Essential X-Men, Volume 11 by Chris Claremont, et al.

At the height of mutant popularity

In the early 1990s, the X-Men were the most popular characters in Marvel’s comic line (although Spider-Man probably could have argued that point). So popular, in fact, that Marvel decided to supplement their long-running Uncanny X-Men title with an all-new comic named just plain X-Men (now known as Volume 2). This was in addition to X-Factor, X-Force, Excalibur, and the solo Wolverine magazine. Marvel’s trade paperback Essential X-Men Volume 11 celebrates this heyday of mutantkind by reprinting Uncanny-X-Men #273 to 280 and X-Men issues 1 to 3, along with a few crossover issues of X-Factor, The New Mutants, and The New Warriors. All of these issues were published in 1991. I was actively reading Marvel comics at this time and own at least half of these issues, but thanks to this Essential volume I was able to bridge some gaps in continuity.

Chris Claremont, the premier X-Men author since 1976, was still cranking out good work in 1991. The end of Volume 11 marks the end of his long run. Claremont writes about half of the issues in the volume, and Fabian Nicieza most of the other half. The main villains antagonizing the heroic mutants in these issues are the Shadow King and Magneto. The Magneto stories are better because they remain mostly in science fiction territory with a little bit of politics thrown in, while the Shadow King plots are mostly mystical and psionic mumbo jumbo, with the action often occurring within some character’s mind. The whole purpose of these plots seems to be to get as many mutant characters as possible into the pages, and Claremont manages to do that while still keeping the stories interesting and reasonably intelligent. Almost all of the dozen core X-Men are quite appealing characters, but the army of also-rans that populate X-Factor, the New Mutants, or X-Force seem excessively ephemeral. Just about every villain the X-Men faced in 1991 employed some form of mind control, which serves the purpose of getting the X-Men to fight each other, thus giving fans the chance to see Wolverine fight Gambit, or Professor X fight Colossus, or Rogue fight . . . Strong Guy.

Marvel’s series of Essential paperbacks reproduces classic comics in black and white on newsprint paper. Often the pages are scanned from the original inked artwork. In this volume, however, colored art has been scanned as grayscale halftones. At times this renders the panels difficult to read, as when all the characters are wearing nearly the same shade of gray. A trend began in the ‘90s of placing less importance on inking and more on digital coloration. As a result, inking of that decade often consists of fine-lined chicken-scratch cross hatching with very little shadow. The colorist would then go wild in Photoshop. In my opinion, this trend was a step down from the classic Marvel style. Of such chicken-scratch artists, however, Jim Lee was clearly the king. He draws about half of the issues in this volume, and his work looks beautiful. Although the ‘90s were not a great decade for Marvel art overall, they usually put their best artists on their popular X titles. Guys like Whilce Portacio and Andy Kubert, both of whom pencil issues in this volume, aren’t quite up to Lee’s level, but they’re still good artists for this era.

I believe Claremont and Lee’s X-Men #1 is still the highest-selling comic book of all time. Like most of the other issues in this volume, it’s a fun, thrilling, well-executed comic. There’s nothing here that will be considered a classic masterpiece like Claremont’s earlier Dark Phoenix Saga, but these stories succeed as action movies if not as Shakespearean drama. Things at Marvel would soon go downhill from here, but this volume provides a nice trip down memory lane.