UNCANNY X-MEN OMNIBUS VOLUME 3

Hardcover, 2016. Collects 1982-84's UNCANNY X-MEN #154 - 175, X-MEN ANNUAL #6 & 7, SPECIAL EDITION X-MEN #1, MARVEL GRAPHIC NOVEL #5, WOLVERINE #1 - 4, and MAGIK: STORM AND ILLYANA #1 - 4.

I like the X-Men, for the most part, throughout their entire history (at least up to around 2001 or so when I stopped following them regularly). But there are some eras I only tolerate, and others I consider definitive. For me, the most definitive period in X-Men lore is UNCANNY X-MEN issues 94 - 175 (technically I prefer to include 176 as well, but I won't quibble if a collection spanning that stretch omits it). This volume completes that run for me, and if Marvel never produces another UNCANNY X-MEN OMNIBUS, I'll be content.

While it's the Chris Claremont/John Byrne material which is the heart of those eighty or so issues, there's plenty to enjoy beyond Byrne's departure. Dave Cockrum, who shepherded in the era of the "new" X-Men with Len Wein and then Claremont on writing chores, returned as series penciler with issue 145, and the first chunk of his second run was included in the second UNCANNY X-MEN OMNIBUS. As I discussed when I covered that book a couple years ago, once upon a time Marvel's Omnibuses followed a pretty strict routine of cramming a few previously published Marvel Masterworks volumes into one book and sending it off to the printers, with no regard to story flow. This resulted in UNCANNY OMNIBUS volume 1 ending in the middle of the "Dark Phoenix Saga".

Not so anymore! UNCANNY OMNIBUS 2 broke the trend and reprinted only a portion of the seventh UNCANNY X-MEN MASTERWORKS, stopping after issue 153. The reason, as we see here, was to avoid separating the long "Brood saga" into two books. With some interludes for other adventures, the Brood storyline runs all the way from UNCANNY 154 through 167! And, thanks to modern Marvel's more enlightened decision-makers, the entire epic is reprinted here.

X-MEN: ASGARDIAN WARS HARDCOVER

Hardcover, 2009. Collects 1985's X-MEN AND ALPHA FLIGHT #1 - 2, NEW MUTANTS SPECIAL EDITION, and X-MEN ANNUAL #9.

Published in 2009, ASGARDIAN WARS is a very slim hardcover collecting only four issues. It begins with an introduction by Chris Claremont, written in 1988 for a trade paperback edition of this material, then continues into 1985's two-issue X-MEN/ALPHA FLIGHT mini-series. Each issue is double-sized, written by Claremont and illustrated by Paul Smith and Bob Wiacek. The story features the X-Men of the era setting out to find their leader emeritus, Cyclops, after his plane crashes. The mutants team up with Canada's super-team, Alpha Flight, and find themselves eventually dealing with Loki of Asgard.

Aside from Smith's artwork, I was never much of a fan of this story as a kid. The Asgardian stuff seems an odd choice to mix with the X-Men (and this is coming from someone who loves when they go into space now and then). Plus the story was created during one of my least-favorite periods for the X-Men, the mid-eighties era when Cyclops was not a regular member, when Rachel Summers was a regular member, and when Storm sported her dumb mohawk and leathers.

So given my distaste for both the premise and status quo, it's not really surprising I consider this story skippable. The fact that Smith only gets to draw his brilliant rendition of Cyclops in costume for a couple pages at the very end only adds to my dissatisfaction.

THE UNBOXING - FEBRUARY 2015

Three items arrived this month; two of which I've awaited for quite a while, for varying reasons.

But first is AME-COMI GIRLS, volume three from DC. Some may recall that I reviewed volume one last year, and I received volume two a few months ago. I was originally going to cover the second volume soon after I got it, but ultimately decided to do both it and three in two consecutive weeks once both were available. So watch for that very soon.