Thread by @KurtBusiek

What happened here, I wonder?

The word back in the day (to the point that even I heard it, and I hadn’t broken in yet) was that Gene Colan would give so much space to the early scenes in a story that he’d have to cram the endings into too-little space. This is the second-to-last page of an issue, and that...

…seems to be what’s going on here, but it’s a very un-Colanesque layout overall — it looks like two different layout ideas.

So I’m kinda wondering if Colan drew too many pages, and that cape-shape was perhaps not a silhouette at first, but they had to crop the bottom of the...

…page and fit two panels from a different page in, and then have Chris write a summary to bridge the missing material.

Would looked better if Orzechowski was still lettering it, in any case.

If Colan did just hit Claremont with “Here’s empty space, summarize the story climax, I’m not drawing it,” then that might be why Chris left the book a few issues later.

Could be why Colan did too. Though he left Marvel entirely soon thereafter, due to disputes with Jim Shooter.