Revisiting Days of Future PastThe most obvious and immediate selling point of he Paragon Collection is the brand new Days of Future Past prologue story. But as Claremont pointed out, that story has already been in the spotlight in 2020, as he and artist Brent Anderson reunited for an expanded and remastered version of God Loves, Man Kills.

Perhaps the one real glaring omission here is 1982's X-Men: God Loves, Man Kills, the graphic novel that inspired the movie X2: X-Men United and helped transition Magneto from fearsome mutant terrorist to misunderstood, tragic figure. Nor is any of Claremont's New Mutants or Excalibur work included. Obviously, Marvel opted to focus on the classic Claremont run rather than his more recent runs on X-Treme X-Men, X-Men Forever or 2014's Nightcrawler series. With Marvel taking a somewhat more narrow focus to the contents of the Paragon Collection, there are inevitably key stories that miss the cut. Rounding out the stories is a pair of collaborations with artist Jim Lee - the Wolverine/Black Widow/Captain America team-up in Uncanny X-Men #268 and the record-shattering X-Men #1. The book emphasizes the early, formative years of Claremont's X-Men work, starting with his first story in 1975's Uncanny X-Men #94 and continuing on to 1980's The Dark Phoenix Saga and the 1982 Wolverine limited series Claremont created with artist Frank Miller. And I said, even more cool.' As Claremont alludes, the contents of the book are built around the classic Days of Future Past storyline and the corresponding new prologue story from Claremont and Larroca (which is actually listed in the contents as 'Uncanny X-Men #140.5'). I thought, 'Wow, that's cool.' And then they said they wanted a 20 page add-on that structured this all together. 'Since I only work from a perspective of a small piece of the project, the giant size aspect of a 400-page omnibus is sort of like, 'Huh?' No, I got a call.

You might assume Claremont himself curated the lineup in the Paragon Collection, but he told us Marvel already had the contents laid out before he was approached to participate. 12 Images Choosing Claremont's Best X-Men StoriesGiven that Claremont wrote Uncanny X-Men nonstop from 1975 to 1991, not to mention assorted spinoffs and more recent projects, the prospect of narrowing down that back catalog to a couple dozen issues is certainly daunting.

Claremont x men run