]

I am so continuously impressed by classic x-men's women.

[sheliak]

Storm's depowered arc was SO GOOD. I love her with her powers too, but I loved how the storyline about her losing them was handled, and how instead of fading into the background without her powers she became even more central and kept right on leading the team.

And yes, that core team and their relationships were wonderful! Pretty much every pair out of those five characters have a really interesting relationship.

(And Frog Thor! My first experience with comics Thor was when he showed up, as a frog, to give Dani Moonstar some much-needed encouragement. So of course he came across as very kind and noble, and also he just happened to be a frog right then! Why wouldn't he be a frog, in this universe?)

[lilacsigil]

I remember that kind of haphazard collecting! In my case the comic store was 2 hours away in the city, and I didn't have the money for it anyway. But the newsagent would have sporadically have these excellent 2 or 3 packs of random comics for 50c, and I got most of my comics from that.

[delight]

Once upon a time I saw X-2 and thought Kurt was amazing! Yeah, that's an embarrassing intro to a series when you have a comic geek parent, but it is the truth.

So I wanted to learn more about the source material - my father was a huge Jack Kirby fan (they shared a birthday, as a bonus) - and my first opportunity was at summer camp. What my camp-mates had brought along in terms of X-Men was all Claremont; I got introduced to the swasbuckling priest Kurt Wagner and fell in love with both him and everything around him, his team, his friends, everything.

ETA: The arc with Alex Summers and Annie Ghazikanian was the first I actually read in full! It was so far away in my weird foggy memory and then came back all at once.

My second summer at said camp, the Emma Frost miniseries origin story came out, and now Emma and Kurt are tied for first comic book characters of all time in my heart. Yes, both have had arcs that make me go D: and want to ignore them, but that's comics for you. I recently learned the Emma series has a complete set you can buy on Kindle for $25, and I intend to do this as soon as I have the funds because I haven't got the faintest clue where the actual books are anymore!

[rachelmanija]

That intro sequence with Kurt in X-2 is one of my favorite sequences of anything ever. Though swashbuckling priest Kurt is still the greatest.

[sheliak]

Kurt was wonderful in X2! He's had a lot of really great iterations, really; he's been pretty lucky with adaptations.

[sholio]

I love Kurt in X-2! He's so wonderful in that. :D

[lilacsigil]

So! I was about 10 and my mother brought home a random box of books from a garage sale. In it was the X-Men: Heroes for Hope comic. It was a one-off special by various big-name creators (including Stephen King!) with a framing story by Claremont, where each of the X-Men of the time have a scary experience where they learn about despair and then go to famine-hit Ethiopia and literally beat up despair in the form of a monster. It sounds terrible but the individual stories are really good, and they're clear that this doesn't solve famine. I was super impressed by Storm, Magneto and Rogue, who are still three of my favourites.

[sheliak]

I've never read that story, but it sounds really fun! And I'm glad that Storm, Magneto and Rogue all had good sections.

[teshumai]

So my classic x-men story is a bit round about. I didn't start reading comics and x-men until the 90s after the Claremont era had ended and I kept reading them for a long time. But I never really went backwards, until recently when I got marvel unlimited and decided i was going to read the entire 500 something run of Uncanny X-men starting in 1963. The move from Thomas to Claremont is sort of staggering in just how much better Claremont is. His voice is so distinctive and really gripping.

I have made it to 1985, and just met Madelyn Pryor last issue and i think it is time for me to decide if I'm just going give my life to the x-men and start reading new mutants and x-factor as well or stick to uncanny.

[rachelmanija]

New Mutants is great. The Magik miniseries is one of my single favorite comics. You need Illyana Rasputin in your life.

[sheliak]

You should definitely read New Mutants! It's a fantastic series with a lot of really great characters—Illyana and Dani are two of my favorites. And it has some great stuff with Magneto.

New Mutants also ties in much more closely with X-Men than X-Factor does—for a long time the New Mutants and the X-Men are living in the same house and storylines can start in one book and finish in the other. X-Factor does its own thing, and the characters don't even talk to the X-Men for a very long time. (Which gets awfully silly, to be honest—I think the editors wanted the books to stand on their own, but there were a lot of melodramatic misunderstandings that could have been solved if someone had just picked up the phone. And X-Factor surely had the mansion phone number!)

I don't think you have to read New Mutants to understand what's going on with the X-Men—my library only had the X-Men half of things and I managed—but it does help a lot. And it's a really great series, so it's well worth reading in its own right.

(I'm not as fond of X-Factor—never really forgave it for what happened to Madelyne as a result of its existence—but it does have its moments, after the very rough first few issues. I really liked the Judgement War storyline, which has kind of a TOS Star Trek feel.)

[julian]

I didn't read comics when I was a kid, but I read character summaries in the Marvel game descriptions in Dragon Magazine (really), and was captured by some of the storylines, so I was kind of vaguely interested in starting. But I didn't know quite how.

And then I discovered, in 1992, that my college had a small comics library inside its larger actual library. (OK, it was my co-college, me being at Bryn Mawr and the library being at Haverford.)

As far as I *remember*, they had most of the Claremont X-Men run. I'm pretty sure they were light on the early Claremont/Cockrum productions, and I don't imagine they could have had Giant Size X-Men #1, it being even then pretty rare & expensive, but I know I've read that stuff at other times.

Anyway. Love! Drama! Claremontisms! The focused totality of her psychic powers! Self-sacrifice! Punk Storm being badass, and Kitty Pryde figuring things out and being one of the more stubborn people in the universe. Mentorship of many different kinds. Mutantkind as one big ol' queer metaphor. Stuff like that.

I guess the arc I liked best was, yes, punk Storm, or more accurately, Storm trying to figure herself out, re-discovering that core of strength and steel, and how the network of relationships within the X-Men changed and grew, all during it.

(But I also loved Rachel Summers flailing in confusion and pain, and Piotr and Kitty's Big Romance (which makes me wince now), and Kurt being Kurt, and just everything.)

Anyway, I think they had like 3 issues of Excalibur and a couple of New Mutants. I later went on to collect as much of Excalibur as I could, and all of New Mutants until Claremont left, but not so much X-Men because I'd already read it and Claremont's writing tics by that time annoyed me. (I also collected some post-Claremont NM, but Simonson just really didn't... jell with the book, and Liefield is to be avoided at all times.)

[sheliak]

Storm's arc was amazing. And Kitty's coming of age, and Rachel... yes. So many great characters!

I haven't read much of the Simonson New Mutants, or collected any of it. There's some good stuff there, but it really doesn't feel like the same series or characters.

[julian]

Yeah, not at all. (Especially once she killed off Doug. Humph.)

[laceblade]

Hi! This community has fortuitous timing because I'm actually reading the X-Men comics for the very first time. A couple of years ago, I started with the Dark Phoenix saga because this article suggested it was a good place to start.

Right now, I'm in 1988/1989, smack in the middle of the Inferno arc - like I literally read the "Part 1" collected book and am waiting for "Part 2" to come in through the outerlibrary loan program :D The X-Men are all "dead" in Australia, except for their grieving counterparts who are meanly not told that it's all a fakeout!!?!

I've read some of the associated limited runs - Wolverine & Kitty Pryde mini-series, Illyana in Limbo mini-series, Fallen Angels, etc. The ones I'm reading right now include X-Men, X-Factor, New Mutants, X-Terminators (I think I just read the last one?), Power Pack, and Excalibur. I am sad that the fourth/final edition of Power Pack never got published! But now I have something to hunt for in used bookstores.

Illyana/Magik is probably my favorite character. This whole "having a darkness inside of you and being afraid of it" thing is way too on the nose for me, a person who loves metaphors for depression in fiction.

I've also strongly clamped on to Kitty Pryde, probably because 1) she has brown curly hair like mine, and 2) she joined the X-Men team essentially right during/after the Dark Phoenix saga, or where I started, so it feels like we've been going through this thing together.

The Bill Sienkiewicz art was mind-blowing while it lasted. I recently grabbed basically his entire run for $1 per issue at a sale, :D

I am aware of a few vague spoilers (e.g., Illyana), but am excited to continue through this run of "canon," and to continue through the 1990s and 2000s, both good and bad. The hardest part right now is figuring out where/how to continue the storylines. I might need to get a digital subscription to Marvel Unlimited at some point so that I can continue with New Mutants, Power Pack, and whatever other random things were never collected (e.g., Cloak & Dagger).

[sheliak]

I felt so sorry for everyone who wasn't in on the secret. (And in some cases, it seems like a terribly foolish decision--I'm thinking of Magneto left with nine teenagers to look after and no backup, and Illyana losing her brother when she's struggling so already, and Mystique wanting to avenge a daughter who isn't really dead...)

Illyana is one of my favorites too. Her struggles really made an impression on me as a teenager.

[julian]

Wow, cool. You should review 'em in here as you read 'em!

(I was peeved at their grieving counterparts not being told. Limp way to create angst and drawma, really.)

[lilacsigil]

Yeah, I was not a fan of the fake death thing! Fair enough for the world to think they're dead, and maybe even go into isolation, but it took a real toll on the rest of their friends and family. And it wasn't like the other mutants were going to run off and tell the media all about it!

[nyctanthes]

(Using one of sheliak's fabulous X-Men icons...)

Very excited to participate in this comm.

I came to X-Men in a roundabout way. I watched the cartoon back in the '90s (and hence became quite the Rogue-Gambit 'shipper), saw the first two X-Men movies, then read a few of the later runs (Whedon, Morrison). At some point I drifted away from X-Men fannishness. I came back into the fold a few years ago, when I started listening to the Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men podcast.

I recently got a Marvel Unlimited subscription, in part so I can read the classics as well as keep up with some of the current storylines. I have a good friend who's going to lend me his Excalibur back issues, which I'm excited about.

In terms of older material, I might start with New Mutants because of the Bill Sienkiewicz art and I love Ilyana. But I enjoy almost all the original characters, as well as the new ones who have been introduced over the years. What makes me happiest is when there's a good story arc with lots of team interaction.

[rachelmanija]

I love Illyana so much. Have you read her Magik miniseries?

I recently listened to a ton of Jay and Miles episodes, which introduced me to the wonders of Frog Thor.

[nyctanthes]

the wonders of Frog Thor.

Yes! Miles has a great, limited edition (13 eps?) podcast (not with Jay, with his friend Elizabeth) of Walter Simonson's run on Thor. If you're new to them, both the run and the podcast are lots of fun.

Have you read her Magik miniseries?

Downloaded and ready to read! Hope to get to it between Christmas and New Year's. I'm spoiled for all of it, obviously, and it sounds like a gut punch.

[rachelmanija]

Yes, I now really want to check out Simonson's Thor - they sold me on it.

I look forward to your thoughts on Magik. Even if you've been spoiled, I think it's still really intense.

[sheliak]

The Sienkiewicz-drawn arcs are really fantastic! And Illyana definitely takes center stage in New Mutants for a long while; it's great.

I'm also fond of Bob MacLeod, the original artist--he's doing house style and can be unexciting next to the later artists, but he's doing it well, and I like the care he put into the characters' designs. He made all of the characters very visually distinct from each other (important given the matching uniforms!), and I think he's the one who came up with the visual effects for Sunspot and Magma's powers, which I love.

I've been really enjoying Jay & Miles too; their reactions to the stories are great fun, and they've made me feel rather more kindly to some of the arcs I used to dislike.

[nyctanthes]

It'll be interesting to read more of the classics and see how my reaction compares to Jay & Miles. I'm not, for example, as enthusiastic about God Loves, Man Kills as they are. In large part because the art was a little "meh" for me (and I read Marvel/Claremont were hoping to use someone else.) Perhaps because I came to comics from the non-superhero end of the spectrum, I've got expectations for art that are not realistic for a long-running, consistently crank 'em out mega-franchise. Your point about the house style and working within that to create something of quality that lasts over time is well taken.

On the plus side, Jay & Miles have got me super excited to check out the Gambit and Wolverine story with yet another redhead and spectacular, painterly art.

I found this PopMatters piece on the 15 best Claremont X stories. (Here Be Spoilers!) I'm going to use it as a place to start on X-Men (as opposed to New Mutants) stories.

[sheliak]

I think part of my fondness for MacLeod is that his strengths are things that are common weaknesses in superhero comics art--his teenagers look look like real people, everyone has a different build, things like that. I don't know that he would have impressed me at all if I weren't resigned to artists failing at the things he does well. (Although I think I would still have thought Sunspot's powers looked neat!)

The first time I read God Loves, Man Kills it was in grayscale (they reprinted it in the Essentials), and it looked dreadful. So the color version worked better for me just because it didn't look like mud.