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!)