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Uncanny X-Men, Part 20: Iron Fist, Blame Canada, and Some Strike-Outs

Uncanny X-Men, Part 20: Iron Fist, Blame Canada, and Some Strike-Outs

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This Quixotic blog series of my reread of the Uncanny X-Men has gotten to twenty posts! When I started in December, I wasn’t sure how long I could do this, but it’s been a lot of fun! In this post, I’m going to go over two gems from 1977: the Canadian Invasion in Uncanny X-Men #109 and the dinner party gone bad in Iron Fist #15. Then I’m going to take a bit of a higher level look at a few swing-and-a-miss guest appearances and another issue where a fill-in art team mangled an issue.

You’ll recall that at the end of X-Men #108, the X-Men, along with Princess Lilandra, had just come home after Phoenix saved the universe. Except for their vacation-trap in issue #101 this is basically the first break the X-Men get since issue #98. #108 is the first issue in over a year that didn’t end with some kind of a cliffhanger!

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Uncanny X-Men, Part 12: X-Men Guest Appearances in 1971-1972 and Hank gets Furry!

Uncanny X-Men, Part 12: X-Men Guest Appearances in 1971-1972 and Hank gets Furry!

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We’re back in the Bronze Age, baby! We left the original X-Men in John’s Byrne’s X-Men: The Hidden Years and in this 12th installment in my reread of all the X-Men, we’re now into the guest appearances our merry mutants made in the dark period between 1970 and 1975 when they weren’t being published regularly.

I want to go over The Amazing Spider-Man #92 (guest-starring Iceman), The Incredible Hulk #150 (guest-starring Havok and Polaris), Marvel-Team-Up #4 (featuring Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Angel and Professor X), Amazing Adventures #9-10 (starring the Inhumans against Magneto), and finally Amazing Adventures #11, the most significant issue discussed today, because of permanent character changes to Hank McCoy.

I slagged a bit on The Hidden Years in my last post because it was a comic of the year 2000 with a 1980s writerly sensibility. We’re diving back 20 years now, where the action was more slap-dash and energetic, the dialogue more over the top, and the social-political positions both surprisingly advanced and backwards for the time.

The Amazing Spider-Man #92 is a quick single-issue story with pencils by Gil Kane, inks by John Romita Sr, and writing by Stan Lee. The webslinger finds Gwen Stacey and Sam Bullit, a secret criminal boss running for New York D.A. against Foggy Nelson.

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Uncanny X-Men, Part 9: Filling in the Corners of the Original X-Men with Savage Hulk #1-4

Uncanny X-Men, Part 9: Filling in the Corners of the Original X-Men with Savage Hulk #1-4

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Welcome to the 9th episode of my reread of the vast X-Men story that began in 1963. The X-Men series stopped putting out original stories in early 1970, due primarily to low sales; it was a reprint magazine from issues #67–93, cover dated December 1970 to April 1975, until the beginning of the Claremont and Cockrum run in issue #94.

I’m going to go through their early Bronze Age appearances in coming blog posts, but for story continuity purposes, I’m also reading issues created in contemporary times but fitting into that 5-year dead period, like I covered for the original X-Men in X-Men: First Class.

So this time I read the 2014 series Savage Hulk, by writer/penciller Alan Davis, inker Mark Farmer and colorist Matt Hollingsworth. 

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Uncanny X-Men Part 8, Issues 59-66: The Savage Land and the End of the Silver Age X-Men

Uncanny X-Men Part 8, Issues 59-66: The Savage Land and the End of the Silver Age X-Men

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This is a gigantic milestone! This is the 8th episode in my reread of the X-Men run. It covers from #59, the height of the Roy Thomas-Neal Adams run, to #66, the end of original X-Men stories, which hit the stands on March 10th, 1970. The end of the X-Men’s ongoing stories coincides with the end of the Silver Age and the beginning of the Bronze.

The Silver Age X-Men, as a distinctly 1960s phenomenon reached their peak with some of the Arnold Drake stories with some interesting experimentation under Steranko’s art. The arrival of Neal Adams feels much more like it belongs in the Bronze Age. Both the art and the story complexity (under Roy Thomas) feels like it’s breaking creative ground that the best of the 1970s will follow.

The merry mutants’ uneven momentum had carried them for 7 years, but even a spectacular finish couldn’t save the series from its failure to come into focus. We’re going to talk today about that end.

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Uncanny X-Men: Part 7, Issues #54-58 – Havok and Neal Adams

Uncanny X-Men: Part 7, Issues #54-58 – Havok and Neal Adams

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I was super-tempted to pause my blogging about my X-Men reread to complain about my reread of another classic, but I opted for the high road and am glad I did, because this was a fun post to think through. And, for those of you still with me, we’re almost at the end of the original X-Men! So pull up a chair for the 7th installment of my reread of the X-Men.

In this post, I want to look at issues #54-58 (March, 1969 – July, 1969), a run that contains two major Silver Age milestones. The first is the introduction of Alex Summer, the mutant brother of Scott Summers. Alex will eventually join the X-Men as their 7th member. The second is equally exciting – the beginning of Neal Adams’ brief but spectacular run. The team-up of Roy Thomas and Neal Adams marks the beginning of the zenith of the original team, outshining the Kirby-Lee issues and sitting comfortably at the same table as many of the great Claremont-Byrne stories.

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Horror + Hulk = The Immortal Hulk

Horror + Hulk = The Immortal Hulk

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Marvel’s jacket copy of The Immortal Hulk goes like this: “Horror has a name. You’d never notice the man. He doesn’t like to be noticed. He’s quiet. Calm. Never complains. If someone were to walk up and shoot him in the head… all he’d do is die. Until night falls. And someone else gets up again. The man’s name is Banner. The horror is The Immortal Hulk.”

Marvel’s The Incredible Hulk has had a lot of incarnations. His original incarnation by Lee and Kirby was a Jekyll and Hyde story with a scientist turning into a gray-skinned monster each night. They found that gray-skinned monster blended into the gray night-time scenes so the Hulk soon became green and more of a science fictional anti-superhero who fought high-science communist threats and briefly joined the Avengers.

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