I gave this book a five star review because I realize I love it so much. It's probably more of a 4.5 but amazon is full stars or nothing and my enjoyment made me round that score up. That said, I think the previous two volumes are better. Claremont and Byrne were an excellent creative team at the top of their game and Byrne being a mischievous little bastard accidentally made everything even greater than it already was.
With Byrne's absence, we get the return of the All-New, All-Different X-Men co-creator, Dave Cockrum. Cockrum did the art for more of Epic Collection volume 5 and I recall really loving that first run. You could see Cockrum's talent. The book was coming out every two months and Cockrum had the time to make those pages sing. In THIS volume, X-Men is a monthly book and those deadlines really cut into Cockrum's quality. He's also paired with inker Joe Rubinstein and I'm learning that I'm not really a fan of Rubinstein's inking techniques. I prefer someone with a smoother line. Rubinstein is usually pretty rough as an inker.
That being said, Cockrum is still able to show a great degree of talent. His work here reminds me of a Silver Age DC artist which is a little bit accurate considering the time Dave Cockrum put in at DC. DC's Silver Age artists would produce some amazing figure work and background details and this is Cockrum through and through. It's not just character shots. It's the whole scene. All the backgrounds. All the added details. His work is still a little stiff. The angles aren't dynamic. Cockrum doesn't borrow as heavily from Jack Kirby as other Marvel artists would. However, even through those scratchy inks, the foundations here are solid.
This is especially apparent in the Marvel Fanfare issue included in this collection where Cockrum is the penciller and Bob McCleod is on inks. These epic collections have given me a good appreciation for McCleod. His work over Cockrum's pencils is amazing.
The worst I can say about Dave Cockrum's work here is that it's a kind of boring to look at. You can tell the talent but after Byrne... it's hard to go back to this dated style.
And that's where Chris Claremont comes in. Claremont is still at the top of his game during this run. The stories are missing some of the Byrne mischief but oh man do the characters more than make up for it. Claremont had a talent for writing his cast as fully realized people and you could tell that he was well on his way to figuring out who everyone was and how they would act in a variety of situations. They are human. They're about as real as super-powered comic characters could be. There's a maturity to the writing that you weren't going to get in a lot of other Marvel books.
Case in point: Avengers Annual #10. If you're an X-Men fan, this is a book you've heard of before. This is the first appearance of Rogue but really, it's Claremont going in and fixing up the tragic events of Avengers #200 and scolding the Avengers for their behavior within. Penciled by Michael Golden, it's a gem of a book, featuring the Avengers as well as characters Claremont was writing at the time: Spider-Woman and the X-Men. Chris Claremont was a writer on Ms. Marvel before the book was cancelled and the character went over to the Avengers book where she became impregnated by a resident of Limbo named Marcus (the son of Immortus), quickly gave birth TO Marcus, and then ended up falling in love with him and moving to Limbo to be with him forever. And the Avengers thought this was just fantastic and not super gross. Claremont details what those books had revealed and just not really dealt with: Ms. Marvel was being mind controlled and HOLY CRAP WTF. In Avengers Annual #10, Ms. Marvel is depowered and has to have her memories painstakingly restored but it's nothing to her ordeal in that original Avengers story... a story with four different writers who won't take credit for it.
Anyway, it is great and a reminder that even heroes and seriously mess up.
It's also quality. The reason the X-Men book was selling so well is because it was a very good read. This book is a very good read. Considering it has stories from X-Men, Avengers Annual #10, Marvel Fanfare, and Bizarre Adventures, the whole story flows fairly well. Most of it is written by Claremont. Most of it is illustrated by Dave Cockrum and Joe Rubinstein. The guest artists are mostly Marvel house artists doing the house style and it looks great. Bob McCleod pencils X-Men #152 and it is beautiful.
I haven't even talked about issue #150! This is the turning point in Magneto's career where he goes from being a full on villain to starting his journey into heroism. It is great and believable and the story truly shows that Dave Cockrum needed a break (it was a plus-sized issue and the storytelling is ROUGH towards the end).
Marvel Fanfare shows what is happening to Angel after Warren leaves the team (his second tenure with the X-Men didn't last long at all!). The series was a premium comic shop only experience and the production rates on these issues is higher than the X-Men stories. The X-Men eventually get involved in the tale. Ka-Zar and Sauron are involved. It is well told and adds weight to where all these characters will be some 100 issues later. Angel even reverts to the uniform Magneto made for him during his last foray into the Savage Land which is just a neat detail... that was probably a coloring error that they rolled with?
Finally, we have Bizarre Adventures #27. These were black and white magazine stories featuring X-Men past and present. There's a great little story about Jean Grey's older sister, Sarah, visiting Jean's cemetery plot and reminiscing on a little adventure she had with Jean before the death of Dark Phoenix. Another story penciled by the great George Pérez details Iceman visiting Dartmouth College and solving a crime scheme. This story was reprinted in Uncanny X-Men #600 so it's one of the stories I've got to read previously. Finally, we have a story featuring Nightcrawler drawn by Dave Cockrum that has him accidently teleport to an all-female planet and deal with the Well and the Center of Time... which I'm almost certain also comes up in his mini-series reprinted a few Epic Collections later and also penciled (and written) by Dave Cockrum.
The Bizarre Adventures stories are the only parts that don't slot in neatly with the rest of the stories but most of them are already side tales so they don't NEED to and I really like their inclusion here. It's probably a book that most X-fans haven't had the chance to explore.
This book is light on extras but it still has some. There are a few pages of original artwork by Dave Cockrum and Brent Anderson (and their respective inkers). Dave Cockrum's cover to X-Men Chronicles #1 (an X-Men fanbook) is included as is John Byrne's cover to Crazy Magazine #82 and John Buscema's cover to The Savage Land trade paperback that reprints those Marvel Fanfare stories. We are missing the covers to X-Men Essentials 3 but, having that book in my collection... we aren't missing much.
And that is weird! The stories within haven't really been printed in trade form before unless those covers have been omitted here. Epic Collections typically have all previous trade covers. I imagine there have been Masterwork hardcovers for all of this but it's kind of a black hole in X-Men collections. Considering how much I enjoyed rereading these (first time in color!), I'm hoping the rest of this gap gets covered soon.
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