Too few today remember, it seems, how the character was utterly rejected by so many fans when he joined the X-Men. The most common response was that they wanting Logan gone and Hank McCoy back. The very features which would later define his stardom were what seemed to turn off these readers.

(I have noted, too, how very much fandom changed in a very short time. Fans who did not like Wolverine wanted him to LEAVE. Just a few years later, the same negative reaction to Kitty Pryde generated a flood of mail from people who wanted her to DIE. The shadow of Phoenix, no doubt. Death had become "popular".)

Wolverine was pretty huge with all the kids in my neighborhood by 1982-83.  Granted, this is no scientific sample and it may have been a bandwagon thing but everybody (but DC me) was reading X-Men and any kid who had the Miller miniseries was lucky.  And yes, it really seemed to be during the Smith era.

I didn't care for Smith at first but have grown to really love his work (except Maddy who looked nothing like Jean) and can't believe his run was so short (9 1/2 issues? Simonson did issue 171) as it seemed to go on indefinitely. But Cockrum/Byrne/Smith/Romita Jr. are just one great run of stories for me. 

And when I did read Marvel, Wolverine was never my guy.  Kitty Pryde and Rogue, always my favorites.

••

How well I remember glancing thru her introductory issue, coming to that last page, and wondering what the heck was going on.

That, of course, is a prime example of the "This-Is-How-I-Do-It!" approach I mentioned earlier. For that scene to work it was vital Maddy look like a Cockrum/Byrne Jean, yet she did not. Paul didn't even give her the same hair style.

Really had me flashing back to those days when Dave was redrawing the X-Men any time I had them in a guest appearance, like TEAM-UP or IRON FIST. Somewhere along the line, drawing on-model became passe.