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Why isn’t it enough that I think it would be?

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Not a big fan.

X in 1964.......

Interesting to note Xavier referring to himself as possibly the first mutant. In those days all mutations were the result of parents being exposed to radiation, which limited the time frame in which they could occur. Something long since forgotten by Marvel.

Yet, like so many of Dave's tropes, it worked, and doesn't really look right when he gives X a bigger bonce!

(Clever way to have everybody facing the camera!)

"Tangentially, it's definitely interesting to ponder, as JB keeps generously giving us more ELSEWHEN stories, whether the original impact (not the intrinsic quality!) of the Dark Phoenix saga was also a matter mostly of context, and particularly so because it seems like the impact was really most powerful years after JB had departed."

I've long felt that Dark Phoenix falls very much into the same category as Gwen Stacy.

If Gwen, like Peter's other girlfriends, had merely drifted off, she would not have created such a massive wound across the face of the Spider-Man mythos. She would have stood next to Betty Brant and Liz Allen.

So, too, if Chris and I had done the story we originally intended, with Phoenix becoming a recurring villain and, most likely, eventually being "rehabilitated", there's no way the story would have cast such a long and deep shadow. Creative crews inheriting the X-Men mythos would not have had THAT hanging over them from Day One.

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Not that I recall.

Altho....... One day Shooter was complaining about what he called "objectifying the panel borders", by which he meant having them sub for floors and walls, so the characters appeared to be standing or leaning on them. He declared "If you don't show the floor, the readers won't know there's a floor there!"*

Now, my thought was that something as NORMAL as a floor would automatically, even unconsciously assumed by the readers. It would be necessary only to show if there WASN'T a floor! So I asked if I should cover all the background walls with mirrors. After all, if the readers can't see the backs of the characters, they won't know they HAVE backs!

(The basic absurdity of Shooter's point is underscored by my solution: any time I wanted to do a shot where I would normally use the bottom of the panel as the floor, I would add a narrow black band, thickening the border. This, apparently, was enough to satisfy Shooter's desire that readers be assured there was a floor there.)

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*Honestly! He said that to me!