The Uncanny X-Men #268
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeUncanny X-Men #268 is one of the defining single issues of the Claremont–Jim Lee collaboration, delivering the first on-panel meeting between Wolverine and Captain America in a dual-timeline story set simultaneously in 1941 Madripoor and the present day. The flashback permanently reshaped Black Widow's continuity by strongly implying she possesses a retarded aging process tied to her Soviet conditioning — a detail that later writers formalized into her core biography and that made her wartime history with both Wolverine and Bucky Barnes narratively coherent. It also laid the groundwork for the Upstarts storyline by depicting the nascent alliance between the Fenris twins and Matsu'o Tsurayaba's Hand. Jim Lee's opening Captain America splash page became one of the most referenced single images of the era, and the issue is widely credited with reinvigorating the X-Men line after a prolonged, unfocused period.
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We Buy Collections ▸History
This issue effectively marks the formal debut of Jim Lee and inker Scott Williams as the regular artistic team on Uncanny X-Men, with the preceding issue (#267) having been credited more collectively to Homage Studios while Lee's full control was still being established. Writer Chris Claremont crafted the dual-timeline 'Madripoor Knights' structure to showcase Lee's strengths — action, precise anatomy, and high-profile Marvel guest stars — and the result was widely received as the creative reset the title needed after roughly a year and a half of scattered, team-less storytelling. Editors credited on the issue are Bob Harras and Suzanne Gaffney, under Editor-in-Chief Tom DeFalco.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Story title: 'Madripoor Knights!' — written by Chris Claremont, penciled by Jim Lee, inked by Scott Williams, colored by Glynis Oliver, lettered by Tom Orzechowski; cover date September 1990.
- First on-panel meeting between Wolverine (Logan) and Captain America (Steve Rogers), set in Madripoor in the summer of 1941, against Hand ninjas and Nazi forces including Baron Strucker.
- First appearance of Seraph, the bar owner and Madripoor underworld contact who aids Logan, Cap, Ivan Petrovich, and young Natasha Romanoff in the 1941 flashback.
- First appearance of the Jonin, a Hand leader who dies in the 1941 flashback sequence.
- The issue strongly implies — and is widely cited as the first explicit statement — that Black Widow's unnaturally slow aging is a product of her Soviet Black Widow program enhancements, retroactively explaining how she could appear as a child in 1941 while still being active in 1990.
- The Fenris twins (Andrea and Andreas von Strucker) and Matsu'o Tsurayaba appear in cameo; the issue seeds their partnership as the earliest setup for what would become the Upstarts storyline of the early 1990s. Note: Fenris themselves first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #194 (1985) — this is not their debut.
- Consul Geoffrey Sydenham makes his first appearance in the 1941 flashback as the American consulate official who betrays Captain America and Ivan Petrovich to Baron Strucker and the Hand.
- Reprinted in multiple collected editions including X-Men Visionaries: Jim Lee, the X-Men by Chris Claremont & Jim Lee Omnibus Vol. 1 (2011), Essential X-Men Vol. 10 (2012), Uncanny X-Men 3D #1 (2019), Marvel Visionaries: Chris Claremont (2019), and a Facsimile Edition (April 2024) with several variant covers. A JC Penney reprint also exists, identifiable by the 30th Anniversary Spider-Man image in the UPC box.
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Reprints
Reprinted in Spécial Strange #77 (1991), Gli Incredibili X-Men #45 (1994), Marvel Limited: The X-Men Chris Claremont Collection #[nn] (1994), X-Men Annual #1996 (1996), X-Men: Marvel Power Game #[nn] (1996), X-Men Visionaries: Jim Lee #[nn] (2002), Wizard Wolverine Masterpiece Edition #1 (2004), Marvel Visionaries: Chris Claremont #[nn] (2005), Wolverine: Origins #16 (2007), Marvel Zombies / Army of Darkness #[nn] (2009), X-Men by Chris Claremont & Jim Lee Omnibus #1 (2012), Essential X-Men #10 (2012), Wolverine: The Adamantium Collection #[nn] (2013), Uncanny X-Men 3D #1 (2019), X-Men: Grand Design - X-Tinction #[nn] (2019), X-Men XXL by Jim Lee #[nn] (2019), Marvel Visionaries: Chris Claremont #[nn] (2019), Marvel Comics - La collection #208 (2022), Uncanny X-Men No. 268 Facsimile Edition #[nn] (2024), De X-Mannen #108, La Patrulla-X #110
Key issues in The Uncanny X-Men
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