>But there's the reality question. The shadow of HIDDEN YEARS stretches long, and leaves me with some serious trust issues.

This just gets more and more tantalising. I'm a pessimist by nature but even I'm getting a positive vibe about this.

You know, it occurs to me that although I never got into Elseworlds, Marvel are without a doubt taking the any hero, any format to another level. Currently we have the main universe, the Ultimate universe (hate, hate, hate), the Noir universe (Is it one or many? I haven't read any of them), the various future versions and many others.

Of all these, the only one that has interested me has been Claremont's version. I do wonder if Marvel are moving to a position where anyone who wants to would be allowed to produce their version of a charcter and do what they want. You may get some killer teams Claremont X-Men, Byrne X-Men (Oh please), Simonson Thor (Ditto) etc, but there would be no need for all this convoluted mess that currently exists. It would just be great stories with characters that you love acting like heroes again. None of this internal navel gazing and company wide events.

Mind you, you just know they'd screw it up and ask for a mega-crossover that brings them all together and that would be that.

Nicely done!

John- I'm new to your forum so I hope its okay for me to just come in an ask a question. I have been a fan of your X-men for such a long time and I loved the hidden years as well. When I heard about this talk here I thought it was too good to be true. Then I saw Claremont chime in favor it and Tom Brevoort in favor it and Ralph Machio in favor of it on the forums and I thought its really to good to be true.

My question is how can us fans do anything to make this happen if you even wanted it to happen? and if Marvel came to you with this would you ever consider it for real?

Maxwell:

Welcome to the forum.  Can you provide links to the comments from Claremont, Macchio and Breevort?

Rick Whiting wrote: As long as readers are forewarned in advance that a book is going to ignore and/or start fresh from a certain point in a character or comics history, should prevent any confusion. Also, resetting the clock doesn't necessary mean that past stories you and I might have liked, won't be retold (although slightly differently) sometime in the future.

But who gets to decide what to ignore, Rick?  What if what you decide to ignore is something that I and many others love?  And why would we want to reset the clock to a point in time where Spider-Man, for example, wasn't screwed up, but then tell a different version of all the stories that screwed him up in the first place?  That makes no sense to me.

QUOTE: If Marvel called me up and said "Let's make this happen!" I would ask "What are you offering?" I got royally screwed on HIDDEN YEARS, and the first thing I would need would be an ironclad assurance that such a thing was not going to happen again. With that in place, I would be absolutely delighted to sail off onto these familiar seas once again.

Is it wrong that even this little glimmer gets my hopes up?  I'd be interested in a link to the quotes from Macchio and Breevort too.  

Edited to add: Geoff here the link to the Claremont quote: http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=46581&a mp;page=29

QUOTE: If Marvel called me up and said "Let's make this happen!" I would ask "What are you offering?" I got royally screwed on HIDDEN YEARS, and the first thing I would need would be an ironclad assurance that such a thing was not going to happen again. With that in place, I would be absolutely delighted to sail off onto these familiar seas once again.

Just the thought of people thinking about this happening is enough to make me happy. I hope you get that call and I really hope if 'the call' does happen that you get those assurances and one day soon fans old and new will be allowed to check this series out.

Fingers crossed, of course