And, not only were their powers increased, but their presence in the book was also slowly increased. The three finally, after all those years and different teams, became A-list characters instead of supporting.

Theno

The whole Angel/Suicide/Apocalypse arc was great (even if Archangel later became a parody and the "darkened hero" bit was beat to death), Beast slowly losing his intelligence was heartbreaking and made his triumphant return to blue form all the more exciting, the Judgment War arc was original and heck of a lot of fun (I'd buy a trade of that) and the work she did with the supporting cast (both the trainees and the non-mutant romantic interests) was excellent and very Claremontian (in a good way).

I think I'm going to have to pull some of these out and read them again...

Matthew

Hmm, does anyone have any information regarding that period? It seems as if Marvel wanted to expand the franchise at that point, and I wonder if that was imposed on Claremont - we need Cyclops for a new book, and can u spare 3 or 4 X-men for a title set in Europe?

I didn't mean it to sound harsh, and I don't have any insider knowledge about Claremont's motivation. It was just supposition based on the stories that came out at that time. Prior to X-Factor, Claremont had spent a lot of time building up Rachel Summers and slowing revealing that she was Cyclops and Phoenix's child. He finally had them meet in the Alpha Flight/X-Men mini-series - they shared a touching scene - but Cyclops was still unaware that they were related. I would assume that Claremont, being Claremont, was planning to milk the story for as much pathos as possible

But then, out of the blue, Cyclops loses a sparring competition to Storm and is kicked out of the team, and then six issues later- just as out of the blue - Rachel is gutted by Wolverine and disappears from X-Men comics for years to come.

It certainly seemed to me, that these stories were imposed on Claremont by Marvel.

It would soon become standard procedure, but back in 1987, it wasn't as common to have a long-standing hero becoming "darker" and more powerful, and the extended storyline of Angel losing his wings and becoming Archangel was sorta cool.

I even like the Celestials storyline. I mean, X-characters in a cosmic adventure that had nothing to do with the Shiar Empire is a true novelty. Probably a bit goofy by today's standards, though.

Louise Simonson did a great job at characterization. She managed to draw upon the X-book milieu but give the book its own feel. My vote was cast for Louise Simonson's X-Factor rather than just Simonson/Simonson, but she did a lot of great stuff when her husband wasn't on the book. So many superhero team books tend to get into a sort of "incestuous" situation where the superheroes are just romantically involved with other superheroes. Weezie did something great by pairing up members of the team with non-superpowered love interests. It was the dream of integration that X-Men drifted away from.

The Judgment War arc was very cool because it was so original. Simonson was using her own setting rather than drawing on pre-established aliens.

Simonson's X-Factor is also my favorite run for Jean Grey. I think did more difficult yet more interesting work with Jean Grey by developing her as a mortal woman than a lot of writers do by going back to tap the well of the Phoenix yet again.

Just to make things clear - characters don't do anything their writers don't want them to do. Bob Layton was the guy who decided that Scott would just dump his family at a moment's notice when his dead girlfriend turned up alive. Chris Claremont was the guy who decided that Scott was so obsessed with Jean that the first woman he fell in love with after she died was a woman who looked exactly like her. Scott's obsession with Jean was created by the writers - so I tend to blame Claremont for making Scott so creepy and Layton for his hack writing that made him into a terrible husband/father. The only thing that Scott "deserved" was a resolution of the "Scott is obsessed with Jean" arc one way or another. And it took a couple decades before anyone finally put to paper what an unhealthy relationship Scott and Jean actually had and let Scott move on and stop acting like a creepy-stalker-weirdo-obsessive about her (even if it did involve killing Jean yet again - sigh).

As for the issue of Cylcops, wasn't he being written out of Uncanny anyway? I do think the criticism of Claremont retaliating was a bit harsh, Scott as a character deserved whatever he got for dumping his wife and kid (in my opinion, anyway) in such a quick, thoughtless way. It wasn't until Claremont brought back Maddie into the title with the whole Marauders faking her death story that we saw Scott dealing with the issue. All moot anyway, since they ended up turning Maddie into a batshit psycho who would be willing to kill her own kid just to absolve Scott of being a deadbeat and Jean of being a homewrecker...but I digress.

My only real complaint with this series, as with the original X-men, was that the line-up was kept static. Caliban joined them for a few issues, and they trained Rusty, Skids, etc, for a while. But it wouldn't been nice to see a couple more members added full time. I realize the hook of the series was that it was the Original 5 back together, but after a couple of years, it got a bit boring. But it's a minor point, not a major one. And Walt Simonson did give the book his usual, dynamic, awesome artwork. He def drew the best Archangel, if you ask me.

But there were practical considerations too. As John Seavey pointed out in his Story-Telling Engine essay for X-Factor; it was a lot easier for them to pretend to be mutant hunters, if one of them wasn't a blue gorilla.

I always felt that the notion to bring back the original X-Men was a deeply flawed one. The original comic had folded for a reason and that was because the actual core team were pretty boring (the Beast became a great character once he joined the Avengers and formed his double act with Wonderman, but he has never shown that sparkle before or since). This was compounded by Chris Claremont strip-mining the earlier run of its best characters - Professor X, Magneto, Jugglenaut and the Sentinels - and clearly having no intention of giving them back. The-powers-that-be did make Claremont hand over Cyclops, but he retailiated by bringing Cyclops's wife and child into the X-Men, just so we didn't forget what a deadbeat dad he was.

If the X-Factor did have a story to tell it was the return of Jean Grey, but the story we wanted to see was how the X-Men reacted to her resurrection and that didn't happen for years. Instead we had the completely artificial situation, whereby the X-Men thought that X-Factor were really mutant hunters and the X-Factor thought that the X-Men were members of the Hellfire Club. And NO-ONE PICKED UP A PHONE AND ASKED. I mean, how many X-Men enemies have mind-control powers anyway - Mesmero, White Queen, Dark Phoenix, and that's just off the top of my head. What an insult to every reader's intelligence.

So let me repeat, under the circumstances, Louise Simonson deserves a lot of credit for producing even half-way decent comics.