Thoughts

Ah – the dreaded fill-in issue. At the end of the previous issue, we were left on a great cliffhanger with Lilandra kidnapped and hurled into Space, with the X-men in pursuit. A great tease for what’s next, especially given that we know this is going to be Cockrum’s Space which is certainly going to be awesome.

And this issue… well, we don’t see any of that. Instead getting a fill-in issue. The plot of which – Fake versions of the original X-men turn up to attack the new X-men was already done just six issues earlier. We’re introduced to the Evil Xavier / Mr Hyde to Xavier’s Dr Jekyll, a slightly batty concept that Claremont clearly never comes back to.

I remember how annoying fill-in issues could be when collecting monthly titles, but it must have been even worse back in 1977 when this comic only came out every two months. Fans were going to have to wait a whole third of a year to get to what happened next after the great cliffhanger.

None of that matters too much in an Omnibus. You can sail through this fill-in and on to the next one in a matter of minutes.

Mutant Mailbag Mayhem

Kudos once again to the Letter’s Page, the Editorial staff and even Chris Claremont for giving a blunt and honest explanation of the fill-in issue on the letter’s page. They even remark that this issue was effectively drawn with the hope that it would never be necessary to actually print it! It’s a nice touch, especially as it allows Claremont to pay tribute to the artist who had recently died.

Another nice touch that not all fill-in issues had is that they actually take a few pages to add new art to at least turn the fill-in story into a genuine flashback. We open with Firelord, and we slip into Xavier’s memory of Evil Xavier, before returning to basically leave us back at the same cliffhanger. With the promise of Dave Cockrum Space Adventure next time!