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5 (15) 4 (75) 3 (105) 2 (67) 1 (6) 3.2 starsAverage score of 268 user reviews
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Once More, with Feeling 0
The only thing new in this issue is a brief introduction by John Byrne. The different cover and colors aren't really "new," since it's a different kind of issue needing a different cover, and the new color scheme does more harm than good. Apparently 1983 was a time when reprinting was more a matter of the spirit being willing while the flesh was weak: the desire to get these "classic" Thomas/Adams/Palmer issues into the hands of readers who had just (re)discovered the X-Men thanks to Claremont a...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
With a Little Bang and a Little Whimper 0
And so it comes to an end. The explanation is money. Big surprise. Marvel had enough money to start new horror comics and some things called Homer the Happy Ghost and Peter the Little Pest, but not enough money to continue the X-Men. The final story is not all that memorable, reminiscent as it is of the forgettable fights with the Avengers and Spider-Man: "hey, there he is! let's fight! wait, let's not fight! too late! oh, we don't need to fight? okay!" Xavier is so strained from hijacking the m...
2 out of 2 found this review helpful. -
A Comic by any other Title would Smell as Rotten 0
My eyes tell me this penultimate issue of X-Men's first run is called "Before I'd Be Slave." My brain tells me 1) shouldn't that be "a slave"? and 2) that has so little to do with the issue it is beneath the House of Ideas to allow that through. Considering what they have been letting through lately (of the time of the issue under present review), though, it shouldn't be too surprising. For another issue, little of the content provided makes sense. The X-Men return to the mansion after their enc...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
A Spoonful of Bigotry Helps the Patriotism Go Down 3
I would hope if the creative team involved in this issue were to look back upon their work - admittedly some 45 years later - they would be rather embarrassed by the effort given for this issue. As nice as it is to see an Asian mutant, the origin of Sunfire is rather far-fetched. Not the origin of Sunfire's mutant abilities - that is actually the only clever part of the issue. Rather, the psychological creation of Sunfire by the will of his evil uncle is confusing and painfully simple (and stere...
3 out of 4 found this review helpful. -
The Oscillating Allegiance of the High-flying Angel 0
Around about that time, the Duke boys had gotten themselves in a whole mess of trouble ... and the artwork of Neal Adams had started to wear out its welcome. All of his male characters are starting to look the same. Fortunately, the mutates in the issue help break up the monotony. Unfortunately, no one in the Savage Land yet recognizes Ka-Zar's authority, but perhaps the events of this issue will help with that. Like the previous issue, we are presented with potential ideas that don't come to me...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Discontinuity 0
Despite Marvel's claim several issues ago never to do multiple-part stories again, the creative team of the X-Men have both tied this issue into the two-part story of the previous two issues and connected it to the next forthcoming issue. I assume the creative team is Thomas and Adams again, but the issue never gives any credits for the first time in the series' run. The artwork looks like Neal Adams, but the bizarre "flashback" panels are quite poorly done, even if they are attempts at hazy mem...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
The Heartbreak of Forced Melodrama 0
What starts off as a somewhat promising issue ends up as a mildly blithering melodramatic farce (with no humor or genuine emotion involved). Neal Adams's artwork oscillates between fantastic and mediocre, though I suspect the mediocre bits were partially intentional as to distinguish Sauron-induced optical illusions (but it's still poor art). The first half of the issue is simply an extended battle between the X-Men and Sauron (who knows their identities but doesn't do anything about it). Like t...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Impressively Moving 0
It's hard to imagine how this story could have gone any other way. As part of DC's "you decide" campaign to get the audience more involved in the creative process (which rarely ends up as successfully as you want it to be, since, if the fans were really the creative ones, they'd be doing the actual creating themselves), audiences were allowed to call in to vote on the fate of Jason Todd, Robin 2. Clearly, though by a much smaller percentage than I would have thought, the people chose death for J...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
A Beginning with No End 2
Wowzers. It takes Kirby a little while to get going, until we realize it is all part of the plan and remember Kirby is the King for good reasons. Mark Evanier gives us some interesting insight into "the plan," though, in the afterward: Kirby was planning on giving these new series away shortly after getting them started, ever desiring to create anew. That doesn't initially sound like a great plan for a new universe with a structured major story arc, but Kirby had a way of making things work, eve...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
What Goes Up... 0
And here we are, coming back to normal. Neal Adams's fine work, while still a tremendous asset, is losing its ability to distract the reader from the plot holes and troubled dialogue of Rascally Roy. In his favor, we are fortunately by now far removed from those ultra-condescending days of calling us "pussycat" every third panel, and the dialogue is mostly superior to those 20s-issues a few years (for him) ago. Thus I do give credit to Mr. Thomas's maturity as a plot and dialogue constructionist...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
We Have a Leader 0
Finally, Scott Summers is performing as an actual leader. People listen to him, and he says intelligent things during action-filled away missions. This provides a good motor for the issue, which is rather fast-paced (perhaps too much so, though, since the issue is dominated by movement with very little content actually occurring). Again we have an issue with rather significant flaws, but the overall impression of the work is so positive the flaws are more digestible (though not quite as easily a...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Where has this been? 0
Huzzah! A pretty good issue, at last. It has its flaws, true: Thomas has the X-Men announce what they are doing, as if the artwork of Neal Adams doesn't communicate it effectively (which it does); Angel refers to himself as the "Avenging Angel," which was what he called himself for less than a week several years ago; and Magneto is a robot (and supposedly was back in the Steranko-lead Magneto/Lorna mini-series) and Mesmero looks like the Green Goblin. Neal Adams's artwork and layout do a fantast...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Let's All Take a Breath, Shall We? 0
Just as we saw with Jim Steranko saving the super-sized maize-filled stories/lines of Arnold Drake, Neal Adams's artwork goes a very long way in salvaging the lines of Roy Thomas. In his favor, though, for once Roy Thomas's dialogue/character befuddlements are less memorable than the overall flow of the issue. Aside from Roy Thomas's display of the women in the X-Universe as ineffective (why are Lorna's powers fading out? why can't Jean use her super-powered brain to search for one single brain ...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Elvis in Egypt 0
No, wait ... that's not Elvis on the cover - it's the Living Monolith (nee Pharaoh). Finally, the X-Men series is back on the right track, thanks to DC guest drawer Neal Adams. Roy Thomas's dialogue isn't exactly stellar (apparently the X-Men never spoke in declarative sentences until Chris Claremont came along - everyone is still always shouting), but it's less noticeable thanks to the artwork. The story is essentially the same as the previous issue, minus the "Cyclops is wanted by the cops" bi...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Alex! 0
Oh, Roy. It's you. Welcome back, sort of. Roy picks up where Drake left off last issue and feels like he can improve on things, ignoring what was said last time (if he even read it). This is not typical Roy, but Roy's first run was not compounded by being Stan the Man's acolyte and heir apparent. Roy doesn't exactly pick it up in stride here: Jean doesn't use her TP powers to find Scott until several minutes into their search; she can sense he is alive because of some recently-acquired connectio...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
It's All Coming Back ... It's All Coming Back to Me Now 0
"How did I get here? Oh, yes, I remember now ...." Okay, fine. Just do that. For the introduction of Scott's long-lost brother (whom he'd apparently known about all this time), you'd think there would be some sort of, well, interesting build up to that fairly important revelation. But no. Scott offhandedly "remembers" he and the gang were attending Alex's college graduation (yet Scott is the older brother, still with no marketable post-secondary degrees), and BAM, Scott has a younger brother who...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Meanwhile, at Misogynist Headquarters 0
And then this happened. Despite the fact we were promised a story about Cyclops wanted dead or alive last issue, we get a box story full of blobs, blahs, and boring ... blobs and blahs. Blastaar makes an appearance in the X-Universe here, but no one knows why. The creative team at the beginning is mostly a group of newcomers to the series, which could partially explain why the issue is thoroughly horrendous but not why the advertised story was pushed back to the next issue (promised once again a...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Frozen Affidavits at the Friskoteque 0
Ugh. Arnold Drake and Co. show us again why the moribund series is doomed - issues like this just aren't any good. The drawing is poor, the lettering is horribly located, and the dialogue is so lousy it would have to get better just to be awful. As nice as it is to pick up the, I guess we'll call it, "action" right away, Drake takes a lesson (the wrong one) from his predecessor once removed, Roy Thomas, and just has things happen simply because he wants them to happen, not because they make any ...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Don't Judge a Cover by its Book 0
Despite the cover prominently feature El Gato (excuse me, I mean "Erik the Red"), the issue is a continuation of the previous shocker. Now that we know Magneto is back and his daughter is Lorna, the action most likely would lead to a bit of a letdown, which it does in this issue. Steranko (who doesn't even really get credited for his artwork in the issue) does his best to carry the vapid dialogue again, but it's much more of a challenge considering Arnold Drake emptied his bag of magic beans las...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Steranko! 1
Where has this been? The covers have been fairly impressive the last few issues (far better than the content inside), and this is another great cover, but the inside is totally unlike anything we have seen thus far in the series. I don't think I have read anything else drawn by Jim Steranko, but I can tell he deserves his reputation simply from this one issue. He manages to turn what is a fairly nondescript script by Arnold Drake into a stunning issue. To be fair, Drake's script is better than h...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Lorna! 0
This issue is tough to pin down: it's not great, but it's not nearly as horrible as the last issue. It has some inexplicable goofy moments, to be sure: Jean can make a telepathic conference call of the X-Men when 2 of them are 3,000 miles away, but 2 miles up in the air is too hard for her; Jean can't remember after 10 seconds that Hank is skydiving; Mesmero comes out of nowhere and is apparently some heir-apparent to Magneto, and he has the ability to "activate" countless latent mutants around ...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Move Over, Mekano 1
Arnold Drake had done the impossible: created a worse X-Men issue than either Mekano or Spidey. Apparently, when Fred Duncan "split up" the X-Men, he meant sending Hank and Bobby to California (sometime soon, perhaps), leaving Scott and Jean in New York, and letting Warren cover the rest of the country - I'd like to play a wargame against that strategist. Let's spend a moment reflecting on the comment made about Jean in this issue while she is working at her "undercover" job as a model: "That's ...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
"I must flee this madness" 0
Oh, so that's why the series was cancelled. After Friedrich did a decent job last issue forcing the X-Men to confront Juggernaut alone and deal with breaking up, he follows it up with a real dud. I hesitate to call it as bad as the Mekano or Spidey issue, since it's still early into his run as a writer, and Thomas pulled those out after several issues' experience. It starts out with an almost promising premise: Hank and Bobby are trying to find solace with their girls, in the wake of their recen...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Socialist Services 0
Again, we have an issue that is trying to be very good, and actually has some rather fine elements, but it cannot sustain them and is hampered by a number of irrational elements. The cover is great, but I don't want to overrate the issue just because it is mostly better than most of the issues lately, but it does rank a bit higher than the other 40s so far. Gary Friedrich does a better job this issue with tying up loose ends many fans had noticed (and wrote in the letters pages) since the abrupt...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Ha, ha - just foolin'! 0
Once again Roy Thomas proves he can make happen whatever he wants to happen - whether it is feasible, realistic, rational, or none of the above. I certainly appreciate the need for suspense and surprise, but 3 rapid "nope, we were just kidding!" "reveals" at the rapid 2-page climax/conclusion is a bit much. The Avengers only pretended to fight, Warren only pretended to be captured, and Magneto's machine and master plan only pretended to be something significant. Somehow, the Toad manages to save...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Graphite Beats Lead 0
I'm truly not trying to be vituperative - I truly wish these issues of X-Men were better. I am taking no delight in being disappointed by these classic Silver-age tales (what contemporaneously was referred to as the Second Golden Age of Marvel), though it is nice having finally read them, even in their dilapidated condition. Gary Friedrich does a slightly better job with his second issue, which would have been nearly impossible not to do - but still, the issue is mostly piffle. I'm not the bigge...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
It's Filler Time 0
And here I thought the X-Men were afraid of Apocalypse, Mr. Sinister, Onslaught, and the like, when they really should have been afraid of ... Gary Friedrich. Seriously, what was the point of this issue? Here is a chance to continue a potentially interesting storyline, with Magneto doing his thing again and Quicksilver on the verge of doing something drastic (as is his wont) and the X-Men trapped except for the Angel who goes in search of the Avengers for assistance and we get ... this. It is ve...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
In Every Ending a Beginning 0
Whew - that was an interesting ride. The negatives I haven't enjoyed throughout the series are still present in this final volume (the language and nuditity), but not quite as much as the others, at least it seems that way (except for a couple of scenes here and there), so that was nice. Perhaps I was too focused on seeing how this story ends, what happens to the characters to notice the first time through. This was one story I somehow managed not to spoil its ending for myself, for which I am g...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Funeral Interruptus 0
Roy Thomas bows out the same way he came in: bringing back old villains and doing not that much with them. Magneto is back to being a maniacal, static character with facial expressions straight out of C horror movies, though he does have some interesting lines about being Pietro's friend (which he quickly dismisses in his own tyrannical interior monologues). Thomas does a decent job depicting Pietro and Wanda, though on the further reflection they seem to be back where they were when we first me...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Character Saves the Issue (Not the Day) 0
...huh? First, though, we should say the character moments in this issue are the real highlight, even though they are mostly negative. Finally the facade of "fighting team" comes down long enough to see some antagonisms: Warren has had enough of Jean and Xavier's secrecy, especially now that their teammates and the world are in genuine danger. Xavier's "Cyclops and Beast are all right" is total nonsense, and everyone knows it. Jean finally asserts herself for the first time in dozens of issues, ...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
How a B-Story can Save an A-Story 0
Desperate to find a way to outdo his own inanity with Frankenstein's Monster, Roy Thomas follows up with a tribute to an age when comics were not very good, drawn by Dick Ayers, whose drawings are also sub-mediocre. Grotesk wanders the metro lines and suddenly remembers he is the sole surviving prince of an under-ground race who ruled the caverns for millennia, only to be wiped out by tremors from an underground radiation explosion done by the US, which wiped out millions of miles of underground...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
So This Happened 0
Frankenstein's monster, really? It's not as bad as the Spider-man issue, since it does have a nice moment at the beginning finally back training in the Danger Room (though it's a bit confusing why they get mad at Iceman for making it harder for Beast to train ... that should be the point, right? training for unexpected things?), and we do have a brief perhaps throwaway moment of some secrecy between Jean and Professor X with something they may or may not be working on. The rest, though ... ouch....
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
How Not to End a Series 0
At least it's all over. No more Factor 3. No more "Professor X is missing!" The finale is not a total waste, and it does have some fine moments here and there, but the majority of it is almost impressively illogical and foolish. The X-Men's separate away team missions are wrapped up quickly and easily, for some reason leaving the Russians happy with the mutants and the Americans angry at them. Thomas again has things happen just so they will happen, free of any sense or logic involved: the good ...
2 out of 2 found this review helpful. -
Let's Check the Predicto-Scope, Shall We? 0
It's located right next to the Plot-Thinner and Suck-o-Matic. Apparently trying to outdo his own inanity, Roy Thomas surpasses the ineffective oblivio-ray with the predicto-scope. Factor Three has been underground too long. Once again Roy Thomas presents us with some potentially good ideas that succumb to horribly inept execution. Leaving aside the farcical presentation of military personnel ("Take no chances! Assume he is alone!"), Thomas can't even keep the motivation of Factor Three straight....
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Fine Idea, Flawed Execution 0
Having gone as low as he can possibly go with the Mekano issue (one can only hope), Roy Thomas does a fair job bringing back our interest in the X-Men as a series (though the individual personalities of the characters are dulled too much in this action-heavy issue). Using his knowledge of X-Men history, Thomas revives some former villains to use against the X-Men in a slightly unusual way: jury members. The problem, though, is Thomas again does things just because he wants them done in a certain...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Hanna-Barbera Presents: The X-Men! 0
Boom: lowered. Just when you thought things could not get any worse than issue 35, Roy Thomas comes up with an embarrassingly horrible mess. It's so bad, apparently none of the other creative staff wanted to work on it (possibly not the reason for a new inker and penciler, but one never knows). Thomas has proven he can do some decent "down time" things with the X-Men, showing them as civilians with fairly interesting aspects, but this issue has none of that. Instead, the issue is crammed full of...
0 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Along Came a Failure 0
Ouch. This is virtually a total failure from beginning to end. Byzantine's review enumerates the many coincidences quite well, so no need exists to mention them again here. Allow me, then, to simply express my deep disappointment with the issue: here's the chance for an actual meaningful meeting between Spider-Man and the X-Men, superheroes misunderstood and maligned by the ones they protect, and yet it's nothing more than an unnecessary battle filled with sarcastic thoughts and comments, unexpl...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Well...nice try? 0
It was a good try, I suppose. The artwork from Dan Adkins is refreshing and interesting - both of the temporary artists are more creative with their panelling than Werner Roth has been, so perhaps he will take some lessons and think outside the 3x3 box. The "regular life" panels are good, though short, and it's nice to see Jean has a roommate. The Roberts brothers return for no particular reason. We were treated with a potential "revealed identify" conflict the last time they appeared, but it is...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Momentum Schmomentum 0
And then this happened. Wow. Roy Thomas actually makes us wish for one of the improbable 1-page finales for the previous issue, instead of sitting through an almost thoroughly disappointing mess. Thomas makes a lot of things happen simply because he wants them to happen, not because they makes sense or fit within the admittedly young and growing X-Universe: Cerebro was smashed beyond repair last issue, but the X-Men find it merely toppled over and working just fine - in fact, better than ever, w...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
All Righty Then! 0
Now, we're talking. True, Thomas does spoil the ending with the magic voice of Factor Three convincing the Juggernaut to give up his plans, but the issue is quite enjoyable for most of its duration. Thomas does try to spoil the very beginning with a note "hey, this is a two-parter," but the character moments for the first half of the story overcome the still-lingering lack of interest in the seriousness of the series. We get treated to the X-Men working together, finally, to stop a ludicrous ban...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful.
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