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Classic X-Men

Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2005 6:16 am
by JasonSacks
I picked up a stack of Classic X-Men issues the other day and found, to my surprise, that Dave had drawn some extra material in many issues. For instance, CXM #5 has three (at that time) new pages by Dave to do with his other, reprinted, work in those issues.

I'm curious how those stories came about, and what motivated Marvel to play around with the original stories. I was just blogging about this series (http://spaces.msn.com/members/obsessedwithcomics/) and got curious about the extra material. It certainly is a unique approach to reprints.

Hope all is well with Dave and Paty!

Classic X-Men

Posted: Tue Mar 29, 2005 7:08 pm
by Dark Bamf
By the time Classic X-Men came around, I was no longer much of an insider, so I don't know much of the rationale for creating the bew material. My take on it is that older readers, who'd bought the original issues, could be inveigled into buying the reprints to get the new cover and additional pages.

Your notion about Thunderbird's death being somewhat perfunctory is closer to the mark than you know. We had a brain session comparing the various new X-Men, and we came to the conxlusion that we had TWO obnoxious loudmouths on the team, Wolverine and Thunderbird, whose powers pretty much resembled each other. Why not kill one of them off, for the shock value? We picked on Thunderbird for the obvious reason that Wolverine was already an established character, if only in one issue oof the Hulk's book.

Personally, I'd have been just as happy to kill off Wolverine and keep Thunderbird. I thought he had a damn sharp costume (if I do say so myself) and we could have done a lot with him. And what the hell, Wolverine could've come back, what with his healing factor and all. :LOL

:bamf

Classic X-Men

Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2005 10:27 pm
by JasonSacks
Thanks for the information on Thunderbird. I've always wondered why the character was killed off so quickly. I notice that someone (Claremont? Liefeld?) brought in his brother in New Mutants.

Along the same lines, when was the decision made to turn Jean Grey into Phoenix, and why was that made? Was it felt that Marvel Girl was too dull or similar to other characters? I know in my case, X-Men #101 was the first issue of the new series that made me really pay attention. I had bought all of them from #94 up - missed GSXM #1 - but I still remember that the sight of Phoenix flying out of the water really sparked my imagination.

Was there any talk at the time as to the origin of these powers? I know you were mainly drawing the book, Dave, but you were probably in some plotting sessions.