X-Men: The Hidden Years

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X-Men: The Hidden Years #1 (December, 1999). © Marvel Comics. Art by John Byrne.

X-Men: The Hidden Years was a comic book series set in the Marvel Comics universe, which starred the company's popular superhero team, the X-Men. It was written by John Byrne, with illustrations by Byrne and Tom Palmer.

The series attempted to fill in the period in the late 1960s and early 1970s when the original X-Men comic was publishing only reprints of earlier issues. The series was intended to fill in the team's chronology during the reprint issues of the original X-Men series (#67-93). According to Byrne, the series "was clearly finite, since [Giant-Size X-Men #1] was out there as an "end point" for my series, but the way I had it worked out, I could have easily done 100 issues or more before I had to send the team off to Krakoa."[1] Hidden Years featured the cast of the original X-Men and their villains, with a few appearances by characters who had not otherwise appeared at that point in time, such as Storm.

Marvel's editor-in-chief at the time, Joe Quesada, considered the series one of the more extraneous X-Men spinoffs and cancelled it, along with several other X-Men franchise titles, in an effort to streamline Marvel's output. It is believed that part of the reason for the cancellation was because Marvel wanted to also simplify the continuity of the X-Men, and did not want a series around that added to the complexity by dealing with the "hidden" time of issues that were published in the 1970s. Perhaps more relevant was that Hidden Years was one of the lowest selling X-Men titles at the time of its publishing, ranking far below other titles such as the franchise flagship Uncanny X-Men and even some of the more tertiary spin-offs. On the other hand, the sales of Hidden Years were good compared to other ongoing series published in the 1990s that shared the similar concept of being set in the past continuity of the Marvel Universe.

Byrne maintained that the comic was still profitable and believed the cancellation to be unexplained. This disagreement was a precipitating factor for him to decide to no longer work for Marvel Comics. X-Men: The Hidden Years completed its run with issue #22, though Byrne claimed he had ideas that might have extended the series.

A similar series was done for Spider-Man in the 1990s written by Kurt Busiek called Untold Tales of Spider-Man, adding stories to Spider-Man's earlier years. The series lasted 25 issues, 2 annuals, and 1 graphic novel.

A similar X-Men: First Class series, featuring the original X-Men, launched in 2006.