Chris Claremont run on uncanny x-men

[Paradox]

SUPERECWFAN1 has his breaking point:

Personally I drop it right around where Wolverine and Jubilee go on the run awhile in the 250's. Its there it seemed like Claremont really had no idea what he wanted to do.

I chose to stop buying it with the deaths in Dallas. It had become painfully clear that Claremont had run out of viable ideas.

[spoon_jenkins]

Actually Classic X-Men didn't ever reprint 2 issues I believe one was by Tony DeZuniga and the other by Bob Hall (not sure, dont have them with me) and they didn't ever reprint the Days Of Future Past 2-parter I think since it was being released seperately as it's own Tpb.

It's actually the late Bob Brown, who died before his X-Men issue was published, who drew that issue - not Bob Hall. Those two issues (#106 and #110) were fill-ins, so I guess whoever ran Classic X-Men decided they weren't worth reprinting. I've got a copy of #106, but #110 I have in a weird black and white digest format. The panels are cut and pasted in a layout that I don't think matches the original page layout. It would have been nice to see Days of Future Past reprinted in Classic, just to see Steve Lightle would have done for the new covers. I have that in two-issue TPB format. The DoFP TPB has an alteration. It omits the last page of the original story. So it with the uncertainty of X-Men wondering whether the future has been changed, not the more ominous coda of Senator Kelly saying the Sentinel program should proceed. I didn't even know about the original ending until I saw a scan of the page on the internet one day.

[grphxkindaguy]

It's actually the late Bob Brown, who died before his X-Men issue was published, who drew that issue - not Bob Hall. Those two issues (#106 and #110) were fill-ins, so I guess whoever ran Classic X-Men decided they weren't worth reprinting. I've got a copy of #106, but #110 I have in a weird black and white digest format.

I didn't realize these 2 issues were fill-in issues until I was reading the original issues. They were pretty awful!!! Whoever decided to omit them made a good call IMO...

[Roquefort Raider]

I didn't realize these 2 issues were fill-in issues until I was reading the original issues. They were pretty awful!!! Whoever decided to omit them made a good call IMO...

One of the fill-ins does introduce a major concept, though: that of Xavier's "evil" self. This entity would eventually destroy most of the Micronauts' universe (in the X-Men/Micronauts miniseries) and one could argue that it was probably tied to Onslaught as well. But poor Bob Brown didn't get as much respect as many other artists, and that issue was probably judged "not sexy enough" to be reprinted.

I admit that I was not a Brown fan in those days; I disliked his tenure on Avengers and his work on Warlock... However, later on, I came to appreciate many aspects of his art. His storytelling was clear, and his work on Daredevil was quite suited to the tone of that book.

[Mace Dolex]

I have that in two-issue TPB format. The DoFP TPB has an alteration. It omits the last page of the original story. So it with the uncertainty of X-Men wondering whether the future has been changed, not the more ominous coda of Senator Kelly saying the Sentinel program should proceed. I didn't even know about the original ending until I saw a scan of the page on the internet one day.

My Tpb of DOFP from the 90's has that page you speak of omitted too, I discovered the original missing page in the newest printing of DOFP which also has several more Byrne stories.

[King Poindexter]

I liked the entire Claremont run on X-Men. His best was obviously with Byrne, but I thought his stuff with Romita Jr., Silvestri, and Lee was solid. He was at another peak when he was writing X-Men and Excalibur and Wolverine came out. Of course, his X-Men/Teen Titans with Simonson and Austin is the stuff of legend.

[back_to_the_newsstand]

...
I was also wondering about the black and whit spider man logos and if their significant?
...

The black & white Spider-Man images were used for a few years to distinguish comics distributed to comics shops on a non-returnable basis from comics distributed to traditional (newsstand) outlets on a returnable basis (these copies had UPC barcodes instead). Some collectors prefer to collect direct-sales copies; some prefer newsstand copies. A few dealers charge a premium for newsstand copies, based on their perceived relative scarcity; most don't. Some dealers will claim to be selling newsstand copies when their actual-item scans clearly have the words "direct sales" or "direct edition" printed on the cover.

[back_to_the_newsstand]

I think very highly of Chris Claremont's work on X-Men and related titles. Still, it's impossible to deny that the entire run does not equal the achievement of the 1979–80 issues (Dark Phoenix and surrounding issues).

What is debatable is how much of that can be blamed on CC getting distracted, or running out of ideas, or not playing well with others, and how much can be blamed on the increasingly difficult circumstances in which CC was working. Personally, I subscribe to the latter theory.

From 1975 until 1985, CC (and his editors) had full control over the X-Men cast of characters, and while the comics weren't always to everyone's liking, the characters had a sustained integrity and direction not often seen in comics. With X-Factor #1, CC and his editor lost some of that control another editorial office. Integrity of the characters immediately suffered. Scott Summers, in particular, went from being a heroic and virtuous individual who always considered the effects of his actions on others to being a wife- and child-abandoning philanderer. CC's initial reaction appeared to be to focus on the characters he retained, but at some point, perhaps due to management edict, CC's titles started crossing over with X-titles that he didn't control. In my recollection, that is when the creative direction of CC's titles start to show the influence of gravity exerted by non-CC X-titles. I continued to find the series worth reading, but CC's creative efforts seemed increasingly compromised, first by a competing editorial office, and later by artists who appeared to be pursuing goals other than telling CC's stories and an editor who couldn't pull the team together. In the end, an editor decided to choose an artist with a fleeting commitment to the characters over the writer who had built his career developing those characters, and damage was done that has never been mended.

IMHO, the Claremont X-books are worth collecting and worth reading, but the body of work has to be seen as a flawed masterpiece. It's tempting to believe that, without interference, Claremont's X-books would have been an unqualified masterpiece. In the world of modern corporate comics, perhaps that's too much to hope for.