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There were a few times during my run on X-MEN when the deadlines got a bit tight. Deadlines actually mattered in those days, so rather than even RISK the book missing shipping (necessitating a fill-in), the jobs were done as close to simultaneously as possible. So, I was sending in the pencils in chunks, rather than a complete book, and Terry was inking them as Orz lettered on overlay.

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Yup. One of those examples I have mentioned, where Chris actually wrote TO the art -- and shouldn't have!!!

The earliest example of this, that I recall, was in an issue of IRON FIST, where I opened a scene in a dream sequence, which was then supposed to be revealed to be a dream as we came out of it. A cliché, perhaps, but at that point I hadn't done it before. Chris wrote a caption for the FIRST PANEL saying it was a dream!

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Problem is, it introduced something that had not existed in the Marvel Universe before that panel!

Stan and Jack presented us with Mutants and Humans, strictly either/or. Roy Thomas introduced "non-mutant variants", which meant people like the FF, Spider-Man, and, in the specific to the story where the term first appeared, Sauron. But they were still HUMAN.

But there were not, before this issue, people who had the POTENTIAL to gain powers. There's another stain that spread far in the MU!

So, right there, the X-Men were RISKING something. They were prepared to make SACRIFICES to save the world. You know. Like heroes do.

Double the pity, since Chris actually wrote that scene so beautifully -- then gutted it with references to "alternate realities" and the "incestuous Lesbian kiss."

sigh