Can someone explain to me what is so amazing about the Dark Phoenix Saga? I read Claremon't run up to and through it...

Can someone explain to me what is so amazing about the Dark Phoenix Saga? I read Claremon't run up to and through it, and while it was mostly entertaining, nothing about it seemed to justify the mountains of praise it gets. I feel like I'm missing something.

Attached: x-men.jpg (327x500, 80K)

Other urls found in this thread:

cbr.com/comic-book-urban-legends-revealed-29/
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

Haven't read it but I'm assuming it was a "great for its time(1980)" sort of thing.

It turned a non character in Jean into an iconic something and was the first true heel turn for a long term hero character.

Also even bigger DPS was Wolverine's break out story. Pretty much shifting how comic book heroes are presented to the reader forever.

So it sounds like it's one of those cases where a story is big because it was the first to do it, not necessarily because it did it exceptionally well. Is the rest of Claremont's run like this?

A hero -- a founding member of the X-Men, no less -- commits genocide and then suicide. That was groundbreaking at the time, before corrupting and/or killing off major characters devolved into a tired, tired gimmick.

The "Women should not be allowed to have power" trope started here.

Writers like Byrne and Bendis would use it again and again and again...

Yeah it's the first of many "corrupted heroes" stories but it was well executed from start to finish. It would probably still be a praised even if Jean didn't suicide in the end, but it wouldn't be as iconic though.
And it was a before and an after for Wolverine too.

>Is the rest of Claremont's run like this?
why don't you read it and stop pretending your time is worth something

>why don't you read it
I read almost 40 issues of it, expecting it to lead up to this amazing crescendo in the Dark Phoenix Saga. If this is really as good as it gets then I'm going to stop now.

lolz

Once I hear someone use the term "Trope" and "women" and "comics" in the same sentence, you automatically lose any credibility in my eyes.

Get out of here Anita.

The killing off of a major character after their corruption in such an emotional way probably. Kind of like how Gwen Stacy dying was a big fucking deal.

It was babies first BDSM experience.

You had high expectations and probably already knew how it ended. I suggest you to keep reading the book though, many people like the post Byrne/mohawk Storm era.

They didn't use the word "comics" in that sentence

>You had high expectations
I've gone into plenty of comics with high expectations and loved them. It's not super encouraging if you say "it's great so long as you don't expect it to be good."
>probably already knew how it ended.
I didn't

It was well written and had. Or been done before. Then the editors demanded she be brought back. The start of X-Factor is the beginning of the decline of the X-Franchise.

>It's not super encouraging if you say "it's great so long as you don't expect it to be good."
That's not what I said though. And you really didn't know Jean Grey dies? I'm surprised.

Agreed. Bringing Jean back is one of the biggest mistakes in comics history. It invalidates the entire Dark Phoenix Saga (and its repercussions) and ruins Cyclops too, by turning him into a wife-abandoning asshole.

I like to think that everything past UXM 175 takes place in an alternate universe. That Jean never comes back and Scott and Maddy live happily ever after. I love that the third Uncanny omnibus ends at 175.

Kind of, yeah. Its sort of like Lord of the Rings where the things it did have been ripped off and redone so many times since, it doesn't seems special anymore.

And the dialogue style from that time has not aged well.

I just don't get Madelyne or understand how Claremont tought it would be a good idea to hook up Scott with a Jean look alike. It seems like a lazy way to get Cyclops out of the books.
Also Scott was always kind of shitty, like that time during the Savage Land story where he said he didn't care about Jean dying and then went on to hook up with Colleen Wing.

Dark Pheonix is just over hyped and iconic. It's a great story still though.

Honestly Byrne era might be iconic but it's honestly probably my least fav

Claremont's run keeps improving until he leaves. Brood Saga is the next big quality level up.

Attached: 20201-3092-22537-1-uncanny-x-men-the.jpg (400x596, 92K)

Like other anons are saying, a very well executed and shocking heel turn. Noteworthy in particular as a payoff for long term story telling which was still in its early stages in cape comics.

As good as it is, I think it's most famous just for being a catch all term for Claremont's best years on X-Men.

It was simply well executed. People can like something without it being Mozart.

>Claremont's run keeps improving until he leaves.
I think it became stagnant after Mutant Massacre. Still good though.

It's still a great storyline IMO. I'd also say reading it at the time as it was coming out probably would've made for a different experience than reading it all at once. This was a storyline that was built up over literally 5 years worth of comics so over that time period you're getting these little bits and pieces that slowly increase in prominence before the big climax of Jean going full Dark Phoenix.

Along the way you get some great storylines as part of it too like the Proteus Saga which is my favorite overall storyline from that part of Claremont's run.

It was his attempt to make Jean STAY dead, to take away any reason to bring her back. It wasn't so much about Cyclops as it was about Jean.
We have Bob Layton to thank for that. "Gee, wouldn't it be cool to re-create the original team?" "Uh, three of them are on the Defenders, and one is dead." "MARVEL I WANT THESE CHARACTERS NOWWWWW!" "Ok, Defenders is cancelled, and we killed off every non-X-Men character, so those three are free. What about the dead one?" "I'll retcon it to say it was a duplicate this whole time, fuck the plot I want this character in my book."

Then he fucked off after 5 issues or so. The only reason he gave a fuck was because he had been stuck doing 1-shots and mini's since his run on Iron Man ended, and wanted a series. Why'd he jump ship after FUCKING the plot? Because he got his job back on Iron Man.

It's a combo of being new for its time and x-fags being one of the largest fanbase in comics.

Jean's return is Kurt Busiek's idea. Layton couldn't come up with a way to revive Jean that Shooter would approve (Shooter wasn't about to let a mass murderer off the hook), so Dazzler was set to join the surviving original X-Men in X-Factor. Busiek came up with the idea that Jean wasn't actually Phoenix, which absolved her of Phoenix's crimes, and he told John Byrne, who told Roger Stern, who told Bob Layton, who told Jim Shooter, who then greenlit the idea.

cbr.com/comic-book-urban-legends-revealed-29/

Well, it's a fact as Bendis copied it a couple of decades later with the piles of shit called Disassembled and House of M.

I will never understand the why people love the Brood arc so much. It's just Aliens, but with the X-Men thrown in.

>It was his attempt to make Jean STAY dead, to take away any reason to bring her back. It wasn't so much about Cyclops as it was about Jean.
Wrong. Claremont's intention always was to retire both Cyclops and Jean to live a normal life. When Jean died (after an editorial decision, not Claremont original idea) he created a figuratively, and then literally, Jean clone to marry Cyclops and put him away of the team. It was lazy, no doubt it totally backfired in the end.

It didn't exactly help that Claremont kept making people go "OMG you look exactly like JEAN!" and hinting that there was some kind of a resurrection/Pheonix connection going on before Jean was ever revived for X-Factor.

>(after an editorial decision
Doesn't the story go that Byrne drew that planet exploding without Claremont being aware of it, and that she was being punished for that (originally unintended) genocide?

Years of multi-character build up and development that regular collections or single issues read won't get you, coming back from X-Men being a cancelled title until Claremont, which is unthinkable nowadays that character fagging is a thing thanks to stuff like Claremont X-Men and the MCU.

Yes, but the original ending was lame as fuck regardless of that fact.

The great thing about the Brood storyline is not the Brood. The story is loved because it's a big wacky sci-fi action story with a sprawling cast, great art, and represents the end of the X-Men as a story contained to one monthly book since New Mutants begins during this adventure. It's the end of the era that began with the Phoenix saga back in the #120's.

Attached: Uncanny X-Men 167-020.jpg (1988x3056, 1.66M)

Because it's quite fun space adventure, with the X-men almost dying in the process, so it's got some good doom and gloom stuff when everyone is resigned to it becoming a suicide mission. My personal head canon is that Kitty and Peter fucked in the space ship because of that, instead of waiting until Whedon's run.