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As far as your thesis goes, yes, the stories after #200 failed to deliver as a “storytelling engine.” However, those stories were often quite excellent, plagued by Claremont’s weak prose (but not by his very good plotting) and inconsistent art. I disagree with your belief that Nightcrawler and Shadowcat left the team mysteriously - they were both horribly injured in the Mutant Massacre, went to Muir Island to recuperate, and by the time they were ready to rejoin the team, everyone believed the X-Men were dead, so they helped form Excalibur. It’s kind of a lame reason, but it’s fairly clear in the stories WHY they do it. What I really like about the series from #200-280 (when X-Men debuted) is the idea of chaos - Claremont threw these characters into the world and we saw how they would function without Xavier, and how they were forced to change. For an immutable superhero franchise it was probably a bad move, but as a story, it’s excellent. Of course Marvel had to hit the reset button, but how is that any different from any of the other times DC and Marvel have done it to other characters? That doesn’t invalidate the entertainment of the comics themselves.

Of course, when you consider the fact that Claremont’s vision of the 200s included James Jaspers and the Fury but then Grumpy Man of the North County went all nutty about that, the rather unfocused issues from #200-230 make more sense. Still, they’re fascinating to read.

“(In storytelling terms, that is. Obviously, it happened because these were the stories Chris Claremont thought would flow logically from his initial premise.)”

I don’t quite agree with this, only because there is one equally if not more plausible explanation: Claremont was burnt out and floundering. From what you have posted (I stopped reading the X-books shortly before #200), it appears to me that Claremont’s work on the book became remarkably lame and unfocused, probably because he had been at it for too long and had simply run out of ideas. I’m not sure Xavier’s continued presence would have made much difference at that point. But of course this is all speculation on my part.

If #200 broke the engine, it took a while for the car to stop. New Mutants went strong for more than a year after, and Uncanny went strong for more than three more years. I think Inferno is when it went to hell, so to speak. But between 200 and 239, there were a lot of great issues and stories, with (I’d say) 205-217 being as strong as any year run in the franchise’s history, and the terrific X-Men vs. Fantastic Four/ Avengers minis falling during the same timeframe.

From Inferno until, say, the Muir Island Saga, everything was broken. But Inferno and the Siege Perilous nonsense were new decisions, not required by the Magneto decision.

I don’t think the x-men engine exclusively depends on xavier. Right after Morrison left New X-Men all the X-books were rebooted. they were back to wearing spandex, and there were some new titles (most of which didn’t last long.) But, during this time, Cyclops became leader. The teams didn’t go into chaos, and really nothing changed except for wolverine duking it out with cyke because of his taste in women. It was the same during that period and it didn’t go to hell without the prof.

“It didn’t go to hell without the prof.”…yet.

And Greg, I absolutely agree with you that the stories in this period were frequently very good. That’s actually starting to become a cardinal rule of mine: The most disastrous stories for the future of a series are almost always very good stories, because they kind of have to be. Nobody’s going to screw up a very good series for the sake of a really crappy story, but when something very good comes down the pike, it overwhelms the long-term judgement of the editors.

Fairly Non-Controversial Example: Kraven’s Last Hunt. Obviously, this comic reduces the future storytelling opportunities for Spider-Man, because it permanently seals off the ability to do any more Kraven stories. If it had been a genuinely awful story, the editor would have shot it down instantly. But because it was a very good DeMatteis story, giving a lot of dramatic weight to a relatively minor Spider-Man villain and making his death genuinely meaningful, it went through.

I’m not saying the post-200 X-Men run wasn’t good, any more than I’d say that Grant Morrison’s X-Men run wasn’t good (or any more than I’d say a dozen other “impact” stories weren’t good.) What I’m doing is asking the question, “Is the short-term good story worth the trade-off of the long-term damage this does to the series’ storytelling engine?”

(Which, BTW, I will give Claremont props for foresightedness for. He could very easily have killed Xavier in issue #200–the injuries had been portrayed as fatal. But by bringing in the Starjammers and Shi’ar, he hedged his bets quite intelligently. If a few more people did the same, we’d be spared series like ‘Green Lantern: Rebirth’.)

Heh: Green Lanturd: Afterbirth. Heh, heh.

““It didn’t go to hell without the prof.”…yet. ”

And it won’t, since the prof is back at the mansion, calling the shots, at least for one team of x-men. if he was still in space, i would agree with you and say there was still a chance for it to mess up, but he is back, and we can safely say that this latest no prof period where cyclops led the team was disaster free of story telling engine badness.

I think Claremont did something very interesting post-#200: moving from traditional high-concept short-form to low-concept long-form. Superheroes until then had mostly been the former, teams particularly following a rough blueprint of “group forms around a specific event or idea and are assailed each issue by a rotating roster of imaginative threats.” But after #200, Claremont threw most of that out the window (though because the Jasper’s Warp 2 story got kiboshed, it didn’t fully materialize until the Massacre). Rather than the old “threat comes, fight threat, defeat threat, then go back home and wait for next threat” cycle, he went to broad open-ended antagonists that didn’t go away; sure, the Massacre ended in #212, but the Marauders continued to be a factor until Inferno — similar plots happened with the Hellfire Club (especially in New Mutants), the Reavers, the Adversary, Shadow King, Freedom Force, and Sinister. You could see Claremont going in that direction in Phoenix, Dark Phoenix, and the Brood Saga, but those stories still had individual issues in short-form and were reasonably self-contained. Actually, the long-form change begins before #200, at some time after #176 when the stories began to dovetail into one another, and picks up steam starting with the X-Men/New Mutants Asgardian adventure which led directly to the Trial of Magneto to Xavier’s departure to the Scott/Ororo fight to Secret Wars 2 to Freedom Force in San Fran to the Hellfire/Nimrod fight and then the Massacre. But the Massacre is the fulcrum. After that, Claremont opened the arc so wide that it’s essentially one whole story from the Massacre to Muir.

So that’s the short/long-form switch. What about high/low-concept? Well, the high concept of the X-Men is Mutant School and Peace-enforcing Heroes. And then Rachel Summers joined. Until then, everyone who became an X-Man did so for either the schooling or the enforcing. But Rachel joins, basically, because that’s where her dad is and she’s got nowhere else to go. Suddenly, people are joining the X-Men for reasons other than the X-Men concept: Psylocke because that’s where her boyfriend is and because she wants to excite-up her life, Longshot (not even a mutant) because they’re there, Dazzler because it’s shelter from the Marauders and something to do besides being a has-been, Jubilee because they have food, and Gambit because that’s where Stormy is. The only one to join for the concept, strangely enough, was Magnus. Claremont’s issue-by-issue stories became low-concept as well — he no longer had to rely on “re-luring” readers each month since character and over-arcs (and later, Jim Lee) had become the big draws.

It was a daring move, one I think generally paid off. Sure, Claremont sacrificed month-to-month quality, but he gained seven years of anticipation as readers became hooked on the over-arcs. The arcs got out of control there near the end, but by then Jim Lee had arrived to re-energize a measure of creativity (and some of that muddy writing came from Claremont’s clashes with Bob Harras). So I guess I’d take issue with your “When it didn’t work” summation, John. It DID work, only on a different level with a different style. It wasn’t Dark Phoenix or DoFP anymore, but it wasn’t supposed to be.

Oh, and Claremont maybe didn’t have as much foresight as you think: he planned to kill Xavier for good in issue #300.

I believe Professor X had some sort of damper on his telepathic abilities when he got mugged.