NOT A HOAX! NOT A DREAM!: X-Men

Showing posts with label X-Men. Show all posts

Sunday, May 24, 2026

THE MARVEL ANIMATED UNIVERSE PART 2 - THE X-MEN

Well! It was last July that I wrote a fairly long post about my dream Spider-Man cartoon series, an adaptation of the Silver Age comics by Steve Ditko, Stan Lee, and John Romita; a series that would have been set in the sixties (or at least in a pre-digital world). At the time, I said it was part one of a two-part series, and the second installment would cover my ideal X-Men animation. But, while I thought about it quite a bit in the subsequent nine months, I never got around to putting fingers to keyboard to write about it... until now.

Look, I loved the X-MEN cartoon in the 1990s. It was my companion through middle school and high school. And I really enjoyed its continuation, X-MEN 97, on Disney Plus. (Though that series is perfect encapsulation of why I loathe the current streaming model for TV series -- we had a ten episode season one in 2024 and we are still waiting for season two, two years later!! It's idiotic.) The X-Men series, at least for it's first season, took one of the most appealing aspects of the comics of the era -- namely, serialization -- and translated it to the small screen. To a kid who had never watched the likes of ROBOTECH, this was groundbreaking.

But X-MEN wasn't perfect; far from it, in fact. Even as a teen, I found it odd that the group was made up of a bunch of then-popular characters like Gambit, Rogue, and Jubilee, waltzing around like they'd always been there. Later in the series, this premise was walked back and it was established that there had been at least one prior iteration of the X-Men -- but at least early on, we were meant to believe that Wolverine and Gambit were among the first X-Men, fighting alongside Cyclops and Jean Grey against Magneto. It was weird.

And as with Spider-Man, I've long wished for an X-Men series that hewed more closely to the original comics. However, where the Spider-Man show I ruminated on last year was a somewhat straight adaptation -- not issue-to-issue, but simply in terms of the major storytelling beats -- this hypothetical X-Men cartoon would take a different route, at least at first. We would begin with the same basic premise as Spider-Man; a 65-episode series comprised of five 13-episode seasons. The first two seasons would focus on the original X-Men, and the final three would cover the era of the "new" X-Men.

THE UNBOXING - JULY 2020

After a couple months off, The Unboxing returns with two books and a few digital items. First, from Marvel, it's the SENSATIONAL SHE-HULK BY JOHN BYRNE OMNIBUS. I own this run in four formats now -- original comic books, two trade paperbacks, digital versions of those trades, and now this Omnibus. I can't help it; I love Byrne's She-Hulk! Heck, if IDW was ever to offer an Artist's Edition of pages from this run, I'd buy that, too!

Which turns out to be a nice segue to our next book, from IDW: DAVE COCKRUM'S X-MEN ARTIFACT EDITION. Prior to buying this, I owned exactly one Artist/Artifact Edition, which hit The Unboxing just about two years ago, and that was the JOHN BYRNE'S X-MEN ARTIFACT EDITION... so you can see where my tastes lie. Further, since I don't buy these things very often, I went ahead and splurged on the signed and numbered limited edition, which has a "virgin" wraparound cover, as well as a Chris Claremont autograph. I did the same thing with the Byrne book a couple years ago -- it was a Comic-Con exclusive, signed and numbered by Byrne.

THE UNBOXING - APRIL 2020

I may be under state-mandated quarantine due to COVID-19, but The Unboxing recognizes no authority! Here's what we have this month:

From DC, it's TALES OF THE BATMAN: MARV WOLFMAN (inexplicably labeled as "Volume 1" even though I'm pretty sure this contains every Batman story Wolfman ever wrote). As we saw when I looked a ton of Batman in the Seventies comics last year, Wolfman's run on BATMAN continued directly from Len Wein's, wrapping up several loose ends, so the main reason I grabbed this volume was to site beside TALES OF THE BATMAN: LEN WEIN on my shelf for just that reason. It also contains a number of other Wolfman-penned Batman stories, though, which I'm sure I'll check out someday.

And from Marvel, we have the CAPTAIN AMERICA EPIC COLLECTION: BLOOD AND GLORY, another installment in Marvel's collection of Mark Gruenwald's dedace-long run on Cap. When I started buying a lot of digital collections a couple years ago, I gradually tapered off my purchases of most trade paperbacks, figuring that Marvel seems to publish everything in hardcover sooner or later, and the digital versions would be my reading copies of most paperbacks (and of things I never really needed to own physically in the first place) until the inevitable Omnibus, oversized hardcover, etc. came around. But these Gruenwald Cap collections are pretty much the only paperbacks I "grandfathered in", since I had several already.

For those keeping count, this book follows from the previously released Epic Collections SOCIETY OF SERPENTS, JUSTICE IS SERVED, THE BLOODSTONE HUNT, STREETS OF POISON, and THE SUPERIA STRATAGEM -- plus the out-of-print Epic-in-all-but-name THE CAPTAIN -- and all of them together collect CAPTAIN AMERICA # 307 - 410. Gruenwald's CAP run ended with issue 443, so that's only thirty-three issues to go, which will comprise a total of three more Epic Collections (which we know since BLOOD AND GLORY is volume 18, while MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY, the book beginning the Mark Waid/Ron Garney run that immediately followed Gruenwald, is vol. 22.

I grabbed a few digital items this month as well. Amazon/Comixology had a BOGO sale when the Coronvirus situation really started heating up, so I picked up the following:

AVENGERS EPIC COLLECTION: EARTH'S MIGHTIEST HEROES
(The only Silver Age Avengers Epic I was unable to get in Marvel's big year-end sale because it wasn't discounted at the time.)
AVENGERS EPIC COLLECTION: THE AVENGERS/DEFENDERS WAR
AVENGERS: THE ORIGIN
(You'll be seeing more about this book, plus the subsequent pair listed below, very, very soon right here!)
AVENGERS: EARTH'S MIGHTIEST HEROES vol. 1
AVENGERS: EARTH'S MIGHTIEST HEROES vol. 2
X-MEN MILESTONES ONSLAUGHT
(I'm weirdly excited for this one because it contains only the core, "essential" parts of the "Onslaught" saga, without all the extraneous crossover junk. Looking forward to cracking it open when Gentlemen of Leisure's "X-aminations" reaches this point in the not-too-distant future!)
X-MEN MILESTONES: PHALANX COVENANT
(Since for some reason, the old PHALANX COVENANT hardcover has never seen a digital release, this will be my digital copy -- even though it's missing a few issues from the hardcover edition.)

Not too shabby, considering I haven't been allowed to leave the house for nearly a month! But now, with distribution on hold from some publishers due to the ongoing quarantine situation, we can only wonder what May will bring...!

Friday, February 21, 2020

THE UNBOXING - FEBRUARY 2020

Just one single, solitary book this month, if you can believe it -- and it's not even digital for a change! Hot on the heels of last month's X-MEN: SHATTERSHOT, it's another hardcover starring Marvel's mighty mutants, from much later in the 1990s: the X-MEN VS. APOCALYPSE: THE TWELVE OMNIBUS. This volume is basically a compilation of several paperbacks that were released nigh-on a decade or more ago: X-MEN: THE SHATTERING, X-MEN VS. APOCALYPSE vol. 1, X-MEN VS. APOCALYPSE vol. 2, and X-MEN: POWERLESS. I never picked those books up at the time, however (though I do own them in digital format), so rather than an upgrade, this one is a new purchase for me.

And what a purchase it is! Though I haven't had much cause to talk about it here, I don't think I've made any secret of the fact that this era was one of my favorites for the X-Men. This book covers the majority of the period when Alan Davis served as plotter on both X-MEN and UNCANNY X-MEN throughout 1999. It was a period which brought back several plot points from earlier in the nineties (and even tied some of them up), but also felt somehow like a bit of a throwback to an earlier era. 1999 was probably the closest the X-Men of the nineties ever got to feeling like the X-Men of the late seventies, which was a great thing in my opinion.

So this is one I'm pleased to have on my shelf. I can't wait to read it, when Gentlemen of Leisure's X-aminations series gets to this era in a few more years. (And I know I say this a lot with no results to show for it, but I really do want to get my photo-reviews of the X-Men collected editions going again. I have no idea when it'll be, but it's still something on my to-do list!)

Friday, January 24, 2020

THE UNBOXING - JANUARY 2020

The first Unboxing of the year is a little light on physical books, but quite hefty on digital. First, Christmas gifts: from my lovely wife and from my parents, I received two more installments in the Carl Barks Disney Library from Fantagraphics: THE MINES OF KING SOLOMON and CHRISTMAS IN DUCKBURG.

Then, my normal book shipment for the month contained one Marvel tome: X-MEN: SHATTERSHOT, an oversized hardcover collecting a run of issues from X-MEN vol. 2. This book replaces the previously issued trade paperback, A SKINNING OF SOULS, as it includes all the issues contained therein plus more.

(Apologies; I haven't had a chance to take pictures of these books yet. When I eventually do, I'll add them to this post.)

And then we move into the digital realm. Remember last month when I mentioned the huge sale Marvel was having on Epic Collections, for only five bucks a pop? Well, I received some Amazon gift cards for Christmas and I, uhh... may have gone a little overboard. I have a huge blind spot for Marvel's Silver Age catalog, outside of Spider-Man and to some extent the X-Men, so I decided to stock up. Who knows if I'll ever find time to read all of these, but I picked up all of the following:

Also, via a couple of other Amazon/Comixology digital Marvel sales to start the year, I picked up DEFENDERS: INDEFENSIBLE and GALACTUS THE DEVOURER.

And lastly, in a recent Fantagraphics sale, I grabbed the digital version of THE CARL BARKS DISNEY LIBRARY: THE MINES OF KING SOLOMON, as well as MICKEY MOUSE: THE PHANTOM BLOT'S DOUBLE MYSTERY.

Whew! That's it (and isn't it enough?) for January. Next month should be considerably lighter, I hope! Catch you in February!

Friday, September 20, 2019

THE UNBOXING - SEPTEMBER 2019

We're gonna keep things short and sweet this month, with an all-Digital, all-Marvel Unboxing. I have to admit that I think I actually bought a few of these during some sale or another last month, but for the most part, these are all September purchases as part of Marvel's 80th anniversary BOGO sale at Comixology/Amazon. Thus, the latest additions to my digital lineup are:

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN EPIC COLLECTION: ASSASSIN NATION
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN EPIC COLLECTION: GREAT POWER
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN EPIC COLLECTION: THE GOBLIN LIVES
AVENGERS EPIC COLLECTION: FEAR THE REAPER
AVENGERS MASTERWORKS vol. 19
CAPTAIN AMERICA EPIC COLLECTION: THE SUPERIA STRATAGEM
FANTASTIC FOUR: HEROES REBORN: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION vol. 1
FANTASTIC FOUR: THE WORLD'S GREATEST COMICS MAGAZINE!
IRON MAN: HEROES REBORN: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION vol. 1
LUKE CAGE, POWER MAN MASTERWORKS vol. 3
MASTER OF KUNG FU EPIC COLLECTION: FIGHT WITHOUT PITY
SAVAGE SHE-HULK MASTERWORKS vol. 2
SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN MASTERWORKS vol. 2
THING: THE SERPENT CROWN AFFAIR
X-MEN/ALPHA FLIGHT
X-MEN EPIC COLLECTION: DISSOLUTION AND REBIRTH
X-MEN: GAMBIT: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION vol. 2
X-MEN> ONSLAUGHT AFTERMATH

And that's it for September, True Believers! Catch you back here next month (or not, if I don't wind up getting anything new)!

Friday, July 26, 2019

THE UNBOXING - JULY 2019

If you're reading this post, you've somehow traveled back in time. I was insanely busy in July and missed doing the month's Unboxing, so, even though today is actually August 5th, I'm backdating this baby to the final Friday in July.

Two books this month, one from Marvel and one from IDW -- though both star Marvel characters. First, from the House of Ideas proper, we have X-MEN: EVE OF DESTRUCTION, a hardcover collecting the very end of nineties X-Men. And yes, these issues were published in 2001, but to me, they mark the end of the era that started with X-MEN #1 in 1991, as this was the point just before Grant Morrison's run on X-MEN.

I actually don't have the greatest memories of these issues... Chris Claremont's abysmal "Revolution" run on X-MEN and UNCANNY X-MEN had sort of dampened my enthusiasm for the mutant titles, and even though Scott Lobdell returned here to put a bow on the nineties, it just didn't feel the same. So, while -- as I said above -- I consider this the official "end" of that era in X-Men comics, it's not necessarily an end I love. I wanted this book for completist reasons, but I actually prefer "The Twelve" as sort of a real conclusion to the X-Men of the nineties (even if that means the nineties X-Men ended with my favorite mutant, Cyclops, merged with Apocalypse).

And then we have SPIDER-MAN: THE ULTIMATE NEWSPAPER COMICS COLLECTION vol. 5, from IDW's Library of American Comics imprint. I think I read someplace that these books haven't been selling as well since the first two volumes (which were drawn by John Romita), but I'm still on board for picking them up, at least to the point where Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson get married -- which I believe should be in volume 6 or 7, if the series makes it that long.

That's it for July, and right now I don't know that I'm expecting anything in August, so we may not meet for another Unboxing until the fall.

Friday, April 19, 2019

THE UNBOXING - APRIL 2019

What's this? The Unboxing on Friday?! It's true, and the reason why will be explained in this very space... next Friday! But for now, after skipping the past two months, The Unboxing returns at last with three offerings from Marvel, and I think the wait was worth it!

First we have two trade paperbacks, starting with CAPTAIN AMERICA EPIC COLLECTION: THE SUPERIA STRATAGEM. Over the past few years, Marvel has been steadily plugging away at completing Mark Gruenwald's ten-year run on CAPTAIN AMERICA in a number of trade paperbacks. Currently, thanks to this new volume and the previously released Epic Collections SOCIETY OF SERPENTS, JUSTICE IS SERVED, THE BLOODSTONE HUNT, and STREETS OF POISON, plus the out-of-print Epic-in-all-but-name THE CAPTAIN, we've got issues 307 - 397 collected. That's ninety-one issues plus associated annuals and such, covering nearly the first seven years of Gruenwald's run. Gruenwald's final CAP issue was 443, so we've still got quite a ways to go, but at the very least it's safe to say that the "prime" material is pretty much all available at this point. (Though I love all of it and will happily snap up the rest of the run as it's released!)

Next is X-MEN: ONSLAUGHT AFTERMATH, and I cannot overstate how absolutely thrilled I am to own this book. Those who follow my X-Men Collected Editions chart know that this was the final piece needed to close the X-Men's 1990s gap. As of now, thanks to ONSLAUGHT AFTERMATH, EVERY. SINGLE. ISSUE. of UNCANNY X-MEN and X-MEN from the full decade of the nineties has been collected. I seriously want to do a little jig over this. It's been my goal for about the past five years to have that entire run of issues on my bookshelf, and now I can finally say that the mission is accomplished.

(Of course this isn't to say I won't re-buy some of this material as it finds its way into better collections -- upgrading from paperbacks to hardcovers, for example -- but the point is that for now, the goal is complete.)

And speaking of rebuying, our last book is one that I couldn't resist even though I've purchased all of it in various formats over the years -- comics when I was a teen, trade paperbacks and hardcovers as an adult... but now we have it here, all collected in one comprehensive and definitive oversized hardcover, just in time for a certain major motion picture it inspired: the THANOS WARS: INFINITY ORIGIN OMNIBUS. The name is an inelegant mouthful, but the contents are what's important here. This book collects all of Jim Starlin's early Thanos material, from his first appearance in IRON MAN #55, through his war against Captain Mar-Vell and the Avengers, and up to his dealings with Adam Warlock -- plus everything in between, whether Thanos-related or not. I've probably mentioned it here before, but for the record, Starlin's cosmic stuff at 1970s Marvel is among my all-time favorite comic book runs, and it's wonderful to see it get the high-end treatment it deserves at long last.

Friday, April 12, 2019

X-MEN: GRAND DESIGN VOLUME 2

Cartoonist: Ed Piskor | Editor: Chris Robinson
X-Men Group Editor: Jordan D. White | Editor-in-Chief: C.B. Cebulski
And a bunch of other stupid credits I don't want to type out, because Marvel likes to credit every executive who took so much as a single sideways glance at every comic they publish.

I had fairly high hopes for the first X-MEN: GRAND DESIGN volume, in spite of some reservations regarding Ed Piskor's artwork. And while I didn't love some of the liberties it took with the X-Men's established history, it wasn't an awful read and, and it left me interested, if nothing else, to see what Piskor would do in the subsequent book, which would cover my personal favorite X-Men era -- and my all-time favorite comic book run -- the Chris Claremont/Dave Cockrum/John Byrne/Paul Smith era on UNCANNY X-MEN.

Unfortunately, what goodwill Piskor had gained from his first installment is squandered by this one.

The two issues contained in this book cover the entire Claremont/Cockrum/Byrne/Smith run mentioned above, opening with the events of GIANT-SIZE X-MEN #1 and concluding shortly after the "From the Ashes" storyline. Issue 3 opens with the X-Mansion deserted. We're told it's been this way for months, and the implication is that the X-Men have been trapped on the sentient island of Krakoa for that entire time -- which seems a bit odd; the story in GIANT-SIZE X-MEN #1 has always read to me as a very compressed timeline, with the X-Men missing for a few days or a week, tops.

At any rate, Piskor uses this absence to allow the Hellfire Club to bug the mansion, erasing from his retelling the story in which the club sends their operative, Warhawk, to do the job in X-MEN #110. Again, as I mentioned once or twice last week, I like some aspects of Piskor's work in this series. Here, he sets up the Hellfire Club as the main antagonists of this entire era, presenting them early on as a shadowy cabal spying on the X-Men. This is the sort of thing I feel a retelling of this sort should do -- set up an overarching plot where originally none existed, or where one was later retroactively established, as would be the case with the Hellfire Club's involvement in both the Warhawk episode and the attack of the Sentinels in issue 98.

X-MEN: GRAND DESIGN VOLUME 1

I picked up X-MEN: GRAND DESIGN solely for its premise. It's been quite a while since I bought a comic with artwork that doesn't appeal to me solely for the story, but this series' conceit was too fascinating to pass up: a condensed retelling of the X-Men's long and convoluted history, written as if everything had been planned out in advance. So I bought the first two volumes in various Comixology sales last year.

Now, I wasn't expecting auteur Ed Piskor to truly cram every bit of X-lore into his retelling; to do so would be an undertaking of insane proportions. So I figured there would be some streamlining here and there. What I didn't expect, however, was for the story to be some sort of parallel universe X-history, explicitly removing and/or changing bits of backstory in the service of Piskor's narrative. But sadly, that's what we have here.

The first issue (comprising the first half of volume 1), covers Charles Xavier's childhood and early years, and follows him as he meets a number of mutants and recruits his original team of X-Men. We see Xavier's interactions with his stepbrother, Cain Marko, and Marko's presumed death in the temple of Cyttorak during the Korean War. We see Xavier's travels in Cairo, during which he comes across young Ororo Monroe, as well as his time in Isreal with Gabrielle Haller and a young man called Magnus (whose own history as Holocaust survivor is told alongside Xavier's).

Unfortunately, this is where Piskor's changes begin to pop up. We're told that Xavier lost the use of his legs when the Cyttorak temple collapsed, rather than in battle with the alien warlord, Lucifer. In theory, removing Lucifer from Professor X's backstory is fine; however the result finds Xavier in a wheelchair during his time in Isreal, which was not the case originally. It's a little thing, but little continuity glitches are often the most likely to irritate me because there's no real reason to get them wrong.

CAPTAIN AMERICA, SPIDER-MAN, AND THE X-MEN

It's hard to believe, but I haven't written anything about a Marvel series here in nearly a year, when I looked at X-MEN '92 last March! My Mondays have been nonstop DC for fourteen months now, while my Fridays have been dedicated to other characters, universes, and publishers. So, if for no other reason than to justify all those little heads up top, I figured I should head back to the House of Ideas for a few weeks in an All-Digital Review Grab Bag!

We'll lead off this Friday with THE ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN AMERICA, a 1991 limited series by Fabian Nicieza and Kevin Maguire. Then, one week later, we'll stick with Nicieza and jump ahead a decade for 2001's SPIDER-MAN: LIFELINE, drawn by Steve Rude.

Then we'll look at a couple of odd projects that tickle my recent interest in newspaper adventure strips: CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE 1940S NEWSPAPER STRIP, a project written and drawn by Karl Kesel in 2010, meant to read as it it were a vintage strip from the Golden Age, and the SPIDEY SUNDAY SPECTACULAR, a 2011 collection of backup pages from a run of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN issues, written by Stan Lee and drawn by Marcos Martin in another comic strip-inspired pastiche.

And after those, we'll wrap up with Marvel's Merry Mutants in a two-week look at X-MEN: GRAND DESIGN, a still-ongoing series of one-shots by writer/artist Ed Piskor which retells the X-Men's story from the beginning using the conceit that every later development was planned in advance.

So... face front this Friday, frantic ones! Mighty Marvel's comin' atcha!

Sunday, January 27, 2019

THE UNBOXING - JANUARY 2019

We'll kick things off this month with the Christmas Unboxing -- a few gifts from my family on December 25th. First and foremost among these is STAR WARS ART: RALPH McQUARRIE, a massive two-volume slipcased set collecting all the artwork McQuarrie did as a concept artist on the original STAR WARS movies. I'm positively in love with these books, and I may have to do a post about them at some point, if I ever get around to it.

Also, from my wife, we have Fantagraphics' CARL BARKS DISNEY LIBRARY: THE LOST PEG LEG MINE and CARL BARKS DISNEY LIBRARY: THE BLACK PEARLS OF TABU YAMA. I think I mentioned last year that my wife has been giving me these books every year for Christmas for a few years now (Fantagraphics releases two volumes per year). I believe there are only around ten books left before the full series is collected, but I could be mistaken. In any case, I read Barks' stories through Gladstone Comics when I was in elementary school, but I've never touched them since. Still, somehow they're indelibly burned into my brain to the point that every time I get a new volume, memories rush back as if I just read them yesterday.

I also made a number of digital purchases through Comixology via their year-end sales. From Dark Horse, several books which are no longer available to buy, since the company has now lost its license to Marvel: THE SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN vols. 1 - 9 (the series ran much longer, but I believe this is the full Roy Thomas run, which is all I really wanted), and CONAN: THE DAUGHTERS OF MIDORA AND OTHER STORIES.

From DC, I grabbed WONDER WOMAN/CONAN and BATMAN AND THE OUTSIDERS vol. 2. From Fantagraphics, I picked up THE CARL BARKS LIBRARY: THE BLACK PEARLS OF TABU YAMA (yes, I'm double-dipping on these. I like having "digital copies" of a lot of my books) and THE DON ROSA LIBRARY: THE THREE CABALLEROS (I want to own Barks in physical format, but I'm okay going digital-only for Rosa).

And from Marvel, I got THOR BY WALTER SIMONSON vol. 3 and vol. 4, TOMB OF DRACULA: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION vol. 2, X-MEN CLASSIC: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION vol. 1, X-MEN: GRAND DESIGN vol. 2, and X-MEN: THE MAGNETO WAR.

And that about covers my merry holiday haul. We'll check in next month for more of the same!

Friday, December 28, 2018

THE UNBOXING - DECEMBER 2018

What's this? A Friday Unboxing?! Yes, due to the holidays, I didn't have time to photograph any new books earlier in the month, but I still wanted to get this post up in December -- so here we are. Plus, it allows me a Friday off to gear up for the beginning of the year! (And technically it'll be two Fridays off, as next week will simply be an announcement of the review series to lead off 2019.)

Anyway...

It's the most X-Men time of the year (partly because one of the below books shipped to me a month late). Of the four Marvel volumes below, three spotlight the House of Ideas' mightiest mutants. But first, from the "Non-Mutant Super Hero" realm (with apologies to Spider-Man), we have the MOON KNIGHT EPIC COLLECTION: FINAL REST, which wraps up the original series run by Moon Knight's creator, Doug Moench, and most influential artist, Bill Sienkiewicz.

Then, moving into the X-Universe, we've got X-MEN: GAMBIT: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION vol. 2, finishing the Fabian Nicieza/Steve Skroce series from the late nineties. (And it's a long overdue volume, I might add -- book one came out nearly three years ago, in March of 2016!)

From around the same timeframe is X-MEN: MAGNETO WAR, a thick trade paperback collecting roughly the first half of Alan Davis's X-Men run of 1999-ish. Thanks to this book alongside a number of other volumes from ten or so years ago, that full Davis era is now reprinted. I really, really liked these comics at the time, though I'm not sure how well they hold up today -- but nonetheless, I'm extremely happy to have them all collected.

Lastly is the biggie of the month (which is the one that actually came out in November): the X-MEN: MUTANT MASSACRE OMNIBUS. Now it's true that Marvel already released an oversized hardcover of this crossover some years back. I reviewed it here. But this collection made for an easy upgrade, as far as I'm concerned. In addition to adding a few issues of UNCANNY X-MEN that had never before been collected, plugging a gap between the original MUTANT MASSACRE book and the FALL OF THE MUTANTS hardcover which followed, this Omnibus also squeezes in several other odds and ends, such as an annual or two and the X-MEN VS. THE FANTASTIC FOUR and X-MEN VS. THE AVENGERS limited series -- thus making for a much more comprehensive volume than the previous edition.

And on the digital end of things, thanks to a couple of recent Comixology/Amazon sales, I also picked up BATMAN AND THE OUTSIDERS vol. 2 from DC, and SILVER SURFER EPIC COLLECTION: THANOS QUEST from Marvel.

Not a bad way to end a year! We'll soon find out if 2019 can top it.

Sunday, September 23, 2018

THE UNBOXING - SEPTEMBER 2018

Just one book this month, and it's a volume I'm very pleased to own: THE WEDDING OF CYCLOPS AND PHOENIX hardcover. Some years back, before I started this blog, Marvel released much of this material in a paperback edition, which is still available secondhand (and I reviewed it here). But that didn't stop them from putting out an updated and revised hardcover edition just this month.

I really do intend to get my semi-monthly photo-reviews of X-Men books up and running again in the near future (possibly to kick off 2019), so I won't gush much about this book here and now, other than to say that, while it removes one issue that was in the prior paperback edition (X-MEN ANNUAL #2), it more than makes up for that by filling in a bunch of issues of X-MEN that hadn't yet been collected, along with several other odds and ends -- including the "Bloodties" crossover with AVENGERS, thus making prior editions of that particular book obsolete as well. Plus, it's a hardcover rather than a paperback -- I daresay this is what the initial volume should have been in the first place, but I'm happy Marvel has corrected their prior mistake.

So with this one on the shelf, another Unboxing comes to a close. Catch you in October!

Friday, August 31, 2018

THE "PERSONAL GOLDEN AGE"

It's weird how these things go. A month or so back, I was thinking about typing up a debriefing on this year's Comic-Con -- but as usual, while I enjoyed myself, I find that I have very little to put to screen regarding my time there. It was fine, but a lot of the experience for me is simply spending time with friends who I don't see as often as I used to. The con itself is almost secondary nowadays to the hanging around, the games, and the eating out around town.

But as I mulled over whether or not to bother with a recap essay, I mused that the first SDCC I attended was nineteen years ago, in 1999 (and if you think that means I'll find a way to commemorate twenty years of Comic-Con next summer, True Believer, you've got me figured out). I started thinking about what the convention was like back then and the sorts of panels I attended. Then, the kicker -- my iPad wallpaper as I entertained these thoughts was an Avengers image by George Pérez, and I noted the year he'd drawn it beside his signature: 1997 (that's it at right).

I thought some more. We're more than twenty years removed now from the start of the Busiek/Pérez AVENGERS run, the Busiek/Bagley THUNDERBOLTS run, Spider-Man's Clone Saga, "Onslaught", and so forth, and it's been almost twenty years since my first Comic-Con. That got me thinking about the concept of the "Personal Golden Age" of comics, which I've seen now and then on the internet: the idea that everyone has an era where comics captured their imagination more than any time before or after. For some, it was probably right when they got into comics. For others, like me, it came a bit later.

THE UNBOXING - AUGUST 2018

It's a throwback Unboxing this month -- nothing digital, no "Junior" edition; just two physical books from the Big Two publishers.

From DC, it's volume 3 of BATMAN AND ROBIN ADVENTURES, finishing that series and concluding DC's tie-ins with the original iteration of BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES. The subsequent series, BATMAN: GOTHAM ADVENTURES, adapted the retooled NEW BATMAN ADVENTURES era of the show. Hopefully DC has plans to continue this trade paperback series into that run as well. GOTHAM ADVENTURES was by far the longest running of all the tie-in series, but in total it came to about as many issues as BATMAN ADVENTURES and BATMAN AND ROBIN ADVENTURES combined.

And from Marvel, we have the X-MEN REVOLUTION BY CHRIS CLAREMONT OMNIBUS. Why did I buy this? Even I'm not entirely certain. I didn't like these issues when they first came out. By most accounts, they haven't aged well at all. They were filled with lame villains, random alterations to status quos and unnecessary costume changes for nearly every character. Perhaps tellingly, I have yet to remove the shrink wrap from the book. Usually I free an Omnibus as soon as I receive it, to peruse the pages within. But Marvel uploaded nearly every issue contained in this book to their Unlimited service practically right after it hit shelves, so if I really want to revisit the material, I can do it there.

I think I really only bought this one to maintain my nineties X-Men completist mentality -- I really do love the idea of having every X-MEN and UNCANNY X-MEN issue from that decade on my shelves. And while this book mostly collects material from 2000, it still "feels" like a continuation of the nineties. But at the same time, I question whether I really need this stuff. If you told me the X-Men's saga ended with Alan Davis's final issue in 1999, I'd be totally on board with that (even with my favorite X-Man, Cyclops, merged with Apocalypse).

So, yeah... while I wouldn't say I have buyer's remorse about this one, I'll admit it's a book I probably don't need and will likely only read/peruse once in my entire adult life. In fact, there's a good chance I might just sell it someday, never removed from its shrink wrap.

Friday, August 10, 2018

A MILESTONE TO CELEBRATE

Just about four-and-a-half years ago, I put up a post discussing how close Marvel was to collecting, via a mix of hardcover and paperback, my definitive X-Men run -- the beginning of the Chris Claremont era, circa 1975, through the end of the Scott Lobdell era, circa 1997. At the time, a lot had been collected -- the majority of the issues, in fact -- but there were still holes to be plugged in both the Claremont period and the Lobdell/Fabian Nicieza period, and certain older editions were crying for updates.

Well, today I can finally say my goal is complete. Mind you, the book hasn't been published yet, but with the recent Amazon ghost listing for an X-MEN: ONSLAUGHT AFTERMATH volume to plug the very last remaining gap next spring, it's safe to declare that within the year, that run of twenty-two years' worth of X-Men will be fully represented on my bookshelf -- and the vast majority of it will be in a handsome hardcover format.

The Claremont stuff was a no-brainer. We all knew it would be released in its totality eventually. You can't ignore the definitive run by the definitive creator in a franchise's history. But I will never cease to marvel (no pun intended) at the fact that the much more divisive and oft-derided material from the nineties will be comprehensively collected, too. And we're not just talking the Lobdell/Nicieza era here, either. Beyond "X-Cutioner's Song", "Fatal Attractions", "Phalanx Covenant", "Age of Apocalypse", "Onslaught", "Zero Tolerance", and everything in between, Marvel has also collected (or will have collected, again, within the year) the full Joe Kelly/Steve Seagle run which followed Lobdell, as well as the Alan Davis run that came after them. Plus, just this month, Claremont's ill-received return to the series via the "Revolution" event found its way to hardcover via an Omnibus. It's all out there. The entire decade of the nineties for X-MEN and UNCANNY X-MEN exists in hardcover and/or trade paperback (as well as in digital format), preserved for all time in glossy, high-end collections.

Mind you, happy as I am to have all this stuff available, I won't complain if Marvel eventually upgrades all the paperbacks to hardcover format (I'd dearly love an Omnibus of the 1999 Alan Davis run, for example). And I'll continue to update my X-MEN COLLECTED EDITIONS CHART whenever something like that happens. But for the time being, at least, I'm taking a rest. I can see the end of the road, and it's a wonderful thing. The X-Men -- my X-Men -- will soon be home for good, and I couldn't be happier.

(Now, will all these books upcoming in the next year or so to round things out, it's probably time I resurrected my semi-monthly photo-reviews of the things...)

Sunday, July 29, 2018

THE UNBOXING - JULY 2018

I'm getting this one in just under the wire for the month, but there's a reason: I picked something up at Comic-Con that I wanted to include for our July Unboxing. First, however, a quick Digital Unboxing: You'll recall that just last month, I grabbed digital versions of a bunch of Dark Horse's USAGI YOJIMBO SAGA books, with plans to get the remaining, earlier Usagi stuff from Fantagraphics whenever they had a sale. Well, that time came sooner than expected, with a linewide Comixology/Amazon sale of the publisher's wares just this month. As such, I picked up USAGI YOJIMBO BOOK 1: THE RONIN, USAGI YOJIMBO BOOK 2: SAMURAI, USAGI YOJIMBO BOOK 3: THE WANDERER'S ROAD, USAGI YOJIMBO BOOK 4: THE DRAGON BELLOW CONSPIRACY, USAGI YOJIMBO BOOK 5: LONE GOAT AND KID, USAGI YOJIMBO BOOK 6: CIRCLES, and USAGI YOJIMBO BOOK 7: GEN' STORY, making me (as far as I know) the proud owner of all collected Usagi stories to date.

I also took advantage of a Viz sale to grab DRAGON BALL SUPER vol. 1, vol. 2, and vol. 3, adapting the ongoing TV series into a manga format (which is totally the opposite of the original DRAGON BALL/DRAGON BALL Z, which was a manga adapted to television.

And now the biggy: from IDW (in cooperation with Marvel), the John Byrne's X-Men Artifact Edition. There have been a few of IDW's "Artist Edition" books which have intrigued me; specifically the John Romita Spider-Man books and the Walter Simonson Thor book, but I've always balked a bit at the price and considered them non-essential items. This, however, is the first in the series which really piqued my interest, and which I considered a must-have.

So since I had wanted the book anyway, when I saw IDW offering an SDCC exclusive version with an alternate cover, signed and hand-numbered by Byrne himself, I jumped to pre-order, and picked it up the first day of the show. I've only skimmed it so far, but it's really nice -- and it's huge! This is the first Artist Edition book I've seen in person, and even though I know how big comic book art pages are, it's still larger than I expected. I can't wait to really sit down and peruse this thing.

But for now, that's it. Will there be an Unboxing in August? Last year that started a three-month stretch of nothing. This time, I guess we'll find out together.

Sunday, May 13, 2018

THE UNBOXING - MAY 2018

Marvel comes at us with two books this month; a trade paperback and hardcover. The trade is CAPTAIN AMERICA EPIC COLLECTION: THE BLOODSTONE HUNT, plugging a long-lived hole in Marvel's reprints of Mark Gruenwald's CAPTAIN AMERICA. Slotted between the previously released THE CAPTAIN collection and the STREETS OF POISON EPIC COLLECTION, and combined with the SOCIETY OF SERPENTS EPIC COLLECTION and JUSTICE IS SERVED EPIC COLLECTION, this book now completes a full run of CAPTAIN AMERICA issues 302 through 386, plus assorted annual and other goodies! Essentially this is the first half of Gruenwald's ten-year run on the bookshelf, and while the second half has seen some spotty collection over the years, it seems only a matter of time before it, too, receives the comprehensive Epic Collection treatment.

And from the X-Office of the nineties, we have the X-MEN: LEGIONQUEST hardcover. This book contains several of the same issues as could be found in the X-MEN: AGE OF APOCALYPSE PRELUDE book from some years back, though that was a volume I never picked up due to very poor reviews of the paper quality -- which turns out to have been the right choice in retrospect, as this book offers a significant upgrade in size and quality.

And now a new edition of the Junior Unboxing! It came to my attention recently that Marvel published a second edition of the AVENGERS STORYBOOK COLLECTION, just released last month, containing all-new tales aimed at younger readers. I snagged it and, while I was at it, picked up 5-MINTUE SPIDER-MAN STORIES (2017 edition) and the SPIDER-MAN STORYBOOK COLLECTION (2016 edition), both of which also offer (mostly) new contents as well. I spoke a few months back about the Marvel Storybook Universe I'm compiling and suggested I might write a post about it -- and that's still my plan, but the addition of these three books has me revising the universe, so the post has been delayed. I suspect it'll probably arrive this summer for the one or two people who might any interest.

I think that's it for May, so we'll reconvene in a month to see what shows up next!

Sunday, April 15, 2018

THE UNBOXING - APRIL 2018

Mighty Marvel has two books for us this month, a matching pair titled X-MEN BLUE vol. 0: REUNION and X-MEN GOLD vol. 0: HOMECOMING. Why they chose to title these as if they were entries in the ongoing X-MEN BLUE and X-MEN GOLD series, which have nothing to do with this material, is anyone's guess -- though I would assume it's just some sort of cross-promotion; i.e. more casual fans might grab these if they seem like they're supposed to go with the other books in those series. To me, though it feels more like false advertising.

But in any case, these two collections, when combined with 2015's THE HUNT FOR PROFESSOR X volume*, encompass the full and complete Steve Seagle/Joe Kelly run on UNCANNY X-MEN and X-MEN from the mid-late-nineties. It was the era that fell between Scott Lobdell's and Alan Davis's runs, and is kind of notorious these days for some serious editorial interference -- but nonetheless, in my quest to own the complete 1990s X-Men, I'm happy to have all three of these volumes in my collection.

(Plug alert: for a pretty comprehensive list of various X-Men collected editions, check out my X-MEN COLLECTIONS page! Crazy as it sounds, by the end of this year, the entirety of nineties X-material will be available in hardcover and/or trade paperback, with the exception of just a handful of issues in the immediate aftermath of the "Onslaught" event. And with all these volumes coming up fast and furious, I may need to get back to my semi-regularly scheduled photo-reviews of X-Men books...)

In the realm of the Digital Unboxing, it's been a busy month for Marvel. Comixology/Amazon have been running some pretty big sales, offering newly released collections at a mere 99¢ a pop -- plus there have been, in recent weeks, two sales offering hundreds of Marvel collections at that same bargain price! So in the past month, I picked up the following in digital format: THE ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN AMERICA, EXCALIBUR EPIC COLLECTION: THE CROSS-TIME CAPER, MARVEL HORROR: THE MAGAZINE COLLECTION, MARVEL SUPER HEROES: CONTEST OF CHAMPIONS, MARVEL TEAM-UP BY CHRIS CLAREMONT & JOHN BYRNE, MASTER OF KUNG FU EPIC COLLECTION: WEAPON OF THE SOUL, NAMOR VISIONARIES: JOHN BYRNE vol. 1 and vol. 2, NEW MUTANTS EPIC COLLECTION: CURSE OF THE VALKYRIES, SPIDER-MAN: THE GRAPHIC NOVELS, THANOS: THE INFINITY SIBLINGS, VAMPIRE TALES vol. 1, vol. 2, and vol. 3, WEREWOLF BY NIGHT: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION vol. 2, WOLVERINE & NICK FURY: SCORPIO, X-MEN: GRAND DESIGN, X-MEN: LEGIONQUEST, X-MEN BLUE vol. 0: REUNION, and X-MEN GOLD vol. 0: HOMECOMING. (Those last two sound familiar for some reason...)

I would've grabbed more, but I already own many of the other 99¢ offerings I want from previous sales! Still, to drive home the point: that's twenty books for less than $20.00!

But sadly, it seems like this run may have ended. From what I've read, irate retailers bullied Marvel into contacting Amazon/Comixology about the sales, and a week or so after, the 99¢ offerings vanished from Comixology's site -- so it seems probable the same will happen on Amazon eventually. Mind you, I don't think anyone ever expected this to last; it was obviously some sort of experiment on Amazon's part, but it's still a shame the plug was pulled so quickly due to a retailer hissy fit. I was grabbing lots of stuff I wouldn't ordinarily have touched through these sales, as well as backup "digital copies" of many books I already own.

Oh, well... at the very least, we can hold out hope that the big, more-or-less quarterly price drops will continue on Amazon, where digital collections, while not discounted as drastically as to 99¢, go down to something like three or four dollars a pop.

It's been three years since THE HUNT FOR PROFESSOR X collection came out?! I checked to verify while typing up this post, seriously thinking it must have been just last year, or winter 2016 at the latest. You can't imagine how my jaw dropped when I saw the release date. How time flies!

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