Tags Matching: jim lee

Hot day today, and many more in front of it.

As I sat at work peering across a very large office at some very large windows, I thought about how I spent many summers as a kid. Playing football in the street, exploring the woods near my house both vast and… not so vast, and laying around reading comic books on the floor of my very small bedroom. It’s funny to think about how much free time I had, and how looking back on it I wouldn’t change a second of how it was spent. Albeit I do wish I had been forced to endure a Todd Marinovich level of training in football or basketball, my parents were happy to see me reading, whatever it was that I was reading. And looks like so far I’ve done better than Mr. Marinovich.

So to celebrate two great things that work really well together, I am going to do 100 days of Summer, a look at a single issue every day from now until September 18th. Marvel Comics exclusively, because that’s what I read as a wee lad (and pretty much still focus much of my attention on now). No particular thread to hold any issue together to the next – just damn good comics. Why September 18th? Because that’s when the fall semester starts at the last school I attended, UC Irvine. So, without any further explanation, the first installment.

#100 – Uncanny X-Men #273

A weird note to start. Writer: Chris Claremont. Artists: Whilce Portacio, Klaus Janson, John Byrne, Rick Leonardi, Marc Silvestri, Michael Golden, Larry Stroman, Jim Lee. Quite a list. A veritable who’s who of X-artists, and though it doesn’t add to the story on initial reading, it’s pretty neat now looking back at it. The X-books found themselves closing the end of a very trying time, the fall of the “outback x-men” bled right into the x-tinction agenda, and here’s Lila Cheney. Galactic insanity to ensue. But this story does a lot of things right. Heavy on character development, Claremont is at his best right here. He’s cleaned up a lot of his loose ends – and here he’s tying together some threads while at the same time laying out a whole new era.

There’s a feeling here of rejuvenation and a weird combustible closeness; the proximity of the greater x-teams was never closer and the full house was a welcome change to almost a decade of a very divided house of x. Even the combination of artists pushes this along now, looking at it; all you need to see are the Jim Lee drawn pages of an Iceman / Boom Boom interaction to see what I’m talking about. Worth every penny.