Welcome, X-Fans, to another uncanny edition of X-Men Monday at AIPT!
Let’s kick things off with a little comics journalism inside baseball. When you apply for a convention press pass — often months in advance of the actual event — you don’t always know who will be on the final guest list. So ahead of attending Rhode Island Comic Con 2023 for AIPT, I was very excited to see that former Marvel editor Jim Salicrup would also be there.
Over his lengthy Marvel career, Jim is probably most famous for his work on the Spider-Man line, which he helped take to new heights by bringing in Todd McFarlane. (Jim also wrote a few early issues of Marvel’s Transformers series, which we also talked about at RICC.) But most relevant to you, X-Fans, is the fact that Jim had a short stint editing Uncanny X-Men during “The Dark Phoenix Saga” (issues 132-137).
I mean, if you’re only going to edit six issues of X-Men, those are the six to edit, right?
Jim was very generous with his time, so read on for his thoughts on the Phoenix’s fate, editing passionate creators, and his favorite X-Man.
Jim Salicrup at Rhode Island Comic Con 2023
AIPT: Welcome to X-Men Monday, Jim! You managed to edit six of Uncanny X-Men‘s most iconic issues. How did you end up working on Marvel’s mutants?
Jim Salicrup: Roger Stern was editing Uncanny X-Men and I was his assistant. Basically, he decided to become a full-time freelance writer, and since I was his assistant, it only made sense to promote me.
That’s what created a lot of confusion with the death of Dark Phoenix. I think Jim Shooter, the Marvel editor-in-chief, remembered having a meeting with Roger, and he assumed I must have been there as well, where all sorts of plans were discussed. Although I don’t think they actually discussed killing off Jean Grey. And as an editor, I never thought I had the authority to kill off one of the original X-Men. So there was a lot of confusion going on.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
I was editing a lot of titles — it wasn’t just the X-Men. We had Avengers, Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Fantastic Four, Marvel Two-in-One, Marvel Premiere, Marvel Spotlight, Marvel Tales, Marvel Treasury Edition — it went on and on, plus the annuals, graphic novels, and whatever else was coming at us. So it was a pretty overwhelming amount of titles. I think the whole Marvel line at that point was only really divided into four editorial teams. So I was one of the original ones with Roger. And because it was pretty overwhelming, I was very fortunate to inherit all the creative teams, and I didn’t have to worry too much. I just tried to leave everything in place until people decided to move around and it all worked out very well.
AIPT: “The Dark Phoenix Saga” is regarded as one of the greatest X-Men stories of all time — if not the greatest. Tell me about working on it.
Jim: Well, the story I edited was published as Phoenix: The Untold Story, where Jean lived.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
But to go back to that meeting I mentioned before, I think maybe the original concept was to take a long-standing good character and make them a major villain. So I think that was probably what Jim’s understanding was — that Jean Grey was going to remain Dark Phoenix. There was an issue earlier in “The Dark Phoenix Saga” where we saw Dark Phoenix destroy that planet with the asparagus people. Jim was aware of that for quite a while, but I think maybe at the last minute, he was like, “Wait a minute — we can’t have that.”
In many ways, it’s kind of like the Spider-Man stuff with Venom I edited later on. I always saw Dark Phoenix as an alien entity that possessed Jean Grey, and Jean had not really turned evil. So in the issues I edited, if you simply remove that entity, then she’s back to being good old Jean Grey. I don’t think Jim interpreted it that way, so he was pushing for us to change it.
Also at that point, Marvel was expanding its editorial staff and Louise Jones was coming on. All the editors from the previous four editorial groups had to give up titles so Louise would have books. And naturally, a lot of the editors were giving her their least favorite books. Jim wanted to give her an impressive book. And this is before there were royalties or anything like that for editors — because then I would’ve probably been a lot more reluctant to let go of the X-Men. But at the time, I had no problem giving it to her.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
So, everything was going along and the pages for the next issue were already being worked on. And then Jim suddenly realized Jean Grey’s still alive and she got away with this, and this cannot stand. So I think he addressed it directly with Chris Claremont. I think Jim would’ve been content with just turning her into a villain, which would’ve been a lot easier to change. It could’ve been one of those last few pages or panels of the death issue with one of those close-ups at the end that only the reader sees where you could tell she’s still evil.
But Chris is a feisty guy and he was almost sort of bluffing. Jim’s saying she has to be punished and Chris is like, “What do you want me to do? Kill her?” And Jim said, “Great idea,” which is why we’re still talking about it right now.
AIPT: It’s OK, Jean came back.
Jim: Well, I mean, with a character named Phoenix, how permanent can death be? But I give all the credit to Jim stepping in. Otherwise, the issue I edited would’ve been published and no one would care that much about it.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
AIPT: So you believe it was the right move to kill Jean?
Jim: Oh, definitely. It made for a much stronger, much more powerful story that people would remember. And as I said, it never would’ve occurred to me that I would have the authority to do that.
AIPT: What was your approach to editing comics at Marvel?
Jim: When people would ask me — “What’s an editor’s job?” — everyone sort of has their own take on that. There are certain basic things: getting the books out to the printer, making sure that deadlines are met, etc. I think my priority was trying to provide an environment that was conducive to creativity.
I wanted everyone to feel like they were doing their best work. I was trying to treat them the way I wanted to be treated by an editor. You know, when I was writing and I had editors telling me, “I want this,” “I want that,” “I want the story to be like that,” I would think, “Why don’t you just write it yourself,” right? I mean, why the heck are you hiring me?
Whereas, whether it was Chris or John Byrne — all those people — I strongly believed in trying to maintain that regular creative team on everything. I think that was part of Marvel’s original success. If you loved Fantastic Four for over 100 issues, you knew it was by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.
There was a point where I even went over to England and there was a convention where they used to have the Eagle Awards. Even though it was maybe 20 kids over in London, it had a beautiful logo. So even when I was assistant editor, Roger Stern was very kind to me and let me handle the covers. So I was working with the artist designing the covers and writing the cover copy, and when the covers said “Winner of 5 Eagle Awards,” that was me putting it there. So I was always trying to push the title to make it successful.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
And as I said, it was really important to keep that regular creative team. That’s something I tried to do on all the books I ever edited. When you have that many characters, having a regular creative team is vital because they create the voices of the characters. If you have someone else come in, it’s just not going to be the same. It’ll be treading water.
At the time, there was such a history to the book, and I had so many other titles at the time, that I was putting a lot of my faith in both Chris and John. For these kinds of stories, you want people who feel strongly about them. The more passionate they are, the more it comes through in the material. So I always want the creators to care as much about the work as possible. Because I feel if they don’t care, how can I expect the readers to care?
AIPT: Finally, was there an X-Men character you were especially fond of?
Jim: How can you not fall in love with all the characters? There were so many great moments for so many of the characters. I think at the time I missed the rest of the original X-Men. I was fond of the Beast, and I think he may have been appearing in Avengers around that time. I liked that solo series he had — Amazing Adventures. It was something different and sort of added more to the character — visually, I mean.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
It reminded me of when Stan Lee would give advice to the editors when they were developing new characters. He would say, “If you just saw silhouettes of the original X-Men and I asked you, ‘Which one is the Beast?’ you probably would say ‘that guy’ by default.” So I think it was actually more in keeping with the original concept of the character and very Marvel — in the tradition of the Thing and the Hulk, being turned into a monster. But with the Beast, he maintains his humanity. They were always complaining about being monsters and Beast seemed to be the first one to sort of accept it and not have a problem with it.
AIPT: Thanks so much for taking the time to stroll down memory lane, Jim — this was wonderful!
Before we wrap, X-Fans, here are this week’s eXclusive preview images, courtesy of current X-Men Senior Editor Jordan D. White. You may notice a few of the folks — and cosmic entities — Jim mentioned appear in these…
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
Courtesy of Marvel Comics
Until next time, X-Fans, stay exceptional!
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