Which is why I had my name taken off it. Shooter then insisted that I would receive no royalties on that issue, since my name not being on it meant that I did not contribute to the sales. I wonder if he thought that would bluff me into changing my stance?

Aha!!!!! Finally, I learn the truth about one of the things that bugged me in this issue. The credits annoyed me very much back then. I would have loved it to read John Byrne's and Terry Austin's names side by side again and got deprived of this little pleasure.

The other thing that bugged me was that some of the Phoenix scenes didn't look like Byrne. Of course, we all know, thanks to this board, that they weren't, so that's also answered.

Easily one of my most favorite issues of all time. I particularly love the fake Phoenix on the cover. Brilliant!

Some day, like "The Untold Tale of the Phoenix", perhaps there will be a "special edition" of this issue restored to what I intended it to be.

Wow...this is one of the most powerful issues of Mr. Byrne's run, and now it's our chance to know more about the genesis of this book.

BTW, Mr. Byrne, is it true Kurt Busiek's story about that he inspired the story of this issue?

The micromanagement explains a lot.

The first time I read it I thought it seemed very "off" the usual Byrne FF artwork and writing. 

In this issue as I wrote and drew it, Phoenix is portrayed as a malevolent entity, in keeping with what Chris and I had developed in the process of doing what became the "Dark Phoenix Saga". (Remember Princess Lilandra's comments that she had feared all along that Phoenix would go bad? That was a bit of retofitting we did to make our story work.) When Chris was brought in to do the rewrite, he went with the version of Phoenix he was trying to make out of the original. All these years later, of course, few people (probably not even Chris himself!) truly remember, if they ever even knew, what that original really was.

This is, of course, the issue that was micromanaged by Shooter. Every line of art and script was fully and completely approved. Then I announced I was going to do Superman, and suddenly chunks of it had to be redrawn by Jackson Guice and rewritten by Claremont.

*******

That's just mean-spirited, vindictive behavior on Shooter's part.

I've seen similar things happen in other industries - a person announces they are moving on to a different employer, so they get mistreated on the way out. It's completely uncalled for, though. You had given Marvel everything they had paid you for and then some. Heck, you even wanted to stay on the FF and when you couldn't, you still left in a professional manner. Not sure why Shooter couldn't return the same courtesy.

Shooter didn't insist on the crossover. Roger Stern and I cooked it up and presented it to him. That was our mistake. That was when he started micromanaging.

Brine?  I can't imagine anyone coming up with that.  I said Byron until someone corrected me about five years ago or so.

Still, nothing should suprise me when it comes to destroying names.  I have so much trouble with "Ari"  Your name is what?  Rai?  Ira?  Ori?  3 stupid letters

It was really disingenous of Shooter to use the credit "You know who," as if we fans were too stupid to realize there was a change in art and story on several pages. I knew right off the bat that something was different. In fact, I believe I had the art pegged as being Jackson Guice.

JB, do you think that Claremont's whole deal with making the Phoenix a benevolent force, and Jean the corruptor, stems from his having had a hand in creating Phoenix, so it was "his" character, while Jean was not?

Again, that wasn't Shooter, that was me. It was my "homage" to Jim Steranko, who'd had his name removed from an issue of X-MEN, and replaced with "Do We Really Have to Tell You?".

And so it went, and so it goes.

Even since seeing the unpublished pages here on this site some time ago, I've vastly preferred the original version of the story. Phoenix is inherently evil, but Jean uses her psi-powers to imprint her own personality on Phoenix so as to turn it into a true duplicate of her. And that copy proves to have Jean's own courage in the end, when it kills itself to save the universe.

Brilliant. And way better than "Hi, I'm Phoenix! I'm going to heal you and then turn myself into a dupilcate of you--with a part of your consciousness inside me at no extra charge!"

And I say this as someone who thinks human beings are basically, you know, animated pond scum.

Brilliant. And way better than "Hi, I'm Phoenix! I'm going to heal you and then turn myself into a dupilcate of you--with a part of your consciousness inside me at no extra charge!"

***

Exactly-- it's like a comedy sketch.  "Hey there, are you busy?"  "Not really, I'm pretty sure I'm about to die." "Oh, bummer that.  Maybe I can help."  "Why, who are you?"  "Oh, I'm a god-like force that no one's ever heard of or called out to before-- but you called out to me.  At least I think you did... What number were you dialing?"  etc.

The Phoenix/Jean exchange as printed presents Jean with no additional dilemma or conflict.  It's just a gift from that ol' debil Deus Ex Etc.

I agree Jeff. When I first saw this issue I was so excited. Not only is Jean Grey coming back but here is a comic with no ads and JB goodness to boot.

Never knew about the pages or dialouge being replaced. Looking back now I wish they would have done things as JB did or just not even bring the character back.

I peg this as the issue where everything begins to go downhill.  I thought the resurrection of Jean Grey to be a huge mistake.  Perhaps if JB's original intention was followed, the damage could have been contained, but I would have preferred her to never come back.

I don't put any of the damage on the people directly involved with this issue.  They had no control over what would happen.  But for me, the rot begins here.

But I really like the Byrne/Austin art on the pages it does appear.

I totally bought resurrection... hook, line and sinker.  I think I was so eager to see Jean back that anything was fine by me.

I even liked (the original) Maddie Pryor...

But these pages you've posted here are lightyears stronger storywise

Vinny Valenti wrote: A question - the other imaged recorded alongside Jean's in the crystal - what was that supposed to be?

I was hoping no one would ask, and then I was hoping someone else would answer, but it looks like I get to be the bearer of bad plots.  Here's what happened to the crystal: Kandor Syndrome.

JB, your FF version is indeed better than the published one.

I still believe that either version robs the entire run of X-MEN 100-137 of a great deal of its emotional power, not just Jean's death. The best portrayal ever of the Scott/Jean romance never really happened to Jean.

JB, your FF version is indeed better than the published one.

I still believe that either version robs the entire run of X-MEN 100-137 of a great deal of its emotional power, not just Jean's death. The best portrayal ever of the Scott/Jean romance never really happened to Jean.

I agree.  I recall when reading Jean's rebirth, all I could think about was that great scene in the desert where Jean and Scott were romantic, and then I thought, wait, that wasn't Jean! 

But, I understand the reality of the market.  It is a shame that X-Factor, the excuse for bringing Jean back, was so lame, right down to the concept of the original X-Men hunting mutants, but really secretly helping them. 

Superhero comics are supposed to be like a roller-coaster ride. When you take a particularly spectacular slide, you don't stop the car and back up to do it again. You race on in anticipation of the next one.

This mucking about with JB reminds me of that "West Wing" episode which expressed a simple thought applicable here -- LET BYRNE BE BYRNE.

I'm just speechless that a storyline, a character, he was so intimately connected to and fundamentally familiar with was crushed under heel. Terrible.

This thread is also serving to point up something that has gone very wrong with comics, particularly superhero comics, in the last thirty years or so. "When Jean came back, the first thing I thought of was a scene that appeared six years earlier."

*************

SER: This fan mentality came up during the Clone Saga. There was objection to the notion that the Spider-Man they had grown up reading was not the "real" one (the "irony" I suppose was that the Spider-Man revealed to be "real" was the one Ditko, Lee, and Romita had worked on).

If the comics audience turned over as it should, there probably wouldn't have been this reaction or at least Marvel might have been willing to "ride it out."

It's hard for comics to "escape" bad stories now because of the fannish belief that "every story and every scene" counts.

SER: This fan mentality came up during the Clone Saga. There was objection to the notion that the Spider-Man they had grown up reading was not the "real" one (the "irony" I suppose was that the Spider-Man revealed to be "real" was the one Ditko, Lee, and Romita had worked on).

If the comics audience turned over as it should, there probably wouldn't have been this reaction or at least Marvel might have been willing to "ride it out."

************************************************************ *************************************

The reason why the Clone Saga didn't work was because they changed Peter Parker into Ben Reilly.  Gone was the Daily Bugle supporting cast.  Gone was Aunt May (killed during this fiasco).  Instead we have a character who instead of being married and too old, we have a character that spent the last how-ever-many years wandering the Earth thinking he was a clone.  That's even LESS Spider-man-like.  It was a really bad plan.

Stephen, in that case, I think that "fan mentality" was for the best.

The Clone Saga was a really bad story and a bad idea on so many levels. In that case, fan uproar caused Marvel to do a 180 and restore Peter Parker (the same guy we had followed for 30+ years) as the real Spider-Man.

I agree with the notion that an older fanbase (like all of us here on the JBF, to be quite honest) does make it harder to get past bad stories. But in the case of the Clone Saga, that was a story that needed ending before it did any further damage to the Spider-Man franchise.

After all the discussion around here about uniform colors, did this panel stand out to anyone else?  I thought that it had been decided that the FF uniforms are actually black with blue highlights used in the coloring.

I don't believe that the original outfits (the outfits that Jean refers to in the panel above) were ever supossed to be all black. It was JB's outfits (as Jean also refers to) that were black.

Not every outfit that was colored blue was supposed to be black. The outfits that JB mentions were outfits that were predominantly black in the early appearances, with blue highlights. The Fantastic Four's original outfits never really had large black areas, other than the gloves, boots, belts, and collars (those parts were black).

The last time I recall Jean Grey meeting the Fantastic Four "on panel" before "Uncanny X-Men" #101 would probably be in the "Avengers" when Yellowjacket married the Wasp ("Avengers" #60?).

Unless you count "X-Men: The Hidden Years," natch.

Andy, I was trying to think of an early-mid-Seventies meeting between the X-Men and the Fantastic Four, but I can't think of any offhand. Remember, the original X-Men's title was in a period of reprint for several years, and the X-Men only popped up occassionally in other titles at that time.

From roughly 1968 to 1975 I can't think of a story where the X-Men WITH Jean met up with the Fantastic Four outside of the issue of "The Avengers" I cited. The X-Men guest-starred in "Marvel Team-Up" (with Spider-Man), "Captain America," and later issues of "The Avengers," and a few members (not Jean) popped up in "The Incredible Hulk." I don't remember Jean being present in "Giant-Size Fantastic Four" #3 (I think that was the issue), when Jamie Maddrox first appeared.

"Iron Fist" #15 would've been Phoenix, not Jean. That is Jean speaking in the panel from JB's "Fantastic Four" story. The last issue of "Marvel Team-Up" featured Rachel, not Jean and/or the original Phoenix.

Edited for clarity.

Andy wrote: ...Matt, I'm glad I don't have your memory.  I get to re-read my comics periodically and enjoy things that I'd forgotten.  Sheesh.  Amazing. ...

LOL! The thing is, I used to be better at remembering everything, including exact numbers. I am getting too old.

Edited to add: And another thing that hinders me as I grow older is that I don't re-read stories too often. Most of the comics I read I only read once when I first bought them.

Edited to add: And another thing that hinders me as I grow older is that I don't re-read stories too often. Most of the comics I read I only read once when I first bought them.

------------------------------------------------------------ ----------------------

That's why I pretty much quit buying too much new stuff.  I've got 30+ short boxes full of comics and bookcases full of paperbacks, novels, etc. that I won't ever get to, much less re-read.  Buying weekly books quickly get's out of hand in terms of storage.  I love 'em but the wallet and the square footage just isn't there.

I caught the point about the FF's costumes being black and not blue.  You beat me in making that point Andy.

But beside that point, JB brought up a good issue when he said:

This thread is also serving to point up something that has gone very wrong with comics, particularly superhero comics, in the last thirty years or so. "When Jean came back, the first thing I thought of was a scene that appeared six years earlier."

*************

I started thinking about the current stuff that's out now and what has come before in the last few years and realized that Spider-Man has been married for 20 years.  That between, the comics, movies, and cartoons the comic fans of today only know a married Spider-Man for example.

Even though that was a major change in the staus quo for the character, do you think fans are like this because the stories in general are just going on too long?  Or is it that there doesn't seem to be any downtime in comics anymore?  It just seems as though they go from one big event to the next without any time for character development anymore.

For example, the way JB handled Sue's miscarriage, was handled well.  Wasn't schlepped off in one issue, but was a gradual thing (until it was undone).  Maybe the best example of this was the way Star Trek handled Picard's assimilation into the Borg Collective. After all the action was done, he was back on Earth visiting his family.  Recovering from his ordeal.

Comic fans are thrust from one thing to the next, because the cause of one big event is usually the effect of the last big event.

This issue offers me an added bit of pleasure that dates back to my first days with the FF. I began reading in the mid-1970s (issue #166, the first of a two-part Thing/Hulk battle, when George Perez was illustrating).

A few months after I became a fan, I remember an issue where Ben stumbles upon Sue doing a multi-forcefield trick in a Danger Room-style exercise. He makes a crack something along the lines of "So, you're ready to take on Marvel Girl of the X-Men--one fall, winner take all?"

"What a cool idea," thought this nine-year-old kid.

A decade later, I was finally treated to that foreshadowed Invisible Woman/Marvel Girl bout.

Thanks, John--it was worth the wait.

Why would it be?