What are you guys talking about?

••

That's the one in which I revealed Lockjaw to be an actual Inhuman, not a dog. It had sprung from a discussion a bunch of us had had in Mark Gruenwald's office, one day, in which we got to wondering when and why a puppy would ever have been exposed to the Terragen mists.

This was later undone by Peter David, who revealed that Lockjaw speaking was actually a ventriloquism trick played on the Thing by those notorious jokers, Karnak and Gorgon.

......... was actually a ventriloquism trick played on the Thing by those notorious jokers, Karnak and Gorgon.
*****************************

That really made me laugh out loud.

Your sarcasm not the reveal.

For reasons beyond mere mortal comprehension, Chris, scripting that page, gave the Surfer a line that indicated he was going to zoom down to Earth and see what was going on -- even to offer assistance to this new creature, if needed.

Well, as you can probably imagine, there were a whole passel of readers who were NOT PLEASED when the Surfer did NOT show up in the next issue. Or the next. Or the next. And, of course, because we worked so far ahead in those days, it was months before Chris and I even KNEW there were people who were unhappy at being "cheated".

Cut to years later, and Steve Englehart had returned to Marvel for some writing. Shooter declared that Englehart deserved a "plum", and since the X-Men were the plummiest assignment (OMFG! My spellchecker does not know "superhero", but it knows "plummiest"???) Steve should have some kind of special X-Book to script. Steve protested that he did not know nearly enough about X-Men lore, so Shooter called me (to this day I know not why) and asked if I had an idea for an X-Men story Steve could write.

Now, mind you, it should be emphasized here that Shooter just wanted a plot from me. I was being offered neither the art job, nor the scripting!

Well, I thought immediately of the "missing" Surfer/Phoenix story. I worked up an outline, it bounced back and forth between Shooter and me a few times, and then. . . disappeared. Nothing happened.

So, when HIDDEN YEARS finally came to be, and Marvel was at the time insisting that every 12th issue be double-sized on all the books (resulting in the first and 12th issues of XHY shipping late due to editorial incompetence, TYVM) I decided I would do a "flash forward" for the 24th issue, finally telling the tale of Dark Phoenix and the Silver Surfer. It seemed like it would be a neat idea to get Terry to ink it.

Then XHY, still a profitable book, was canceled.