Issue(s): Uncanny X-Men #138
Cover Date: Oct 80
Title: "Elegy"
Credits:
Chris Claremont & John Byrne - Plot
Chris Claremont - Script
John Byrne - Penciler
Terry Austin - Inker

Review/plot:
This is Jean Grey's funeral.

It's told from Cyclop's perspective, and it's mainly a retrospective of the entire Uncanny X-Men series, and even X-Men appearances in books like Marvel Team-Up. It's not much in terms of a story, but it's nice to see all these X-Men scenes as depicted by John Byrne.

Lilandra gives Jean's father a "holempathic matrix crystal" which allows the person to touch it to feel her essence.

Scott quits the team.

The issue ends nicely after the death of one X-Men with the addition of a new one, as Kitty Pryde shows up at Xavier's School.

The back-up for this reprint is a really bad Nocenti story dealing with Rogue's first kiss with a boy, which coincided painfully with the emergence of her powers. In Uncanny X-Men #185, this was told as a normal girl making out ("neckin'") with her boyfriend when suddenly her powers emerged. In this telling, Rogue is leaving with Mystique, who walks around their southern cottage in her full super-villain get-up - blue skin, high heeled boots, skulls in her hair and around her waist - and tells her "You must be strong and away from boys! You know you can't touch them...".

Destiny is living with Mystique and Rogue too.

But Rogue eventually lets her boyfriend Cody kiss her, and of course they transfer memories and he passes out.

Afterwards, she's still hanging out with Mystique and Destiny, but now willing to do whatever Mystique wants.

It's nonsensical and poorly done.

Quality Rating: C+

Historical Significance Rating: 2 - funeral of Phoenix, Cyclops quits, Kitty Pryde joins.

Chronological Placement Considerations: This takes place soon, but not directly, after Uncanny X-Men #136. It's been moved back a bit to account for that and to fit in with the Beast's Avengers appearances.

References: Basically every appearance of the X-Men to date is referenced.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? P - (Classic X-Men reprints add new material)

My Reprint: Classic X-Men #44

This issue also had to be redrawn a bit due to X-Men #137 being changed. The original ending showed Scott & Jean driving away from the mansion with Wolverine getting all weepy. Marvel never printed the original pages as far as I know, but some did show up in Fantagraphics' X-Men Companion.

The quite excellent Secrets of the X-Men blog reproduces the original "happy beginning" first page from 138 here, as well as recounting the Phoenix saga's development: http://secretsbehindthexmen.blogspot.com/2012/02/why-phoenix-had-to-die.html

Walter, thanks for these links. It's a cool site.

This was one of my first issues of X-Men and remember thinking back as 10 year old how awesome all of those old stories looked. Factor 3 and Grotesk sounded and looked great. Then years later I picked up the actual stories in a TPB and I realized the only reason why these stories looked so good at all was because John Byrne drew the flashback. Needless to say it was a big disappointment.

@ Martin Dent - It's not just the art, though, yes, the art is great here and wasn't great in the early X-Men issues. It's the writing. Believe me, anyone who hasn't read the original run on X-Men, especially the Roy Thomas issues, are much better served just getting the one issue recap here.

Should there be tags for characters, even when they appear only in the later classic X-men stories?

For some reason it feels "wrong" to me. But it's your website :) and it's up to you.

I doubt fnord will change the site at this point, but I have to agree. Putting the original, super-high-quality stories in the same entry as the filler that followed a decade later just makes my teeth hurt.

I agree, chronologically-wise it would make a lot of sense to have the Classic X-Men back-ups separated from the main stories and placed accordingly. It would take a lot of work though so I understand why fnord doesn't do it.