Uncanny X-Men #218 pg 21 (Silvestri pencils, Green inks, Claremont story) - Silvestri's 1st work in X-Men and the start of his era's team

SILVESTRI ERA X-MEN TEAM started here!

I debuted this art during my CAF origin story interview with Bill Cox (5/7/24) this past week, it was a major grail piece to add to my collection as I am a huge fan of the Silvestri era's X Team (UCX #218 - 261; 1987 - 1990). It was a team of newbies (Rogue the initial veteran on the team by only a few years; with newer X-Men Dazzler, Longshot and Psylocke forming a team) that eventually enlisted some heavy hitters (Colossus, Storm, Havok, Polaris and Wolverine; as well as "human" Madelyne Pryor) to make an amazing team of X people. They eventually became the X-Men team that fled to the Australian Outback and Siege Perilous. Silvestri and Claremont also teamed up to do a lot of really great individual character story pieces and their best work together in INFERNO. This book started that amazing teamup (characters and creators) for one of my top favorite X era's. Silvestri went to work on an amazing run of Wolverine (1990 - 1992, which I have a few examples) and then co-created IMAGE with his work on Cyberforce. He was the precursor to the Jim Lee era of X-Men, who took the Uncanny X-Men book soon after and during his run.

Specifically this page features some great characters teaming up really together for the first time to establish building a new team. Top left panel features Dazzler using her powers in a really unique way (in conjunction with Psylocke) to keep the faces of each character hidden and unrecognizable, while lighting up the scene to rebuild after the destruction caused by fight with Juggernaut. Rogue is using her strength to carry a heavy load, single-handedly. I love that they mention "Neither of 'em is Union. 'Tis our work they're doin', suppose management hires 'em permanent-like." As this is something near and dear to me, since I work in the film industry and have spent the past few years working to get our department VFX unionized, as we are the last ones not at the table.

The upper right panel has Juggernaut laid out, his known remark of "nothing can stop the Juggernaut", well except this team of newbie X-Men. Then you get multiple team-shots of the new four grouping together and celebrating their victory while at the same time lamenting on the loss of being fooled for what was really going on. And finally on lower right panel with Psylocke saying "We win - yet also lose - such, my friends, is life. Today, we began forging ourselves into a team - but we also learned how far we've yet to go before we're done, and can well and truly call ourselves X-Men." Truly Uncanny in every way, they win, they lose, they celebrate and move past their losses as a new team forged.

One of my favorite t-shirts is the cover to this book UCX #218, art by Art Adams. I wore it during my CAF interview (picture seen below) and always get the remarks of what a beautiful collection of X women. I love it, as it really is with the addition of their male teammate Longshot, but he is beautiful as well. One thing I always like to look for when I get original art of Longshot, is to see how many fingers he has, in this page Silvestri hit is right (don't see any erase markings), not all artists do.

https://www.youtube.com/live/aDEgTLFi964?si=KwZhRuSKdCtKWhpA