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John Byrne
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Grumpy Old Guy

Joined: 11 May 2005
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Posted: 19 August 2018 at 11:26am | IP Logged | 1 post reply

Another thread just listed the actual sales from these years and it was a couple years after this issue before sales skyrocketed.

•••

X-MEN sales could not be said to have "skyrocketed" at any time during my tenure.

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Rick Senger
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Posted: 19 August 2018 at 11:34am | IP Logged | 2 post reply

Remember, every issue is the first issue for somebody, and 22 pages of homework does not make for an enticing first issue!
*****
138 WAS my first modern X-Men issue and it was an odd if quite gorgeous looking entry.  It didn't deter me, though, and I slowly filled in the rest dating back to Adams' run in reprint form and some of the older silvers I could afford in the ensuing decade.  I've often wondered if you were working from copies of the actual issues highlighted when you put together this issue.  Your re-creations of many famous moments were by and large better to my young eyes than the original versions I later tracked down and many images from this issue are the ones I think of first when I recall X-Men history.
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John Byrne
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Posted: 19 August 2018 at 11:43am | IP Logged | 3 post reply

I was, indeed, using the original issues as reference.

I might mention, these kinds of "album" issues are among my least favorite. Page after page after page of copied panels!

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Rebecca Jansen
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Posted: 19 August 2018 at 12:24pm | IP Logged | 4 post reply

Brian H.: It was Amazing Spider-Man #181with graveside origin recap, I specifically looked for and got it as a back issue. :^)

I don't think I had bought a single back issue yet when X-Men #138 was the newest issue, but I found it totally fascinating as someone who had only #131 up and some of the Amazing Adventures reprints of the first Kirby issues (a couple with Byrne covers). I pored over the album issue more than most. I remember my first time in a comic shop was around then and I bought X-Men #42 'The Death Of Professor X' hoping it would make clearer what the story was alluded to in #138 and it just confused me, but it was fun. Also the first comic I ever had and kept in a comic book 'baggie'. I'm pretty sure I paid $1.50for that. The other two comics I bought were Marvel Premiere #47 & 48 at the current price for 50 cents each and I actually wondered why they weren't 'Still Only 35 cents' like the cover said. "Because they were in the 50 cent box smart ass" was the owner's response! Cheap at ten times the price but 15 cent mark-ups were a lot bigger back then.

Memorieeess, blah blah blah...


It was a strange issue, but it was of such things I'm sure collectors were made! The seeds of doom were sown right then and there as young geeks and geekettes began thinking about all those past numbers and what they were like... 'Rascally' Roy's footnotes and reprint titles were one thing, but actually illustrated scenes from so many 'how do you find those now' past stories... B-toom! "Oh yeah, there's this place of Fort Street sells old comics, maybe they'd have some of these."

Memorieeess, blah blah blah...



Edited by Rebecca Jansen on 19 August 2018 at 12:26pm
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Brian Hague
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Posted: 19 August 2018 at 1:08pm | IP Logged | 5 post reply

Thanks for the correction, Rebecca! Sorry for the error, everyone.

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Steven Myers
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Posted: 19 August 2018 at 2:06pm | IP Logged | 6 post reply

138 was also my first issue of the X-Men. I thought it was a great place to start, and it really whet my appetite for more! But it was also a bad place to start, because I just missed the BIG event!  But I didn't miss Days of Future Past/Mind out of Time!!
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Marc Guggenheim
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Posted: 19 August 2018 at 5:23pm | IP Logged | 7 post reply

Uncanny 139 was the first issue of X-Men I ever bought.  When I went hunting for back issues, finding 137 was an absolute game-changer.  It told me everything I needed to know and clarified everything I was confused about.  I couldn't have loved it more.
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Matt Hawes
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Posted: 19 August 2018 at 5:54pm | IP Logged | 8 post reply

I had already been reading the "Uncanny X-Men" for about a year or more when issue #138 was first published. It was not my first issue, but I enjoyed it as much as the other issues, and liked that it filled me in on the history of the team, which I was not overly familiar with up to that point in time. It was fun, as I started to acquire the back issues of the title, to note, "Hey, that's the scene shown in #138!"

Though it was in flashback, there was still action in the issue, enough to satisfy me in my youth. And the comic, in my view, was a great way to get newer readers up to speed.

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Matt Hawes
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Posted: 19 August 2018 at 5:58pm | IP Logged | 9 post reply

 John Byrne wrote:
...I might mention, these kinds of "album" issues are among my least favorite. Page after page after page of copied panels!...

Ah, but how I enjoyed your take on those classic panels, JB! I enjoy most homage covers artists create based on past covers, so looking at your interpretations of those earlier scenes in X-Men history -- which is very similar in some ways -- was a pleasure for me.
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Peter Martin
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Posted: 19 August 2018 at 6:29pm | IP Logged | 10 post reply

I might mention, these kinds of "album" issues are among my least favorite. Page after page after page of copied panels!
------------------------------------
I'm with you. Remind me of those TV series episodes where someone ends up in a coma in hospital and the other characters reminisce via flashback to all their wonderful memories of their beloved friend. Just seems like filler. I know folks here like UXM 138, but it's probably my least favourite of your run.
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John Byrne
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Posted: 19 August 2018 at 6:50pm | IP Logged | 11 post reply

Clip Shows! Every season, it seemed, sitcoms would have clip shows. But their advantage was using actual clips. The actors did not have to redo the scenes. (Except on one brilliant episode of COMMUNITY, which used "clips" from episodes that hadn't happened!)

On a technicality, I suppose "The Menagerie" episode of STAR TREK TOS was a clip show.

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Greg Kirkman
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Posted: 19 August 2018 at 8:16pm | IP Logged | 12 post reply

On a technicality, I suppose "The Menagerie" episode of STAR TREK TOS was a clip show.
+++++++

I often refer to it as “the best clip show ever”, since the clips were all from an episode that the audience had never seen!
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