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

[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.