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Uhm. . . .   no.

Weird, as I sit here thinking about it. STARLORD was clearly a significant turning point in my neophyte career. It was on the basis of that particular pairing of Terry Austin and myself that then-EiC Archie Goodwin decided to assign us both to X-MEN, so a good case could be made for "John Byrne" (whatever that means!) having really begun in that book.

Yet it left no real impressions in my brain. No "muscle memory", as I call it, of drawing the pages.

I always imagined that Iron Fist was used for that purpose. The X-Men even showing up in the very last issue(as a test run?).

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You know what they say -- when you "imagine", you make an "i" out of "mag" and "ine". . .

Oh, wait. That's not what they say, is it?

Over the years, I have often referred to the X-Men's appearance in IRON FIST as my "audition" for their book, but that was based on my not knowing that the truth was something else entirely.

As mentioned elsewhere, it was a few years back that Terry Austin gave me a "looking glass moment", as he mentioned, quite casually, how he and I came to be assigned to X-MEN, and suddenly I was in a different reality.

As most people know, Dave Cockrum was having trouble keeping up the production pace of X-MEN. (What should have been my third issue was a fill-in originally commissioned when it was assumed Dave would still be on the book.) What I was told by Archie, when he offered me the book, was that Dave was stepping down voluntarily, for the good of the book. It had to go monthly in the current shape of the market, and Dave understood he could not handle a monthly grind.

What REALLY happened, as Terry told me so many decades later, was that Archie saw the work in STARLORD, and decided we would make a good team on X-MEN, especially since the third part of STARLORD, Chris Claremont, was already there, and Chris and I were gaining attention on IRON FIST. So, step on, Archie approach Terry when he was in the office one day, and asked if he would be interested in inking X-MEN, if I was penciller. Terry said yes, so Archie then called me, and told me Dave was leaving and asked if I would be interested. (It should be noted that at this point, Dave probably didn't KNOW he was leaving!) I said YES! and the deal was set. Dave got nudged off the book, and Terry and I stepped in. A short time later, the book went monthly.