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X-Men: The Age of Apocalypse Omnibus (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.

The nineties represent a contentious time for fans of the X-Men franchise. The decade saw comic books explode into a huge market, with ridiculous sales and publicity, and the entire X-Men franchise rode that wave perfectly. Chris Claremont and Jim Lee’s adjectiveless X-Men #1 remains the biggest-selling comic book of all time, after all, and the franchise quickly secured itself as Marvel’s premiere comic book franchise. On the other hand, the line had been thrown into disarray by the departure of long-term steward Chris Claremont and its era-defining artist Jim Lee. The family of titles had struggled to find a footing through some uneven crossovers and events like X-Cutioner’s Song and Fatal Attractions. However, I think the decade produced one gem that can be considered as a true classic, along with the best of Claremont’s tenure and the work of Grant Morrison. The Age of Apocalypse might seem an odd choice to identify as one of the highlights of the X-Men saga, but I think it deserves very serious consideration.

Apocalypse now…

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Craig Kyle & Christopher Yost’s Run on X-Force (Hardcover Vol. 1-2) (Review/Retrospective)

I’m really not sure what to make of Craig Kyle and Christopher Yost’s run on X-Force. In many ways, it is a throwback to Rob Liefeld’s nineties team of anti-heroes, only with more gore and violence and dismemberment. On the other hand, it’s also the only book in the X-Men line that explores the dark ramifications of the direction that Marvel has driven the books, and Yost and Kyle are both careful to counterbalance the darkness and graphic violence with remarkably solid character work. It’s always going be in the shadow of Rick Remender’s more conceptually fascinating Uncanny X-Force, but one can see the seeds of that later comic sewn here.

An Angel gets his wings…

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