For that matter, although everyone screams "yellow spandex!", I rather wish costumes were back to smooth outfits with no lines... and I can't imagine that artists are a lot more happy about the crap issue in and issue out. For the love of a #2 pencil, who WANTS to make their job unnecessarily harder?

Even that is early.  Second half of the original run, Thomas/Adams issues especially, Jean can hold her own with anyone of the team. powerswise That's without even getting into after she came back where I'd say she was the most powerful member of X Factor and I'd say second only to Xavier in the 90s.  I mean among actual X Men.  Not a Nate Grey.

Now, she's not uber powerful like Phoenix.  I prefer it that way.  Plain Jean for me, all the way.  I wish the movies felt that way.  My favorite incarnation since the turn of the century is probably the cartoon EVOLUTION.  50 plus episodes of just Jean.  The last episode dropped some  quick hints about Phoenix, but they never actually got there.

I'm trying to think of some I liked.  I don't view Peter graduating high school as that.  I'm thinking of drastic personality changes or dramatic powerset changes that I liked,  Blanking right now,

Actually the recent Batgirl of Burnside run changed the face of many (well a few at least) comics, and i'm sure the recents Spider-woman and Patsy Walker aka Hellcat series wouldn't have been the same if it had not existed.

By the way, do you also know that Spider-Woman (Jessica Drew) is currently in couple with Porcupine? (here we can feel the influence of Mark Gruenwald's version of that guy in Captain America. Yep, i know that by the end of Mark's story Porcupine died. Well, he got better and continued to be a nice ex Super-vilain and convict.) Not the brightest of the guys, but nice and lovable. Plus he is good with kids. And very helpful with Jess' baby. These explain that. You knew Jess has a baby, of course?

Actually, while differents from the classic stuff, those are amongst the few new comics i really enjoyed in recent years. not just reading, because "they're almost good" or "have nostalgy value" as i occasionally do. But because i loved them. On the same level as i love the work of Byrne, Claremont, Michelinie and a few others. That is not something i can say of many comics these days.

Comics that are fun. Also something that can't be said of many comics these days. 

Somehow, though, Porcupine as a vilain was fine and i wouldn't say that becoming nice and a bit dumb, did necessarily improve the character. But excepted for his costume and "power", he was a relatively generic vilain. Good, but we didn't knew many things about him. Now he is a familiar character, and was a regular character in the series. 

In cases like that i often miss a bit what the character used to be, but i am also happy to see him more often.

I have to say though that i prefered the original costume of porcupine to the one we got since Mark Gruenwald's Captain America story. The new one isn't a bad one, but i prefer the original.