This is "Turns Back the Page," which is a look at interesting back-up stories from comic books. If you have suggestions for back-ups that you'd like to see me write about, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!

1986 was "only" 32 years ago and yet, in many ways, it feels like it was a million years ago, at least within the context of our current understanding of the world of comic books.

By 1986, the X-Men were by far the most popular comic book series in the entire comic book industry. However, such status was still a fairly recent distinction. It had only been three years since Uncanny X-Men became the most popular Marvel Comics title and it is up for debate when it took the title for all of comics. New Teen Titans definitely out-sold Uncanny X-Men in the early years of the 1980s and I don't know precisely when that changed. Certainly by 1986, but not by such a great change that it was like X-Men was the top book for many years. Because of that, that means that while the Byrne/Claremont/Austin years certainly saw a notable rise in sales for the X-Men, it was more towards the latter half of their iconic run that sales really started to go up. That sales trajectory continued through Dave Cockrum's return to the title and then it finally hit #1 when Paul Smith took over the book (RIGHT AWAY, so obviously it wasn't like "Oh man, this is Paul Smith's first issue, let's make this the #1 selling book at Marvel!) and Smith kept the book there and the other artists that followed followed suit.

This is important because it means that many of the important issues in the history of the X-Men were not read by a whole lot of people at first. So the early 1980s saw a big rush in back issue sales of the earlier X-Men stories, especially the Byrne/Claremont stuff and the very earliest stuff. So we hit the first part of my "How different things were" bit. Nowadays, you would just read a trade paperback collection of those issues (or buy the back issues, of course). Then, that wasn't really an option. So while reprint comic book series were not quite as popular after back issues became big in the late 1970s/early 1980s (as specialty comic book shops popped up all over the place), there was still a market then that doesn't really exist anymore. So Marvel decided to do a new series called Classic X-Men that would reprint the stories featuring the all-new, all-different X-Men.

The covers for the series were by the amazing Arthur Adams, who really did a marvelous job on the book...

Classic X-Men also came with back-up stories in every issue. Let me pose a question to you - why would there HAVE to be back-up stories in a given issue of Classic X-Men? Think about it for a second and you'll get the answer on the next page if you didn't already figure it out...

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The reason that the books HAD to have back-up stories is that when Marvel first started doing the All-New, All-Different X-Men stories, the page count in Marvel Comics were down to roughly 17 pages a comic, unlike the 22 pages they were in 1986. So since they were going to have to do back-up stories no matter what, Marvel decided to make the book a little more expensive and have LONG back-up stories where Chris Claremont could add stories to build up the past of the characters.

Now, here's the other key part about how different things were back then. There were only a handful of X-Men comic book series and Wolverine didn't even have his own comic book. Therefore, there really wasn't a whole lot of room to get into Magneto's past. We learned in Uncanny X-Men #150 that he has survived the Holocaust, but besides a brief photo of his first wife, Magda, there wasn't the same opportunities that there are today to flesh out pretty much every character in comics with a miniseries telling their past.

Thus, the Magneto back-up in Classic X-Men #12 by Chris Claremont and John Bolton was the first time we saw real in-depth flashbacks to Magneto's youth (we did see a young Magneto hang out with Charles Xavier in a story by Claremont and Cockrum, but I mean BEFORE that).

It opens by showing the first life that Magneto ever took, as he managed to kill a guard before being slaughtered at the end of World War II...

He escaped with a young girl named Magda and they lived together on the run in small villages away from civilization and fell in love and had a child together, Anya. Eventually, though, they moved to the Soviet Union as a family...

Magneto got a job, but his corrupt Soviet boss kept half of his pay for himself. Magneto instinctively grew angry at him and a crowbar went flying through the air. Scared out of his mind, the man paid Magneto his full pay.

He arrived home, eager to tell his wife about his newfound powers when he saw that his home was on fire.

He went to go save his daughter...

but he was then attacked by his boss, who had alerted the secret police to Magneto's wrongdoing. He watched his daughter die in front of him. He just flipped out.

His power let go, killing everyone in the area except for his wife, Magda, but she was so disgusted by him that she ran away, as well. He never saw her again.

The story then cuts to the present, where Magneto, hiding out in Paris, sees a fire and he intends to ignore the cries for help as they're just humans, but then he changes his mind and saves a woman and a young girl...

This was a powerful piece of work by Claremont and Bolton. Wow, Magneto's past was MESSED UP. So damned bleak.

This obviously would serve as Claremont's concept of Magneto as a tortured man who was forced into a bad path by trauma from his past but was, in the end, a noble person who would eventually become a true hero.

If anyone else has a suggestion for an interesting comic book back-up story that they'd like to see featured here, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!

I might feature other Classic X-Men back-ups in the future (not any time soon, as it seems like a little too close to his one), so if you have one in particular that you'd like to see spotlighted, let me know!