Marvel Masterworks The Uncanny X-Men 10 Hardcover – February 21, 2017

Nostalgia aside this is the collection I was waiting for. The brilliance of Claremont and the Romita and others shines here like no where else. Bravo to a time when comics was substantive and gave hope.

Very good.

Delivered as advertised and in the time frame as promised.

Really LOVED this book!

As a collection it's hard to top this masterwork. At about 450 pages it is bordering on omnibus territory. The book collects 17 issues from the mid 1980s, 13 from the regular Uncanny X-Men title and 4 from the Magik miniseries, plus many bonus features.The big draw for me is the stellar writing of writer Chris Claremont. He was still in top form in this period and the X-books were Marvel's best selling titles. He was a master of juggling multiple plot threads, creating one here, tying one off there. His characters were always complex with considerable depth whether they were heroes, villains, something in between, supporting characters, or just walk ons. Later, he would be criticized for having too many dangling threads with resolutions few and far between but in this collection the balance is just about right. While a master of characterization, Claremont's plots did not suffer. There's hardly a bad apple in this barrel; the two worst are the Cyclops solo story in 176 and the "Young Dragons in Love" story in 181 but both have their moments.Unfortunately, the company-wide crossover juggernaut was beginning to pick up speed at this point. The Secret Wars crossover was dragging down all titles at some level and X-men were not unaffected. This collection can be read fairly well without having read that story but the seams are all over the place. The same can be said for interactions with the other X-titles at this point. Several plot points raised in this collections don't pay off here but in the New Mutants title. And if that wasn't enough there is an infusion of the licensed property Rom into this title towards the end. This is going to make collecting this title tougher and tougher as the 1980s progress and 450 pages will have to become the norm.We are also going to get a steady diet of miniseries as well. In volume 9 we got Wolverine, here we have Magik, and next volume we're going to get Kitty Pryde and Wolverine. These rank as some of Claremont's best work; the self contained nature of the these series is a nice contrast to the sprawling epics in the main title.Artistically, this is a take it or leave it volume for me. I have nothing against John Romita, Jr. but I don't enjoy him nearly as much as I did Cockrum, Byrne, or Smith. Barry Windsor-Smith in the double sized issue 186 was more to my liking. John Buscema and Ron Frenz are good in the Magik miniseries but I really liked Sal Buscema's wrap up issue.The extras are outstanding, among the best I've seen in a Marvel collection. The feature from Marvel Fanfare was the main attraction but there are also text pieces, house ads, collection covers, original art, you name it. The three page introduction by Chris Claremont is of interest as well.Very highly recommended. Claremont and the X-men have fallen from the heights collected here in the last 30 years but the X-men remain a powerhouse franchise in comics and in the movies.

Mesmo depois das colaborações épicas de Claremont com John Byrne (incomparável) e Paul Smith (muito curta mas deixou saudades), entra John Romita Jr agora de maneira definitiva e mantendo o alto nível nos desenhos.Vale muito a pena e a edição das Marvel Masterworks é sempre muito boa com papel de qualidade e ótimo acabamento.