From the ashes of the past, there grow the fires of the future!
The early seventies were an important time for comics. While the X-Men were putting out reprints, the rest of the industry was changing rapidly. Stan Lee published a story about drugs in Amazing Spider-Man that proved to be the first nail in the coffin of the Comics Code Authority. A while later, Peter Parker's girlfriend Gwen Stacy took a a swan dive off the George Washington Bridge and died, leaving an indelible mark on the character's history and setting a dangerous precedent for future storytellers. Jack Kirby's creative differences with Marvel widened to the point where he decided to leave the company and start working for DC – and DC itself was finally catching up and starting to get good. The Silver Age ended and gave way to the Bronze Age.
Even the X-Men, despite their lack of an ongoing title, weren't forgotten. The team was still active, after all. Their untold adventures during the five year gap would later be covered in X-Men: The Hidden Years, a spin-off that started in 1999 and ran for 22 issues. Maybe I'll cover it someday. Some of the characters also drifted through other books at the time, and a few of the resulting stories are worth noting for posterity.
