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Mark Haslett
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 6100
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| Posted: 12 April 2014 at 5:04pm | IP Logged | 1
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All logic would suggest that, if Wolvie hadn't achieved superstardom by X-Men #133 and DOPF, he certainly was in a league of his own by the time his mini-series ended, which is why UXM achieved new sales heights, Wolverine won those fan polls in 1982 and 1984, and just about everyone who was collecting back then has confirmed that he had broken out into superstardom already by that time, and that it didn't just happen in the late '80s. If anything, that was the beginning of the overexposure and saturation phase; the breakout phase was unquestionably the early '80s.
**
"All logic" being used here to mean "in my opinion".
Wolverine's popularity was certainly growing, but when one of Spider-Man's books was regularly outselling the X-Men-- and Spider-Man had three additional books on the market every month, it's hard to say Wolverine was in "a league of his own".
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132261
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| Posted: 12 April 2014 at 6:20pm | IP Logged | 2
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Wolverine was the "breakout star" of the All New, All Different X-Men, eventually. Tho in my day that was a lot like being the world's tallest midget.
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Mark Haslett
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 6100
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| Posted: 12 April 2014 at 10:06pm | IP Logged | 3
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One thing that's interesting about that giant-ego-John-Byrne-guy is how he refuses to spin the success of the X-Men as one of his accomplishments. JB is always very clear that his contributions were among those of many others who made the book much more successful than when he was on it and that, if we look at the numbers, he may have only been holding Chris Claremont back!
Hogging all the glory, as usual.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132261
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| Posted: 13 April 2014 at 5:10am | IP Logged | 4
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One thing that's interesting about that giant-ego-John-Byrne-guy is how he refuses to spin the success of the X-Men as one of his accomplishments. JB is always very clear that his contributions were among those of many others who made the book much more successful than when he was on it and that, if we look at the numbers, he may have only been holding Chris Claremont back!•• I've sometimes wonder, if I HAD tried to "hog the glory," how many of those same people who accuse me of having a giant ego would have jumped in with the same numbers I often reference myself!
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Carmen Bernardo
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 08 August 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 3666
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| Posted: 13 April 2014 at 8:12am | IP Logged | 5
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It's kind of hard for me to look back at this and say just for certain what caused the X-Men to become the #1 properties at Marvel. At the time, what drew me to the book was the art, the stories being written for the characters, and the fact that they were something different at a time when it seemed like everybody else was writing basically the same set of stories for the other characters.
Today, I scratch my head and wonder why Marvel will now continue to live the lie that their (BLEEPBLEEP!) doesn't stink when sales are actually saying otherwise. There's this saying that goes "Be careful what you wish for..." At this stage, I realize that I should've jumped off the title a lot sooner than I ended up doing.
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Tim O Neill
Byrne Robotics Security
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 10924
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| Posted: 13 April 2014 at 9:27am | IP Logged | 6
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One of the numbers I haven't seen is the number of "Dark Phoenix Saga" trade paperbacks that have been sold from the 1980s and throughout the 1990s. I think that storyline and "Days of Future Past" were such creative achievements that they went into trade form pretty quickly and instantly helped build the positive reputation surrounding the book. "The Dark Phoenix Saga" trades were a constant presence in bookstores for years after JB left, so I think people group it into the entire decade of the X-Men's rise.
While I am sure UNCANNY X-MEN was big with the hardcore fans in the know, it was not necessarily big to casual readers. I read maybe four titles at a time as a kid, and X-Men only broke through because my brother had some issues.
I feel lucky to have sought out X-Men with issue #136 after reading my brother's books. I got everything after, but it was the Dark Phoenix trade that was a constant presence on my nightstand. I re-read that a bunch of times. The stories are all solid, the characters crackle, and JB and Terry Austin's art was fluid and a wonder to see.
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Stephen Robinson
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 5835
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| Posted: 13 April 2014 at 9:35am | IP Logged | 7
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The collapse of comics can be linked to the direct market and later the
speculator boom, but I think the biggest problem is that the industry
started catering to the aging fanbase -- the readers who had been
around so long they were bored with the status quo and demanded
"growth" and "change," so Peter Parker and Clark Kent gets married,
Batman works solo because Robin is a silly idea, Green Arrow stops
using trick arrows and abandons his secret identity (not particularly
realistic if you want to avoid being killed in your sleep, but I digress).
Comics stopped being fun. I've mentioned before how I will sit down
with a run of comics and hit the early 1990s and I'm appalled -- it's not
just a style preference, it's as if the product changed entirely (more so
with Marvel, alas, and then slowly DC).
No one stands on chairs and screams that there's no reason comics
can't sell what they once did if they were the product they once were,
when the ads inside were targeted at kids because kids read the books.
It's not lack of interest in the properties. Think about it: HARRY
POTTER is based on a best-selling book series. Yet, blockbuster comic
book movies are based on titles that sell peanuts? That makes no
sense to me. The market is there.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132261
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| Posted: 13 April 2014 at 9:35am | IP Logged | 8
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It's important to remember that the rising sales of the X-MEN corresponded to the increasing influence of the Direct Sales Market.The DSM was the place where books that might otherwise have been cancelled found new life, in the form of non-returnable sales. Pure profit for the publishers. And even books that were not "Direct Only," like X-MEN, benefited from this effect. Plus, the people running the shops back then came almost exclusively from the dealer mentality. They were not "retailers" in any real sense. Not yet. And so they tended to base their orders on what they thought was "hot" -- ie, what they could make money on in resale. The speculator market was about to kick into high gear. When it did, corresponding approximately with the arrival of Paul Smith, X-MEN sales really took off. (And, as I have said before, the myth that "Byrne's stuff doesn't sell any more" was born, as X-MEN zoomed too 400,000 a month, while FANTASTIC FOUR was "only" 275,000. Comic shop managers were not interested in checking the sales of X-MEN in my day. Like those whose arguments started this thread, they assumed a book they liked was a big seller. The numbers they were seeing on X-MEN must have been the number back when they were NOT seeing them.)
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Brian Miller
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 28 July 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 30894
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| Posted: 13 April 2014 at 12:43pm | IP Logged | 9
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Was the arrival of Smith something fans were anticipating? He was the penciller on the book when I started actively collecting.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132261
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| Posted: 13 April 2014 at 4:10pm | IP Logged | 10
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Smitty seemed to spring fully grown from Zeus' head. The X-Men book had become something of a star-maker, even before its sales really took off, and I think the combination of increasing speculator interest with the arrival of a new talent -- well, it all added up to a pretty serious explosion.What I found interesting was that Paul made absolutely no attempt to draw the characters "on model". In many ways he foreshadowed the "This Is How I Do It!" approach of the proto-Image boys.* And yet, so far as I knew at the time, there were no complaints. Something was changing in the wind! __________________ * I've mentioned before looking over some of Smitty's pencils with Dave Cockrum, he and I both noting that Paul had given Storm pronounce Negroid features, rather than the feline look of Dave's design. "I guess we were doing it wrong!" Dave said.
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Robert Bradley
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 20 September 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 4825
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| Posted: 13 April 2014 at 5:00pm | IP Logged | 11
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JB: Wolverine was the "breakout star" of the All New, All Different X-Men, eventually. Tho in my day that was a lot like being the world's tallest midget.
I don't believe he actually became the world's tallest midget until they cast him in the movie!
Anyhow, I can remember the buzz when GS X-Men #1 came out and the months following, but it was some time before the book even went to monthly publication (late 1978 I believe - a few months after you had taken over for Cockrum).
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Robert Bradley
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 20 September 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 4825
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| Posted: 13 April 2014 at 5:16pm | IP Logged | 12
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Nightcrawler was another character who got a makeover - although Cockrum did it himself. Early on he was drawn to be more of a misfit and unattractive, but by the time they were a year into their own book he was already being prettied-up. Eventually to the point where he was a lovable "fuzzy elf" in his second tenure on the title.
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