Description: Romita, John, Jr., and Windsor-Smith, Barry, and Golden, Michael, and Blevins, Bret, and Leialoha, Steve. New. No dust jacket as issued. New paperback with very light shelfwear. Securely packed. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 632 p. Contains: Illustrations. Essential X-Men, 5. Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Marvel Enterprises
Date Published: 2007-04-11
ISBN-13:9780785126928ISBN:0785126929
Description: NEW. Softcover. From an inventory that is 100% brand-new, 100% direct from the publishers' distribution channel. We carry NO pre-owned, NO remaindered. We pack in CARDBOARD to ensure the pristine quality is maintained. (Bubble-wrap alone is NOT sufficient to protect from USPS equipment. ) Guaranteed brand-NEW, protected with CARDBOARD, your satisfaction is guaranteed. BKLUVID: 9780785126928. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Diamond Comic Distributors
Date Published: 2007
ISBN-13:9780785126928ISBN:0785126929
Description: The X-Men face off with some of their greatest foes in this all-new edition-including the Juggernaut, Doctor Doom and the Hellfire Club's newest recruits, the Hellions-and team up with the Avengers, Spider-Man, Power Pack and more! Featuring the... read more
"Yeah, I almost missed a couple buses with this one. Chris Claremont is repetitively cheesy, but the characters are really awesome. All of them uniquely scarred and tortured just makes it a compelling read. The guest appearances by lame Power Pack and Alpha Flight made me realize how sympathetic a team of weirdos is."
"This is where you start to feel that you don't get the full story in the pages of the Essential. And it is a tad frustrating. These big ol' collections are great for a continuity nut, but New Mutants starts playing so strongly into book and mini-series are starting to pop up, and there's that whole Secret Wars deal. What is more, Claremont wanders a bit through this essential. He's really starting to shake up the team but he doesn't seem to quite have a definite plan.
It isn't all bad though. Rachel Summers swings into the spotlight a bit, which annoys many others, but I find her story interesting at least in potential if not execution. Actually, she may be the true downfall of this period of books. But my hope in her potential carries me through. Rogue has a good psychotic episode.
The two Barry Windsor-Smith illustrated stories are intended to be the highlights of the book. When they put the title on the front like that someone is banking on it being a classic story everyone will remember. Mostly I just see cheap copies of Life-Death I everywhere. I enjoyed Life-Death II better. Neither is a bad story, and Windsor-Smith's art is appreciable if not especially interesting to me.
Most of the book is John Romita Jr. art. I was getting frustrated with him at the start, it kinda cooled down towards the end. I seem to always be swinging between liking and disliking his art at this point. It is kinda frustrating. I almost want someone I can stand on one side of the fence or the other on. You can also tell he's drawing in the 80s. Mullets and big hair and Rachel's bizarre (it seriously looks like an exercise) costume and her rat tail. It all just looks really bad and dated. But good for a laugh.
Anyways, Claremont is still ripping up the foundation and he is going to keep it up for some time. A lot of people don't like this because they want to read a familiar X-Men comic, but it is nice to be free from the status quo. Claremont doesn't excel in his freedom at this point. I wonder if he was afraid to move too far from the status quo. In the end he will move much further and then restore everything back to the way it was just in time to leave the ship."
"Still a fun mix of superheroics and soap opera elements, but at this point, the X-book inertia is starting to settle in. This is around the point when the X-Men started being insanely popular, have already garnered one spin-off (New Mutants), there's another not too far down the pike (X-Factor), the various spin-off mini-series are really starting to pile up, and everything's starting to passively crossover into one another. But we don't get all of those crossovers in this book (no New Mutants issues, nor the Kitty Pryde & Wolverine mini), so references are made to things happening in the other books, but as far as this one is concerned, that's all off-camera. It's a bit disjointed at times as a result.
If you're a fan, there's lots of fun reading here, but to be completely honest, this is the point where the Essential X-Men series pretty much stops being truly essential."
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