Uncanny X-men #266 page 16 pencils by Mike Collins (1st App Gambit issue - 1990)

This page is the original pencils to page 16 from Uncanny 266 and as close as I have been able to get to a published page from the issue so far. A collector in the UK who had this page and another for over 25 years reached out and offered to sell me one, and I chose this one because Gambit is in all panels and uses his powers. Then I went back to Mike Collins to get more details on the page. Mike said because of time, he pencilled the prelims as tight as possible on A4 paper, got editorial approval, and then he and 2 artist friends light-boxed them onto full size boards which he then tightened up completely to send to Joe Rubinstein to ink. So these are the original pencils by Mike and they are pretty exact compared to the published page. Very glad to finally have something official from Uncanny 266. :)

Some backstory, I am a big fan of Gambit from that '90s era. When I was a kid, I fell out of comics for a few years from about 9-13 when I was spending all my extra cash on upgrading my skateboards instead. Then one day a friend gave me a copy of Uncanny X-men #267, which was the issue that Whilce Portacio did layouts, Jim Lee did pencils and Scott Williams did inks. I think I heard they did that issue in less than 2 weeks or something due to the tight schedule, so they all worked to their strengths to work so fast. But there was a new character I had never seen before both on the cover and inside, and Gambit was his name-o lol. So that issue brought me back to comics as I had to get the previous issue to see his official intro. I just thought Gambit was the coolest. And from there I got back into Spider-man in time for Todd and Erik, X-men from Jim and Whilce, and Rob Liefeld on New Mutants/X-Force and everyone that went on to explode as superstars and found Image. Those were good times. But I digress lol. I am still looking for pages from 267 as well, but those 2 issues became super important to me as the rekindling of my comics love as a kid.