I was giving an interview the other day, talking about X-Men and Dark Phoenix, and the question was asked about why the Dark Phoenix Saga is as "important" as it is. I pointed out that the thing that set Dark Phoenix apart from most of the "events" that followed, is that our story was not planned to be an "event". The Dark Phoenix story grew naturally out of the flow of the book -- and, of course, the death of Phoenix was not planned at all. The story was not hyped as a big "event", because it was not hyped at all. But since then, everybody and his uncle has tried to duplicate the impact of Dark Phoenix, and if there is one great truth in comics -- and this is something I used to say before Chris and I did Dark Phoenix -- it is that if you set out to do an "important" story, you will almost always fail. (The death of Supergirl, for instance, had none of the impact of the death of Phoenix, even tho Supergirl was a much longer established character, from a much "bigger" mythos with, presumably, a much larger fan base. But the fact that it was deliberate and calculated muted the power of the story. Didn't damp it out completely, but even at there time there was a vague "bin there, dun that" feeling --- because it was a deliberate attempt to ride the same thunderhead that had generated Dark Phoenix. And that particular lightning could only strike once.)