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Summary: Chris Claremont and Dave Cockrum reinvent the X-Men
Review: I greeted the new and improved X-Men with less than open arms. I had been a big fan of the original Uncanny X-Men, which had gone out in a blaze of glory with comics drawn by Jim Steranko and Neal Adams. When Chris Claremont and Dave Cockrum revived the title in 1975, after "X-Men" had been reduced to a reprint comic, I was not overly thrilled with the decision to jettison most of the original group. If Cyclops had not stayed then I might have given up on the title right then and there, but this was the old days when you could still buy every title in the Marvel universe each month for less than five bucks (remember, this was when you could fill up your car and get change back on a $5 bill). So I stuck around and saw how Claremont, Cockrum, and John Byrne turned the "X-Men" into one of the premier comic books in the land. This collection stops short of the point where Bryne became the artist for the series, but it still serves as a prelude to greatness. The original strength of the X-Men was that their being hunted mutants served as a subtext for various issues involving social prejudice. Claremont and Cockrum put that in an international context by having Professor X go around the world to recruit his second generation of merry mutants recruiting from the mountains of Kenya to behind the Iron Curtain. This time around we find not only that the X-Men are no longer all white, they are also not all as young as before (Banshee qualifies more as a contemporary of Charles Xavier). Also thrown into the mix is their disparate temperaments; early issues always have Wolverine and Thunderbird in a contest to see who can blow up first. This volume contains "Giant Size X-Men" #1 and issues #94-100 of "X-Men." The new X-Men are put together to rescue the old X-Men, at which point the question becomes: what do you do with thirteen X-Men? The answer is to get down to a half-dozen by having all of the original X-Men leave except for Cyclops, to have one of the new X-Men decide not to play, and then you are down to seven, one of whom is doomed to die (and if you pay attention to the group logo on the cover you can see that they telegraphed their choice from the start). Ultimately the idea of recreating the X-Men is more interesting than most of the particular stories being told in this collection. All things considered, the new X-Men are an improvement over the original group, not only in terms of their powers but also in terms of their secret identities. I mean, all things considered all Angel could do was fly and the Beast was a muscular acrobat with lots of brains (the decision to make him blue and furry admits to the character's liabilities). Storm is an exotic elemental queen trying to fit in with regular folk and Colossus remains a man-child at heart, even in this brave new world. Most importantly, Wolverine makes the Thing look like a cuddly teddy bear, giving the group a dangerous edge. Claremont liked to skate as close to that edge as possible, and eventually he would send the series over the edge with his Dark Phoenix plotline and the demise of the asparagus people.
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