COMIC BOOK OF THE WEEK

COMIC BOOK OF THE WEEK


Hello again!!  Welcome back to our weekly installment, where we take a comic book issue, and give you the lowdown on it, and provide some background, as well as it's impact on the comics world.  And what a better way to drop one this week, than the comic that rattled the industry back in 1991, as the collector's market REALLY  kicked into high gear.  Marvel, with the growing success of their mutant title The Uncanny X-Men, had been reaching incredible levels of popularity during the 80's, and Wolverine becoming Marvel's 2nd most popular character behind Spider-Man himself, the offshoots The New Mutants, and X-Factor having gained steam, and the first title being re-named X-Force eventually, Marvel had a hot commodity on its hands.  The crossovers of the Mutant Massacre, Fall of the Mutants, and Inferno elevated the mutant titles to the top of the sales charts.  So...Marvel did what it felt was a great business decision:  give the fans MORE of what they want.  And what they felt the readers wanted:  a NEW series!  And thus...THIS week...this is why we are here.  






X-MEN #1


COVER:  Jim Lee, Scott Williams
WRITER:  Chris Claremont & Jim Lee
ARTIST:  Jim Lee
INKS:  Scott Williams
COLORS:  Joe Rosas
LETTERS:  Tom Orzechowski
EDITOR:  Bob Harras, Suzanne Gaffney
COVER DATE:  October 1991
PUBLISHER:  Marvel Comics



TAGLINE:   A Mutant Milestone!, 1st issue!  A Legend Reborn

STORY TITLE:  "Rubicon"




X-Men #1....or as we would like to say, "Volume 2", was a brand new title brought to life by Marvel, as a means to add more stories to the X-Men mythos, as well as give yet another vehicle for writer Chris Claremont...who had long been the scribe of the X-Men for many years on their original title, but for him to work with artist Jim Lee, who had been pencilling the previous title.  This new book allowed them to collaborate together, awhile arist Whilce Portacio took over the art duties on Uncanny X-Men.  At this point, the mutant roster had grown for the team, as the original members:  Cyclops, Jean Grey, Iceman, Beast, and Angel, had returned to the fold after forming X-Factor.  With X-Factor now under the leadership of Cyclops' brother, Havok, the original members returned to the X-Men, and the team split up into two groups:  Blue & Gold.  They both get introduced in this issue, as well as Xavier sporting a new hoverchair.  This book would end up being the primary vehicle for the Blue Team, which was led by Cyclops, while the Gold Team would be led by Storm.  This book exploded into shops with heavy pre-order sales at 8.1 million copies - making it the biggest selling comic book of all time, which got it into the Guiness Book of World Records.  This book also came with five variant covers, courtesy of Jim Lee.  It's estimated that around 3-4 million were actually sold, and the variant covers were purchased by speculators, thinking these would become instant collectors' items, thus increasing their value.  This became a theme (and, sadly, a curse, during the 1990's, as oversaturation and flooding of the market nearly caused the industry to evaporate).  It also should be noted that while the series got off to a rocking start, Claremont only lasted 3 issues, before he and editor Bob Harras couldn't agree on the direction of the book, so Claremont left.  Jim Lee himself would leave after issue 11, as he , Portacio, Rob Liefeld, Todd McFarlane, Erik Larsen, and Marc Silvestri all left Marvel over monetary and creative issues to form a new company, Image Comics.  John Byrne and Scott Lobdell had come in and taken over duties, until, with the book's new name relauch, Grant Morrison took over on the book, and a new direction, courtesy of new Editor-in-Chief, Joe Quesada.  The book ran for 10 years, and went under a couple of name changes such as X-Men Legacy and The New X-Men.






THE STORY:  An old familiar foe returns to plague the X-Men once again, as Magneto, who has formed a new group called The Acolytes, claims the asteroid above the Earth - Asteroid M - a safe haven for mutant refugees, but the rest of the world doesn't view it that way, and once again, the X-Men must face off with their longtime arch-enemy.  This is also the introduction of the split squads of the team:  Gold & Blue.  The Blue led by Cyclops, and the Gold led by Storm.  




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At the time of this issue's release, the X-Men had been dealing with the fallout of these various crossover events that had effected their respective outfits.  After the events of Inferno, the team once again banded together, and two split squads formed.  This was a great way to feature two different teams of X-Men in the book, and focus on one team, while the other team's stories and adventures would be told in Uncanny X-Men.  Claremeont and Lee get the series off with a bang, by bringing back Magneto as the heavy, with a whole new group of followers in the Acolytes, and a place for them to set up shop:  Asteroid M.  But the same issues of fear still grip the populace when it comes to mutants, so Asteroid M becomes a powderkeg issue with the populace, and it's up to the X-Men to stop Magneto before he does something against humanity, and start a war.  I would've been curious as to had seen WHERE Claremont had gone with this first arc had he stayed on the book a little longer.  The book benefitted from Lee still working on it until he left after issue #11.  But still, for a landmark first issue, it doesn't get bigger than this.