X-Men: The Hidden Years was a comic book

Comic book

A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...

 series set in the Marvel Comics

Marvel Comics

Marvel Worldwide, Inc., commonly referred to as Marvel Comics and formerly Marvel Publishing, Inc. and Marvel Comics Group, is an American company that publishes comic books and related media...

 universe

Marvel Universe

The Marvel Universe is the shared fictional universe where most comic book titles and other media published by Marvel Entertainment take place, including those featuring Marvel's most familiar characters, such as Spider-Man, the Hulk, the X-Men, and the Avengers.The Marvel Universe is further...

, which starred the company's popular superhero

Superhero

A superhero is a type of stock character, possessing "extraordinary or superhuman powers", dedicated to protecting the public. Since the debut of the prototypical superhero Superman in 1938, stories of superheroes — ranging from brief episodic adventures to continuing years-long sagas —...

 team, the X-Men

X-Men

The X-Men are a superhero team in the . They were created by writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby, and first appeared in The X-Men #1...

. It was written by John Byrne, with illustrations by Byrne and Tom Palmer

Tom Palmer (comics)

-Biography:Although Palmer has done a small amount of pencilling work , the vast majority of his artistic output since the 1960s has been as a comic book inker...

.

Publication history

The series attempted to fill in the period in the early 1970s when the original X-Men comic was publishing only reprints of earlier issues. The series was intended to fill in the team's chronology during the reprint issues of the original X-Men series (#67-93). According to Byrne, the series "was clearly finite, since [Giant-Size X-Men #1] was out there as an "end point" for my series, but the way I had it worked out, I could have easily done 100 issues or more before I had to send the team off to Krakoa." However, as part of a retooling of the X-Men line, X-Men: The Hidden Years was cancelled, prematurely ending its run with issue #22.

Hidden Years featured the cast of the original X-Men and their villains, with a few appearances by characters who had not otherwise appeared at that point in time, such as Storm.

Similar titles

A similar series was done for Spider-Man

Spider-Man

Spider-Man is a fictional Marvel Comics superhero. The character was created by writer-editor Stan Lee and writer-artist Steve Ditko. He first appeared in Amazing Fantasy #15...

 in the 1990s written by Kurt Busiek

Kurt Busiek

Kurt Busiek is an American comic book writer notable for his work on the Marvels limited series, his own title Astro City, and his four-year run on Avengers.-Early life:...

 called Untold Tales of Spider-Man

Untold Tales of Spider-Man

Untold Tales of Spider-Man is an American comic book series starring Spider-Man published by Marvel Comics for 26 issues from September, 1995 to October, 1997....

, adding stories to Spider-Man's earlier years. The series lasted 25 issues, 2 annuals

Annual publication

An annual publication, more often called simply an annual, is a book or a magazine, comic book or comic strip published yearly. For example, a weekly or monthly publication may produce an Annual featuring similar materials to the regular publication....

, and 1 graphic novel

Graphic novel

A graphic novel is a narrative work in which the story is conveyed to the reader using sequential art in either an experimental design or in a traditional comics format...

.

A similar X-Men: First Class

X-Men: First Class

X-Men: First Class is a comic book series published by Marvel Comics starring the X-Men.-Publication history:The original series was an eight-issue limited series. It began in September 2006 and ended in April 2007. It was written by Jeff Parker and penciled by Roger Cruz...

limited series, featuring the original X-Men, launched in September 2006 and spanned 8 issues. A special one-shot was released in May 2007. An ongoing series then launched in June 2007 and lasted 16 issues. Another one-shot was released in November 2008 branded "Giant-Sized X-Men: First Class", and the series was capped off with another limited series called "X-Men: First Class Finals" in February 2009.