What If... Essential Deadpool volume 1?

For a final look at a hypothetical Essential volume I turn to one of Marvel's biggest latter-day stars, the Merc with a Mouth in the days when he first became the Merc with a Monthly, the one and only Deadpool!

Woo hoo it's me!

Oh no! No! NO!

Hey I finally made it onto your blog!

Oh no you don't! Didn't you pay attention? You didn't know you were a comic character until the Writer of Death showed up and those issues aren't until later.

Yeah but you're inserting me into older material. And it wasn't quite Priest who...

Look let's stop this now. I'm the one with the keyboard, I'm the one who can type blanks into all your weapons - and I don't just mean your guns - and I'm not having another of these conversations. You have two choices - either p*** off and star in another film or I make like Fox and sew your f***ing mouth shut. GOT IT?!

Your funeral pal. See you in the funnier pages. Toodle-oo!

Now that that's over, back to normal service...

Essential Deadpool volume 1 would contain his first appearance in New Mutants #98, the two four-part limited series Deadpool: The Circle Chase and Deadpool: All New X-Men Limited Series (well that's what it says on the cover; it's also been called "Sins of the Past" in places) plus issues #1 to #11 & #-1 from his first ongoing series and the crossover annual Daredevil/Deadpool '97 as well as a guest appearance in the back-up story from Avengers #366 which ties in with the first limited series. That would make for a larger than usual volume but Deadpool's done this sort of thing before.

The bulk of the material can be found in Deadpool Classic volumes 1, 2 & 3 but the Avengers appearance is in Deadpool Classic Companion, an extra volume devoted to all those appearances sequential reprints often ignore. This doesn't include every early Deadpool appearance ever - in particular there are some X-Force storylines absent that would otherwise overwhelm any collected edition - but it catches his early years quite well. Otherwise, most of the earliest Deadpool limited and ongoing issues looked at here have been collected in a variety of editions, released in multiple countries and languages. The most complete source for the ongoing title is the Deadpool by Joe Kelly Omnibus.

(And for those wondering where the cover image has come from, it's a piece that did the rounds when the ongoing series was launched and is now probably best known as the cover for the trade paperback Deadpool: Mission Improbable which reprinted the first five ongoing issues back in 1998. Yes the standard practice for Essentials in the 21st century has been to use art from the original comics but since when did Deadpool ever conform to standard? And the obvious alternative image from New Mutants #98, as used on Deadpool Classic volume 1, is just hideous. It's unsurprising both the Italian edition and the British edition with just the two limited series went for the cover of the first issue of the second series, but this is a better option.)

Deadpool's first appearance in New Mutants is plotted & drawn by Rob Liefeld and scripted by Fabian Nicieza. The Circle Chase is written by Nicieza and drawn by Joe Madureira whilst the second limited series is written by Mark Waid and drawn by Ian Churchill, Lee Weeks and Ken Lashley. The ongoing series, including the "Flashback" and annual, is written by Joe Kelly with help from Pete Woods on one issue and contributions of a different kind from Stan Lee on another. The art on the series is mostly by Ed McGuinness with some issues by Kevin Lau, Shannon Denton and John Fang whilst John Romita contributes in a way on one issue whilst the "Flashback" issue #-1 is drawn by Aaron Lopresti and the annual by Bernard Chang. The Avengers story is written by Glenn Herdling and drawn by Mike Gustovich. Invariably this means there's a separate labels post. And I see someone has already done the dialogue for it. Grr...

This volume would cover an interesting and turbulent period in the comics market with Marvel and its travails often at the centre of the storm. During the early 1990s there was a massive rise in overall sales accompanied by a huge increase in the volume of titles and many characters received their own limited or ongoing series, with Deadpool amongst them. But it was notable that very few of Marvel's new titles lasted any length of time outside of the X-Men and Spider-Man families. (Exactly how few is subject to a few myths so worth checking in detail.) After a flurry of lasting successes launched in 1990 such as Namor the Sub-Mariner, Ghost Rider, Guardians of the Galaxy, New Warriors and even Barbie and Barbie Fashion, Marvel entered a long run of misses. Over the next six years many titles were launched but outside the Spider-Man and X-Men families only six series lasted more than three years - Darkhawk, Warlock and the Infinity Watch, Punisher War Zone, Spider-Man 2099 (counting that as a 2099 family title rather than a Spider-Man one), The Ren & Stimpy Show and Doom 2099. The last of these launched in early 1993 and all of these had gone by late 1996.

Meanwhile the various Marvel companies and divisions got involved in some complicated chaotic financial dealings that led to actions that exacerbated problems in the North American comics market, contributing to a massive crash, roughly around the time of Deadpool's second limited series and over the next few years Marvel lurched through a series of crisis decisions that saw many titles axed and several long running superhero titles farmed out to Image creators. The bleakest moment came in late 1996 with the announcement that Marvel had filed for bankruptcy protection. It seemed as though the creative edge had gone out of Marvel and few expected any new series to last.

Yet out of that winter came two series that did manage to last for a good number of years and show that Marvel had now got its mojo back. The second of these titles was Thunderbolts. The first was Deadpool.

But reading Deadpool's first appearance from some six years earlier there's nothing that hints at this. He may be the most prominent character on the cover of New Mutants #98 (with the element later lifted for the first of his Classic series) but within the story he's a one note character whose primary purpose is to establish the skill of another new character, Domino. Deadpool fights Cable and the other New Mutants before being overcome upon Domino's arrival and is then mailed to his employer with the implication that will be the end of him. As first appearances go it's extremely underwhelming though it establishes Deadpool as a rather chatty mercenary who just won't shut up. He would pop up again and again in the replacement title X-Force before benefiting from the massive explosion in the number of titles in the early 1990s in which even the most obscure character could get a limited series.

With the great explosion of came some titles came some not so great product and that's apparent here. The Circle Chase is primarily a quest series with Deadpool and a whole range of other characters hunting for an ultimate weapon mentioned in the will of the unseen Mr Tolliver. The quest spills over into a back-up story in the 30th anniversary Avengers issue which otherwise focuses on the Black Knight's battle with his squire turned evil, the Blood Wraith. The appearance here of Deadpool, and indeed the one-off Plug-Uglies - Flame and Foam - also searching for the weapon, provides a wider conflict to ensnare the Blood Wraith but otherwise is mainly incidental to the story, though there's a scene where Victoria Bentley is confused for Deadpool, something that can't happen that often. Even Deadpool's dialogue is tame, showing how difficult a character he is to write for.

Back in the regular series we're reintroduced to other elements of Deadpool's life such as his technician "Weasel", his artificial healing factor, his personal history with the mutant Copycat aka Vanessa and so forth. But the storyline itself is lame, consisting of a series of fights around the globe with the likes of Weapon X, Slayback, the Juggernaut, Black Tom Cassidy and various lesser foes, before a climax in which the weapon is revealed to be the least offensive tool imaginable and Deadpool saves himself through logic and selflessness in acting to heal Copycat. Overall this limited series just isn't anything to set the world on fire and is an unfortunate start to Deadpool's solo tales.

The US comics market was starting to go into freefall by the time the second limited series came along, but that may have been to the title's effect by increasing the talent available. This limited series is far more personal to Deadpool, focusing upon his history with the Weapon X project and as a mercenary plus his friendship with the X-Force member Siryn under the disapproving watch of her father Banshee. The story deals head on with one of the character's biggest problems, namely that his healing factor is so powerful that it removes any real sense of danger for the character. Here he has to come to terms with the factor failing and find a way to restore it, as well as a repeated encounter with the Juggernaut and Black Tom Cassidy, the latter now needing some healing of his own. It's a good little personally focused story, of the kind that the limited series format is best for. The only new character of any significance is Dr Killebrew, the geneticist responsible for Deadpool's healing factor in the first place and thus has good potential for recurring appearances over the years. Otherwise we get a movement of the lead character towards the more wacky side that would come into full force with the ongoing series.

Deadpool's ongoing title began in late 1996 and it's easy to forget now just how revolutionary or niche it often was. This series began before the regular South Park series launched, before the first Austin Powers movie had come out and indeed before much of the explosion of cartoony style adult humour series. Indeed at times it seems to be setting the trends. Marvel had done humorous titles before but never a mainstream universe superhero title with such a bizarre wackiness to it. This is a very experimental title that does its own thing, with a character highly different from the norm.

It's also easy to forget, especially now with such a major movie about to come out, that this was a title that was constantly fighting to survive and at times only holding on by the skin of its teeth. From memory Marvel announced its cancellation more than once and there was a big "Save Deadpool" campaign, trying to increase the number of subscribers to secure extra sales in advance. Marvel's then-recent track record on cancelling titles was not encouraging. Few honestly expected the series to last at all and expected Deadpool to then drop into obscurity. To predict the character's present day popularity and sales would have marked one as mad as the character. And yet somehow the book managed to last so long.

It's probable that Deadpool primarily survived because the series was so different from everything else the company was putting out and thus probably bringing in readers that Marvel otherwise couldn't reach. And the cancellation threat itself was oddly beneficial to the series, allowing the creators to experiment as much as they did because they had nothing to lose. The result was something truly amazing.

Now sure the issues contained here, covering the first year of the title, include some typical Marvel superhero comic clichés. There are the guest appearances, both by characters Deadpool has a history with and those with no previous connection. There's an encounter with a superhero team, allowing the Avengers logo to appear on the cover. There's a whole issue devoted to a Spider-Man encounter. There's some exploration of the character's past and origins. There's a supporting cast established, including an over helpful sidekick role, a recurring antagonist in day to day business and an elderly lady. And the storylines vary in length from done in one tales to multi-part sagas that try to go into more detail.

But it's the whole approach that is so different. It's best to think of the series as like an adult cartoon, with a foulmouthed anti-hero as the protagonist and some quite wacky and offbeat situations encountered along the way. The conventions are rarely conformed to but instead often sent up in their own wild and wacky way. Deadpool is slowly drifting towards herodom but it's a long journey for Wade Wilson, in spite of the hopes of Landau, Luckman and Lake in a long running subplot. Early on the healing factor is toned down, allowing for more tension. There's also a very unusual guest cast.

Weasel continues to help Deadpool from time to time, playing a pivotal role in the last issue as we learn more about his past and just how long an influence Wade has had on him. He makes for a likeable supporter who sticks by Deadpool in spite of everything and it works. More curious is Blind Al, an elderly woman who lives with Deadpool and we slowly discover she is his prisoner who has become accustomed to her situation despite all the crap she has to deal with. The exchanges between the two makes for a tricky relationship with each unable to admit how much they are dependent on the other. It can also set Deadpool back in the field, especially when Al sabotages his weapons.

As well as Deadpool's own home he also spends a lot of time at the "Hellhouse", a sort of community centre for mercenaries to hang out, collect assignments from the runner Patch and maintain tense relations with one another. Deadpool's main recurring rival in the series is the mercenary T-Ray, though the antagonism is not fully explored at this stage. There aren't too many new foes introduced at this stage with the main new one being Deathtrap who captures Deadpool and subjects him to a highly surreal situation. Otherwise the foes are drawn from a variety of other Marvel titles with appearances by the likes of Taskmaster, Vamp (one of the more obscure Captain America foes), Typhoid Mary and Kraven the Hunter.

The potential list of guest stars was not great if the title was consciously trying to avoid encounters with the X-Men family at this stage. A good chunk of big name heroes were absent because of the transfer to the Heroes Reborn pocket universe, but that proves advantageous in forcing a more experimental approach with those that are left. The first issue features Sasquatch, between stretches in Alpha Flight, with the traditional misunderstanding, fight and then team-up. Later on we get an appearance by Siryn which sets out just what Deadpool actually means to her. The handling of his rather creepy stalking her and hovering outside her bedroom window is a bit tame though. There's a tense encounter with the Hulk, at this point in his most inhospitable with Bruce Banner having been torn out of him. But the most memorable tales come with three other guest stars.

An extended story with Typhoid Mary leads to a crossover with Daredevil in the annual but this is different from what has come before. Although many a prior annual has contained a guest star joining the regular hero (and some have forgotten which is which), this one is the first to give joint billing to both stars. It was a successful experiment that led to nearly every annual the following year being such a team-up book. The story itself provides a strong contrast between Deadpool's wackiness and the traditional darkness of Daredevil, adding in a twist from the latter's past as he discovers just how responsible for Typhoid Mary's life he really is. Meanwhile Weasel and Foggy Nelson go out on the town, with the consequence that Deuce the Devil Dog changes owner and titles. A dog companion is part of old comics silliness that feels totally at home in Deadpool's title.

But two other guest appearances at the end of the selection are even more amazing. First come, wait for it, the Great Lakes Avengers. Sorry, a correction. At this point they had brought out of the Avengers franchise (the actual team being disbanded and presumed dead can't have helped) and were now "the west coast adjunct to the Thunderbolts... the Lightning Rods! Attracting malignancy away from those it would see electrocuted in its negatively charged grip of evil!" This was the first time the team changed their name, although the cover of issue #10 retains the original. On their few prior appearances the GLA Lightning Rods have been treated as a joke aspiring to Avengers membership and here they encounter Deadpool at an aquarium resulting in total chaos as they fight. By this stage the series has settled into a fantastic alternate cartoon approach and this works incredibly well.

Before we get to the final issue though, a quick word about the "Flashback Month" issue. And frankly #-1 is an example of where the gimmick completely failed. It was published in the middle of the Typhoid Mary storyline (and thus has had to be relocated to before it for collected editions), apologies for the interruption but doesn't really tie into anything in the ongoing series beyond the interest in Deadpool by Zoe Culloden of Landau, Luckman and Lake. And here her investigations only bring her into indirect contact with Wade, instead focusing upon Vanessa when she worked the streets. A character called Montgomery is created for the story seemingly only to allow a cover image of a terribly burned face. Overall we have the mess of trying to create a Silver Age retro feel for the most Modern Age of characters, made worse by the issue not actually focusing upon him at all. To top it off we now have to accept that the Landau, Luckman and Lake interest in Deadpool has been going for at least a decade, which may be a commentary on how long some subplots last but feels more like a product of trying to come up with anything that could tie in with the current title. Going by the issues in this selection alone, one could easily skip #-1 and miss nothing at all.

A much more successful attempt to create a Silver Age feel yet apply it to Deadpool comes in issue #11, a triple sized issue that is the inevitable Spider-Man issue but comes in a very different form. Rather than a fight or a team-up we get a wonderful time travel story in which Deadpool and Blind Al find themselves thrown through time and arrive in 1967 just in time to take part in the events of Amazing Spider-Man #47. The original issue is reprinted at the end and is a somewhat typical example of the middle period of Stan Lee's run on the title with John Romita's art really coming to the fore in a tale focused on Flash Thompson's leaving party with a gatecrashing by Kraven. But it's also an example of the innocence of the Silver Age comics and the weird slang that can sound utterly incomprehensible at times. And that becomes the beauty of it.

Deadpool and Blind Al find themselves impersonating Peter Parker and Aunt May respectively as they wander through the events of the issue, often drawn into the original comic pages in a Forrest Gump manner. Pete Woods's new art is highly sympathetic to the original, helped by veteran inkers Al Milgrom and Joe Sinnott recreating a classic feel. However the script is mocking in all its glory as Deadpool and Al brings their own sensibilities to it, commenting on the mad slang, the Osborn hair, the sexual undertones to what was originally written as fairly innocent material and so forth. Against all this the fight with Kraven is even more of an afterthought than in the original issue. Overall this is a wonderful contrast of the classic and modern approach with wonderfully biting satire to boot, making for what is easily the best issue in the whole selection.

As a whole this is a series that knows it's allowed to be different and revels in it. There had been anti-hero leads in comic series before but never any quite like Deadpool. His earlier appearances had shown some potential but also a lot of extraneous moments that have to be waded through. But the ongoing series finds a strong niche and runs with it as a comic form of adult sitcom cartoon, sending up the situations and presenting a wacky lead with incredible dialogue and few inhibitions. Based on this selection alone, Joe Kelly is the best Deadpool writer so far, really nailing the character. There are some individual poor issues but there are also some incredible ones, with #11 a contender for one of the absolute best Marvel issues of the 1990s.

So should Deadpool have had an Essential volume? Absolutely! Deadpool is a character who has transcended all other rules so recentism is no problem. There's a lot of material out there - the Classic reprints are already up to volume 14! - and a good cheap bulky volume would be a good primer. The Classics suffer from the first volume having to contain the two limited series so an Essential volume would get deep into the main run.

Yay! Now to time travel once more and sort it out.

Sigh... Oh well, he's someone else's problem now.

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 Wolverine volume 7

Essential Wolverine volume 7 contains issues #129 to #148 plus the crossover issue Hulk #8. Surprisingly absent is the 1999 annual. Most of the volume, including the Hulk issue, is written by Erik Larsen, at times collaborating with Eric Stephenson or Fabian Nicieza. Early issues are by Todd Dezago with one script by Brian K. Vaughan. The artwork is mainly by Leinil Francis Yu and Jeff Matsuda, with contributions by Cary Nord, Ron Jensen, Mike Miller and Roger Cruz, with the Hulk issue by Ron Garney.

This is the Essential volume with the most recent material of all, covering the series from the late 1990s. But it also covers Wolverine's twenty-fifth anniversary and contains a good number of hat-tips to his previous adventures in a suitably nostalgic mode. Unfortunately, the best-laid plans for Wolverine can clash with wider plans for the X-Men family of titles, as we will come to see.

The first few issues show a series in the traditional problem as it looks for an ongoing writer and marks time with a series of rather forgettable fill-in issues. The main theme here is of monsters in one form or another, with Wolverine facing off against the latest incarnation of the Wendigo, an alien spider in the Himalayas and a wife beater. There's a brief nod to the recent marriage to the Viper when she persuades Wolverine to go the Himalayas after a Hydra expedition failed but otherwise this is a plot point that will soon be forgotten. Issue #131 originally had a notorious error when "killer" was accidentally lettered as "kike" but this edition use the corrected version rapidly put out instead. Issue #132 shows that not all monsters are creatures with the return of the Higgins family who live near the X-Men's mansion; when the mother is found dead and the daughter badly injured Wolverine goes in pursuit of the father who has fled, taking the son with him. It's a good focus as Wolverine contemplates how his prior demonstration of his humanity by not killing the father has led to this, but there's a twist at the end. But overall the book has been floundering for ages with no clear permanent writer and that has to change.

That change and more comes with the arrival of Erik Larsen. Right from the outset there's a real sense of a determination to do things differently from the traditional style, with ninjas and the Far East both notably absent during the run. Instead there's a move towards more traditional elements of the Marvel universe, including an issue when it seems just about every second tier hero available in New York goes after Wolverine in quick succession. The idea of Wolverine confronting Galactus seems absurd but it manages to work in its own way. That's not to say there aren't appearances by various X-Men or Alpha Flight in the process but overall we get a different and strong take on the series that seeks to put the hero through different situations from before.

The run kicks off with the six-part saga "The Great Escape" although notably only the first issue carries the banner on the cover. It sees a steadily expanding scope, beginning in a bar with Wolverine and Warbird (formerly Ms. Marvel and Binary and have I left any identities out?) and then steadily expanding through "Too many guest stars to count!" before taking Wolverine out into space to a prison planet run by the Collector and containing both the Starjammers and Torgo, a rarely seen robot from the pages of Fantastic Four. He's aided in all this by Aria, an alien who can possess others' bodies and makes the classic mistake of acting first to grab help rather than seeking to persuade it first but despite this Wolverine comes anyway. However, there's a twist as Wolverine discovers the purpose of Prison World only after he destroys its defences and reveals its location, leading to the oncoming destruction. There's a strong theme of failing to consider and explain throughout the arc with the Collector, Aria and Wolverine all arrogantly thinking they know best and not discussing it with others, resulting in tragic consequences. The battle with Galactus is as one-sided as you'd expect but Wolverine isn't under any illusion that he can do anything beyond buying a little time. His bone claws prove ineffective at a critical moment, reinforcing the need to regain his adamantium and overall it's a much humbler Wolverine who returns to Earth after realising his blundering and weaknesses have had major consequences. This is a very different type of tale from the normal Wolverine saga but it never loses sight of the character regardless of the situation he's in. It bodes well for the rest of the run.

Unfortunately there's not too much space available to do a great deal before the series has to cover two big events that will take in the last third or so of the volume. So in the three issues before that we get a team-up with Cable against the geneticist Arnim Zola, then a team-up with Nightcrawler to battle first some androids and then Cardiac and Solo, two less well remembered mercenaries, and finally a team-up with Jubilee to battle Donald Pierce, with some help from the mysterious Khyber. Spot the pattern? It's as though the title is turning into a Wolverine team-up series without explicitly acknowledging this is where it's going, though at least most of the guest stars and villains so far have a history with Wolverine. But team-up titles are rarely the place to really develop the lead character due to the ever-changing supporting case and demands from other series. And Khyber is poorly explained, appearing to be a cyborg version of Wolverine without any acknowledgement at all of the similar Albert but this isn't explicitly stated; nor does he appear to be a foreshadow of what is to come. As a whole these stories are mixed and not really offering too much excitement or a sense of the way forward for the series. But first it's going to look back a bit.

With Wolverine's twenty-fifth anniversary falling in 1999 it was inevitable that there'd be some revisiting although to its credit the series doesn't explicitly ram home the point until the main anniversary issue itself. In the meantime the series starts with a two part team-up with Alpha Flight, which primarily serves to undo all manner of changes made over the years, resurrecting characters, killing off duplications, ending relationships and demoting members such that by the end the story has re-established the line-up of the original team plus Puck. Given Wolverine's early history with Alpha Flight it's understandable that such big changes could take place here but a lot of these changes are implemented in a very sweeping manner with a number of the lesser characters written out in a flashback that explains their demotion to Beta Flight, leaving the main story to focus on Wolverine and the restored original team invading an AIM base to rescue Guardian where they battle with Modok and also Kane from the Weapon X programme. It falls to a back-up story in the second issue to sort out some of the detail though not every aspect of latter day Alpha Flight continuity is addressed, leaving this as one of the more blundering retcons ever carried out.

Wolverine's first appearance in the pages of Incredible Hulk gets a latter-day revisit in a two-part crossover with that series in its renumbered and (temporarily) renamed form. We get a flashback story set immediately before the first appearance as the Leader kidnapped Wolverine, Hercules and Karkas of the Eternals as part of a plan to use them against the Hulk. It's a suitably nostalgic piece that shows us Wolverine in his first days in the original costume without simply retelling his debut story. This helps set the scene for a modern day rematch as Wolverine once again gets sent by a government agency to tackle the Hulk in the Canadian wilderness, leading to a fierce fight in which both combatants seem somewhat out of character even before Tyrannus takes over the Hulk's mind. Wolverine is especially brutal, temporarily blinding the Hulk with his claws in order to level the odds, as though the battle is a rejoinder to the many past clashes between the two.

And then comes the big anniversary issue but the whole thing is deflected by being caught up in the lead in to the next big X-Men crossover "Apocalypse: The Twelve". Worse still issue #145 opens as though it's flashing back to events in other titles that contain one of the most significant revelations going. Once again this series sees a major event in the lead character's life take place elsewhere. And we get a mind-numbing retcon that can be summed up as "Skrulls? Yeeesh!"

It's revealed that for a number of issues (but just how many of this series is unclear as the revelations are anchored to recent events in X-Men) that Wolverine has been a prisoner of Apocalypse who has transformed him into his new Horseman Death, including restoring the adamantium skeleton and claws by taking the metal from Sabretooth. Wolverine's long-time nemesis is seemingly dispatched in a quick flashback, in order to demonstrate the ruthlessness of Logan's conditioned form. Meanwhile Wolverine has in the interim been impersonated by a Skrull who has been conditioned to subconsciously act and think like Wolverine in every way. The whole thing feels nonsensical and unplanned. It seems to be a way to reinforce Apocalypse as a longer term planner with enough time to carry out the changes but Apocalypse has captured and conditioned Horsemen quickly before so it's more likely a way to paper over any perceived out of character behaviour and negate recent stories. It's a pity as whatever their weaknesses the Skrull retcon just doesn't add anything or even allow the series to side-step a particular status quo. The conditioned Wolverine battles first the Hulk and then the X-Men before steadily overcoming his conditioning; however Archangel in turn seems to be undergoing a relapse and this leads to further conflict. Overall "Apocalypse: The Twelve" this is a convoluted crossover to understand from just the Wolverine issues alone and it feels like a messy intruder on the series despite leaving restoring Wolverine to his traditional form.

But the final issue is even worse for understanding what's going on. "Ages of Apocalypse" seems to be a glimpse of either a horrid alternate future or an alternate reality that has arisen out of the previous crossover but it's not too clear. Nevertheless we get a good little tale of the New Fantastic Four, comprising Wolverine, Spider-Man, the Hulk and Ghost Rider as they battle against Doctor Doom, Annihilus, Blastaar, the Harpy and Arnim Zola in this dark world. It's a good take on a particular team who have usually been more popular in theory than in practice. But in the bigger scale of things this is a confusing issue to understand because of the way the crossovers have stomped all over the regular series at the end of the volume.

This is a volume that tries to find a new direction for the series rather than endlessly rehashing all the traditional elements of Wolverine and shows some imagination in throwing him into unusual environments. It also does its best to honour the character's history for his anniversary. However at times the series seems to be overdoing the restoration of older status quos and the whole thing is rather blown off course by the X-Men crossovers at the end along with the silly Skrull revelation. As a result this is a volume that all but explicitly says that large chunks of it don't matter which is a pity as it showed the series starting to get its act back together when left to its own devices.

Essential X-Factor volume 5

Essential X-Factor volume 5 contains issues #60 to #70 & Annual #6 plus the crossover issues Uncanny X-Men #270 to #272, #280 & material from Annual #15, and New Mutants #95 to #97 & material from annual #7. The regular X-Factor issues see the end of Louise Simonson's run then subsequent issues see Jim Lee & Whilce Portacio plotting and Chris Claremont scripting then Fabian Nicieza and Peter David finish off the run and write the annual stories between them. The Uncanny X-Men issues are written by Chris Claremont and Fabian Nicieza with the latter handling the annual whilst the New Mutants regular issues are written by Louise Simonson and the annual by Fabian Nicieza. The regular X-Factor issues are drawn by Jon Bogdanove and Whilce Portacio with the final by Kirk Jarvinen and the annual by Terry Shoemaker, Steven Butler and Guang Yap. The Uncanny X-Men issues are drawn by Jim Lee and Andy Kubert with the annual by Jerry DeCaire. The New Mutants issues are drawn by Rob Liefeld and Guang Yap with the annual by Kirk Jarvinen. Due to so many creators, most of the labels are in a separate post.

This volume is almost drowning in crossovers, containing material from not one, not two but three of them. It kicks off "X-Tinction Agenda", a nine-part story also told in Uncanny X-Men and New Mutants. Then the annual is part of "Kings of Pain", a crossover between the three mutant titles and also New Warriors though their annual is not represented here, with a second storyline entitled "The Killing Stroke" running across the three mutant annuals only. Finally, the end of the volume encompasses the latter half of "The Muir Island Saga" which also runs in Uncanny X-Men and contains some major developments for both titles. It's lucky that not all of the latter two crossovers have been included here as it probably made the difference between getting up to issue #70 and not, but it reflects on an unfortunate situation whereby it became increasingly hard to follow an individual series without "having" to buy lots of extra issues in order to be able to read a whole story.

And the stories they got were simply not that great. "X-Tinction Agenda" is an overlong, excessively rambling storyline that X-Factor is clearly the least essential element in spite of the villain being Cameron Hodge. It's also poorly paced, most notably when a key character is killed off in a rush at the end of the issue, and it's the first of several signs in the volume that artists rather than writers have secured control of the general plot and direction of the various series but are exercising that control rather poorly, with the result that many issues are confused and dominated by action to the detriment of the overall storytelling. As for the content, it revolves around the African island nation of Genosha that was initially devised as an allegory of apartheid South Africa but in the year that Nelson Mandela was released we get a rather more violent overthrowal of the state and its apparatus than in reality. The plot hinges on the state's practice of enslaving, brainwashing and genetically altering mutants into "mutates" to serve as slaves for the country. A mixed group from the X-Men and the New Mutants are kidnapped by the Genoshan Magistrates and taken to the island where some are converted, with the remaining team members calling in X-Factor for help to rescue them. The story is grim and brutal, though some of the resolutions are rather simplistic in their effects, but it is hard to avoid the feeling that the story would have worked better as a six parter without including X-Factor since none of the current team go through any significant changes and there isn't really anything that comes out of Hodge's involvement in the storyline that hasn't been covered before. More so than any previous crossover, "X-Tinction Agenda" marks the point at which the mutant title crossovers ceased to be either major moments in the lives of all the titles involved or else wider events that individual titles brushed past and instead became regular events telling tightly connected stories in which titles participated simply because they were part of a declared "family" of books. The mutant books weren't alone in pioneering and developing such crossovers but as one of the best-selling set of titles at the best selling comic company they were amongst the most noticeable - and profitable - and so bear a great deal of responsibility for the development of such a mechanical process that interrupted and sucked the life out of so many titles. And when it comes to the collected editions this crossover takes up almost half the entire volume so it's not something that can be simply shrugged off as just a few issues amidst a much bigger whole.

The annuals show an alternative way to do crossovers. The "Kings of Pain" storyline ran in the lead stories of the annuals for X-Factor and also New Mutants, New Warriors and Uncanny X-Men but only the X-Factor chapter is included here, (this isn't the only way to collect it though - both Essential X-Men volume 11 and New Warriors Classic volume 2 contain all four chapters) as this is the point at which the team get involved in the main storyline. X-Factor arrive in Scotland to find that Proteus has returned, fused with an energy absorbing mutant and is now converting Edinburgh into a strange computer mathematics environment of structure and order. Together with the New Mutants, New Warriors and the "Muir Islander" X-Men, X-Factor have to find a way to persuade Proteus to stop, one way or the other, whilst from afar both Aim and the Toad & Gideon - the self-proclaimed "Kings of Pain" - have been manipulating events. It's a so-so annual story but with only the X-Factor portion included here it doesn't take up too much space needlessly. Also included are a few other stories from the New Mutants and Uncanny X-Men annuals. A three-parter, with the concluding chapter in the X-Factor annual, entitled "The Killing Stroke" sees the rump of Freedom Force - the Blob, Pyro, Avalanche, the Crimson Commando and Super Sabre - on a mission in Kuwait during the Iraqi occupation, with orders to either extract a German scientist or prevent the Iraqis finding him. However it goes badly wrong when they encounter "Desert Sword", a group of Middle-Eastern heroes including the Arabian Knight, Black Raazer and new characters Aminedi the Invisible One, Sirocco and the Veil, and Freedom Force is further depleted. Another back up in the X-Factor annual sees Mystique coming to terms with Destiny's death and taking a cruise to scatter her ashes. The oddest inclusion is a short story from the New Mutants annual in which former X-Terminators members Leech, Artie and Taki meet an eccentric old woman who resembles Leech's late adoptive mother, whilst a mob assembles outside. It's a nice character piece but it has no particular reason to be included here. All in all the annual material here is forgettable but there isn't too much space taken up with stories from non-X-Factor issues and so it's not as bad an offender as the "X-Tinction Agenda".

Over in the regular series there's a real sense of a protracted winding down with a variety of elements brought to the fore and wrapped up prior to a crossover covering the final two issues. Louise Simonson's final storyline in issues #63 & #64 was the very first X-Factor story I ever read when I was lent these issues back in 1991. Today it still holds up well as it focuses upon Iceman's girlfriend Opal when she's kidnapped by the Cyburai, cyborg warriors working for her natural grandfather, Lord Tatsu'o, and taken to Japan where she is expected to marry a warrior and provide an heir. Bobby heads off to rescue her with the help of Jean and Mariko. It's a good intense personal story, particularly the scenes involving the warrior Hiro, and it answers various questions about Opal, but it's not the most exciting storyline for the series's longest running writer to go out on. In a way that should have been the next storyline, a four parter that sees the return of Apocalypse as he seeks to reclaim Ship. The early issues also contain extracts from "the Apocalypse Manifesto", single page profiles of each team-member with in character comments by their greatest foe. The story shows its age in the names of Apocalypse's new henchmen, Foxbat, Tusk, Gauntlet, Psynapse, Hard-Drive and Barrage, collectively known as the Dark Riders, but it gives a good exit for Ship and also a team-up with the Inhumans in a showdown on the Moon. However it's let down by introducing a mystery woman called Askani who declares baby Nathan Christopher to be both "the Chosen" and kin, as part of attempts to save her timeline. The story ends with Nathan being infected with a techno virus and taken off to the future. Children have always been problematic in long-running comic series and Nathan has not really aged at all during the run of this series so it's a neat way to remove the problem but it also has the consequence of once more wrenching Scott away from another family member.

The final two issues form the penultimate chapter and epilogue to "The Muir Island Saga" which sees X-Factor and the various groupings of X-Men reunited in battle against the Shadow King, with Professor Xavier returning and reuniting with his original students for the first time since this series began. It's a strong reunion that has clear repercussions but it's also very clearly an X-Men story that X-Factor have wandered into midway through and explanations for those who haven't read the earlier parts are somewhat lacking. The story sees the original X-Men return to the team but the final issue of the volume and indeed of the original incarnation of the team just doesn't feel like an appropriate wrap up issue with too much emphasis on Xavier and Legion or Rogue and Mystique rather than on the actual X-Factor members. As a result X-Factor dissolves itself into the older team in a blink and you'll miss it moment and the final page of this book is more concerned about what to do with so many X-Men. This is a real letdown as X-Factor deserved a much stronger ending on its own merits. Instead it goes out with a whimper, playing second fiddle to another team which is what it's done for much of this volume.

This is frankly the worst of the five Essential X-Factor volumes, largely because the regular series is swamped by all the crossovers and the original is wound up rather suddenly without a proper final issue. There are some good moments when the series is allowed to do its own thing but otherwise this volume shows how crossovers and franchises were starting to take over regular series in the early 1990s and it wasn't for the best. Nor was the increased dominance by the artists, often putting more emphasis on individual images than the overall storytelling and the results here show poor pacing and rushed critical moments. It's a disappointing end to the original incarnation of a series that had managed to rise beyond its roots as an awkwardly forced reunion book and often offer something much more spectacular.

Psi-Force Classic volume 1

Psi-Force Classic volume 1 contains issues #1 to #9 of the title. Although created by Archie Goodwin and Walter Simonson, the series itself is written initially by Steve Perry then Danny Fingeroth with individual issues by David Michelinie and Fabian Nicieza. The art is mainly by Mark Texeira with some issues by Mike Vosburg and Bob Hall.

The basic premise is the series is one of psychic powers, with the White Event having enhanced and adapted the abilities of a number of people who already have Extra Sensory Perception. This use of ESP is another example of the supposed rules of the New Universe being broken from the outset, as is the handling of the reaction to having such powers. Although the main characters themselves at times struggle with the consequences, there's a rather all too easy acceptance that they have these powers when in reality many would likely freak out and the wider population panic. The only other significant sign of a more realistic approach is that injuries happen far more easily than in the regular superhero comics, but as the injuries are usually rapidly healed the effect is much the same.

At the start of the series Emmett Proudhawk, a CIA agent gone rogue with ESP powers of his own, assembles five teenagers who have recently found themselves with powers and brings them to San Francisco. In an early encounter with KGB agents "Hawk" is killed but the five teenagers find they are able to combine their powers to create a silent manifestation called "Psi-Hawk". Over the course of this volume they learn, sometimes the hard way, that the Psi-Hawk won't let them go their own way and they have to stay in hiding as runaways to protect both themselves and their families.

Hiding out in "Sanctuary", a home for runaways under the protection of Hawk's old friend Colby Shaw, the five struggle to adapt to their new lives with the problems of keeping their powers a secret, getting on with each other which is not always an easy task, dealing with other kids in Sanctuary, facing off against various government agencies and coming to terms with the Psi-Hawk. The concept is somewhat generic and it's easy to see elements of other teams of youths in this, particularly the X-Men. However setting this in a different fictional universe at least removes the obvious escape routes of turning to existing heroes for help, and instead the teenagers are left to fend for themselves.

The teenagers themselves are an unfortunate collection of stock archetypes that try to tick all the boxes. We have a moody loner, a pampered rich kid who finds themselves out of their comfort zone, a sporty kid rebelling against parental expectations, an annoying boy genius nerd and a foreigner. The four American teenagers cover multiple ethnicities, with Hawk's Native American heritage initially covering another, and the whole group looks as though it was assembled to order. This series may have debuted four years before the cartoon series Captain Planet and the Planeteers but it's hard to avoid noticing the similarities between the two as they both use the same structure.

The five themselves are a mixed bunch with several not terribly likeable. Wayne Tucker appears to be the eldest. A hot head from Chicago, he has telepathic powers to read minds and make people carry out actions. He resents being stuck with the others the most and is the first to try to break away on his own only to learn the Psi-Hawk exerts a control even when not formed. Wayne's powers are often used to get out of trouble and to wipe other's memories but he resents having to do this all the time. At one point he worries he's inadvertently used his powers to make another kid at Sanctuary commit suicide. His attempts at redemption are well meaning but forcing a businessman to not use loan sharks for money and instead "Get it from a bank!!", leading to a broad daylight hold-up. Kathy Ling is the archetypal "Valley girl", literally coming from the San Fernando valley near Los Angeles. A rich kid with telekinetic powers, she especially resents the way she's been dragged into all this and makes the most concerted effort to escape. Often she is resentful of the others' activities and just wants to go to the shops. Tyrone Jessup is initially the sporty kid, right down to the shirt he wears on the cover, hailing from Scarsdale, a small town outside New York. It soon becomes clear he's resentful of his parents pushing first him and then his brother down this route, believing it to be the only way black kids can get university scholarships. He has the power of astral projection, allowing him to become an intangible spirit form that can travel anywhere whilst his body remains in a vulnerable coma. Michael Crawley comes from Vermont and is both the youngest and geekiest of the five. He has the power to project destructive waves at objects with devastating results. Often the most optimistic of the five, his naive innocence is at times a crucial anchor. Finally Anastasia "Stasi" Inyushin is from the Soviet Union, having been extracted at great risk by Hawk. The back cover of the volume describes her power as "psychic empathy", presumably to make it fit the overarching theme, but it's really a miracle healing power that can heal just about any injury or illness. At times she wonders what she's let herself in for but perseveres.

The team has some limited support from Colby Shaw who runs Sanctuary, but her patience with their use of their powers and frequent fights with other residents. Otherwise their only ally is "Skipper", a colleague of Hawk's at the CIA who keeps tabs on them.

The group get caught in a succession of mundane problems and small time threats from criminals and thugs, plus the interest of various state agencies. In the first issue they are attacked by "Mindwolf", a KGB agent with his own destructive psychic powers who kills Hawk. It's clear over subsequent issues that at least one agency is keeping tabs on the kids and a mysterious figure has hidden another empowered kid, Thomas Boyd, from Hawk. Thomas is given the nickname "Stalker" and has the power to drain energy and life force from others. He thinks he's only capturing them, but rebels when he learns his master wants them dead and presumably him next. Much of the rest of the series is focused on the kids' attempts to grasp their powers and roles, find a way to escape from the power of the Psi-Hawk and cope with life around them. There are a few trips back to one hometown or another and a brief departure from San Francisco to Seattle but it's quickly reversed.

Overall this series shows an awkward hybrid of the arching vision of the New Universe and more conventional superhero norms. It may take advantage of the fact that this is a world without established heroes and that the powers have come in a single instance, but otherwise this book doesn't feel like it's set in an ordinary universe with a few science fiction but no fantasy elements. Instead it feels like a rehash of many of the themes of the X-Men, with the Psi-Hawk never really pulling things forward in a different way. Overall the series is rather pedestrian.

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.