Product Description: Wolverine! Nightcrawler! Storm! Colossus! Endowed with unique abilities, these mutants were summoned by Professor X to rescue the original X-Men, an underground organization sworn to protect those that fear and hate them. Relive their original adventures; discover the human within the hero and the truth behind the legend. Collects Giant-Size X-Men #1, X-Men #94-119.
Black & white reprints of classic four-color comics...? I honestly don't get the appeal of these books. Why bother making (or reading) black & white reprints of classic four-color comics...? I mean, yeah, the stories are still great and the original comics are hard to find, but a huge part of what made these comics great was the eye-popping artwork, including the bright primary colors: reading them in dull B&W is just plain wrong. Sure, the printing costs are lower, so you can get more pages for your money, but it's more pages of boring, not more pages of fun. It's really a travesty.
On the other hand, it recently occurred to me that these could be used as coloring books... Maybe you could buy a box of crayons to go along with all the artwork that the publishers ruined in this format. (Axton)
The Begining of a Legend (Not Quite) Any of you who thought that these were the first adventures of the X-men are in for a rude awakening. The X-men were created in 1963 by the man himself (drum roll please) Stan Lee. The adventures of the original team can be found in essential Uncanny X-men vol.1, Classic X-men vol. 2 and the last volume of the X-men Marvel Masterworks series (please forgive me, I forgot the exact number of that last one). That series was canceled in 1971 (don't ask me why it didn't sell, because I love it). These are the first adventures of the new X-men (who premered in 1975):
Cyclops: He is the leader (he was the leader of the old team too). He can fire laser like beams from his eyes.
Wolverine: He's probably the one you've heard the most about. I like him, but he has never been on of my favorites. Most people like him because he's a lot more violent than most superheroes. His bones are covered in adamantium (an invinceable metal that only exist in the Marvel universe) and he has razor sharp claws made out of the same stuff. He has enhanced senses and a healing factor that allows him to heal any wound (that includes poison).
Storm: The first black lady superhero. She can control the weather (trust me, it's a lot cooler than it sounds).
Colossus: The first russian superhero (thats quite a feat for a comic written during the cold war). He can change his body into an invinceable organic metal (no, not adamantium).
Nightcrawler: He may look like a demon, but he's actualy the most religous superhero ever (and since he's german, we can safely assume he's lutherian[just like me!]). He's very acrobatic, has a phrensile tale, can become invisible in shadows, and has limited teleportation ablities (he gets better at it as the series progresis).
Jean Grey (formaly Marvel Girl): She was a member of the orignal team and returns to the group several issues in. She is a phsycic who can also move things with her mind.
Last and certainly least is Thunderbird. I won't even bother to describe him because he dies on his second mission.
The X-men as a team were all gathered by Professor Xavier (he's the most powerful phsycic there is) to protect mankind. If you don't already know, there all mutants.
Anyway, just buy the dang book because it's just plain spectacular!!!!!!!!!
Graphic SF Reader Here is the beginning of the rise to greatness and immense popularity of the team of characters known as the X-Men. Claremont masterfully reinvents a cosmopolitan team of mutants from around the globe, after the east coast wasp whitebread incarnation we had known previously. Adding a more adult edge to their relationships is something that worked, big-time.
Graphic Novel junkie Ok, ok, I should say comic book junkie, because that's what they were called when I first started reading them some decades ago. This whole series of Essential X-men books are a fun read unless you get bogged down in details. I never did, I just enjoyed reading them. This is a great book. Enjoy
The definitive essential edition of x-men volume 1 Finally, after a very long wait of ten years, THIS reprints the contents of X-Men volume 1 issues 94-119--plus the main feature of Giant-Size X-Men 1--in its "most essential" form: in glorious black and white (the emphasis were on the script (Claremont) and the inked pencil art (Cockrum and Byrne)). When the first ESSENTIAL X-MEN came out [circa 1996], it contained very obvious misprints:
(1) Instead of X-MEN issue 113, the reprint came from the version excerpted from the first story of Classic X-Men 14: Witness these glaring markers:
a.) The first page single panel b.) the segue to Asteroid M wherein Magneto is almost swallowed by thought balloons.
(2) Another reprint-editorial mishap is the last page of issue 119 where the epilogue featuring Proteus smothering the poor Angus MacWhirter was missing.
This, however, is corrected in the reprint edition of ESSENTIAL volume 1 (published 2002, complete with new cover) which finally reprints the missing page. But the contents for X-MEN 113 remain the same.
This NEW EDITION will be a good buy if you are a late completist of the pre-postClaremont X-Men stories so that u won't have to buy the much expensive UNCANNY X-MEN OMNIBUS #1 (which contains the original x-men 113-in color, though), or MARVEL MASTERWORKS featuring the UNCANNY X-MEN (Volume 3).
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