Per its entry at the Mike’s Amazing World of Comics web site, the comic we’re discussing today originally reached America’s spinner racks on January 20, 1976. But even though one can’t tell it from artist Dave Cockrum’s very fine cover, once we turn to the opening splash page we find that, three weeks into the new year, the All-New, All-Different X-Men were somehow still celebrating the December, 1975 Christmas season: Read More
Re-reading the early issues of the revived, “All-New, All-Different” X-Men title for the first time in decades, your humble blogger has found himself struck not only by how quickly writer Chris Claremont — still a relative neophyte in 1975 — made the book his own, but also by how enduring many of the concepts and characters he introduced in the first half-dozen or so of the stories he wrote on his lonesome (the first two issues under his byline, #94 and #95, had of course been plotted by his predecessor, Len Wein) have ultimately proven to be. Half a century on, it’s hard to imagine what the X-books — or maybe even the Marvel Universe, period — would look like, had neither Moira MacTaggert nor the Shi’ar (to name two of the most prominent examples), ever existed. Read More
As you may recall from our post about Giant-Size X-Men #1 back in April, that landmark comic book concluded with one of the mutant superhero team’s original members, the Angel, posing the query: “What are we going to do with thirteen X-Men?” That question was reflective of the fact that while Marvel Comics had just introduced seven new members to the team (the majority of whom were also brand-new characters), there were still six veteran heroes of the old guard to be dealt with in one way or another. It seemed unlikely that even a giant-sized version of the freshly-revived “X-Men” feature could easily accommodate such a large number of costumed crusaders in every issue — and once Marvel decided to use the existing regular-sized X-Men title (which since 1969 had only presented reprints of old X-stories) as the relaunched series’ primary vehicle instead, that question became even more acute. Read More
Cover layout by Gil Kane, featuring only the new X-Men team lineup.
The completed original art for the cover, with the new team pencilled by Kane and the old team pencilled by Dave Cockrum; all inks by Cockrum.
Half a century after its original release, there’s little doubt that the subject of today’s post was the most historically significant mainstream American comic book released in 1975; indeed, it’s arguably in the very top tier for the entire decade of the Seventies. But in April, 1975, it arrived with very little fanfare — at least in the relatively isolated comics-reading world of your humble blogger, who at age seventeen still wasn’t tuned in to what little fan press there was at the time. I don’t recall seeing any house ads for Giant-Size X-Men #1 ahead of its release, and the only promotion of the book I’ve been able to locate in any Marvel Bullpen Bulletins page published around then is a brief mention in the column that ran in the company’s March-shipping issues, reporting how artist Dave Cockrum’s being chosen to illustrate the project represented the realization of the “fan dream of a lifetime”. That may well have been the only heads-up I had that this book was coming out at all, prior to seeing its soon-to-be-iconic cover by Cockrum and Gil Kane staring out at me from the spinner rack. Read More
With this 175th issue of Captain America, the “Secret Empire” saga that had dominated the series’ pages for over half a year finally reached its climax. And as our storytellers picked up their narrative right where the previous month’s episode had left us readers hanging, you could hardly accuse writer Steve Englehart of underselling the occasion in his opening, credits-prefacing caption… Read More
When we last saw Captain America and the Falcon, near the end of last month’s post about CA #173, our heroes had seemingly been successful in their subterfuge against the sinister Secret Empire — the clandestine organization behind both Cap’s recent woes (which include first having his reputation smeared by an ad campaign, then being framed for murder) and the mysterious disappearance of multiple mutants, including several members of Cap and Falc’s newfound allies, the X-Men. We rejoin them here on page one of issue #174, as they make their descent into the proverbial belly of the beast… Read More
In February, 1974, the X-Men hadn’t appeared in a new story in their own title in over four years — but while gone, they were hardly forgotten. (Actually, they weren’t even gone, since their book had been resurrected as a reprint title by Marvel’s then-publisher, Martin Goodman, eight months after he’d cancelled the series with issue #66. But you know what I mean.) That’s because a number of people working for Marvel just plain liked the characters, regardless of their allegedly limited commercial viability; and, as writer Steve Englehart puts it in his 2009 preface to Marvel Masterworks — The X-Men, Vol. 8, “the Marvel Universe was a coherent entity, so the X-Men continued to exist in it even if they had no comic to call their own.” Read More
The ostensible main topic of today’s post, Captain America #172, is the first issue of the series in which writer Steve Englehart and artist Sal Buscema’s “Secret Empire” saga has the center stage completely to itself. But the storyline may be said to have properly started three issues before this, in #169; and its earliest seeds show up a full six issues before that, in #163. Read More
As regular readers of this blog may recall, I started picking up the Roy Thomas-Neal Adams-Tom Palmer run of X-Men with the second issue, #57, in which the book’s new creative team began their “Sentinels” storyline. I managed to score the next issue as well, and so was on hand for the debut of Alex Summers’ costumed identity, Havok — but then, the following month, I missed issue #59, and thus didn’t get to read the end of that storyline. Read More
I feel pretty confident in making the statement that Neal Adams’ cover for X-Men #58, featuring the debut of Scott “Cyclops” Summers’ younger brother Alex in the costumed hero identity of Havok, is one of the most iconic of the late Silver Age at Marvel Comics. But apparently, not everyone associated with that cover was, or is, completely happy with how it turned out — at least, not in the published version.
According to a 1999 article for the comics history magazine Alter Ego by the issue’s scripter (who was also Marvel’s associate editor at the time), Roy Thomas:
…Neal turned in a real beauty for X-Men #58, with a color-held overlay of Havok as the focal point. Alas, Neal’s suggested color scheme wasn’t followed. Instead of the blue that would have been the closest equivalent of the black in his costume inside, it was decided (by whom I dunno, but it wasn’t me, babe) that the Havok figure should be color-held in orange and yellow. Bad idea.
Well, maybe. I gotta say, though, that that orange-and-yellow has always worked for me. I mean, those colors really popped against the cover’s dark blue-gray background; and besides, blue ain’t black, after all. Too bad we don’t have a “blue” version to compare the published version with… wait, what did you say? We do, kind of? Courtesy of the cover to the trade paperback edition of Marvel Masterworks – The X-Men, Vol. 6, featuring Adams’ art newly recolored by Richard Isanove? Oh, okay then. Read More