But at what cost did we bring Rob Hewitt in? Rob's a great guy and all, but was he worth it?

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It could be argued that I was the beginning of the end. Or blame my grandma-she was the one who bought that for me from a flea market (except issues 2 and 3 which I never did find, and did not read for years until the trade) 

Certainly this board would have less  bulk without me and my 7,000 posts.

(and heck I can't defend Secret Wars II! Even then I was like, what the heck???)

The New Mutants title debuted in March 1983, slightly more than a year earlier than Secret Wars (May 1984).  New Mutants spun off from the same titled graphic novel of 1982 and began a deluge of X-related titles that has never slowed, the biggest fallout from M*****'s  endless stable of X-books is the splitting up of the team across so many different comics and the introduction of dozens of lame mutant characters, some of which are held in as high a regard as the original team members or the all-new, all-different 1970's team.

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The WOLVERINE mini came out the year before the NEW MUTANTS series and the same year as the Graphic Novel. I think we can blame it, too.

However, in both series' defense, it was at least 5 years until a new "x" ongoing was introduced so, I don't know if they are entirely to blame.

Looks like the big Mutant Explosion happened shortly after Shooter left. Until late 1988 all you had other than UNCANNY, NEW MUTANTS, and X-FACTOR were the occasional mini-series. In the Fall of 88, you had the new EXCALIBUR  book, a new WOLVERINE ongoing and MARVEL COMICS PRESENTS which started featuring Wolverine but was after him was a showcase for other characters in the X-Universe.

Perhaps Shooter was the one keeping all the X-books from appearing.

Rob Hewitt: SECRET WARS is what brought me into the Marvel Universe as a whole.

I used to think this very same thing myself, only a few months ago.  But, as I've been reorganizing my comic collection these past few weeks, I'm logging them into a database program and I'm noticing something about the cover dates.  At the time SECRET WARS came out, I was already reading most of the major players anyway.  I'd been reading the various Spider-Man comics for about 3 or so years, I'd been reading INCREDIBLE HULK for nearly as long, I started FANTASTIC FOUR in 1982, and AVENGERS just a few months prior to SW because of an appearance by Spider-Man.

The only new books that SW got me to check out was UNCANNY X-MEN, IRON MAN, and CAPTAIN AMERICA, and I'm pretty sure I would have eventually gotten into them anyway at the rate I was expanding my comic reading interests at the time.

I enjoyed the story well enough, though, so I hold no malice toward it from the standpoint of a reader.  Whatever effect its success might have had on Shooter was something I wasn't consciously privy to at the time.

The concept of Secret Wars reminds me of the little rascals shows where they would put on a musical.

Their premise was that they didn't have talent but they had a barn so why not put on a show.