Storm, Spinner Racks, and the Weirdest X-Men Era

My foundational X-Men experience was peak Outback X-Men. They were living in the Australian Outback and it was genuinely the weirdest of the weird. Fully unhinged. Gen-X coded. Feral 🇦🇺⚡️

I grabbed a random issue from the Fall of the Mutants crossover off a grocery-store spinner rack and that was it. Hooked. I love Storm. Still want to grow up and be her.

There are a lot of great X-Men eras, but the Outback era has always been my era (as some of you already know). This drawing and color pull straight from that energy. The team fakes their deaths. Kicks the cyber-jerk Reavers out of an abandoned cowboy-town villain HQ. Teleports around with Gateway. Introduces Genosha. And the whole book just…goes darker, stranger, and better.

Later, Chris Claremont said he wanted to keep them there another ten years. Marvel kept yelling “bring them back” because of "sales" or something. There are dozens and dozens of us who would have loved the Outback Decade.