Until recently I didn't realize just how complicated Claremont storylines were. I know a lot about comics and I've read a lot of these before but I'm doing a very deep old-schoo…

Until recently I didn't realize just how complicated Claremont storylines were. I know a lot about comics and I've read a lot of these before but I'm doing a very deep old-school read-through of X-Men chronologically. I'm reading all the X titles: - Alpha Flight - Uncanny X-Men - New Mutants - X-Factor - Excalibur All of them. Now I'm getting to this part that I'm trying to wrap my head around because it's been a while and I'm just not realizing how damn complicated the storylines are. Here's just an example of where I'm at right now, just a basic example. Right around this area that I'm at now, spread across three different comics: Scott's over here proposing to Jane, who says no, keeping in mind she's struggling with prior memories from both Phoenix and Madeleine Prior. This is all around the same time. I'm talking about just what's happening in X-Factor 53 through 55 and the same Uncanny X-Men 261 through 263, the same general threads. You have Opal, who meets Mole in the basement. He's one of the old Morlocks who survived the slaughter because Sabre Tooth is hunting him. She helps him and then Opal meets Iceman. They start dating. Mole gets mad and jealous, thinking she's at risk. He tries to do something about it and it turns into a fight. He loses. Basically he and Opal say goodbye to each other. He goes back into the sewers. Sabre Tooth follows him into the sewers. There's a little bit of a disconnect because before that, Angel hears rumors of Sabre Tooth. He goes and hunts him down. They get into a fight. Angel basically loses near the end. Caliban gets involved and he and Angel fight and then Caliban and Sabre Tooth fight in the sewers. It's like, Angel then, on one thread, goes to the hospital and has a nervous breakdown because he's poisoned and has all this stuff happening. Jean's upset so she now goes out to leave for a while. She ends up in the sewers, who then gets kidnapped by Masque and all of his people. And then Mask is torturing Calisto along with the other members of his group, forming them all into fake X-Men. Forge and Banshee, who just got into a huge fight with the Reavers, come back to the sewers and they find Jean. They all work together to beat him. Colossus is over here, who lost his memory and his power because of the Siege Perilous, and all that's mixed up. On top of that you've got Wolverine, Psylocke, and Jubilee. Wolverine gets tortured and then Jubilee saves him from the Reavers. He and Psylocke get wrapped up in this whole situation and it's Jubilee, him, her, and all that stuff happening over there. You've got Lady Duststrike and her group over here. That's not even the bulk of it. That's just some of the bits and pieces of the disconnected events that happen around this time period. You've also got Professor Xavier in space, who's been gone for almost a decade now, maybe give or take. I don't know, and he's having issues with his health. He's going to be coming back soon. You have the new mutants who are now with Cable. The cool thing about it, one of the things I like about Claremont, is that he takes a long time to build up on story. This is right at the end of his run so soon all these different elements that I'm explaining all come together in a really big way. And then Clermont's run ends and it goes into more of an editorial run. There are about 10 years, not quite 10 but around 10 years, of editorial decisions where writers get switched out a lot and changed around a lot. It's early 2000s when the next writer steps on the scene and it starts the next big era. It's just hard to keep up with when you're reading it and you're real deep in the reading. There are so many different storylines going on that it's sometimes hard to track everything.