Wow, I really hated X-Men: The Hidden Years

The following review is a piece I've had buried in Blogger since I started Continuity Error! four months ago. I must have sat on it while I scanned some images as examples, but as I no longer really care to revisit The Hidden Years, I'm just going to give you this review as is. Prepare to see me at my most bitter fit of fanboyness.

Normally I would not review a entire monthly series with a total of 22 issues in one fell swoop, but I think it is a fair generalization when I say that this series sucked from beginning to end.

In the late 1960s, due to sagging sales, Marvel stopped producing new X-Men comics and for the next five years (issues #67-93) only reprinted older stories. Oddly this occurred when Neal Adams was supplying the artwork for the book, which made it a hundred times cooler than it had ever been. So, in 1975, Marvel introduced the "All-New, All-Different" X-Men and new X-Men stories began to be created.

But what about those years between issues #66 and #94. Well, I would have assumed that the X-Men just sat around and did homework, but that explanation wasn't good for John Byrne, because those "missing years" are the subject of X-Men: The Hidden Years.

There were a number of things working against The Hidden Years, so it's no surprise that Joe Quesada canceled it after less than two years.

The writing style is a "homage" to the cheesy narratives and dialogue of the Stan Lee and Roy Thomas stories. I'll never understand why that crap flew back in the 1960s, but it sure as hell isn't going to work in the 2000s. This must have been a boon to all the older comic fans looking for a lethal dosage of nostalgia,* but for the rest of us, less-gray fans, this stuff is just torture to read. Did Byrne not realize that writing like this is one of the reasons why X-Men was canceled in the first place? And it looks like crappy writing does strike twice.

If there is one thing that this series has going for it, it's that every issues was instantly accessible thanks to the page long back-issue-summery-in-the-form-of-flashbacks. Seriously, who thinks like this? I've never found myself, urgently driving in my car to an important appointment, and instead of thinking about what I am going to do, reminisce and summarize the events of the past three days, explaining where my friends are and what I had for breakfast the Tuesday before.

For a series that attempts to fill in the five-year gap before the X-Men's relaunch, this series sure doesn't get through the years very quickly. Overall, I'd estimate that the

The Hidden Years is basically nothing more than a John Byrne wankfest. The Fantastic Four (who Byrne wrote for six years in the early 1980s) appear in two of the storylines. That's two storylines in a series that only had 22 issues! I think Mr. Fantastic might get more panel-time than Iceman. Also, Moleman shows up at one point for no real reason.

And another strange thing is that a majority of the series involves the X-Men going on a sort of "World Tour," beginning with a trip to the Savage Land and taking them all over the place before they finally find themselves home. This should sound familiar, because it is exactly the same thing that happened when John Byrne began his run as an artist for Uncanny X-Men, back in the late 1970s. John Byrne basically ripped himself off, right down to the conflict with Magneto that kicks the whole thing off.**

I like the idea of a retroactive X-Men series, because those early issues need to be replaced by something. Anything. Well, anything but this crap.

*For the purpose of this review, "nostalgia" is defined as "ignoring the fact that the stuff you liked as a kid really, really sucked."

**As of writing this review, I read some more early Claremont issues and found that the premise of going to the Savage Land (or, rather nearby) to confirm that Magneto is dead is ripped right from the pages of Uncanny X-Men. The story line takes place soon after Byrne left the book, so at least he wasn't ripping of a story he actually worked on.