There's a feeling of rote recitation at work in this new graphic novel written by Jonothan Ames and illustrated by Dead Haspiel; "My name is Jonathan A. and I'm an alcoholic," the narrative starts off, and from there Ames tells his (presumably autobiographical and sometimes non-linear) story of a life made sometimes bearable, sometimes horrific, by drinking.

The story is frustratingly well-structured; the seams of Ames's technique are at times distressingly visible, like the ratty sportcoat a drunk might wear to an AA meeting. The whole thing feels like an AA meeting, in fact, except one that goes on for hours and only features a single speaker. All that is moderately redeemed by the fact that at least Ames spins a good yarn, and uses that skill to create some amusing scenes.

His relationships with his childhood best friend and his great aunt loom largest in the tale, although a late-in-life love affair also provides some insight into Ames's psychopathology. At the root of it all is an American man who has trouble navigating relationships and finds it easier to numb the pain with drugs and alcohol. There's nothing out of the ordinary about that at all, really, and Ames and cartoonist Dean Haspiel (who delivers the same solid cartooning here that he did for Harvey Pekar's The Quitter) really don't ever make a case for this story being particularly special or unique.

At times Ames seems like a wounded child, at others a narcissistic jerk. Mix the two, add some booze, and there you have, well, almost every adult male I have ever known. Ames has some modest skill with words and does manage to make The Alcoholic hold together as a narrative, but the total effect feels more like an Afterschool Special than I am sure the creators intended. The Alcoholic aspires to art, but never quite reaches that level, and its indeterminate ending ending suggests either the verisimilitude of life, or the arrogance of lessons unlearned, depending on how charitable you might feel as you turn to the final page.

Buy The Alcoholic from Amazon.com.

Taken as a single graphic novel, out of the original context it appeared in (as single issues of Peepshow, published by Drawn and Quarterly), Joe Matt's Fair Weather is an uncharacteristically idyllic look at his childhood. We see the innocence of his youth begin to give way to more adult concerns that haunt his art, and we see the seeds of the cheap, competitive and scheming tightwad that Matt depicts himself as having grown into as an adult.

Fair Weather stands out as very, very different from other storylines that have appeared in Peepshow. The cover really tells you a lot about the tone of the graphic novel, two young friends working obliviously together as their youth begins to fade into the sunset behind them. In a way, the story is a frank and unapologetic love letter from Matt to the friendship he shared with his childhood friend Dave, and there's even an actual photograph of the two of them at the end of the book that confirms both the story's details and its truths.

Matt paints his adult self as being a pretty repulsive person -- obsessed with pornography to the point of eschewing human interaction, peeing in jars so he doesn't have to leave his room -- and we can easily see how young Joe here will turn into that person. He screws his friends out of their valuable comics, because he's the only one with an Overstreet Price Guide. He encourages Dave to shoplift comics from the neighbourhood convenience store because he's too cheap to pay for them. But there's still some decency in young Joe, as we see in the story's conclusion. Essentially it's a convincing portrait of the life of a young American boy, and a lot of it rings true.

Matt mines some humour from the verisimilitude, as when his mother hides his comics (claiming to have thrown them out) because he wouldn't mow the lawn, and Joe eventually finds them then threatens to burn down the house if his mom ever does that again. But there's also that hint of selfish megalomania in Joe's actions and motivations, that perfectly resonates with the adult persona he's presented in other stories.

Matt's cartooning here is sublime, a perfect evocation of the era and milieu Matt presents -- and clearly showing an influence from his friend and fellow cartoonist Seth. The book itself is compact, beautifully produced and a pleasure to read. Drawn and Quarterly produces some of the finest graphic novels qua art objects in the industry. It's obvious that extraordinary care put into the design and construction of this edition.

Joe Matt is one of the most compelling and gifted cartoonists working the upper reaches of the arts comics scene over the past decade, and Fair Weather shows you an unexpectedly nostalgic yet genuine and credible view of the past from what seems like an honest and straightforward observer. As autobiographical comics go, the focus is a bit unusual but entirely welcome. They don't get a whole lot better than this.

Leave your sense of irony at the door, folks. While the title may recall Dave Berg's long-running Mad Magazine satire strip "The Lighter Side of [fill-in-the-blank]," this beautiful collection published by MQP is serious about offering up Crumb for those who might be intimidated or turned off by the self-confessed "nasty, negative misanthropic sex pervert" (as Crumb calls himself in his droll, confessional and explanatory introduction). Mainly, it seems, it's aimed at women, and if the pastel flowers and kitty-cat on the cover weren't proof enough, Crumb comes right out and says it in his introduction: "If I were a woman, I probably wouldn't like my work either." But MQP and Crumb and his wife Aline assembled this volume anyway, and perhaps being a bit too doubtful of his own appeal, Crumb says if the approach to female readers doesn't work, at least "maybe they'd be able to stomach it enough as a gift for their boyfriends."

Crumb is without question one of our finest living cartoonists, and beyond the targeted marketing and tongue-in-cheek self-doubt evident in the introduction, The Sweeter Side of R. Crumb is a welcome assemblage of beautiful, vital drawings alive with the interest and respect Crumb clearly invests in his life-drawing subjects. There are a few strips, often about the early years of daughter Sophie, but the pieces that impress and arrest the eye are the mind-boggingly detailed French streets, the lovingly rendered family members, and yes, even a few pretty girls. If a nipple is evident here or there, there is nothing in evidence that would offend anyone to the left of "The Reverend" Fred Phelps, so the book actually is gift-worthy for any man, woman or child in your life, especially those with an interest in art in general and cartooning in particular.

Thankfully, Crumb's personal history pervades the collection, and I was stopped in my tracks by the portrait of Crumb's brother Charles as a young man. I defy you to study the image and not be immersed in the sense of love, respect, affection and lost potential Crumb conveys in the drawing. It is, in its way, Charles Crumb's tragic biography, rendered in a single, masterful image by the man who knew him and loved him best -- heartbreaking and awe-inspiring, all in one single drawing. I think it's the eyes that contain the heart of the drawing, but you must judge it for yourself.

Other people that have touched Crumb's life are rendered herein, from his first wife Dana and their son Jesse to second wife Aline and their daughter Sophie (and later on, it seems, a few of her friends). A smattering of hotel room still-lifes, advertising art and musician portraits are also included, but to me the most compelling images in the volume are always the people and places that have defined Crumb's life. He is, finally, one of the greatest reporters of his own life in cartoon form, a foreign correspondent from an unknown country of unique life experience that he generously, compulsively shares through his art. There's no greater proof that comics are art than the life's work of R. Crumb, and The Sweeter Side of R. Crumb is a wonderful and wondrous showcase for that art.

I suppose it might seem cynical, creating a book to market to women like this. If Crumb's self-effacing introduction doesn't eliminate those concerns, then let this: The Sweeter Side of R. Crumb may be the least-perverse, most accessible book the cartoonist has ever issued. But it is still 100-percent Crumb, and that makes it absolutely essential.

     So, you have finally finished cleaning out your attic and have come across some old comic books.  Since comics are a very popular collectible, within the first few moments of finding your books, you ask yourself the age-old question, “What is this thing worth?”  To find the value of your comic book, you must take into account several factors.  You must first figure out what comic you have, including the issue number, then you need to grade it, and finally you must figure out if it is worth anything.  Also, if you have a comic book from after 1980, there is a high probability that it is worth only the cover price or possibly even less.  The comics that are worth the most are from the early years of comics (40’s, 50’s, 60’s).

     For those new to comics, or who have just found their ex-boyfriend’s stash, identifying the comic can be a little difficult.  The first thing you need to know is the series title.  Is it Spider-Man, Archie, Justice League of America, etc.?  For the vast majority of comics, this information is found in great big letters at the top of the cover.  Once you know the title, you need to know the issue number.  These are usually found at the corners of the cover and marked pretty clearly.  However, there are quite a few comics that do not have the information on the front cover.  For these, you may have to do a little searching around the insides of the book.  Try the inside of the cover, the inside of the back cover, or pages adjacent to these.  You are looking for copyright information, like who the publisher is and when the book was printed.  The first line of this little paragraph should hold the information you seek.

     After identifying your book, your next step is to grade it.  Grading is a tricky thing and two people can look at the same comic and assign two different grades.  The reason grading is important is because it can mean the difference between a $100 comic and a $300 comic.  Honesty is also important when grading.  If you sell someone a comic book that you have graded at an 8, and it is really a 7, you have just angered and alienated one of your customers.  “So how do I grade,” you ask?  First, you must know the factors that go into grading your comic book.  The most important factors that go into grading a comic book are: split spines, pages missing, page browning or brittleness, writing, loose pages, faded color, missing pieces, and whether or not the book is still square.  Look through your comic book, and asses it based on what is actually present.  No wishful thinking allowed.  When you have evaluated it based on the factors listed above, click here to find out the grade.

     Once you have graded your comic book, finding the value is easy.  I suggest consulting the Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide, since it is the industry standard for comic book prices.  If you do not own one, you can buy one here, go to your public library, or borrow from a friend.  Simply find your title and issue number, and it will show you the value based on grade.  You can also use iTaggit’s eBay Historical Value Estimator, available to all registered users.  Just go to your item, click “Valuation”, and then click on the “Estimate Value” link.  When the HVE pops up, type in your title and issue number and watch the fun!  The HVE searches completed eBay auctions and tells you the final selling price of every one that matched your query.

     After finding the value, your choice becomes whether to sell or to keep your comic.  Selling can also be a little tricky, since for some comics there is only a small market of collectors looking for an addition to their collection.  Try placing your ad on a classifieds page, or list your item on eBay or another comics auction house (like Metropolis).  A little sniffing around can offer you a wealth of information.  Just take your time and be a little patient and you will get the information you want.  If you have any questions, or would like to add information or helpful links, please feel free to use the comment section below.

Chris 

After years of violent superhero crime comics, Frank Miller's farewell as combined writer/artist to the title that made his name in comics was Daredevil #191 (cover-dated Feburary, 1983), featuring the standalone story "Roulette." It's an issue so alien to the previous Miller run of #158-190 that it seems like a quantum leap from that set of comics, the beginning of a new era for both Frank Miller and Daredevil. And yet, it perfectly summarizes not only everything Miller accomplished on the title, but prophetically points the way to the writer/artist's future. The issue was to be his last as writer/artist, although he would return to write a one-off for artist John Buscema and later the masterwork serial Born Again with artist David Mazzucchelli.

The first clue to the very different nature of this issue comes right on the cover: Miller had designed some striking covers in his time on Daredevil, probably most notably that to #181, the creative peak of Miller and collaborator Klaus Janson's tenure, in which everything that had been building since even before Miller took over as writer with #168 came to a head. The cover to #191, though, is very different from the Eisner-influenced action covers Miller had been designing. For one thing, inker Klaus Janson is not in evidence, either on the cover or inside, where Terry Austin provided embellishment of Miller's shockingly controlled line.

Miller inked the cover himself, depicting Daredevil standing alone, in despair. The character is clearly in defeat at the power of New York City and its implicit violence. The city itself is seen shrouded in fog and threatening shadow, created almost entirely by Miller's by-now obsessive (but not yet fully controlled) crosshatching. Daredevil himself is also composed mostly of these sharply attacking lines of ink, and the cover is almost certainly coloured by Lynn Varley, who is to become Miller's creative partner (and more) for decades to come. The colour palette of the cover is highly unusual for its time, featuring off-note shades and graduated tones that are, of course, commonplace today. In so many ways, this issue seems like a hint of what is to come, not only for Miller but for superhero comics themselves.

Inside, Daredevil plays Russian Roulette with his now-quadraplegic arch-enemy Bullseye, having been driven to the very edge of sanity by a tragic turn of events involving a young boy who idolized Daredevil. Varley provides a spare colour tone for the issue, painting the hospital scenes between Daredevil and the paralyzed Bullseye in mostly black and white, save for sunlight coming into the room and of course the vivid red of Daredevil's mask, a key design element of page three. On this page, Daredevil reflects on how Bullseye has taken so much from him, and Miller relies on one of his most successful visual tricks, splitting up a single face into multiple panels, each moving the story along just a bit, each moving the reader along another instant in time, in this case toward Daredevil's narrative about Chuckie Jurgens.

The first time we see Chuckie, as Daredevil's tale begins, he is bathed in the nauseating green glow of the television. Undersupervised and overstimulated by repeated watchings of Daredevil beating Bullseye to a pulp on a much-watched videotape, Chuckie is entranced by Daredevil's actions. We learn in the course of the story that this tape has become his fantasy world, one that his father is all to eager to let him enter if it means being left alone to plot his less-than-legal activities.

As Matt Murdock joins the Jurgens family for dinner, Varley casts a sickly yellow pall on over Miller's spare set-piece. The family, Murdock and the dining room table are isolated in a sea of yellow, giving a theatrical feel to the sequence. Jurgens scolds his son at the dinner table, shaming him in front of Murdock, giving him even more reason to retreat into his fantasy:

"I'm not crazy. And I am Daredevil, sometimes."

It's fascinating to see Miller take such responsibility here for the violence of the series. For nearly three dozen issues, he used his art to dazzle and entertain with balletic violence inspired by the artistic elegance and economy of Gil Kane, Bernard Krigstein, Steve Ditko and others. Miller had also infused the series with a film noir sensibility stripped right off the blue-glow of the 2 AM TV screen, transferring it intact to the comics page.

Under Frank Miller and Klaus Janson, Daredevil celebrated and explored violent acts of brutality. Thugs beat Daredevil, Daredevil beat thugs, Daredevil beat his lover, his lover beat him, his worst enemy beat them all and killed the love of his life. All the time, readers were kept on the edge of their seats by masterfully plotted cliffhangers and unexpectedly adept dialogue and pacing. Miller's years-long tour de force was a passionate mash-note to comics and violence and the special, bloody place where they intersected in Miller's psyche. That he lived in New York City while creating these stories was a blessing to the work and a boon to his storytelling powers; the series was about the Big Apple as much as it was about people in costumes beating on each other.

So after all this time, it gives the reader pause to see Miller step right up and pay the price for all the fictional blood he'd spilled for the past few years. "If you really want violence," this story seems to say, "Let's get good and bloody and see what the hell it all means." Daredevil is aghast at the effects of his exploits on Chuckie. He can't believe the boy is so in love with violence, so desperately attached to it. Daredevil is so taken aback, in fact, that he doesn't see where this path has to take Chuckie. At a key moment, he abandons the boy instead of getting him to the help he needs. Why does Daredevil make this choice? So he can go beat someone up, of course.

The person he beats is Chuckie's father, involved in a criminal scheme that has quickly gone wrong. Daredevil easily beats Chuckie's dad (of course), but there is a far greater price to pay for the easy win -- Chuckie is a witness to it all, and Chuckie snaps. If Chuckie's father is bad, then Chuckie must also be bad, very far indeed from the hero he wants to imagine himself to be. He loses himself utterly in the world of the DD/Bullseye videotape, watching again and again as the pair kicks, punches and beats each other in an endless loop of savagery. Chuckie is becoming something more pure than merely Daredevil in this fight, he is becoming the fight itself, as it burns itself on his retinas again and again. Sometime later, but not long after, Chuckie becomes another statistic as he brings a gun to school and starts shooting. The fight has consumed Chuckie Jurgens once and for all.

This, then, is what has brought Daredevil to the hospital room, where he holds a crippled man hostage to his story, and to his horrific threat of immediate and terminal violence. Again and again, he holds the gun to Bullseye's head and pulls the trigger. Then he repeats the action against his own skull, each pull of the trigger a desperate plea for an answer to the violence of his life, a violence that seems to corrupt every corner of his universe, even the most innocent and undeserving.

There's one last story Daredevil wants to tell Bullseye, about a time long, long ago when his own dad was still alive. A time when he disappointed his father, and was rewarded with a violent slap to the face. It was, perhaps, the first step on Matt Murdock's lifelong path of violence and pain. Not coincidentally, we are told, it was also the night he decided to become a lawyer -- a lifelong attempt to lay down a pattern of order and structure over a foundation of slaps, smacks, punches and kicks.

One chamber left untested in the game of Russian Roulette. The gun is at Bullseye's temple, and we know that This is It. Miller's art takes the scene into an extreme closeup, as the trigger guard of the gun becomes indistinguishable from the curves of Bullseye's eye -- Daredevil pulls the trigger, and the gun clicks hollow once more. There were never any bullets. When the most inviting target for your rage has become a bedridden invalid, psychological torture is the most violent tool at your disposal, and in revenge for Elektra, for Chuckie, for himself, Daredevil has spent an entire issue torturing Bullseye (and himself) as best he possibly could.

The tension was sustained throughout the entire issue by Miller's utterly alien choices. Inker Terry Austin's tightly controlled, mechanical line is utterly at odds with the universe of texture and shadow that Janson's inks had lent every previous issue that Miller had pencilled. I do love Austin's work here (and in the What If...? that Miller and Austin also collaborated on). It presents a whole new context for Miller's established tropes, recontextualizing the familiar angles, physiology, architecture and psychology that had been evident in the book's previous artistic era.

Varley's sophisticated colour scheme made the issue look like no other Marvel comic book probably ever quite had, with each scene set apart by its own palette, becoming its own world. And most startling of all, Miller's surprisingly mature acceptance of responsibility for the violence that had been his bread and butter for the years leading up to this landmark issue.

Daredevil #191 feels as much like an issue of Sin City as it does Daredevil. It clearly prefigures Miller's future comics work, and is a clear break-point with the traditional comics stylings he had up until now been mining. We get into Daredevil's head in a way little seen before or since, and the end of the story is far from comforting. There is no reassurance in Daredevil's resigned acceptance of the violence that plagues his life. There is only isolation, doubt, and the guarantee of more pain to come in the future.

As a creator, Daredevil #191 is where Frank Miller really began his exploration, casting off the needs of Marvel Comics and instead taking the book solely, for this one issue, where he needed it to go. It's a high watermark for the series and for Miller's career, and one of the oddest single issues any corporate comics company has ever released. It's a mature work that explores the immaturity of violence, the self-defeat that comes every time someone strikes out in rage. A layered work of artistry and complexity, it remains one of the best things Frank Miller has ever done.

The very best graphic novels ever created -- a category

Bechdel's arresting visual ingenuity recalled Will Eisner's most skillful techniques in some places; her visual wit on par with Eddie Campbell. Her fearless attempt to recreate the hidden, broken life of her family is worthy of the graphic memoirs of Robert Crumb. Her narrative ambition and storytelling confidence put me in mind, above all others, of the very best works of Alan Moore, from From Hell to Watchmen to The Birth Caul and Lost Girls.

Not that Bechdel's work in any way imitates or even emulates these peers of hers. Rather, the powerful way she exploits the potential of the comics medium to tell her life story (and that of her father, and how they converged, and how they diverged) pushes both autobiography and comics forward in the same ways some of the medium's most accomplished creators have done before her. Bechdel has raised the bar for anyone who puts pen to paper with the intent of explaining and exploring themselves and the world they came out of, and up in.

I'm embarrassed to say I did not know what a gifted cartoonist Bechdel is; her ink line is loose, easy and confident, a bold and pleasing style somewhere between the meticulous Rick Geary and the breezy Lynn Johnston. Crucially, she is a master at depicting both interior and exterior environments, lending an enormously authentic air to critical scenes throughout Fun Home. When we're in the baroque family home of her childhood, we're really there amid the decorative treasures her father obsessively collected. When we're gazing out over the Hudson at the Bicentennial, it really is 1976 and we're somehow in New York City. There's no unconvincing background or shaky sense of place at any point in Bechdel's story.

According to an interview provided by the publisher (Houghton Mifflin), Bechdel extensively researched her life story using old letters and diaries (actually used in the artwork thanks to her canny, organic use of the potentials of Photoshop), and the author's efforts at presenting her story as honestly and forthrightly as possible lend a paradoxical air of sceptical verisimilitude. She admits throughout that these are her memories and perceptions, and goes to great lengths to show that her memory -- all human memory -- is an unreliable tool at best. Stories are worth creating, telling and remembering, and as Alan Moore has said, I agree that in some way all fictions are true; but just as great art can come out of possibly unreliable memory, great (or at least comforting) truth can be lost in the hazy mists of receding time. It's this convergence of time, memory, recollection and the acknowledgement of loss that makes Fun Home the truly great graphic novel that it is.

Bechdel's Fun Home recreates the nonlinearity of human consciousness on the page, piecing together the sections of her tapestry to show where her father's life (and in particular his secret homosexuality) intersected with her own coming of age and coming out of the closet. I thought of Alan Moore's Big Numbers when I considered the way she was able to draw parallels and find intersections that might have remained forever hidden even from herself, had she not created Fun Home. Her father's love of literature, likely something of an escape from the oppressive era in which he found himself a gay man, was passed on to his daughter, who came of age in a time, thankfully, when it was somewhat more acceptable to be what you are born as, whatever that may be. A time in which the revelation of secrets might actually not cause you to consider staging your own death out of shame, embarrassment, humiliation, or possibly, ultimately, sheer exhaustion.

Fun Home is a memoir, a mystery, and a masterpiece. It is, by far, one of the very best graphic novels yet created, and a work that will linger long after you finish it. Bechdel's life story is uniquely hers and universally all of ours, and it is worthy of all the attention, analysis and praise its readers can shower on it. Most of all, it is a great novel that cries out to be read and demands to be talked about. Because if people could have talked about the issues contained herein at the time her father was alive, he might still be alive today to read her daughter's story, and tell us what he, himself, thinks of it. I'd like to know what he would have to say, but I never will.

Buy Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic from Amazon.com.

After the Snooter is one of the great graphic novels by Eddie Campbell, and right now it is available from Top Shelf Productions for three bucks during their massive three dollar sale.

Eddie Campbell uses the word "wistful," in some context in this After the Snooter, a collection of his autobiographical "Alec" stories that sees him give up the illusion that Alec McGarry is anybody but good old Eddie himself. And wistful perfectly describes the book, and the unique, incandescent idiom Campbell uses to tell stories about his life and his world. Wistful, yes, it is that.

The Alec graphic novels represent some of the most thoughtful, affecting autobiographical work ever created in comics, a frank overview of Campbell's life and career, tinged with a bit of sadness and inspiring awe and wonder at the depth and bluntness of the reports Campbell brings back when he reconnoiters his own existence.

It's work sometimes quiet and pensive, sometimes loud and filled with hilarity. A document of an extraordinary life in which Campbell mostly seems to play the observer; and he's been as lucky as he is gifted, as we see when he discusses the windfall that finally came in the form of From Hell's motion picture adaptation. As he ponders the purchase of a home and leaving behind the life of the renter, I was amused to see we not only share a philosophy about renting, but tend to give very similar examples of why having a landlord is ultimately superior to being the master of your own domain. But I digress.

Campbell's story is parsed out in very human moments, such as when he catches his kids surfing the web and landing on vagina.com, or in the way he accepts his friend Alan Moore's mid-life decision to become a magician. When Moore tells Campbell "All gods are fiction; it's just that I happen to think fictions are real," Campbell confirms both Moore's worldview and my suspicions about the magical work that Moore has been performing on his audience for years now. As such, After the Snooter serves to educate as much as it does illuminate. We learn as much about the world around Campbell as about Campbell himself. More, probably. I'm not sure if it's cultural or just Campbell's unique personality, but the distance at which he seems to look at the world (again, wistfully) serves as a powerful storytelling tool. His narratives are as convincing as they are entrancing. As an observer of humanity in its absurd and sublime diversity, there has been no finer journalist to paint pictures like this in a medium usually left to depict power and revenge fantasies for those totally incapable of ever enjoying either.

After the Snooter is a work of passion and truth from an everyday, ordinary man who has sacrificed a good part of his life to bring you joy and wisdom through the sharing of stories. To ignore what he has to say is to insult both of you.

Uncanny X-Men #141-142

It occurs to me that many of my favourite comics have gone on to infamy as the beginning of trends or plotlines that later went on to be vilified by fans.

Watchmen, along with The Dark Knight Returns, of course, heralded the Grim 'n Gritty Age of comics, in which creators with none of the skill of Frank Miller or Alan Moore attempted to ape the complex, morally ambiguous milieu of those stories. The fact was that most imitators focused on the darkness and despair found in those stories without having a clue that the tales were both grounded in hope and crafted by writers at the very top of their creative game.

So, too, has the storyline in these X-Men issues been followed up on for many years by creators unable to grasp the essence of the tale. Sure, Days of Future Past is about time travel. Titanic is about a boat sinking. Star Wars is about a war in space. Just because you can break the plot of a great story down into a single phrase doesn't mean just anyone can create a similarly worthy tale. The stink from the two decades of crap that followed these two X-Men issues can be smelled from the galaxy of Andromeda. By someone with a very bad head cold. But that does not diminish the power of the original story, or the joy to be found in re-reading it.

In retrospect, Days of Future Past was really the high point of the Chris Claremont/John Byrne X-Men era, not to mention of the careers of the primary creators. The team (along with inker Terry Austin) had taken the mutants from deep space to the Savage Land, delivering mind-bending sagas on a monthly basis for many, many months. Unusually complex (for the time) characterizations and slick, dynamic artwork and clear storytelling were the hallmarks of the run. But this two-part story got to the heart of what made the Claremont/Byrne era the classic it remains today. As many of the best stories are, it was about family.

Stan Lee's X-Men, Roy Thomas's X-Men -- they were superheroes. Sure, they were occasionally exciting, and the concept was always strong, but Claremont (for all his excess verbiage) really got inside the heads of these people and let us know what they were thinking and feeling (occasionally to excess, but it was a successful technique during this run). The end result was that readers cared about the Uncanny X-Men in the late '70s and early '80s in a way rarely seen before or since. It was one part soap opera and one part superheroics, and for a few brief years, it was magic. Every 30 days.

The story begins with Kate Pryde (a much older Kitty Pryde) seen crawling through a ruined New York City in the far-off (it seemed then) 2013. Mutants have been rounded up and either killed or interred, and the Sentinels rule the United States of America. Kate gets herself into jeopardy, and a graying Wolverine comes to her rescue. We learn Logan is part of the Canadian Resistance Army, and that he is working with Kate to overthrow the Sentinels.

There was no set-up for this situation; Claremont and Byrne just tossed the reader right into the midst of this unexpected, dystopic future. It was disorienting, it was disturbing -- it was marvelous. The look we got at the future Wolverine (not, back then, an overexposed joke) was intriguing, and the glimpse of the graveyard in the Sentinel camp was chilling. So many heroes, we learned, were now dead. How could this have happened? And how the hell can it be made right? What price would have to be paid?

Inside the Sentinel camp, we meet the surviving mutants -- including a now wheelchair-bound Magneto who has apparently gone over to the side of the angels. The sense of family among these survivors is palpable. Kate Pryde has been married for years to Colossus, and Franklin Richards is involved with Rachel, a telepath we meet here for the first time. But beyond that, Colossus refers to Magneto as "old friend," a designation almost beyond comprehension back then. It was clear that the struggle against the Sentinels had united mutantkind in ways we could only begin to understand.

Rachel has been tapped to use her powers to send Kate Pryde's adult consciousness back into her 13-year old self's body, and suddenly the story shifts gears back to a world we know. The Danger Room in the Westchester academy that is the secret headquarters of the X-Men. The X-Men we know. Our X-Men.

Kate, now inhabiting the body of her younger self, is quickly able to convince the team that she is not the Kitty they know and love, and that she has come back in time to prevent the assassination of anti-mutant Senator Robert Kelly, and a subsequent nuclear holocaust. Remember, too, that this was 1980. Such tales were not as commonplace (or cliched) as they might be considered now. The team makes off for Washington, where Kelly is leading a senate hearing that Charles Xavier is testifying at.

The plot in the present really isn't all that interesting in and of itself. The X-Men have to prevent an assassination. It's the glimpses of the future that we get that really make this compelling reading. For years now we had gotten to know the characters of Colossus, Storm, Wolverine and the others. We had just met Kitty Pryde a few issues back. Now, we were seeing where they would all end up decades down the line, and because of the skill and talent of the creators, we really, really cared about all these characters. This horrific future had to be prevented, no matter what.

Of course, the X-Men manage to prevent Kelly's death in the next issue, at a terrible cost to the future version of the X-Men, and with