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WIZARD X-MEN MASTERPIECE EDITION VOLUME 1 HC
Highly Recommended (9/10)
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Marvel Comics/Wizard Entertainment
Writer: Chris Claremont
Co-Plot/Pencils: John Byrne & Dave Cockrum
Inks: Terry Austin, Josef Rubinstein & Bob Wiacek
Colors: Glynis Wein
Letters: Tom Orzechowski, Bob Sharen & Jean Simek
Editors: Roger Stern, Jim Salicrup, Louise Jones, Jeff Youngquist & Brian Cunningham
Price: $29.95 US/$42.00 CAN |
Marvel has done some of the most beautiful hardcovers in the industry in the last few years, but their focus (as with much of their trade line) is squarely on their current stuff. Some of which is really good, some of which, not so much, but the shame isn't what they're printing so much as what they're not printing. Some big classic stuff remains out of print. John Byrne's Fantastic Four got one volume and then dried up. Walt Simonson's Thor got more, but still hasn't really reached completion. Roger Stern's Avengers is spotty, his Amazing Spider-Man almost non-existent. The list goes on and on. But topping the list, probably, is that the Chris Claremont/John Byrne X-Men, the stuff that just defined the characters, is very, very spotty, when it really should be reprinted in nice, full-color, sequential volumes. Wizard's X-Men Masterpiece hardcover isn't quite that, but it is a collection of some of the best work these two did in their legendary stint on the book, and it's a beautiful volume that no X-Men fan should be without.
There are 10 issues reprinted in this volume, but really it amounts to three big stories and two smaller ones. The cosmic epic of the Dark Phoenix Saga, the dark future of Days of Futures Past and the original tale of mind-warping mutant Proteus make up the former, and an adventure story of young courage starring Kitty Pryde and a tale of a villain starting down the road to redemption make up the latter. To be honest, I've never remembered the Proteus story all that fondly, but reading it alongside these tales, I found that it held up much better than I remembered, and definitely deserved to be in this company.
The jewel in the crown, though, is the Dark Phoenix saga. It's also the best argument for why the Claremont/Byrne stuff should be reprinted sequentially, because this reprint, complete in a sort of way, really misses out on a lot of the important build-up. We're missing Jean's bonding with the Phoenix in the first place, the slow corruption of her soul brought about by a careless telepathic villain and one of the coolest physical showdowns in comics as Wolverine fights his way past the Hellfire Club's guards to help his friends. Despite that flaw, though, this story still stands as an impressive testament to the work that made Claremont and Byrne so beloved on this book. The dialogue is a little hokey, but certainly not as overly flowery and excessive as the work that Claremont is doing today. And the core characters, untouched by the excesses of popularity in the '90s, are more interesting, more genuinely flawed rather than needlessly angsty, such that seeing Jean turn on her friends and try to kill them is actually heart-wrenching rather than just another tired excuse for melodrama. There are also some really key elements missing in the stories of today, such as the acknowledgement (however brief) of a shared universe, as we see reactions from heroes like the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man and Dr. Strange as Phoenix begins her ascent into cosmic villainy.
Proteus is darkly creepy and Dark Phoenix cosmic and melodramatic, but for my money, the best story in this volume is Days of Futures Past. A surprisingly tight two-parter that just hums with potential (later squandered by too many sequels), we see one of the first really dire dark futures for the heroes, something that makes their fight more heroic as we know the stakes if they fail. Byrne's rundown, ghetto-like take on the New York of the future paints an all-too-clear picture of what has happened to the world, and the alternate future setting lets Claremont run free in killing off characters and presenting some unusual changes, such as the first hint that Magneto could be an ally as well as an enemy to the X-Men, if the circumstances were right. The story also does a nice little riff between modern day and future, and the modern day story is no slouch either, introducing a great new go-round take on the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants and hinting at the potential of then-new mutant Kitty Pryde to become a truly important X-Man in the future.
What I really love, though, is that despite the important and somewhat dark aspects of these plots, Claremont and Byrne don't lose the sense of fun and action in super-hero comics. In the midst of the dire tale of a dark future, we get the amusing portrait of Kitty's first run through the danger room, wherein she walks through all the obstacles all too easily through blind luck. This sort of thing is even clearer in the sort of one-off tales, such as the excitement that builds in the very Alien-like story of Kitty facing off against a demon alone on Christmas night or the heroic fight of the X-Men against Magneto. The latter story also comes with some surprisingly dark and morally interesting moments as well, as Storm considers murdering a villain in his sleep to avoid future horrors, and Magneto is confronted by the wrongness of his actions when he nearly kills the young Kitty Pryde. Claremont earned a reputation for long, drawn out and sometimes unfinished subplots, but it is clear that especially early on, he knew how to tell sharp one-issue tales and how to get his stories done in fewer chapters, even though the subplots tended more toward the decompressed storytelling currently wearing its welcome out at Marvel today.
If you have all of these stories already, and don't have a particular fondness for hardcovers like I do, this book might not be quite so attractive. It isn't oversized, like Marvel's publications, and though the color corrections are impressive, there definitely is enough of an old school colored look to the work that if you have the original issues (or the X-Men Classics) you might not want to shell out the bucks. That said, there are some enticing extras here. It was a real treat seeing Eliot Brown diagram a Sentinel, and the unseen original ending of the Dark Phoenix saga, while brief, is certainly intriguing. The rest of the features run the gamut from amusingly silly to stupidly silly, depending on your point-of-view. None of them are essential, but I must admit to some amusement at the chamber of horrors that was the "Kitty Pryde Fashion Show." All in all, if this is the kind of thing we can expect from the Wizard Masterpiece editions, I say bring on some more... this is an exceptionally well-done hardcover.
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