A Tiny Bit More on the original ending to X-MEN #137

I would have thought that I was finished with this subject for a while yesterday, but while cleaning up some files, I came across yet another artifact of the making of X-MEN #137 that I felt needed to be shared. At first, I considered simply going back and adding it into the original piece–but I figured that all of the people who’d already read it would miss it if I did that. So once more, here’s another short post about the Death of Phoenix. I really ought to be better organized.

Above is John Byrne’s handwritten notes on the original breakdown of the issue, pulled together following (or during) a long plotting conversation with his collaborator, scripter Chris Claremont. I don’t know that any formal plot was ever written up for X-MEN #137 given that Claremont and Byrne were working so closely on the series–EIC Jim Shooter likely would have insisted on their being one, but this was still relatively early in his tenure, and it may have been fine with editor Jim Salicrup for the duo to work in this loose fashion. Salicrup tended to be fairly easygoing about such things.