The coda to one of the most consequential and remembered comic book stories of all time. And the coda itself is one of the best written X-books of all time.
The cover alone is iconic, showing Cyclops quitting after Jean’s death. It became “the ___ quits the team” cover for years, in and out of X-books.
Look at the great job Buffy the Vampire Slayer did with its tribute cover…They even included the Toys R Us ad!
Incidentally, there are lots of other tributes to this cover. This great comic book blog here ran a whole feature on it. Go check it out–and support more comic book bloggers! Blogging is a dying art, and comics blogging is even more rare.
But let’s get back to this feature on Uncanny X-Men #138….
The story starts at the grave site, with Cyclops narrating, and then it goes through an overview of the entire series so far, all the way back to the Lee/Kirby stories that started it all. So it’s kind of a jumping-on point, and I have to say that in the history of famous comic book deaths (Superman, Batman, Captain America), I don’t recall a writer ever using the “event” of death as a way to get new readers up to speed—so from a sales point, this is incredibly wise. But it’s also wonderful as a narrative.
The cover shows Cyclops literally leaving all the old X-Men comic books in his past, moving on to something else, and then the issue ends with a new beginning…Kitty Pryde!
We’ve seen her before a few times, but this is her arrival to Xavier’s school–and she will very quickly become a major character. (Hm. I wonder if Claremont had to kill one female to make room for another one? I guess I doubt it–his X-Men was always pretty full of women and minorities.). Her arrival will bring with it a sense of hope–and humor–that the book hasn’t seen in about a year.
I will close by noting that not everyone agrees with me that this was an amazing storyline…
I wonder if he still feels that way, since this this very storyline was the basis for Kurt’s transition from fanboy to professional writer, when he provided–to John Byrne himself–the idea that retconned Jean’s death and brought her back in Fantastic Four #286.
The death of Phoenix is one of the best stories of the 1980s. And as for this single issue, there are only a few comics better than this one. It’s one of the top 10 comics of all time, according to this objectively accurate list of the 100 best Marvel issues of all time.