Consider:

• One day it occurred to me that Magneto might actually be the FATHER of Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch. The moment I thought of this, all the pieces seemed to drop into place, as if that was what Stan and Jack had intended right from the start (it wasn't).

• When I was working on AVENGERS WEST COAST, and looking for ways to expand on the character of Simon Williams, I thought about the dynamics of his relationship with Wanda and the Vision -- the Vision having Simon's "brain patterns", and being in love with Wanda -- and suddenly all kinds of pieces just. . . dropped into place.

• Again on AWC, I had not liked it way back when, when it was "revealed" that the Vision was really the original Human Torch. That seemed like a bad case of tailcoating, to me. Taking an existing character's history and tacking it onto a more recent character. Not a big fan of that. Yet, what could I do? The deed was done. But one day I mentioned this to a friend, and he reminded me of a somewhat obscure story in which Toro had attended the original Torch's funeral -- and again there was a cascade of pieces falling into place.

• When I was doing HIDDEN YEARS, one of the things I knew I would eventually have to address (but didn't get the chance to, as it turned out) was those stories from the X-Men's days as a reprint title, when the characters turned up in other books, sometimes in civvies, but sometimes in their old school uniforms. What was going on there? I thought about it –– and the pieces dropped neatly into place, just like they'd been planned to fit that particular "puzzle" all along.

There were so many instances, and not just mine. Roger Stern had a whole list. I'll have to drop him an email and ask him to remind me of some.

My reason for mentioning this, tho, is basically this: back in those days, when we looked at Marvel's history, we found so many building blocks, just lying around, waiting to be slipped into place as part of the ever expanding edifice of the house that Jack and Stan (and Steve, and Don, and John, and Johnny, and. . . ) built. That was how we thought of ourselves -- as BUILDERS.

Today, it seems the approach is more akin to a wrecking ball.

A wrecking ball is being kind. At times it feels that they just dropped a bomb.

A nuke.

The building/wrecking ball analogy is quite apt. Whilst those with a "wrecking ball" mindset aren't blameless, I think I'd lay more of the blame at the feet of those who are SENIOR to such people, but let it happen, anyway.

As for those examples provided by Mr Byrne, well I hadn't quite thought of it in those terms, but it does all seem to fit together.

••

I have, well, never said "never". But I cannot imagine the circumstances ever properly aligning to make a return possible. The industry and the companies are just too changed.

As I've said many time, I didn't leave Marvel. Marvel left me.

••

Roger Stern has often said that he and I, and others of our "generation" were lucky, because we got into comics when there was very little money, and the writers and artists were only a few years beyond anonymity. We came in, then, not to become famous or to make a lot of money, but to PLAY WITH THE TOYS. We wanted to work with those characters -- and, more important, AS WE FOUND THEM, not as we could MAKE them.

In more immediate, personal terms, when Chris and I were doing X-MEN (later UNCANNY X-MEN), we did not think we were creating "landmarks". We did not imagine we were generating stories that would still be mined for idea thirty and forty years later. We just set out to do the best damn X-Men stories we could think of. (Unconsciously, we even mirrored the Roy Thomas/Neal Adams X-MEN, which happened to BE the best damn X-Men stories we could think of!)

We "made a mark" -- but it was almost accidental!

••

That's pretty much exactly NOT what I just said.