I grew up on Chris Claremont’s X-Men. The book struck a chord with me, and soap-opery as it was, it was much better than the silly fare most companies were churning out. Claremont took some of the strangest people imaginable, breathed life into them, and made the reader care.
Somehow that all lost focus in the late 80s when Jim Lee hijacked the book. Throughout the 90s, it was a total mess, with a revolving door of mediocre writers and artists who really had no feel for the characters. Every now and then, I’d pick up a copy out of nostalgia, but the books were filled with ridiculously muscled (or ridiculously endowed, in the case of the female characters) ubermensch who seemed to be distinguished from each other by their names only.
Sales dropped, and Marvel started a “let’s throw a bunch of stuff against the wall and see what sticks” approach. Continued...