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I have said many times -- not entirely in jest -- that the continual rise in, and eventual explosion of sales on X-MEN after I left seems to indicate that I was holding Chris back. All that stuff he was doing that I hated, that drove me off the book -- THAT was what the fans wanted.

So, what if that scenario had played differently? Just a few years later, Frank Miller would find himself in a similar conflict with the writer on DAREDEVIL, and there it was the writer who left. What if Chris had left X-MEN, and I had stayed?

Sales would probably have continued to rise -- that seemed pretty much a function of the marketplace by then -- but would the explosion have come? I boosted sales on FANTASTIC FOUR by about 50% over my run on that title -- but by then the X-MEN sales were more than double that. And a lot of that seemed to be due to Paul Smith -- who, like Dave Cockrum, went along with most of the stuff Chris wanted to do.

So, would X-MEN have remained a "cult book" if Chris had left and I had stayed? A much better selling cult book, to be sure, but, compared to Marvel sales in general, still a cult book. And if that had been the case, would we not have seen the mutant madness take over Marvel and fandom? Would we not have seen Wolverine become the great stain he has?

Would Marvel -- and therefore the Industry as a whole -- have stayed SANE?

One man can make a difference! Dear God! WAS I THAT MAN?!?!?

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The suggestion is not that Chris, instead of me, would have gone to the FF. At that time he had expressed no interest in that title (apart from speculating that Reed Richards was a mutant).

It's difficult to imagine, really, WHAT Chris might have done, if he'd been squeezed off X-MEN. Fans have been remarkably intolerant of his work on other titles. DC might have offered him WONDER WOMAN, tho.

I remember that period fairly well from a UK perspective which may be slightly skewed.

For the UK, the X-Men were stratespheric during your and Chris' run - we got to the Dark Phoenix saga roughly around issue 150 of the USA run, so roughly a year and a half after the USA. I tend to think that it was fall out from dark phoenix that led to the initial boost in sales. it became the story people wouldn't stop talking about.

It was Dark Phoenix that made me make the decision to start to buy the USA versions. I picked up the latest and it was Kitty's pirate story. I was peed that you were gone and decided to hunt down the missing issues. For some bizzare reason, a newsaent chain had deemed to buy almost a years worth of old comics at that time so I started a hunt around town to find them - at this point, comic shops were not known to me as we didn't have one in my town. Within a couple of days, I had all your issues and some of the ones after.

Speaking personnaly? Dark Phoenix was what started the ball rolling and whoever had stayed would have reaped the benefit of that.

Bill - James,are you talking about the black and white reprints in Marvel U.K. titles?
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I am indeed. I was reading The X-Men in Rampage but when they printed the Dark Phoenix saga is when I really went nuts-  joined the X-Men fan club and went on a back issue hunt. I can't remember the name of the shop but it was a newsagent chain that had about 5 or 6 stores throughout our Town Centre (Huddersfield). I spent a few days going from one to the other as they at the time seemed to have bought about a year's worth of back issues and were releasing them ad hoc.

Got both parts of Days of Future Past, X-Men 137 to 143 in fact and a whole bunch of other stuff. It was the start of my biting the bullet and moving from UK reprints to US editions (you know you may be right about 142 - I may have had to get that via the fan club along with the Wolverine mini-series - mini-series were not distributed either).

I found a local newsagent that started to import on his own - he wasn't a comic shop but decided to do it as an add on to his normal business. He was good but only got a few copies of each issue. Two instances made me graduate to travelling to Leeds every weekend - The first issue of Dark Knight Returns I saw was a reprint of issue 1along with issue 2 and Chris Claremont and Art Adams were signing issue 1 of Classic X-Men in Manchester.

Went to Manchester, went in my first ever comic shop and that was that. Comics from comics shop in Leeds from then on.