In flashback we learned that the mutant badguy known as Changeling had been diagnosed with terminal cancer and had only six months to live. In that time he wanted to make up for past misdeeds, and approached Xavier for help.

As it happened, Xavier needed to go into seclusion to work on a defense against an approaching alien threat. So he had Changeling use his (never previously mentioned) shape-shifting abilities to transform himself into a duplicate of Xavier. The Professor then “shared” his mental powers with Changeling, who went on to lead the X-Men until he was killed by the monstrous Grotesk.

All of this was a retcon, of course. As originally presented it was the real Xavier who died.

When the retcon was inserted, tho, there were some fans who began referring to Xavier having “faked his own death”. This even seeped into the comics in the form of Bobby Drake being bitter and angry over Xavier’s deception.

Except that deception actually began and ended with the Changeling’s switcheroo. Altho Xavier knew Changeling was going to die within half a year, there was no way either could guess he would actually be killed. That was completely unexpected.

Nevertheless the mantra persists. Xavier faked his own death. This was something I intended to address in HIDDEN YEARS, but my time in here was cut short.

Somewhat annoyingly, this confusion is part of what lead to the growing need to render Xavier as a manipulative creep.

Back in those days, publishers didn’t get the instant feedback seen today. It usually took about eleven issues, for instance, to cancel a new title.

This was long before the DSM. Comics were sold through conventional venues, and depended entirely on potential readers spotting a title on the rack. Getting to that rack was running a major obstacle course. Look up the Statement of Ownership in comics from that vintage. Notice how many issues are listed as “undistributed”, ie never got beyond the first distribution point.

In those days, because of so many hurdles (that intentionally low cover price meant comics were not worth much effort) a publisher might be required to print 600,000 to sell 300,000–and 50% was the cutoff point. Any title that dropped below that number would be canned, even if the distribution was as much at fault as the actual sales.

There was also the lead time. Sales reports ran about nine month behind what was actually on sale. IRON FIST and POWER MAN were canceled and combined only to learn a few issues later the sales had ticked up on both titles. The low sales had been a temporary slump.

Have to wonder how it happened that they didn’t pick up on this threat themselves.

(The real world answer is that the story was done at a time when all the titles worked as independent kingdoms, and even with a group like the Avengers the individual members could operate in their home books as if the team didn’t exist. It would be years later that a deep and damaging change crept thru the books, and the more anal-retentive fans demanded that all the parts be constantly touching.)