I finally got the last two issues of Uncanny X-Men (#38 and 46) this week. So now I have all the stories (original or reprinted) from #1 to the current, which is at about #370 (?) or so, excepting the reprint years which I didn't count. Uncanny X-Men started in 1963, I think, and the changes in the comic book and its spinoffs are sort of an interesting look at how Marvel Comics has done over the last 35 years.

Like in all the early Marvel titles (Fantastics Four, Thor, Avengers, Incredible Hulk, etc) of the time, X-Men (there was no Uncanny in the title back then) stories were predominantly written by Stan Lee and a few other Marvel writers. Stan doesn't write that much anymore, being more involved with running Marvel Comics than in the in-the-trenches work. If you read these early issues, you can see a remarkle difference between then and now. Aside from the art, which tends to be more stilted, and the printing, which is less glossy and less colorful, the dialogue is dramatically different. There is more exposition, with a greater breadth of vocabulary than today. It's more about the characters saying what's happening rather than having the art show it. This can make these early issues a bit of a chore to read, as the volume of dialogue makes it seem like the plot is plodding along at a leisurely pace. But I can also see why there were lots of people who thought comic books were beneficial in helping kids interested in reading and expanding their vocabulary.

Somewhere around issue 67, Marvel Comics decided to stop producing X-Men. I suppose it just didn't sell well enough. They eventually restarted after a bit by reprinting earlier stories. Issues 68 to 92 are all reprints, which is why I don't count them as issues to get other than to cover the earlier issues that I don't have. I think these were published bi-monthly, which throws off your calculations as to how old the title is, you can't just divide the current issue number by 12.

Starting in issue 93, Chris Claremont took over the writing and introduced a new set of X-Men, to form the nucleus of a new team. Cyclops and Jean Grey remained, but the other three were written out of the series. Claremont had the job for a number of years, and his time as the writer marks what quite a few people consider to be the best years of the comic book. Claremont concentrated on character development and interactions, and he really brought the whole series to life with the Dark Phoenix saga and other plotlines.

Claremont left somewhere in the 200s and after that X-Men became more of a franchise. X-Factor and The New Mutants were going relatively strong, and new "mutant" comic books like Excalibur and Wolverine were created. More crossover stories were introduced, more epic sagas were done, and the whole thing sort of retargeted to a younger audience as time went by.

Currently, I still collect Uncanny X-Men, X-Men (another spin-off, now with the original name), Wolverine, and X-Force. I interrupted my collection as Marvel restarted all the X-titles for a year in a darker alternate universe. I've refrained from getting other comics to try to keep the yearly crossover storyline coherent. I've seen the various major story arcs try to get bigger every year in order to outdo the last major event. To a certain extent it has been disappointing, although there are still lots of times when I read a good issue and feel satisfied with the story. So I keep collecting my comic books, knowing that eventually the focus will change, and maybe it'll be better then.

The reason I liked comics as a kid is the wonderment. Super powers, villains to fight, worlds to save, the whole hero thing. X-Men helped change that to bring in people who loved the characters for what they were, not 2-dimensional caricatures, but people who have good and bad qualities. Lately the stories have become a sort of broken record: how can we make their lives more miserable and what danger can we come up with that will top the last story arc? I see a lot of potential for making the stories better, and in the meantime I still like reading the comic books on some level.