Wednesday 27 October 2021

X-Men: Inferno Prologue

We've now reached the end of the issues in this oversized hardcover collection. Earlier I wrote:

"(We'll see as we go how much this collection can legitimately be called X-Men: Inferno Prologue as opposed to X-Men: Collected issues from a period between big storylines that we've slapped the title of a popular crossover onto.)"

It is certainly true that this volume contains every issue of Uncanny X-Men, X-Factor and New Mutants between the Fall of the Mutants and Inferno (give or take a few issues of X-Factor that lack the crossover banner but which are in the main collections). And that includes some irrelevant material. There are some irritating fill-in issues that get in the way of big story developments. All three series' annuals are included, even the chapters of the history of the High Evolutionary that are of marginal concern here. And there are some multi-issue stories that have been dragged out over more issues than they can really sustain in order to mark time.

But there's also a strong sign of developments for both Illyana Rasputin and Madelyne Pryor as Limbo descends into chaos and S'ym asserts his control. The main Inferno collected editions include a good number of pages showing the subplots and it's been good to follow the full development of them as well as seeing how all three teams have been coming towards this big event. So this is a collection that can justify itself as a complete link from one big event to the next.

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