I recently had a chance to re-read John Byrne's whole run on X-Men: The Hidden Years from the early 2000. I must admit I didn't exactly love it at the time - it came out during the Authority/Ultimates/"Nu-Marvel" era, where wide-screen action and minimal approach to dialogues, captions and continuity were all the rage, meaning it was the exact opposite of what was in vogue in comics at the time.

But what seemed hopelessly dated at the time feels delightfully nostalgic, but in an extremely solid kind of way, upon a second read now that I'm very tired of Marvel's decompressed approach to storytelling and lackluster character work. Every single character in the book gets a chance to shine, there's subplots and dense narration and the idea that it's all building up to something, which makes sense since this should have ideally taken readers to Giant-Sized X-Men #1. Byrne's approach to dialogues is quite retro and stiffed at times but works well within the context of the series.

The artwork is VERY strong: Palmer's inks complement Byrne's pencils wonderfully - the art is still very recognizable as Byrne but has a much stronger and firmer look: I find it light-years above much of what Byrne has produced around the same period, both when inking himself (like on Wonder Woman) or when inked by others (on Amazing Spider-Man)

Byrne's use of continuity in this series has been quite amusing. While in some instances it ends up contradicting stuff that's already been established, or sits in a very grey area (like Ororo meeting the original team prior to the Krakoa mission), other bits like the Phoenix Force making first contact with Jean are a nice bit of foreshadowing which can still work well within established continuity. I also really enjoyed how Byrne worked what was effectively Marvel/Timely's first-created mutant Tad Carter and The Promise into "modern" continuity.

So what did you all think? Did you enjoy The Hidden Years or did you consider it a pointless retcon exercise? Do you consider it canon or glorified Byrne-fiction?