Customer Reviews

Exiles Ultimate Collection - Book 1

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At first glance, Exiles seems like a silly way to tie in the old "What If?" series' in a fast-paced, action-packed format with a small cast to guide us from one messed up alternate universe to the next. At its core, though, Exiles is a moving human drama. The Exiles, so named because they are a band of misplaced versions of X-Men characters we know and love (Morph, Blink, Warpath, Sunfire, Mimic, and Magnus, to name a few), are "stuck together" in a journey they don't control to fix the time streams in many different alternate realities. In one reality, Professor X is evil, driven to madness by the mutant-hating humans who rose to power. In another, Tony Stark is President of the United States. In a third, the Exiles must kill Jean Grey, possessed by the Dark Phoenix. The dilemmas they face are difficult, but they face them together, which cause them to grow close to one another. Some are lost along the way, adding tension for the reader -- no one is safe from being "killed off" in this series! If you like alternate dimensions, if you enjoy strong character development, and if you love the comedic and dramatic aspects the X-Men mythology has delivered over the past forty years, then this is for you.

Exiles: Ultimate Collection Book 1 collects Exiles, vol. 1, issues #1-19, originally published between 2001 and 2003 (and previously collected as Exiles 1 (Down the Rabbit Hole, Volume 1 number 1), Exiles Vol. 2: A World Apart (v. 2), and Exiles Vol. 3: Out of Time (X-Men) (v. 3)). Like other Marvel Ultimate editions, this is a hefty paperback graphic novel--480 pages--with decent but not great production values. There are no table of contents, page numbers, individual issue credits (the original credits have been scrubbed from the title pages), nor creator commentary. There is, however, some bonus content: a variant cover, an un-used cover, a pin-up, and the original script to Exiles #7 (which featured no dialogue).

There's a lot of story here, and--for the most part--it's pretty entertaining. Judd Winick's characters are interesting, likable superheroes with well-developed personalities that change as the series progresses. Indeed, despite its frequent "big battle" sequences and What If? stylings, Exiles is at its core a character drama, in which the real action takes place in the relationships that develop between the team members. Indeed, the best individual stories, such as "Play Date," "Nocturne and Evensong," and the beautiful "A Chance to Dream" (told without dialogue) dispense with fight scenes altogether. For all that's good about its emphasis on character, however, Exiles unfortunately drags a bit during the actual superhero segments of the plot. No doubt this is partly a problem caused by the premise (why should the reader care what happens to a myriad of alternate realities?), but Winick exacerbates it by making the dimension-hopping rules so elastic that they often feel like a shallow (and sometimes nonsensical) gimmick. As for the art, Mike McKone and Jim Calafiore's pencils are often good and occasionally (as in issue #7) great.

Overall, this collection is a great value, and is well worth the purchase for fans of Winick or the Marvel Comics universe in general. Be warned, however, that Exiles is a series specifically aimed at long-time readers of Marvel's books. Readers lacking a general knowledge of Marvel's characters and history may find the bigger story lines confusing and difficult to care about. Casual comic book readers should thus probably pass on this one.

Super read. Very entertaining and enthralling and interesting and yet exciting and subtle in its capturing of your time and attention. Wisks you away to a plentiful place of rich writing and art. Lost as you become in its many splendored pages.