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X-Statix Omnibus by Peter Milligan & Mike Allred (Review/Retrospective)

With our month looking at Avengers comics officially over, we thought it might be fun to dig into that other iconic Marvel property, the X-Men. Join us for a month of X-Men related reviews and discussion.

There’s been a lot written about how fiendishly clever Peter Milligan and Mike Allred’s X-Statix was when it was published by Marvel in the early part of the last decade. Spanning two titles (beginning in X-Force and then spinning into its own title in X-Statix), it offered a forty-issue re-examination of the core X-Men thesis. Published at approximately the same time, it actually serves as something of a spiritual companion to Grant Morrison’s equally controversial, challenging and provocative New X-Men run. Both series dared to consider that Chris Claremont’s once revolutionary idea, casting mutants as a feared minority because they were inherently “different” might need revision in the early years of the twenty-first century. Both series have been attacked by critics for not conforming to the model that Claremont designed for the franchise three decades earlier. However, I’m going to be controversial, and I’m going to state that both Morrison and Milligan were more faithful spiritual successors to Claremont than any X-Men writers since the nineties.

Nobody’s Doop…

Note: You can read my review of Milligan and Allred’s initial X-Force run, collected in the hardcover “Famous, Mutant & Mortal” here. This is a review of the recently-published omnibus, which collects all their work on the characters, so I won’t go into too much depth on that initial run.

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Wolverine by Jason Aaron Omnibus, Vol. I (Review)

With our month looking at Avengers comics officially over, we thought it might be fun to dig into that other iconic Marvel property, the X-Men. Join us for a month of X-Men related reviews and discussion.

Wolverine shouldn’t be a tough character to get right. He’s a fairly simple archetype, one often seen in the annals of pulp fiction history. He’s the Man With No Name, the ronin, the warrior who has lived through the war. He’s a man who is a weapon, even if he doesn’t necessarily want to be. He’s badass, he’s a loner, and he doesn’t take any nonsense from anyone or anything. It’s easy to see why the character is one of Marvel’s most iconic fictional creations, right up there with Spider-Man in terms of recognition. However, it seems that many writers struggle in characterising the most famous mutant. Arguably the writer with the best handle on Wolverine since Chris Claremont left Uncanny X-Men was Mark Millar, who wrote two of the character’s more memorable stories (Enemy of the State and Old Man Logan). However, this collection makes a nice argument for Jason Aaron as the logical successor to the writer who defined the bladed Canadian.

It’s hardly cutting edge, but it is good comics…

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X-Men: Inferno – Excalibur (Review/Retrospective)

With our month looking at Avengers comics officially over, we thought it might be fun to dig into that other iconic Marvel property, the X-Men. Join us for a month of X-Men related reviews and discussion.

This weekend, we’re taking a look at one or two of the smaller Inferno crossovers. These issues are collected in the crossovers companion book.

It’s actually quite impressive to think of the mythology-building that Chris Claremont was responsible during his incredible run on Uncanny X-Men. The X-Men had, of course, been confined to reprints for years before Len Wein revived the concept in Giant-Sized X-Men #1, but Claremont guided Marvel’s merry mutants to the heights of success. I think it’s entirely appropriate that the first issue in his last arc, X-Men #1, remains the biggest-selling comic book of all time – cementing Claremont’s impact.

Even though many people would argue the X-Men only really exploded during the speculation bubble of the nineties, it’s remarkable just how much Claremont and his collaborators were expanding the line. By the end of the eighties, Uncanny X-Men had accumulated several satellite books. Of those, Claremont had the pleasure of working with renowned artist Bill Sienkiewicz on New Mutants, while Excalibur paired the scribe with Alan Davis, one of the most respected artists in the business.

What possessed them to come to New York?

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X-Men: Inferno – Fantastic Four (Review/Retrospective)

With our month looking at Avengers comics officially over, we thought it might be fun to dig into that other iconic Marvel property, the X-Men. Join us for a month of X-Men related reviews and discussion.

This weekend, we’re taking a look at one or two of the smaller Inferno crossovers. These issues are collected in the crossovers companion book.

I have to admit, one of the best things about these companion books collecting the tie-ins to mammoth crossovers like Acts of Vengeance or Inferno is that way that they seem to capture a particular moment in time. In the Inferno collection alone, you get a taste of Walt Simonson’s Avengers, Ann Nocenti’s Daredevil and Chris Claremont’s Excalibur. I will confess that I am woefully poorly versed in the history of The Fantastic Four, arguably Marvel’s “first family.” The issues collected here, for example, are my first sampling of Steve Englehart’s tenure on The Fantastic Four.

A good old fashioned death trap!

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X-Men: Inferno – Avengers (Review/Retrospective)

With our month looking at Avengers comics officially over, we thought it might be fun to dig into that other iconic Marvel property, the X-Men. Join us for a month of X-Men related reviews and discussion.

This weekend, we’re taking a look at one or two of the smaller Inferno crossovers. These issues are collected in the crossovers companion book.

In many ways, Chris Claremont’s Inferno can be read as something of a practice run for John Byrne’s Acts of Vengeance. Both were massive crossovers that spread across a significant portion of Marvel’s publishing line, demanding writers to tie their stories in to these big and over-arching events. While Inferno‘s reach was arguably more modest than that of Acts of Vengeance, it seemed that the demonic invasion of New York could not be contained to the X-Men books, and ended up impacting titles as diverse as The Fantastic Four and Daredevil. Walt Simonson’s Avengers tied into Inferno as well, making an interesting attempt to launch a new team against the backdrop of an X-Men event.

Meet the new team…

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X-Men: Inferno – Daredevil (Review/Retrospective)

With our month looking at Avengers comics officially over, we thought it might be fun to dig into that other iconic Marvel property, the X-Men. Join us for a month of X-Men related reviews and discussion.

This weekend, we’re taking a look at one or two of the smaller Inferno crossovers. These issues are collected in the crossovers companion book.

From what little I’ve read of Ann Nocenti’s Daredevil, I really like it. My experience of her work on the title has been mainly limited to crossovers and tie-ins, but Nocenti has always managed to put her own spin on events – rather than feeling like a satellite title to Mutant Massacre or Fall of the Mutants, her connected issues felt like Daredevil stories staring at a world gone completely mad. It’s a subtle distinction, but one that too few authors remember in this era of event-driven comics. Inferno is no different, as Nocenti manages to take a massive and unfolding X-Men crossover and make it work for her own narrative and characters.

This city’s really going to hell…

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X-Men: Inferno (Review/Retrospective)

With our month looking at Avengers comics officially over, we thought it might be fun to dig into that other iconic Marvel property, the X-Men. Join us for a month of X-Men related reviews and discussion.

I don’t like Inferno. There, I said it. There have been dry patches in Claremont’s Uncanny X-Men run before, and some would argue that his work following Inferno would be quite esoteric, but Inferno has always represented, to me at least, the creative low-point of Claremont’s Uncanny X-Men run. That doesn’t mean that I can’t appreciate it for what it is, or acknowledge the care with which the writer crafted it, but it is just too much of a big random mess to really enjoy it. It’s a disjointed crossover that resolves the long-running Madelyne Pryor mystery that Claremont had been weaving through the book, but also features demons and goblins for some reason. It’s just a great big mess.

There’s a Storm comin’…

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Fall of the Mutants: Uncanny X-Men (Review/Retrospective)

With our month looking at Avengers comics officially over, we thought it might be fun to dig into that other iconic Marvel property, the X-Men. Join us for a month of X-Men related reviews and discussion.

Part of me does feel a little bit sorry for Chris Claremont. After all, his Uncanny X-Men run was trapped in a perpetual second act. He hadn’t introduced the franchise, inheriting it from a bunch of other writers and artists, and he couldn’t resolve it either. So, as a writer, Claremont was charged with keeping readers interested in an on-going narrative that spanned well over a decade. Occasionally, the writer would try to keep things fresh, and Fall of the Mutants represents just such an attempt. Trying to transition his team from one status quo to another, you have to give the writer credit for pitting the team against an enemy who is (effectively) God, even if it does make this chapter in his on-going saga the equivalent of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.

United we fall…

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Fall of the Mutants: X-Factor (Review/Retrospective)

I’ll freely concede that I’m generally wary of Louise Simonson’s X-Factor. Her contributions to the Mutant Massacre were the weakest part of the crossover, and she didn’t exactly make Inferno an exceptionally readable event. While I can understand why some fans are fond of her writing, I’ve found the X-Factor I’ve read to generally be an awkward and heavy-handed attempt to emulate Chris Claremont’s patented soap opera stylings.

However, I will concede when I’m impressed, and Simonson has more than impressed me here. While I respect Claremont’s Uncanny X-Men tie-in to Fall of the Mutants more than I enjoy it, Simonson’s X-Factor feels like a much stronger offering, feeling like the book is really firing on all cylinders. Fall of the Mutants allows Simonson to bring all manner of plotlines to a head, tying together years of build-up into a fascinating, exciting and compelling pay-off. I have no qualms in suggesting that Simonson’s X-Factor is the highlight of this gigantic collection.

A wing and a prayer…

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X-Men: The Asgardian Wars (Review)

With our month looking at Avengers comics officially over, we thought it might be fun to dig into that other iconic Marvel property, the X-Men. Join us for a month of X-Men related reviews and discussion.

It has been said that the X-Men rarely interact with the broader Marvel Universe. While characters like Wolverine and the Beast might have appeared on a roster or two of The Avengers, and Storm might have popped up in Fantastic Four, events within the X-Men line seemed to be self-contained, with Marvel’s mutants generally fighting their own problems in their own way. After all, Captain America was hardly a champion of civil liberties if he didn’t stand up for mutant rights, so it made sense to keep the mutants relatively self-contained.

However, despite this (somewhat deserved) reputation, it’s interesting to look back at the connections that writer Chris Claremont fostered with the wider Marvel Universe. Some of these (like the Claremont’s frequent connections to the Ka-Zar mythos) were relatively frequent within the pages of the main title (and no less strange for it), but Claremont was also a fan of making an event of a crossover between the X-Men and any other major players – things like Fantastic Four vs. X-Men. This story arc, told over four special issues, is something similar, making a big deal of the crossover between the world of Thor and the X-Men.

The Goddess of Thunder!

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