The new X-Men team had been introduced four months earlier in Giant-Size X-Men #1, then carried over for a single issue under Len Wein in #94. With #95, Chris Claremont takes the title — and the modern X-Men begin.
What followed is one of the most influential runs in the medium. The Phoenix Saga, Days of Future Past, Magneto's reinvention, the Hellfire Club, the relentless deepening of Storm and Wolverine and Nightcrawler and Colossus into characters worth caring about. All of it is downstream from this issue.
The book itself is a tight Cockrum thriller. Count Nefaria's Ani-Men. A doomed assault on a Cheyenne Mountain installation. And, in the final pages, the death of John Proudstar — the first X-Man to die, written off in his third appearance to make the new team's mortality feel real.
Most collectors think of X-Men #94 as the foundational Bronze Age key. The market still does. But #95 is where Claremont starts, and any honest accounting of the run begins here.
The new X-Men team had been introduced four months earlier in Giant-Size X-Men #1, then carried over for a single issue under Len Wein in #94. With #95, Chris Claremont takes the title — and the modern X-Men begin.
What followed is one of the most influential runs in the medium. The Phoenix Saga, Days of Future Past, Magneto's reinvention, the Hellfire Club, the relentless deepening of Storm and Wolverine and Nightcrawler and Colossus into characters worth caring about. All of it is downstream from this issue.
The book itself is a tight Cockrum thriller. Count Nefaria's Ani-Men. A doomed assault on a Cheyenne Mountain installation. And, in the final pages, the death of John Proudstar — the first X-Man to die, written off in his third appearance to make the new team's mortality feel real.
Most collectors think of X-Men #94 as the foundational Bronze Age key. The market still does. But #95 is where Claremont starts, and any honest accounting of the run begins here.
