Special Edition X-Men #1 page 6 by Dave Cockrum & Hilary Barta - Secrets of the X-Mansion

"A Day Like Any Other"

Birthday art, but not a comic strip that came out on my brithday, but art featuring the birthday of my favorite character. Is that a thing? And what if the page I have doesn't have anything birthday themed per say, but it's part of the story where they have their birthday? I think that counts.

This book served to reprint Giant-Size X-Men #1, the first appearance of the new X-Men for those people who live under rocks. And at the end they buried this little gem. A twelve page story where Kitty and Illyana are exploring the X-mansion and at the end she get's her surprise, fourteenth birthday party. Yup, in four years of our time since her first appearance she has aged roughly six months.

Panel one is Wolverine's room. Then two and three are Nichcralwer's room. Wait a second, he had a pet pterydacyl? What hapened to it? Lastly panel four is Colossal's room. Oh you have a thing for him Kitty? On the next page they mention he's 19 and she's 14. Oh well, thirty five years later they almost tied the knot except Illyana may have inadvertently torpedoed it.

Probably the only Cockrum X-Men page I'll ever own because oh my god, the competition is brutal for these pages. But I suppose that on this one the characters aren't in costume and there's no action, so a much more afordable piece for me.

Signed on the back by Claremont in 2002 and Cockrum at Maplecon. Hmmm, I don't think this was at the convention dedicated to the game Maplestory. It also inclueded a print out of the page with the word ballons in place. The original ballons were glued to a piece of paper paper. You know, typing paper?