Essential X-Men volume 11

Essential X-Men volume 11 comprises Uncanny X-Men #273 to #280 & Annual #15 and the second "adjectiveless" X-Men #1 to #3 plus X-Factor #69 to #70 and the lead story from Annual #6, the lead story from New Mutants Annual #7 and the lead story from New Warriors Annual #1. Bonus material includes some sketches and prints by Jim Lee. The writing on Uncanny X-Men sees the end of Chris Claremont's lengthy run with Fabian Nicieza taking over at the end and writing some of the annual stories with the rest by Len Kaminski. The "adjectiveless" X-Men issues are co-written by Chris Claremont and Jim Lee. The X-Factor issues are written by Fabian Nicieza and Peter David with the annual by Nicieza who also does the New Mutants and New Warriors annuals. The art on Uncanny X-Men is mainly by Jim Lee with individual issues by Paul Smith, Andy Kubert and Steve Butler and the annual by Tom Raney, Jerry DeCaire, Ernie Stiner and Kirk Jarvinen. One regular issue is drawn by Whilce Portacio, Klaus Janson, John Byrne, Rick Leonardi, Marc Silvestri, Michael Golden, Jim Lee and Larry Stroman. The "adjectiveless" X-Men issues are all drawn by Jim Lee. The regular X-Factor issues are drawn by Portacio and Jarvinem and the annual by Terry Shoemaker. The New Mutants annual is drawn by Guang Yap and Kirk Jarvinem and the New Warriors annual by Mark Bagley. And invariably there's a separate labels post.

This volume covers the end of Chris Claremont's original run on the title after no less than sixteen years. And it's something of a damp squib as his last issues show heavy signs of creative conflict, culminating in his departure midway through issue #279. The first big sign in this volume is issue #274, which feels slightly odd, being more heavily scripted than a usual issue in devoting plenty of space to exploring Magneto's inner thoughts. It seems to be almost a struggle for control of the title between scripter and artist - and notably Jim Lee is given full plot credit with Chris Claremont relegated to "Script" whereas the other issues either credit the two of them as jointly producing the title or (more usually with guest pencillers) give Claremont a clear credit as "Writer". As is now well known, Claremont found himself in creative battles with both Lee and also editor Bob Harras over the content and direction of the title, and ultimately Harras had the final say. This issue feels like one of the reported ones where the first Claremont knew of the content was when finished pages of art arrived for scripting and the heavy dialogue and thought captions feel like a natural response to this. Claremont drops out dramatically midway through issue #279 and his name is also completely absent from annual #15 (released on the very same day, according to Mike's Amazing World of Comics).

Much of the conflict feels like a battle between Claremont to continue advancing the storyline in a unique direction and just about all the other creative forces trying to recreate the past, both in revisiting multiple classic storylines and situations but also in trying to bring classic elements back, most notably by bringing all five of the original X-Men back onto the team as well as bringing Professor X back to Earth and crippling him once more. Along the way, there are some new developments and the culmination of the longstanding plots surrounding Muir Island. But there's also a lot of repetition that shows the extent to which the battle is being won by the traditionalist approach. And this fails to grasp that for better or for worse Claremont's Uncanny X-Men was never a title that stood still for long, regularly changing the cast and status quo and not stopping to wallow in nostalgia. As a result we get a move towards a false ideal that tries to preserve the Claremont style at the cost of Claremont himself. It's a very unsatisfactory approach all around.

En route to this we get the trademarks of an introspective issue as the team, now fully reformed, tries to decide on its future direction and the roles of its spin-off; this is also notable for the whole team adopting the standardised uniforms that have been used by the Muir Island X-Men. They may not be the original 1960s look but they have the same colours and represent one of the biggest visual steps back towards a mythical golden age of status quo. Then comes another as the team is whisked off into deep space to help Professor X, who hasn't been seen in the title in a very long time. We get another tale of dynastic struggle within the Shi'Ar empire combined with another alien menace, with the Starjammers and Imperial Guard both adding to the action along with the threat of Professor X seemingly gone bad once more. Meanwhile back on Earth Magneto and Rogue, together with Ka-Zar and S.H.I.E.L.D., confront Zaladane and the Mutates in the Savage Land but the issue is really an exploration of Magneto's character as he steps ever closer back to his traditional role as a villain and the X-Men's archenemy. It's a journey that's been a struggle for both the character himself and the creative forces, with Claremont's dialogue and narration doing what it can to smooth the passage of the artificial pullback. Both the Shi'Ar and Savage Land settings have been done to death by now and there isn't much added beyond manoeuvring both Professor X and Magneto back to their traditional locations and roles.

The annuals contain two crossover stories. "Kings of Pain" brings together the Muir Island X-Men with X-Factor, the New Warriors and a team that starts off in their own annual under the name "New Mutants" but then becomes "X-Force" for the rest of the story. Part of the problem is that the regular New Mutants title had by this stage ceased and a few months later the new X-Force launched to continue the story with this annual published in the interim. Exactly how this mess came about is unclear though it's possible that the regular title was held back due to creative delays, leaving the annual in limbo. Whatever the reasoning, the name of Cable's team is the least of the storyline's problems. "Kings of Pain" is an all too typical example of the messy and overlong storylines that often ran in the annual crossovers of the period, with each chapter trying to satisfy both the title's regular readers who may have only joined the storyline at this stage but also readers of the whole thing. The result is an elongated confusion as one team after another gets drawn into a scheme by A.I.M. via the Alliance of Evil to empower the mutant Piecemeal with the energies of Proteus, resurrecting the latter in the process. The whole thing climaxes on Muir Island and has to tiptoe around developments in the regular series but is ultimate forgettable. A second crossover is "The Killing Stroke" in just the three mutant annuals; this three-part story sees the remains of Freedom Force battling Desert Sword, a team of heroes from across the Middle East, whilst on a mission in occupied Kuwait. It was an attempt to be very much of its time but now feels like a convoluted mess. The X-Men annual also carries two brief back-up stories. One features "The Origin of the X-Men" as Mojo briefly reviews the history of the team as prospective entertainment but balks at all the spin-off teams, in an unsubtle commentary on how the franchise has grown. The other features Wolverine having a nightmare where he battles his adamantium skeleton in an attempt to come to terms with it. As the first full issue released in the post-Claremont era (although here it's placed earlier between issues #277 & #278), annual #15 does not bode well for the future. Instead, it serves as both a demonstration of and a commentary on how chaotic and confusing the whole franchise has become.

The final steps towards restoration and also the end of Claremont's time on the series come with the "Muir Island Saga" in which the Shadow King makes his first full attack in the present day, Professor X is reunited with his original students and Colossus returns to the team, regaining his original memories and personality in the process. Once again we can see the creative struggles manifesting themselves on the pages as characters get rapidly restored or disposed of according to conflicting demands and Claremont departs midway through both the storyline and an individual issue. The Shadow King may be a part of Xavier's history but usually the foes from his pre-teaching days when he travelled the world have been left undisturbed and there isn't as great a sense of an epic showdown as such a storyline demands. This is also the story that dissolves the original X-Factor back into the X-Men, undoing many years of a distinctly different take on the team, and once more it's rather rushed in. As a result the series reaches the twin critical moments of the main guiding force leaving and the expansion into a second title under far from ideal circumstances.

The second "adjectiveless" X-Men series launched in 1991 with a rather silly gimmick of five different covers, four of which fitted together to form a single image that was the gatefold on the fifth. Or in other words if one wanted to see the full picture one could just get the gatefold edition. Coming at a time of rampant speculation not so much by collectors as by comic shops the issue saw over eight million copies sold. This was apparently the record holder for the highest ever sales on a single comic, although the five different covers is a complication as are some of the publication practices in other countries that can split sales over multiple contenders. As is the fact that the bulk of recorded sales were wholesale rather than retail and by many accounts a huge number of copies wound up as unsold overstock in comic shops all over the globe. It was an early sign of the weaknesses in the market but, although no individual issue would again have quite such a high order rate, it didn't encourage restraint amongst publishers.

The new series itself kicks off with a final intersection of the old and the new. Chris Claremont returns for a final three-part story (although he has subsequently returned to the X-Men multiple times in later years) which sets out to establish the new status quo for both the X-Men and Magneto. The mansion is restored and with Professor X having been absent so long he finds there is so much about the team and their powers that is new to him. We're back to an age of the mansion as both a school and a base, with the X-Men developing their powers under the guidance of Xavier and fighting traditional foes such as Magneto. There are concessions to the new age, with the X-Men nominally split into two separate groupings, the "Blue" and "Gold" teams which seems an elegant way to keep so many characters around and have separate writers on the two separate books. There's also another change visually with the uniforms largely disposed of, bar Forge and Banshee, and instead the X-Men now sport a mixture of brand new and older costumes. With the conspicuous exception of Wolverine the visual look is now that which would be adopted by the 1990s cartoon, which also used the "Blue" team as the basis for its main cast albeit with a few alterations.

Claremont's last storyline seeks to return to Magneto to villainy in a way that's respectful to the character development that's come before yet also position the master of magnetism as a recurring credible foe. The latter is achieved with the addition of the Acolytes, a group of mutants who come to him to serve both the man and his vision. However it soon becomes clear that one of them, Fabian Cortez, who has the power to re-energise other mutants, has other plans. The former aim of trying to make the abrupt changes seem natural rather flounders with the revelation that Magneto had been subject to genetic modification when de-aged to a baby and this had affected his behaviour when re-aged to adulthood. It feels as though a decade's worth of character development is being thrown away - and this is probably how it felt to Claremont at the time as he finally lost the battle over the character. The story, the volume and the whole Claremont era all end with a reassertion of the different philosophies of Professor X and Magneto, a fitting point to go out on.

Overall this volume shows the series being dragged in the direction of false nostalgia, first to revisit successful stories ad themes from the past and then to have an as near as achievable recreation of a mythical golden age for the characters, undoing many of the changes made over the years. A lot of comics have gone down the route of reset switches over the years but X-Men has hitherto never fallen into such an easy trap. The result is that this final volume is a rather disappointing end of an era.

Essential X-Factor volume 5 - creator labels

Yet again we have a volume with a lot of creators so here's a separate post for some of the labels.

Essential X-Factor volume 4

Essential X-Factor volume 4 contains issues #51 to #59 & Annuals #4 to #5 plus the one-shot X-Factor: Prisoner of Love, Marvel Fanfare #50 which printed an issue prepared as a standby fill-in and the lead stories from Fantastic Four annual #23, New Mutants annual #6 and Uncanny X-Men annual #14 which, together with X-Factor annual #5, make up the "Days of Future Present" crossover. Bonus material includes Cyclops's entry from the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. The regular X-Factor issues are written by Louise Simonson, bar one by Peter David, and drawn by Terry Shoemaker, Steven Carr, Andy Kubert and Jon Bogdanove. The X-Factor annuals both contain multiple stories written variously by Louise Simonson, John Byrne, Ralph Macchio, Mark Gruenwald, Peter Sanderson and Peter David, and drawn by John Byrne, Jim Fern, Mark Bagley, John Bogdanove and Dave Ross. X-Factor: Prisoner of Love is written by Jim Starlin and drawn by Jackson Guice. The Marvel Fanfare issue is written by (Mary) Jo Duffy and drawn by Joe Staton with an "Editori-Al" introduction written and drawn by Al Milgrom. The Fantastic Four annual is written by Walter Simonson and drawn by Jackson Guice, the New Mutants annual is written by Louise Simonson and drawn by Terry Shoemaker & Chris Wozniak, and the Uncanny X-Men annual is written by Chris Claremont and drawn by Arthur Adams. Inevitably, there is a separate labels post.

The list above gives some indication of how this volume doesn't actually advance the main series very much - with just nine issues from the regular title this has almost the shortest stretch of any single Essential volume. The main culprits for this state of affairs are the annuals, with each forming part of a wider crossover but the two take very different approaches. Annual #4 is from the "Atlantis Attacks" crossover which filled up no less than fourteen annuals in 1989 and tells the tale of an incredibly complicated plot involving Serpent Crowns, multiple undersea kingdoms attacking each other, a great serpent deity being resurrected, superpowered women being offered as incubators and turning the human race into serpent men. It's all rather convoluted and the X-Factor annual is rather blessed to be at the periphery of much of this, focusing upon the kidnapping of Marvel Girl whilst the Beast is reunited with his old Defenders comrade Andromeda in conflict with her father Attuma, current ruler of Atlantis but, as he discovers here, not actually the main villain in the storyline despite the title. The forgettable nature of the chapter is such that despite promises we never get to see Jean being dragged away into the sky in the regular series with Hank grabbing onto her leg. The Atlantis Attacks annuals also contained a multi-part back-up story entitled "The Saga of the Serpent Crown" which retold the whole history of the central object. Normally these chapters are excluded from Essential reprints but it's included here, briefly retelling an old Namor the Sub-Mariner adventure as he battled with an emperor of Lemuria possessed by the crown. On its own it just adds to the general confusion that these annuals create when the whole storyline isn't present. Of more interest are two other back-up strips though one seems to have landed in the annual by accident as Magneto and Doctor Doom encounter one another and recount their pasts, seemingly for the purpose of setting out just how different the two are. The other is a somewhat comedic piece entitled "Inferno Aftermath" as two FBI agents drawn to resemble the Blues Brothers and even named Jake and Elwood explore the aftermath of the events and try to find out what happened, with X-Factor winding up supplying the cover story. It's a nice little piece that addresses how the general public seems to shrug off such events but it's also a reminder of how stretched out things have been thanks to annuals, crossovers and off-world storylines all affecting the pacing as the build-up to "Inferno" began back in volume 2.

The following year saw a shift in policy to running multiple shorter crossovers in related annuals, with the three mutant titles and Fantastic Four all tied together for the "Days of Future Present" storyline, a sequel to the well-known X-Men storyline "Days of Future Past". This storyline proved a mess at the time with the X-Factor annual numbered "Part Two" and the New Mutants annual "Part Three", and they were released in that order, but the contents were inverted such that the New Mutants annual comes first. This volume places the annuals in narrative order but the cover numbering continues to confuse. The story itself involves another time traveller from the dark future of the Sentinels, an adult Franklin Richards. Franklin wanders through the locations of his childhood memories from the alternate timeline, at times reshaping them to match his childhood happiness. Meanwhile the present is attacked by new villain Ahab, the master of the mutant hunting "Hounds" from that dark future. Elsewhere Rachel Summers is drawn into the action, encountering Franklin whom she thought had died in her own time and also having her first meeting with Jean Grey, the woman she recognises as her mother. With four different team books involved there are a heck of a lot of characters running around without the greatest of introductions and the story is primarily focused on Franklin and Rachel, with their parents getting only a partial connection. A major point left completely unaddressed is just who Rachel's mother actually is - when she was introduced her mother was unambiguously the Jean Grey with the powers of Phoenix in the alternate timeline but since then Jean and Phoenix in the regular timeline have been retconned into separate entities and it's thus unclear which is actually Rachel's mother. Jean now having both Phoenix and Madelyne's memories inside her does not help with the confusion. Overall this isn't the greatest crossover for X-Factor with such a key first meeting bungled and swamped by everything going on around it. The only back-up feature in the annual is a character piece focusing upon Jean as she visits Phoenix's grave and tries to reconcile her multiple identities, with the help of an elderly survivor of the Holocaust. It's a good little character moment that serves to cut through much of the quagmire on this.

Also focusing on characterisation is the prestige one-shot X-Factor: Prisoner of Love, since there's frankly not much else going on in it. This over-expensive special sees the Beast go to rescue a pretty young woman called Synthia Naip and end up in her apartment where he has weird dreams and finds out she is an alien and needs protecting from the mysterious "Dark One" who has killed the rest of her race. It's slow, dull, over expensive and the art suffers from both an obsession with drawing pretty women and such bizarre renditions of Hank that at times I had to check just who he was meant to be. The whole thing is rather random and dull, feeling like it was just churned out to get Starlin and Guice's name on the cover. It's definitely something that could have been left aside.

More worthy of inclusion is Marvel Fanfare #50 which contains, according to Al Milgrom's special intro, an issue prepared as a fill-in for the regular series but used here instead. It's been structure to be easy to adjust for use at any point with the main section taking place in flashback when the Angel was assumed dead and a former female acquaintance hires Arcade to kill Iceman and the Beast as punishment for X-Factor's anti-mutant campaign. Her motivations are more personal when it turns out she has a son with angel wings - and claims Warren is the father. In the present day Warren tells the truth about the woman and the boy. As a fill-in that could potentially be called up at any point in the title's run it has to be flexible but it turns into Hank and Bobby asking Warren about something that's been on their minds for quite a while since his return. Still it holds its own and deserves to at last have been included with the regular series.

Warren is also the main focus of the regular series issues which see X-Factor return to Earth and deal with a succession of external and internal problems, starting with Warren finding himself getting ever more out of control and lashing out at all around him at random and making for especially vicious fights with first Sabretooth and then Caliban as the former X-Factor member turned Apocalypse's horseman finally comes into conflict with his former teammates. Then Warren and the others face the vampiric Ravens, including Crimson, Coral and Azure, who infect him with a poison that drives him mad and into different personas at night and day, with his night self becoming an especially vicious vigilante, before the Ravens seek to transform him permanently into one of them. It's not all darkness as he steadily befriends police officer Charlotte Jones and by the end of the volume things are steadily growing between them.

Meanwhile Scott and Jean have their dinner interrupted by an attack by giant roaches led by the old X-Men foe the Locust, but it's not enough to prevent Scott going on to propose to Jean, a proposal she declines as she is still struggling with the multiple memories inside her from Phoenix and Madelyne. Bobby also finds a degree of happiness as he befriends a young woman called Opal Tanaka, but first has to deal with the misunderstanding Mole who seeks to protect her. Hank's relationship with Trish Tilby is on the rocks due to her reporting of a number of incidents that show mutants in an unfortunate life and the tensions just keep on growing. Old flame Vera Trantor turns up when she's manipulated by Mesmero on the commission of Infectia as part of a bigger plan.

These nine regular issues cover a curious period in the title's history when the team are publicly known popular heroes but instead of showing the overall effects of this we get instead a concentration on the individual characters and little indication as to how their status is helping the cause of mutants in general. The story of Archangel's steady rehumanisation is the main focus but at times it feels as if that's the only thing of significance going on with the ongoing Scott and Jean plotlines rather fizzling out whilst the other stories all feel a bit inconsequential.

Overall this volume feels a mess because there's relatively little meat to the regular issues and so much additional material that doesn't really add much to the ongoing series. Annuals and crossovers can both slow things down and here we have both at the same time, taking up such a significant chunk of the series. This is a volume very much treading water.

Essential Wolverine volume 3

Essential Wolverine volume 3 contains issues #48-69. Nearly all the issues are written by Larry Hama bar a couple by D.G. Chichester and another by Fabian Nicieza. The early art is mainly by Marc Silvestri and the later by Mark Texeira. Other issues are drawn by Andy Kubert, Darick Robertson, Dave Hoover, Mark Pacella and Dwayne Turner. Bonus material nestling at the back of at least the first edition consists of a two-page pin-up and a one-page gag strip by Chris Giarrusso.

Curiously the second cover for the volume reuses the art originally used for the first cover of volume 2. It's a surprising choice, even though Wolverine does briefly reuse his brown costume in this volume, as by this stage it was more common to reuse the cover of one of the issues in a given volume. Although a lot of the issues have over specific covers that may not have been suitable, either issue #64 or #67 would have done the job, both depicting sufficiently generic scenes.

One of the slightly irritating features is that, in the first edition at least, the covers sometimes appear at the end of an issues instead of at the start. The cause is the widespread use of double page splashes that was a popular trend in the early 1990s, even though printing was often prone to misaligning the pages so the two halves didn't always sync up and/or dialogue could get lost at the page fold. (Fortunately the double page spreads here manage to keep the dialogue in places where it can be read.) The approach here may be a necessity to avoid blank pages and squeeze one further issue in, although as discussed below there would have been good reasons to leave #69 out. But one consequence is that it is sometimes easy to miss the change between issues (and the title page isn't always the first one) and it's also harder to locate an individual one. Another, minor, problem of the era was the tendency to occasionally use colour for some words in speech bubbles; the early editions simply display a few blank spaces as a consequence.

This volume builds heavily upon the revelations in the "Weapon X" storyline in Marvel Comics Presents to the point that I feel that that should have been included in the run (and may well have been if the Essentials hadn't got to Wolverine until about a decade later but then they needed the most popular series to establish themselves with). However even without direct experience of the storyline or characters such as "the Professor" or Carol Hines, both of whom reappear here, it's fairly easy to follow the flow of events. Almost all of this volume covers a period in which Wolverine is struggling with implants in his mind that have created false memories. His searches bring him to the sets on which these memories were acted out and he's left wondering just what, if anything, actually did happen with his relationship with Silver Fox by far the most uncertain and painful of the memories. Several other Weapon X participants - Sabretooth, Maverick, Silver Fox, Mastodon, and Kestrel/John Wraith - appear throughout the run and they've all had similar implants, which are ultimately traced to Psi-Borg. At one stage an attempt to undo the blocks leads to Wolverine believing it's 1968 and going to a former Soviet republic in order to carry out a mission once more and it's hard to tell when it's the present day and when it's 1968 until he puts on his costume. Although the implants are ultimately removed from Wolverine's mind, a major consequence is that a lot of the small revelations about his past are now suspect, thus restoring mystery to the character.

This brings up the basic problem with keeping characters enigmatic in the long run. Either their past is kept an overall mystery forever, resulting in confusion and contradiction as little pieces slip through without due regard for one another, or else big revelations have to be undone to throw the past back into the melting pot. Whilst the basics of how he acquired the adamantium and claws or his work for the CIA are retained, enough question marks are opened up to make most of his previous specific memories now questionable. And it's not just Wolverine alone who is put through this - Sabretooth also has his past challenged and so now it's even more open to question whether or not he is Wolverine's father. Silver Fox also finds some of her memories have been constructed and it adds to the tension as we slowly discover just how much of her and Wolverine's remembered past actually happened.

The Weapon X project and his time as a government agent aren't the only parts of Wolverine's past to be touched on. We get a return visit to Japan which brings conflict with both the Hand ninjas and Cylla, one of the Reavers' cyborgs, as well as old friends such as Yukio and Mariko. There's a moving end to the story of Mariko as she agrees to a deal to end the illegal operations of the Yashida clan but one of the terms is that she cut off one of her fingers. She agrees only to discover the knife is poisoned and in order to avoid a painful death she begs Wolverine to use his claws to kill her quickly. Silver Fox also comes to a nasty end as Psi-Borg makes Sabretooth recreate the murder Logan remembers, only this time it is for real. On a more general X-Men level there's an encounter with Mojo who is once again trying to exploit events to generate profitable entertainment, this time trying to tamper with the Big Crunch at the end of the universe. The last issue begins a storyline in the Savage Land where Sauron has taken the leadership of the Mutates but the volume ends after only the first issue.

The volume introduces a number of new foes, some of whom offer greater staying power than others. Shiva is a robot controlled by a computer program and sent to dispose of Wolverine and other products of the Weapon X project. Every time the robot is destroyed a new one is dispatched with knowledge of past defeats. The robots the program is limited but we don't see a definite ending to the supply. Also coming from the project is Psi-Borg aka Aldo Ferro, the crime boss who invested in the Weapon X project in the hope of prolonging his life and who has the power to manipulate minds and memories. From Wolverine's past missions comes Epsilon Red, a Soviet super soldier very similar in appearance to Omega Red (the main difference is in their colouring which is lost here) who was meant to be the first man on the moon but the project was abandoned and he was left unable to fulfil his dreams of the stars. Some more mundane foes have been lifted from contemporary trends, such as the Vidkids, a gang of youths who are murdering the Morlocks merely for kicks, or the Nature Defense League, a team of radical eco-terrorists. The most significant member is their leader Monkeywrench with his explosive spikes; curiously he debuts in an issue by D.G. Chichester when the reuse of a name from G.I. Joe suggests Larry Hama's hand in his creation.

This may be one of the most recent runs to have appeared in the Essentials but there are still moments when it shows its age. In issue #50 Logan obtains a file on him from the National Security Agency which Professor X estimates to have over 50,000 pages of words and just as many visual pages. It has had to be stored on no less than two shoeboxes worth of floppy disks. Even by the time the volume was first printed in 1998 this was almost ancient computing history as larger memory formats such as writeable CDs and Zip disks were already around, although neither drive was standard issue with computers available on the high street (though you could usually read a writeable CD on a standard CD-ROM drive) and there was a bit of a format battle amongst industry and niche users. What's even more amazing is that this file has been sent over a modem, which makes me suspect that Larry Hama was not terribly familiar with either the terminology or the contemporary capacity as Logan has the full file by the next day but in reality this would have taken a bit longer. Elsewhere Wolverine's 1968 mission revisited takes him to the country of "Kazakh" - I'm not sure if this was a thin attempt to disguise a real country or an alternate name proposed for Kazakhstan in the early post-Communist years that never caught on.

On a more general level the volume shows the era's predilection for long running storylines in which individual issues can be read quite quickly instead of intense one-off storylines. And often the comics are exceptionally art heavy, most obviously seen with the heavy use of double-page spreads, stemming from an obsession with art over plot that infected part of the comics industry in the period. This makes for a fast read in collected form but originally these issues came out over a space of nineteen months (with a couple of periods when the series went semi-monthly) and it must have been maddening to readers to have such a detailed storyline drag out for so long, made worse by the occasional fill-in issues.

I don't normally comment on pin-ups included in these volumes but the one here is an awful example of how comics in this era sometimes let the art take priority over basic reading. In order to appreciate it one has to turn the book on its side for an excessive two pages when the same could have been achieved in one. Luckily none of the issues in this volume fell for this reader unfriendly practice. The gag strip is an early example of the Mini Marvels feature (though it's branded only as "An Untold Tale of Wolverine") that rips into the "Patch" disguise of just an eyepatch, especially compared to other such paper thin disguises. It's okay for what it is but the target of the joke is dated as Wolverine hasn't used the "Patch" identity since midway through the previous volume.

Issue #69 is the first issue of a multi-part storyline and the result is that this volume ends on a cliffhanger. It took only eight years before volume 4 came out, a rather longer wait than that for the same numbered Spider-Man and X-Men volumes which also deployed this approach (at least in the first editions). Thankfully the Essentials subsequently adopted more flexible lengths to ensure the volumes end at neater points (though it's also a relief that they didn't start putting out new editions of the Wolverine volumes with the contents shifted about).

Overall this collected edition has been to the issues' benefit. Individually the main storyline may have run on for rather too long and also suffered from a perceived need to spotlight the art above all else, but when brought together the whole thing makes for a strong coherent read. It's almost a pity that issue #69 was included, not just because of the cliffhanger but also because issues #48 to #68 make for a broadly complete package with only a few side-shows and interventions (issues #58 & #59 not only feel like fill-ins but explicitly interrupt the ongoing narrative and say so) and this would have been one of the rare times when an Essential volume maps exactly to a major epic storyline.