ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Superheroic Thanks to X-tra Special Humans and Mutants Alike!

The editors wish to thank comic greats Stan Lee and the late Jack Kirby, the real X-perts!

We’d also like to thank series editor Bill Irwin for his X-vision and X-traordinary editorial instincts! Love ya, Bill! Special thanks go to our beloved contributors, whose lively intellects and creativity help make this volume a superpower-packed X-ploration into the vast space-time of the X-Verse. We also want to give our appreciation to Connie Santisteban, Eric Nelson, and the entire Wiley team for their publishing super-prowess.

As for the mutants: Beast, for being both a science geek and a badass; Wolverine, for being short; Mystique for bringing blue back into fashion; Phoenix Force, for being the ultimate sentient cosmic force of life and death (c’mon!); and every other mutant superhero, either in the pages of a Marvel comic or in the recesses of a human mind yet to begin a great hero’s journey. . . .

Jeremy wishes to personally thank Meg Lonergan, now an old pro at making things happen; she did an X-cellent job helping with the copyediting and the index—keep it up, Sparky! Nico Meyering and Nick Forst read versions of the manuscript and offered some useful initial feedback. Nick gets an X-tra “thank you” for donating his illustrating abilities (and his imagination) to the book. (Nick is responsible for Jeremy’s inner superhero at the end of chapter 17.) Jeremy is grateful to his wife, Dorothy, for putting up with his eccentricities (yet again), and his daughter, Audrey, for letting him play with her toys.

Rebecca would like to send special thanks to “Mighty” George Dunn, Bob Housel, Aaron Fields, Connie Santisteban, Stephanie “Shadowcat” Collins, and Marguerite Schwartz for lending super-vision to sections of the Marvel-ous manuscript. Bill Irwin gets a Giant-Sized shout out for reading countless e-mails over four years with eighties trivia and X-Men pleas. Tom Morris also gets a nod for accepting Rebecca’s first article ever (!) on X-Men in his 2005 Superheroes volume. Rebecca’s sincere appreciation goes to her husband, Bob, who lovingly made superhuman efforts in the domestic sphere while Rebecca typed away into the wee hours of the morning, and to her son, Gary, who has been her comic partner-in-crime for the better part of the last twenty years.