One of the biggest comic book events I had the exciting pleasure to live during was the restarting of X-Men at issue number one under the helm of Chris Claremont and Jim Lee. It was October 1991, and the haphazard trend of rebooting comic titles hadn’t yet been a trend. The comic wasn’t being rebooted just renumbered to signify the new direction the characters were going in. That isn’t all. The powerhouse team behind this title consisted of some of comic’s top rated creators of all time. First you have Jim Lee whose fantastic artwork speaks for it self. He was and still remains one of the most amazing artists in the industry. Along with him is one of comics most prolific writers of all time, Chris Claremont who had already been in the comic’s arena for over twenty years. Together, they were unstoppable and produced an issue that is supposed to be the highest selling comic book of all time. Why is that, you ask? This issue is completely filled with what is the essence of X-men: man vs. mutants and the opposing saviors that battle each other for the right to lead the ideal of how those mutants should live. The “Big Bad” of the story…none other than the “Master of Magnetism” himself, Magneto. He wants to protect his mutant kind so intently that he would threaten an all out world war by destroying his enemies with a soviet nuclear arsenal. All that stands in his way is the entire might of the X-men team. This might be one of the most amazing and thought provoking comic books that I had read up to this point in my life. I say this because I discovered that the “Bad Guy” doesn’t have to be all about world domination and destruction for the sake of it. What I mean is that Magneto thinks that he is the “Good Guy.” All he wants is to protect his kind from oppression. He and the X-Men only suffer from a difference of ideals and goals that meet their respective end. It’s a quality of the comic that’s been prevalent throughout its various incarnations, but with this issue it was new to me. The issue definitely changed how I look at villains entirely or rather the motivations that drive them. After this point in my comic reading career I tended to gravitate towards villains with substance, which then influenced villain creation in my own writing.
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