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.
That end of 99/start 00's X-Men was really bad. I really disliked Davis's run on the book, the Skrull X-Men, the mangeled 12 storyline, it was just all bad and then Claremeonts run, blah.
ReplyDeleteI was a big fan of the Davis run as it was coming out. It felt closer to the Bronze Age than the X-Men had been in quite some time -- but I agree that the Claremont run was not very good at all.
DeleteMan, we 90s kids must have really come home to roost if Marvel sees Monday in an omnibus collection of Claremont's second run. I'm almost excited to get there and re-read it. I knew it was bad when it first came out; I can only imagine how bad it is now, with my critical skills more developed.
ReplyDelete(I have a conflicted relationship with the Davis stuff - a lot of it I like, but I also hate how much the Twelve just completely ignores all the previous teases, because I was so excited to finally get that subplot resolved, and then they did it in a way that may as well have been an entirely new storyline for all its connections to the previous hints).
It's funny; I was thinking about this the other day... I loved Marvel for the bulk of the 90s, but right around the end of the decade, a lot of it went south for me. The Spider-Man relaunch in '99 dampened a lot of my interest in those books, and the "Revolution" and "Counter X" retools in 2000 did the same for the X-Men and their satellite titles.
DeleteSo I started the 90s heavily into Spidey and the X-Men, to the point they were the only Marvels I read up until 1996 -- but by 2000, I barely looked forward to them, while AVENGERS and THUNDERBOLTS were my must-reads every month. (Though, as I discussed in my "Personal Golden Age" post a few weeks back, my interest in those declined as well when George Perez and Mark Bagley, respectively, left the titles.)
I say a lot of nice things about Bob Harras, but his final year or so as Marvel's EiC coincided with the start of my decline in interest. It was almost like a precursor to the Quesada/Jemas era, which practically killed my interest in Marvel as a whole.
Forgot to add that, yeah, Marvel botched "The Twelve" based on the original clues. I had never actually read those old X-FACTOR issues when the later story was published, however (and actually I still haven't), so from that perspective, it wasn't a huge deal. That said, I liked the earlier and middle parts of Davis's run more than the later segment. "Ages of Apocalypse" and "Powerless" did nothing for me when I first read them.
DeleteMy main recollection of "The Twelve" was seeing Alan Davis at Comic-Con in 1999, where he was asked to tease the storyline. He was about to name drop one or two of the Twelve, and this tool from the Mighty Marvel Marketing panel, who was standing directly in front of the dais, quickly turned around and shushed him. I'm not sure I realized it at the time, but the guy was clearly there just to police the creators and make sure they didn't let slip anything that wasn't for public consumption. Pretty stupid.