A Look Back on Paul Smith's Uncanny X-Men Run

Paul Smith took over as penciller on Uncanny X-Men with issue #165, toward the end of the Brood Saga, and he finished his run with issue #175, with the climax of the Mastermind/Madeline Pryor plot.  That's not an extensive run (Walt Simonson even filled-in for issue #171), but Smith's contribution should not be overlooked.  Paul Smith may not have drawn a lot of issues, but he had a ridiculously high percentage of awesome issues to draw.

That high percentage of awesomeness relied heavily on Smith's art, but it should be acknowledged that he came on to the title at the perfect time to showcase his stuff.  Do you want to see cosmic, space alien stuff?  Uncanny #165 and #166 have the X-Men fighting the evil Brood.  Did you want awesome action, with X-Men looking like total badasses?  If Wolverine vs. Silver Samurai in Uncanny #173 doesn't do it for you, then try out Storm vs. Callisto in Uncanny #170.  Of course, it's hard to improve on Cyclops beating down the entire X-Men team on his own in Uncanny #175.  Do you need a break from action and want some solid character-driven moments?  Uncanny #168 has some action, but is mainly focused on Kitty Pryde arguing to keep her roster spot on the X-Men.  If romance is your thing, Smith's run covers almost the entire first arc of the Cyclops/Madeline Pryor story --- and we get some cute scenes with Nightcrawler/Amanda Sefton, Colossus/Kitty Pryde, and we witness the tragic star-crossed plot of Wolverine/Mariko.  There is something for just about everyone in this run.

A promo for 1985's X-Men/Alpha Flight.  Nice perm, Kitty!

You cannot just ascribe the quality of this run to the writer, Chris Claremont, either.  He was writing garbage on The New Mutants at this time, so clearly Paul Smith was a valuable contributor.  But what did he ultimately bring to the table?  Aside from clean line work, characters with realistically athletic builds, and faces that were not interchangable, Smith clearly studied the importance of sequential art.  Some of his best moments are dialogue free, with his art doing all the storytelling.

If this had been written in the 2000s, Storm would have dropped a mic here

Personally, what I like best about Smith's pencils is the way he makes the innocent characters look.  It's a combination of clean lines and cherubic faces that I find charming.  He also managed to play up the humor in a title that has a tendency to get dreary with self-importance.  Plus, you gotta love the Herbal Essences-esque hair.

Adorable contemporary drawing from this period, taken from here

Admittedly, Paul Smith's run is peculiar in a few ways.  I understand that he took over mid-storyline when Dave Cockrum left to pursue The Futurians, but it was a pretty severe stylistic switch.  Smith had almost no prior experience (I believe a fill-in of Doctor Strange and a X-Men story in Marvel Fanfare), so he basically came out of absolutely nowhere.  He was also completely self-taught, aside from some airbrushing classes.  Here is a pretty cool contemporary interview with Smith, as he was about to start on Uncanny.  Modern readers can be excused for thinknig that Smith pulled Keyser Soze after he left Unanny; he didn't exactly vanish, but his career didn't skyrocket, like you might have expected it to.  He had a short run on Doctor Strange, he did the X-Men/Alpha Flight two-issue series, he did some time with X-Factor (on a pretty horrendous story), and then...what?  I think his most notable runs since have been the DC Elseworlds limited series The Golden Age, Image's Leave It to Chance, and the post-Darwyn Cooke issues of DC's The Spirit relaunch.  According to hearsay, Smith works so infrequently because he has other interests, like surfing, and he takes comic jobs to support his surfing habit.  Is that true?  I have no idea.  But if you're interested in his later works, check out Comics Should Be Good's Year of the Artist feature, which spent a few days examining Smith's development. 

Contemporary pencil sketch, taken from here

In case you're wondering why Smith would leave a title like Uncanny X-Men for  Doctor Strange, I would suggest checking out that interview I referenced earlier.  The man loved him some Steve Ditko, so it makes sense for him to take his newfound leverage as a popular artist and take on that title.  But if you want to know what he told the press at the time, here is a nifty article from Marvel Comics of the 1980s, who found this May 1983 article from the The Comics Journal.  So if anyone ever asks you why Smith left Uncanny, it is because he thought the writing and direction on the title were lacking.  This, coming from a guy who drew one of the all-time best runs on the title!  Some people can't be satisfied.