STORY: "Once More the Savage Land" (38 pages)  Iceman quits the team in protest at Professor X's behaviour.  The other X-Men return to the Savage Land in search of Magneto.

What you need to know about the series:
Having finished the Silver Age run, we're now jumping forward to 1999, and X-Men: The Hidden Years.  The book ran for 22 issues, from cover date December 1999 to September 2001, all of them written and drawn by John Byrne.

Hidden Years features stories about what the X-Men were up to between 1970 and 1975, when the series was running reprints.  In fact, the X-Men made quite a few guest appearances during that period, which we'll cover in more detail later.  Byrne had intended that Hidden Years would fit around those appearances.  As it turned out, though, that never happened because the book was cancelled before reaching the first one - Amazing Spider-Man #92, which guest stars Iceman.  So in the event, all of Hidden Years fits right at the start of the X-Men's early-seventies hiatus. 

(Or rather, it used to, because for various tedious and arcane reasons, the X-Men's guest appearances in Fantastic Four: The World's Greatest Comic Magazine, an Erik Larsen tribute miniseries, now have to come even earlier.  This doesn't really fit with the stated timescale of either story, but it's as close as it's going to get.)

The cover art for each issue includes a hidden number.  It's the issue number which the comic would have had, if the numbering had simply continued from X-Men vol 1 #66.  In fact, on many of the covers, the number isn't visible because the production staff covered it up with captions and logos.  On this one, however, the number #67 is clearly visible on the rock, just to the left of Cyclops' left hand.  Despite this gimmick, Byrne certainly intended for the series to run far longer than the original gap (which was only 27 issues).  Presumably the duplicate numbering would simply have stopped after issue #93.

X-Men vol 2 #94 has a ten-page "Hidden Years" back-up strip which takes place just before this story - surprisingly enough, the only time an X-Men spin-off book has been launched in this eminently obvious and sensible way.  I'll cover that story properly when the issue gets indexed, but the gist is that the recently-returned Professor X goes straight back to treating the X-Men in a manipulative and condescending way.  Iceman promptly announces that he's going to quit rather than put up with this sort of thing.

What you need to know about the issue:
Turning to this particular issue, we'll start with the obvious: it's double sized.  The first six pages recap the end of X-Men vol 1 #66.  Later on, there's a debriefing scene which allows Byrne to recap everything that happened after Xavier went into hiding.  That's another six pages.  Of course, the original stories were long out of print when this came out, justifying what would otherwise be an awful lot of flashback.

Sticking to his guns, Iceman does indeed quit the team.  He never disappears from the book, but doesn't actually rejoin until issue #14.  Iceman doesn't trust Professor X any more, after he faked his own death and didn't tell the team.  You can see his point.

Professor X is completely dismissive when he finds out about it, and something's clearly not right with him.  He's treating the X-Men like newcomers and seems to have forgotten that they've already graduated.  Marvel Girl claims that his mind is "out of phase, somehow."  Xavier's erratic behaviour continues for the next year or so, with the X-Men expressing concern from time to time, after which the storyline quietly disappears.  The subplot is presented in a way that suggests a big pay-off was intended, so it may be a long-term plan that Byrne never got around to before the book got cancelled.  In the absence of any published explanation, the X-Men's working theory is as good as any: he's still recovering from the coma from X-Men vol 1 #66.

Professor X packs the X-Men back off to the Savage Land, where this book is going to spend an awful lot of time during its first year.  He's not best pleased that they didn't check to make sure Magneto was dead after his HQ collapsed on him back in X-Men vol 1 #63.  Given Magneto's track record for this sort of thing, while Xavier's being a bit snotty about it, he's actually got a fair point.

Naturally, the X-Men crashland (everyone always does when they visit the Savage Land, as New Avengers #4 pointed out), and one of the local tribes promptly zaps them with tranquiliser darts.  When they come round, Scott, Hank and Warren are told that Marvel Girl has "passed over to the land of the dead."  As we find out next issue, this is literally true - the tribe's "land of the dead" is just over the hill.

Meanwhile, Magneto has restored Amphibius' powers (after he lost them in X-Men vol 1 #63) and is hanging around in a grim-looking HQ where he's claiming to be a ghost.  As we discover in issue #4, he survived the collapse of his HQ and was rather conveniently carried away by an underground river, which took him to this hidden city.  Since then, he's been using his Silver Age astral projection trick, and has somehow bullied his way into taking control of the city.  (He never really specifies how he achieved this, but apparently the Nhu'Ghari have been trying to escape the Savage Land for generations, so presumably he convinced them that his plan would help them out.  Nonetheless, they treat him as a leader , not just an ally.)

Havok and Lorna Dane are still hanging around the school but aren't really treated as members of the team - for most of this series, they keep getting dragged into action, but the core X-Men never actually invite them along.  Nonetheless, issue #17 contains the first unequivocal statement that Lorna has "joined" the X-Men, and since there's no later point where it could happen, presumably they must be members by now, albeit of a provisional sort.  Apparently they join shortly before X-Men vol 2 #94's back-up strip (since they're certainly not treated as X-Men in the closing issue of the Silver Age run, where nobody even thinks of taking them along to fight the Hulk).

Before leaving, Bobby tries to persuade Lorna to come along.  Aside from getting him into a fight with Alex, that finally prompts Lorna to spell it out to Bobby that she isn't his girlfriend.  This ties up the romantic triangle storyline from the tail end of the Silver Age run.

(And relax, the entries get much shorter once we hit our stride.)

Comments:
John Byrne is a rather controversial figure among comics fandom these days, for all manner of reasons.  For that reason, it's probably worth making clear at the outset that I'm not planning to get into any of that, at least until we reach the end of this series and discuss the circumstances of its cancellation.

In fact, while I'm not keen on a lot of Byrne's recent work, I rather like Hidden Years.  It had a loyal fanbase, and it's easy to see why.  At a time when the core X-Men titles were still doing the angst-ridden house style of the 1990s, the more traditional and somewhat retro style of Hidden Years was a pleasant alternative.  Byrne is right when he says in his editorial that he's not trying to produce a 1970-style comic, but by the same token his views on superhero comics are undeniably at the traditional end of the spectrum, and that certainly comes through.  This is not necessarily a bad thing, when it's done well.

And this is a good first issue, setting up some conflict, sending Iceman off on an unexpected direction, introducing the mystery of what's wrong with Professor X, kicking off the Savage Land arc, and ending with a couple of good old fashioned cliffhangers - how can Jean and Magneto be dead when we know full well they aren't?

Of course, there are innate problems with the concept of the series.  When you start by asking the question, "What were the X-Men up to between 1970 and 1975?", a lot of readers will give you one of two answers: "Who cares, it was 30 years ago," or "Whatever it was, it can't have been that important or they'd have mentioned it by now."  The latter is a real difficulty because there are limits on what you can do in a book like this without it seeming artificial.  There are examples of this to come, particularly when Storm turns up.

But this issue picks up stories that were unresolved when the book got cancelled.  As a result, it sidesteps that problem.  Instead, it's a strong first issue of a good old-fashioned superhero comic.  The style, not the continuity minutiae, was the selling point here.

FEATURE CHARACTERS
Professor X, Cyclops, the Angel, the Beast, Marvel Girl I and Iceman (leaves the X-Men; all last in the second story in X-Men vol 2 #94)
Havok and Lorna Dane (both last in the second story in X-Men vol 2 #94; both next in issue #3)

VILLAINS
Magneto (last in flashback in issue #4)
Amphibius (last in X-Men vol 1 #63; next in issue #3)

OTHER CHARACTERS
Savage Land tribesmen

Revised: 31 May 2006

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