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.

X-MEN: MUTANT MASSACRE

Hardcover, 2009. Collects 1986's UNCANNY X-MEN #210 - 214, X-FACTOR #9 - 11, NEW MUTANTS #46, THOR #373 - 374, POWER PACK #27, and DAREDEVIL #238.

Published in 2009, X-MEN: MUTANT MASSACRE was, to my knowledge, Marvel's first attempt to collect the complete "Mutant Massacre" event in on volume, including not only the pertinent issues of the mutant titles, X-MEN, NEW MUTANTS, and X-FACTOR, but also the various tangential crossover material from DAREDEVIL, THOR, and POWER PACK.

The book opens with UNCANNY X-MEN #210, X-FACTOR #9, UNCANNY #211, and X-FACTOR #10. From there, we move into the majority of the one- and two-off chapters -- NEW MUTANTS #46, THOR #373, POWER PACK #27, and THOR #374. Then it's back to the "core" material in UNCANNY #212 and X-FACTOR #11, followed by DAREDEVIL's contribution in issue 238, and then the saga is capped off by UNCANNY 213 and 214, which was not originally identified as an official piece of the crossover, but which provides a nice coda to the whole thing.

The reproduction of most of these issues is very nice, with the criminal exception of Alan Davis's X-MEN 213 (below), which looks absolutely horrid and represents an unforgivable crime against one of Marvel's best artists of all time. That issue is, for me, easily the highlight of "Mutant Massacre" in terms of both story and art, and I can't believe it came out looking so awful in this book.