I was an 11-year-old nerd when X-Men #1 came out, and I was as helpless in the face of its pop-culture domination as a brick wall before the Juggernaut.

I’ve re-read these first issues several times over the years, and I have to say: they hold up. Sure, they’re a bit snappy and superficial and glib, but the art by Jim Lee is absolutely gorgeous. Chris Claremont and John Byrne do a good job with the writing too. There’s a massive cast here, and they successfully dole out enough memorable lines to keep the characterization distinctive and fun.

The pace is breakneck to kick things off. It’s all slightly breathless as a new group of “mutants first” baddies is introduced, Magneto does a heel turn, and a Russian space laser gets ready to blast everyone out of orbit. The whole Magneto arc takes just three issue, including Claremont’s hasty “So long and thanks for all the fish” signoff in the final editorial box. Compared to the decompression era that would follow, that’s insane.

The storytelling here isn’t especially subtle (Claremont manages to shoehorn in the X-men being mind-controlled), but it’s effective. It also feels fresh, which is something the franchise needed after Claremont’s decades-long run; I am a fan, but by the end he got lost in its own mythology and stuck in his favorite themes (i.e., mind control).

This Jim Lee-era embraces the new. Lee himself didn’t stay around for long, and by the time of his departure the lineup was already starting to degenerate into aimless, “X-TREME” stimulus-seeking. But this volume collects the good stuff at the start. I don’t think I would recommend it to an X-men neophyte, but if you read the original issues, you probably won’t regret coming back.