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Getting through the Silver Age Era of the X-Men is the most difficult time I've had reading X-Men comics. It's not any worse than the convoluted late 90s where storylines just disappeared as their hacky writers got too overwhelmed to figure out endings. But as I grew up in the 90s and was familiar with that style, I found it easier to eyeroll over those speedbumpy pages than the "Holy, Hannah, it's time for another dull alien or mutant to monologue through a few pages before we never have to think of them again!" era of the X-Men. I made it through this time, though. And while I didn't exactly enjoy it, I finally feel comfortable saying that it doesn't suck, it just isn't for me or very many modern readers. Ed Piskor's Grand Design, which is also not exactly the pinnacle of great writing, is a much more compact way to read the silver-age material, and you really don't miss much. Apart from Neal Adams's evolution in panel design and X-Men costumes from the last dozen or so 1960s comics, there's not a lot of historically relevant art or writing after the first couple of hacky storyarcs in the original series. You'll find that nothing from this post ends up in my headcanon. It doesn't mean this is all bad or that you shouldn't pick it up without gloves, tongs, and a ton of bleach. If you can stomach Silver Age writing, this post is filled with books that provide is a mostly mediocre X-perience. There's certainly no dearth of story here. It's just a repetitive story without a ton of development or interesting villains.   Avengers Epic Masters Of Evil by Roy Thomas, Gary Friedrich, John Buscema, Don Heck, Werner Roth, George Tuska, and Gene Colan X-Men: Prof X, Angel, Cyclops, Beast, Iceman, Jean Grey 1st Appearances: Hawkeye, Hercules, Wonder Man, Black Widow, Dragon Man, Red Guardian, Nick Fury, Power Man, Goliath, The Executioner, Enchantress, Mandarin, AIM, Whirlwind, The Collector, Black Panther, Bucky, Super Adaptoid Also featuring: Scarlet Witch, Magneto, Thor, Captain America, Iron Man, Ant-Man, Wasp, Magneto, Mimic, Hulk, Sue Storm, Mr Fantastic, Thing, Human Torch, Spider-Man, Namor, Dr. Strange, Daredevil While it's not intriguing enough to make my X-Men headcanon, this is a fun, cheesecake factory level comic romp. While most of the volume is just random Avengers adventures with major character inconsistencies and over-the-top writing, the latter third starts to involve X-Men characters. It starts with Magneto returning from the space prison he was kidnapped to in the pages of the X-Men. And eventually we get to see an actual crossover where the X-Men and the Avengers battle before realizing they should be working together. Is it the best crossover you've ever read? Certainly not. Is it a thousand times better than the 2010s Avengers vs X-Men fiasco. Hell. Yes. If you enjoy silver age comics and are an X-Men fan, this Avengers collection is worth picking up. If you're an Avengers fan, you can pretty much skip this one. The non X-Men storylines are a mess.  X-Men First Class Mutant Mayhem by Jeff Parker, Roger Cruz, Kevin Nowlan, Paul Smith, Mike Allred, Nick Dragotta, and Colleen Coover X-Men: Prof X, Angel, Cyclops, Beast, Iceman, Jean Grey 1st Appearances: Invisible Woman, Mr. Fantastic, Thing, Human Torch, Mad Thinker, Hulk Also featuring: Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, Blob, Juggernaut, Dragon Man While not So Good You Don't Have To Read The Original Stuff, Just Read This Instead, this is a solid addition to the early X-Men canon. Sure, it provides a little headache, as the technology and cultural references place this in the early twenty-first century instead of the mid-twentieth, but Parker's ability to get the general feel of the early X-books but infuse more personality and character into the, well, characters. I still recommend this as a buffer between the silver age Epic Collections. In particular, the story where Sue Storm and The Fantastic Four allow Jean Grey some time to spend time with a role model who isn't an angry old man, and Beast and Iceman's road trip to The Florida Keys.  X-Men First Class Brand Of Brothers by Jeff Parker, Roger Cruz, Craig Rousseau, and Colleen Coover X-Men: Prof X, Angel, Cyclops, Beast, Iceman, Jean Grey 1st Appearances: none Also featuring: Sentinels, Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, Mastermind, Magneto, Blob Unfortunately, Marvel's collections editors are rarely ever good at their jobs, so there's a bunch of repeat material in this collection. The new material is okay but not as strong as the previous volumes. This is an entirely skippable chapter of the original team's adventures. It's not part of continuity, it's not very fun or original, and it doesn't add anything to mythos that surrounds it.  X-Men Epic: Lonely Are The Hunted by Roy Thomas, Gary Friedrich, Warner Roth, Don Heck, George Tuska, Ross Andru, Jack Sparling, Dan Adkins, and Jon Buscema X-Men: Prof X, Cyclops, Beast, Iceman, Jean Grey 1st Appearances: Puppet Master, Banshee, Moleman, Mekano, Mutant Master, Changeling Also featuring: Mimic, Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, Spider-Man, Super Adaptiod, The Warlock, Bernard, Zelda, Juggernaut, Dr. Strange, Vanisher, Unus, Blob, Mastermind, Agent Duncan Roy Thomas officially takes over writing duty in this collection. I wish that meant a welcome change from Stan Lee's tortured prose but Thomas was a student of Lee, and continued the stilted dialogue and familiar storytelling techniques that Lee used in his tenure. He does give each X-Man a little bit more of their own voice than Lee, as not every character speaks like Beast from the 90s Animated Series anymore but it's still a slog to get through. The biggest disappointment is that while Thomas has the equivalent craft of Lee, his choice of villains is less inspired. There are several villains in the first half of this collection from "Suspense" and "Strange Tales" but none that you'll remember if you aren't a staunch silver age Marvel comics fan. Apart from Banshee, you really don't see any of these villains popping up again in post-Roy Thomas X-continuity. They just aren't memorable. About halfway through, we move from forgettable villain-of-the-week to let's-get-super-into-continuity-and-examine-the-X-Men's-history-and-sprinkle-in-some-special-guests. After a Juggernaut story, we focus on Factor Three, who were mentioned at the end of the previous volume. I both respect and am confused by the fact that there are more than three of them, and that none of them turn out to be Magneto. But the highlight of the Factor Three story is a one-issue appearance of Spider-Man who is mistakenly believed to be the villain. It totally fits in with his sad sack luck and with the X-Men's punch-first-figure-out-you-messed-up-later approach to pretty much everything. The rest of the volume features more C+ X-Men tales but includes origin stories at the end of each issue. They're stories that were already explored in earlier issues but are told in more detail. They're fine but unnecessary if you're reading these in modern collections. They were mainly for people jumping into the story twenty or thirty issues in who also wouldn't have had any sort of access to the first few issues. Dark days. The collection builds up to a major death. I'm not sure if it's impactful because the intervening fifty-someodd years of history have taught me that the character isn't going to be dead for long. The major con to this story is still Roy Thomas's Stan Leeism-filled writing. Holy Hannah, it's repetitive and annoying. There are also an unfair amount of puns that would be outlawed in a better society. I don't think this would be a highlight, even if you're a silver age fan.  X-Men First Class The Wonder Years by Jeff Parker, Roger Langridge, Nick Dragotta, Roger Cruz, Karl Kesel, Patrick Scherberger, David Williams, Colleen Coover, Dean Haspiel X-Men: Prof X, Angel, Cyclops, Beast, Iceman, Jean Grey, Machine Man 1st Appearances: Galactus, Mysterio, Venom, Doop, Medusa, The Wizard, Spider-Man, Scorpion, Beetle, Gwen Stacy, Agent Baker Also featuring: Sue Storm, Mr. Fantastic, Thing, Human Torch, Zelda, Skrulls Jeff Parker ran out of ideas for his First Class series really quickly. This volume begins with an agonizingly bad "meta" fourth wall breaking story where a group of comic store employees called...prolonged sigh...The Continuiteens have read the previous collections of First Class and find themselves intertwined with the plot. It doesn't even sound like a good idea but it's much worse than it sounds. From there, it gets a bit better, as Angel heads off to spend time with family, and Machine Man briefly joins the team. It's not terrible but it's also not an interesting addition to the X-Men canon. For a series that began with a lot of promise and some creative ways to slip modern stories into the 60s and 70s continuity, this was disappointingly bland. I don't recommend it.  X-Men Epic: The Sentinels Live! by Roy Thomas, Arnold Drake, Linda Fite, Dennis O'Neill, Neal Adams, Jim Steranko, Barry Windsor-Smith, Don Heck, Werner Roth, and Sal Buscema X-Men: Prof X, Angel, Cyclops, Beast, Iceman, Jean Grey, Mimic 1st Appearances: Red Raven, The Warlock, Polaris, Erik The Red, Mesmero, Blastaar, The Dazzler (not to be confused with Dazzler), Candy Southern, Havok, Living Monolith, Sauron, Lorelei, Sunfire Also featuring: Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, Magneto, Toad, Juggernaut, Bernard, Zelda, Blob, Vanisher, Ka-Zar, Hulk Given the quality of the first 48 issues or so of the X-Men, I expected it must have gone downhill a bit when it got cancelled. I actually found the last dozen issues or so to be the most intriguing the series has been so far. While Havoc and Polaris are hardly the most interesting characters ever created, they do add an element of flavor that the book had previously been lacking. The villains continue to be forgettable, and Roy Thomas "Oh Hannah"s hard upon his return, but Neal Adams's panel layouts make the book more visually striking than it has ever been. While I am grateful to be finished with this era of the X-Men comics, I'm glad I finally stuck it out and read the original material so I don't feel like I missed anything. I didn't miss anything. As with my reviews of the previous volumes, I think your enjoyment of this collection will depend on whether you're into the mid-twentieth century comic hackery style of lots of alliteration, puns, and characters leaning heavily into melodrama rather than logic or character development. I think, if you're a fan of comic art and panel layouts, this is several steps above the previous collections.  X-Men Grand Design by Ed Piskor X-Men: Prof X, Angel, Cyclops, Beast, Iceman 1st Appreances: The Watcher, Storm, Shadow King, Gabrielle Haller, Lilandra, Corsair, Ch'od, Larry Trask, Stephen Lang, Bolicar Trask, Robert Kelly, Donald Pierce, Cameron Hodge, Legion, Madrox Also featuring: Human Torch, Namor, Captain America, Wolverine, Magneto, Moira, Skrulls, Jack of Diamonds, Mastermind, Toad, Vanisher, Sue Storm, Mr Fantastic, Thing, Human Torch, Unus, Ka-Zar, The Stranger, Sentinels, Iron Man, Captain America, Giant Man, Wasp, Tinkerer, Mimic, Banshee, Super Adaptiod, Juggernaut, Changeling, Machine Man, Nick Fury, Living Monolith, Lorelei, Polaris, Havok, Mutant Master I've occasionally tried to read as much of the full run of X-Men and related comics (X-Factor, X-Force, Generation X, New Mutants, etc.) as possible but until this year, I never managed to read all of the Silver Age material. This book is like the best possible illustrated Wikipedia page for Silver Age X-Men. It's chronologically straight-forward, contains the bare bones of most of the stories, but it looks awesome. It contains all of the stories from the first three Epic Collections ("Children Of The Atom", "Lonely Are The Hunted", "The Sentinels Live" in deliciously bite-sized portions. I would recommend this for people who love the X-Men but don't have the time or patience for the Silver Age era, fans of the Silver Age era X-Men looking for a quick nostalgic overview of the first 65 issues, people who've never read the X-Men but are looking for a quick primer, fans of Piskor's Hip Hop Family Tree, Vol. 1: 1970s-1981, and mutant plot enthusiasts.  X-Men The Hidden Years Vols 1 & 2 by John Byrne
X-Men: Prof X, Angel, Cyclops, Beast Man, Iceman, Polaris, Havok 1st Appearances: Deluge, Agatha Harkness, Ashley Martin, Sentinels, Master Mold, Kraven Also featuring: Magneto, Blob, Toad, Juggernaut, Zelda, Ka-zar, Storm, Sauron, Lorelei, Sue Storm, Mr Fantastic, Thing, Human Torch, Candy Southern, Medusa, Larry Trask, Sentinels, Namor, The Dazzler, Agent Duncan, Moleman The first time I read this, I was in the midst of reading modern X-Men comics, and the writing and forgettable aliens and villains felt really clunky. I struggled to finish the book. Reading it now, having just finished the silver aged Stan Lee/Roy Thomas era this legitimately feels like it belongs in the pre-Claremont X-verse. It's not great. Tossing in a preview of the Dark Phoenix storyline seems less like fun backforeshadowing and more like an undercutting of a much better story. But the rest of the action is pretty on par with the Roy Thomas/Neal Adams run but with slightly (and I mean slightly) more modern writing. Byrne doesn't quite have the same flare for alliteration, purple prose, and Stan Lee-style editorial remarks that tunelessly hummed through the original run but that's ok. I don't think we need any more of that without tongue granited into cheek. I will confess that I read this earlier this morning and I already couldn't tell you much about it other than: Savage Land, Iceman vs Havoc, the "ghost" of Magneto, the Fantastic Four are involved, and Storm appears ahead of Claremont's run, but that feels like enough. Again, it's not super fun, the writing is an improvement over the silver age dreck but it isn't good, and the art is best defined as John-Byrne-apes-Neal-Adams-to-a-reasonably-successful-degree but it's not worse than the comics it successfully emulates. If you were curious as to what happens between the final all-new material issue of the classic X-Men run, and when the characters started popping up in Hulk, Spider-Man, and Amazing Adventures, this is a perfectly adequate bridge between them.
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November 2024
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