Sunday, September 8, 2013

Early Uncanny X-Men finally available at Comixology

Comixology just added Giant-Size X-Men #1 (May 1975) and Uncanny X-Men 94-100 this week.  Technically, the title isn't Uncanny X-Men.  Just X-Men.  Or, if you prefer, The All-New, All-Different X-Men.  The X-people didn't become uncanny on the cover until issue #114 (October 1978), but Comixology cleverly lumps them all together under one easy-to-find title.

Isn't it strange X-Men managed to go so long without an adjective?  It has precedents.  After all, the Avengers starred in The Avengers.  Daredevil settled for "Here Comes."  But with all the incredibles, amazings, mightys and invincibles, you'd think someone at Marvel would have already slapped some kind of descriptor on these kids before the middle 70s.  Exasperating, exaggerated, exacting.  Anything.  Right?

These issues join the already-available later ones comprising the "Dark Phoenix Saga."  Now you can check out the earliest days of the international X-Men, the characters who made this book one of Marvel's flagship franchises after the original version sickened and didn't exactly die, but entered a sort of zombie-state.  Reprints, we call them.

What does this mean?  It means I just bought a bunch of comics I've bought many times before (including the originals!) in various forms (including, once again, the originals!) and we're going to have some fun with them here sometime in the future after I read them yet again and decide just what the heck I want to point out.  Probably something obvious other people have pointed out about ten thousand times before, but I'll stupidly treat as if I'm the first because that's what I do.  This is my way.

It also means I'm missing Dave Cockrum right now.  That guy could draw.  The stories in these issues are your usual Marvel gang-warfare stuff with a few surprises and then-unique touches but the art was the main draw for me.  The character designs really dazzled my junior high self and I spent a lot of my free time copying Cockrum's splash pages and coolest panels-- there are many of them in these issues-- instead of studying and doing homework...

Now I DRIVE the school bus!

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