The Book Depository X-men Epic Collection: Bishop's Crossing by Ronnie Wagner

4.7 out of 5 stars
The Book Depository X-men Epic Collection: Bishop's Crossing by Ronnie Wagner
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Description: X-men Epic Collection: Bishop's Crossing : Paperback : Marvel Comics : 9781302934521 : 130293452X : 31 Mar 2022 : The coming of Bishop! The reunited X-Men have expanded into two squads - and while the blue team take on Omega Red and learn secrets of Wolverine 's past, the gold team broker peace with the Hellfire Club! But when advanced Sentinels crash the party, one X-Man may not survive! Then, guns blazing, the man called Bishop arrives from the future pursuing hundreds of escaped convicts through time - and finds himself stranded in the present! Bishop was raised to idolize the X-Men -but he knows a deadly. The Book Depository X-men Epic Collection: Bishop's Crossing by Ronnie Wagner - shop the best deal online on thebookbug.co.uk

 

Category: Books

Merchant: The Book Depository

Product ID: 9781302934521

MPN: 130293452X

GTIN: 9781302934521

 
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Author: Amazon Customer

Rating: 5

Review: The post-Claremont Era begins! Had some really great follow up issues and amazing Portacio artwork. Reads great today like it did back then.

 

Author: SuperginraiX

Rating: 3

Review: Oh. So THIS is how they're doing it. This is X-Men Epic Collection Vol. 20. The first 19 volumes pretty much collect all of Uncanny X-Men up to this point. Volume 4 collects the X-Men adventures when their own title had gone into reprints. Other X-Men appearances in other books have also been included in these volumes. Heck, the previous volume had a multichapter X-Factor story which didn't feature any current members of the X-Men team. So my question before this volume was: What do you do when there are two X-Men books? In the nineties, Uncanny X-men gained a sister title simply called "X-Men." The first three issues were collected in the previous volume and represent Chris Claremont's last story from his initial X-Men run. So it's appropriate that they are included. The two books, however, feature their own casts of characters (the Blue and Gold teams) so it would have been plausible to launch another book for the new title and keep this volume as strictly the stories of Uncanny X-Men's Gold team. It wouldn't have made a lot of sense since the teams overlap all the time but it was a possibility. Another possibility would be running the comics as they were released. So one issue of Uncanny followed by an issue of "adjective-less" followed by Uncanny and so on. That also wouldn't have made much sense since the titles were mostly telling their own stories and you'd constantly be shifting focus but it WAS possible. Instead, this title does things how I was hoping they'd be done and they run the book in as chronological an order as is possible with mutli-part storylines running simultaneously. So... we start this book with a story from X-Men and the Blue Team before catching back up with a long stretch of stories from Uncanny's Gold Team and then picking up with the Blue Team again when the two titles overlap. It's good to see how stories are "officially" placed together even though my own head cannon moved a book or two into different orders than how they're presented here. With the mechanics of this book's presentation thoroughly discussed, we should get to the meat and potatoes: what do the X-Men look like in a post-Claremont world? Messy! These books are energetic and fun. The stories are convoluted. Since they were plotted by the artists (Jim Lee and Whilce Portacio), they are flashy with some twisty yet uncomplicated plot lines. The scripting is provided at first by veteran X-Artist, John Byrne, and later by future full-time X-Scribe, Scott Lobdell. Byrne had already proven his writing chops on books like Fantastic Four and Man of Steel. He does a pretty good job keeping us apprised of everything going on in the book but there are a few times where he's clearly doing his best to keep up with a plot that was not fully explained to him and pages that were delivered to him last minute. Scott Lobdell does a great job taking over scripting at the last minute and while his dialogue is usually fun, there's a quality here that starts taking all the subtlety out of the X-Men franchise. It's fine but overdone. So that's scripting but how are Jim Lee and Whilce Portacio handling that art? It is good. Jim Lee is a favorite of mine so I dig all his pages. It looks better with Scott Williams inking. Art Thibert handles most of the later issues here (which surprised me) as well as Portacio's Uncanny X-Men pages and he isn't as good as Williams but still does fine. A little stiff but fine. Portacio's art is more of an acquired taste. Whilce's figure work is all over the place. The panel design is sometimes inspired and sometimes overly busy. These is a lot going on. Some of it is quite ugly. Some of it is quite beautiful. In short, these are two super-star artists in the nineties working on top tier titles while also managing a LOT of fame... and probably personal lives. But do you know what my favorite issue in this book is? It's Uncanny X-Men #287. While that book is plotted by Jim Lee, the artist is John Romita Jr., making his return to the X-Men as a guest penciller. The art here is amazing, inked by Scott WIlliams with help from Chris Ivy, Bill Sienkiewicz, Dan Panosian, and Bob Wiacek. It all looks like JR Jr but, like, REALLY GOOD JR Jr. The story involves time-displaced mutant cop, Bishop losing his two time-displaced mutant cop partners while hunting down the last of the time-displaced mutant criminal while explaining the future events that led to him and his buddies winding up in their own past. We also get to see some scenes that would eventually lead to the Onslaught event. I'm not saying Onslaught itself was very good but the hints leading up to it were engaging. Oh, and Bishop becomes and X-Men at the conclusion. Anyway, it's a good book filled with some of the best art in this collection if you don't hate John Romita Jr. art. And you should not. Bishop would eventually become an interesting character. Maybe to some people he already was! There are some nice hints at his potential here but they are mostly obscured by a glorious nineties mullet and an intensely unlikeable attitude. Bishop's origin as coming from an alternate quasi-post-apocalyptic future was front and center to his character which was all the style at the time. Phoenix (Rachel Summers) had a similar origin a decade earlier and X-Force's Cable would soon be fully revealed with the same deal. It was a lot of quasi-post-apocalyptic scenarios all at the same time. Colors in this collection were at an interesting time. X-Men was being printed on slightly more quality paper and the colors were upgraded accordingly. Slightly. Uncanny X-Men's colors were still being done with that old four color process with more visible color dots. I always think that gave the colors more texture and made everything seem more interesting to look at. In this collection, the colors are all done solidly but there are enough gradients and color shadows to give the art a more "finished" look to it. The Uncanny colors actually look better here compared to the X-Men colors but there are some standout pages for each title. We also have Ghost Rider! At the end of the book, the X-Men Blue Team takes a trip to New Orleans to help Gambit with some Guild Wars that quickly escalates into an alien Brood invasion. That involves Ghost Rider for some reason. I guess GR is in town searching for former Ghost Rider, Johnny Blaze. Death is on the line. Anyway, it's an entertaining little crossover that gives us our first glimpse into the complicated backstory that belongs to everyone's favorite Cajun X-Man. Finally, we close off this Epic Collection with the two 1992 Annuals. They feature the first two parts of the Shattershot crossover. It's written by Fabian Nicieza. He would go on to write X-Men and was currently scripting Rob Liefeld's X-Force and writing New Warriors. The story here involves Mojo and the Mojoverse and I'm not really into that aspect of the X-Men. At the same time, the Mojoverse was involved in a subplot in the X-Men book that was THIS close to blowing up into the main story for the title. So it was a lot of Mojoverse all at once. The Uncanny annual has this Bishop story in it by Skip Dietz with art by Herb Trimpe. It's a simple story about how Bishop is getting acclimated to his present situation and how his view of the X-Men was clouded by time and propoganda. I didn't expect to enjoy it as much as I did. The script is overblown and Bishop is still just... super angry. But there's a good idea at the base of this story and I liked it. Finally, this book has a number of extras that I'm going to mention. There's the cover of Wizard #8 featuring Bishop drawn by Whilce Portacio. We have the cover of Wizard #14 featuring Storm, Jean Grey, Rogue, Psylocke, and Jubilee drawn by Art Thibert. There are numerous pictures from the Marvel Swimsuit Special featuring a variety of X-characters (and adjacent) and drawn by some of the bigger nineties artists. Not an extra, but the Annuals have a ton of pinup pages of the X-Men but even more of the bigger nineties artists. The cover of Marvel: 1991- The Year in Review featuring Professor X and a selection of X-Men drawn by Arthur Adams shows up at the back of the book and is followed by a "Man of the Year" article about Professor X. Next up are Jim Lee's character design sheets for new villain, Omega Red. Following that is a black and white drawing of Cyclops, Wolverine and Gambit by Jim Lee and an unused cover sketch by Lee for X-Men #7. There are cover designs to 1995's X-Men: Mutant Genesis trade, 2002's X-Men Visionaries: Jim Lee book, and 1995's X-Men: The Coming of Bishop. Jim Lee's forward to X-Men Visionaries: Jim Lee and Scott Lobdell's afterward to X-Men: The Coming of Bishop are printed for your viewing pleasure. Jeff Matsuda's filler pages for X-Men Mutant Genesis get tucked in next. 1995's cover for X-Men & Ghost Rider: Brood Trouble in the Big Easy TPB is shown off as is a one page remix of the ending to X-Men #8 that showed up in that collection. The collection closed out with the cover of 1992's X-Men Poster Magazine by Joe Quesada. So it's got some beefy extra content. I gave this collection 3 stars and I stand by that. It's not a great collection of stories. I love the art and, honestly, I love the stories for what they are but this thing is a mess of half formed ideas that the writers have to make work. Post-Claremont X-Men stayed alive and prosperous because... y'know, that's a complicated sentence to finish. There are a lot of factors, including the speculator market that was just about ready to burst. The point is that the X-Men kept chugging along after the burst. It kept on selling. I think people loved the characters. I think people were dazzled by the pretty art. I think the writers did their jobs and kept people engaged. But... this is not the best the book was been. It was a soft reset that got the book into a marketably favorable and recognizable condition. It didn't get there clean

 

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