As Mentioned in Episode 55 – How Nightcrawler Got His Groove Back

This was a great era of Uncanny, despite all of the Secret Wars II derailment. We got two Arcade issues that featured some nice focused character exploration of a few individuals instead of the whole team (Shadowcat and Colossus in 197, Nightcrawler in 204). We got two awesome Barry Windsor-Smith guest issues that spotlighted individual characters (Storm in 198, Wolverine in 205). We got two guest appearances with Katie Power (or the entire Power Pack) contrasting against the X-Men’s world (195 and 205). We got the Asgardian Wars. We got the fantastic double-sized Trial of Magneto in issue 200 that moved Professor X off the board for a while, and really moved forward with Magneto’s redemption into a more nuanced hero from his cartoony villain origins…man. So much from this period is just so very, very good.

I first quit collecting within about 4 months of this, though. The endless Secret Wars II tie-ins (with the X-books but also across the entire Marvel line) were such a shameless cash grab for a story that was really rambling and ultimately felt pointless and just not enjoyable. The launch of a third X-book with X-Factor in this same environment just felt like more of a cash grab as well, especially with how…unfocused? uninspired?…the initial story arcs felt (especially after the Beast transformation that you’ll get too soon.) And when advertisements for the upcoming Mutant Massacre started showing up in the books, and with that crossover being plugged in Marvel Age and again involving a bunch of tie-ins and story across books I didn’t normally pick up, it just felt pretty easy to throw my hands up and say “Forget this!” I wasn’t enjoying X-Factor, I never read Thor or Power Pack, and with prices rising from 60 cents an issue circa the beginning of the first Secret Wars to 95 cents an issue (in Canada) for issues when the Mutant Massacre started? 13 year old me had had enough.

Of course, when 18 year old me got into comics again during University I went back and collected all the back issues I had missed from 1986-1991. And even after I lapsed in collecting again around 1998, the even older (and wiser?) version of me is slogging through runs and issues that came out since then thanks to this awesome podcast reigniting my passion for and interest in X-Men again!

Thanks for another great episode! I’m really looking forward to the episodes coming up that will cover the period of my first collecting lapse, since while I have collected and read those issues over time, they are not as near and dear to my heart as the issues I bought as a kid so many years ago.

Keep up the great work!

So, for obvious reasons, the Barry Windsor-Smith stuff you have here reminds me of the Weapon X storyline from Marvel Comics Presents, which I am still the only person I know who read regularly (although obviously that particular storyline became very famous). This makes me wonder, are you guys going to cover all the X-Men related stuff that came up in that title? Obviously there was a LOT of Wolverine in there, but there was other stuff, too. I didn’t know SMaHAF, so MCP was my first introduction to Firestar, who had a cool multiparter in there. I remember a good Wolverine-Nightcrawler buddy story. There was a lot of Madripoor stuff. Mostly, though, when you got past the Wolverine/Ghost Rider main feature stories, there were a lot of opportunities to see characters that might otherwise be largely forgotten in interesting solo stories.

I guess it doesn’t have much to do with the main continuity of X-Men (except Weapon X, perhaps) so it might not be worth it. If not, I’d highly recommend people go take a look at some old issues of MCP if that is possible somewhere. I think I will do so by raiding my parents’ attic for the ones I bought back in the day.

Thanks so much for reading my question about kids comics. I’m excited to get ahold of some of the stuff you mentioned and I’ll be watching here for future replies.

I wonder if anyone has read Skottie Young’s Young Marvel stuff?