New X-Men Omnibus [Hardcover]

Grant Morrison (Author), Frank Quitely (Illustrator), Ethan Van Sciver (Illustrator), Leinil Francis Yu (Illustrator), Igor Kordey (Illustrator), John Paul Leon (Illustrator), Phil Jiminez (Illustrator), Chris Bachalo (Illustrator), Marc Silvestri (Illustrator)

Book Description

Grade Level: 4 and up

Sixteen million mutants dead... and that was just the beginning! In one bold stroke, writer Grant Morrison (The Invisibles, JLA, Fantastic Four: 1234) propelled the X-Men into the 21st century - masterminding a challenging new direction for Marvel's mutant heroes that began with the destruction of Genosha and never let up. Regarded as the most innovative thinker of the current comic-book renaissance, Morrison proceeded to turn the mutant-hero genre on its ear. Gone were the gaudy spandex costumes - replaced by slick, black leather and an attitude to match. Now, his entire Eisner Award-nominated run on New X-Men is collected in one deluxe hardcover! Collects New X-Men #114-154 and Annual 2001

Product Details

• Hardcover: 1096 pages
• Publisher: Marvel; 1st edition (December 6, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0785123261
• ISBN-13: 978-0785123262
• Product Dimensions: 11.1 x 7.7 x 2.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,456,365 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Yes, it's 1096 pages. But it's all one story., December 28, 2006

By 

Adam Cadre (California) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: New X-Men Omnibus (Hardcover)

A problem that has always plagued superhero comics is that of stasis. Marvel's core business is not comics; it's maintaining a stable of properties that can be turned into movies and toys. These properties have to stay recognizable. So if a writer dares to allow characters to grow, to overcome their problems -- the hard-luck college guy ends a string of bad relationships and is happily married, the android develops human emotion, the villain goes straight, a character dies a noble death -- someone else gets brought in and it's "back to basics!" Divorce the wife! Wipe the robot's memory! Make the reformed guy go bad again! Resurrect the dead girl!

Morrison knew this, but didn't care: "Whatever happened before, whatever happens after, I'm writing a BOOK." His entire run, though divided into arcs, is one long story, with a beginning, a middle, and a beautiful Joycean ending. Bits foreshadowing the twists of his thirty-second issue are sprinkled into his fourth... many comics writers slip portentious pages of shadowy figures up to mysterious doings into their stories, but New X-Men offered the delicious pleasure of discovering clues that in retrospect could not be more obvious but at the time didn't even look like clues.

And this isn't form without content. Morrison approached the X-Men from the following angle: "Hey, for the first time in forty years, let's actually use the premise!" No longer is the mutant idea just there as a hook for children's adventure stories (Stan Lee) or teenage melodrama (Chris Claremont); Morrison, arguing that there's no need for the mutant idea to be allegorical to be interesting or relevant, took the idea of a new species beginning to supplant humankind and wrote a science fiction epic around it. And for the first time, Xavier's becomes an actual school, with a faculty made up of several of the 20th-century X-Men and 152 teenage students who take academic classes along with those on mastering one's powers. They're not future superheroes. They're just trying to prevent more genocide in a world that is freaking out about the end of the human race.

Naturally, everything Morrison did was quickly undone. That's the nature of the business. But who cares? Just read this book. It stands alone.

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The absolute best X-Men stories since the Claremont/Byrne era, December 13, 2006

By 

N. Durham "Big Evil" (Philadelphia, PA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: New X-Men Omnibus (Hardcover)

It was the dawn of the 21st Century. The X-Men finally made a successful trip to the big screen, and in the comic world there were to be some shake ups. Grant Morrison, known for his influential and groundbreaking work on JLA, Animal Man, Doom Patrol, and the Invisibles to name a few, was given the task to breathe new life into the stagnant X-Men series, which had become a series of predictable, overblown, mellowdramatic, military-esque stories that were just plain boring. Re-titling the book New X-Men, Morrison re-shuffles the once too big team into the core of Cyclops, Jean Grey, Wolverine, Beast, and Emma Frost; all of whom have their work cut out for them in the first storyarc collected in this massive volume, which finds the mutant island of Genosha and all it's inhabitants exterminated by a giant Sentinel, and the X-Men come face to face with Professor Xavier's evil twin sister Cassandra Nova. As the volume continues, they meet the mysterious mutant healer Xorn, who joins them and has an impact unlike you can imagine. Soon enough, the Shi'ar make their presence felt, there's a riot at the school, Wolverine makes some shocking discoveries about his past, Cyclops embarks on a psychic affair with Emma Frost, and the Phoenix force inside Jean Grey soon rears it's head. All this sets the stage for Morrison's stunning conclusion, beginning with an old enemy back from the dead (sort of) and then hundreds of years in the future as Wolverine leads a new group of fighters against the evil Beast in pursuit of the Phoenix egg. The first thing you'll notice about Morrison's story is how it branches out in so many directions, yet it all comes together as the volume comes to an end. There are new characters introduced all the time, and they all have their own unique impact, while Morrison weaves a strikingly mature tale not seen before in an X-Men book. The spandex costumes are long gone, Cyclops isn't a total boy scout, and Wolverine is the baddest he's been in a long time. If there's any negative thing to say about this incredibly huge book, it's that because of all the different artists, there is a bit of an uneven feel. However, this is only a minor gripe. Because he couldn't keep up with a monthly title, frequent Morrison collaborator Frank Quitely is supplemented by excellent work by Ethan Van Sciver, John Paul Leon, Keron Grant, Tom Derenick, Phil Jimenez, and even Marc Silvestri. Igor Kordey's art however is a major step down from the aforementioned names, and next to Quitely, his work is here more than anyone elses. That aside, this New X-Men Omnibus features the absolute best X-Men stories ever told since the golden age of Chris Claremont and John Byrne, and if you missed out on Morrison's run or any of the previous TPB's, believe me, this is worth every single penny of the list price.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best X-Men run in at least two decades, July 9, 2007

By 

Justin Gaines (Northern Virginia) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: New X-Men Omnibus (Hardcover)

Remember when Uncanny X-Men was a cutting edge comic? When I started reading the X-Men titles in 1990, they had this mystique surrounding them. X-Men was the dangerous superhero team that the "cool" comic geeks followed. Looking back it seems a bit ridiculous. A lot of that mystique came from a single character (Wolverine), dynamic artwork by Jim Lee, Marc Silvestri, etc. and continuity so baffling that only the truly obsessive could keep track. Unfortunately the X-Men titles began to slide into mediocrity shortly after I started reading them. Just when I was ready to stop reading them altogether, Marvel decided to really shake things up.

They brought in Grant Morrison. By placing more emphasis on character development and sharper dialogue than on spandex slug-fests, Morrison, along with writers like Brian Michael Bendis, Mark Millar, Warren Ellis, and Garth Ennis, are responsible for what has to be the best wave of comics since Frank Miller and Alan Moore started deconstructing the genre back in the mid 80's.

It says a lot that of the two X-Men Omnibus volumes released so far, one contains Chris Claremont's initial run on Uncanny X-Men and the other is Grant Morrison's entire New X-Men run. Both runs revolutionized their respective titles, smashing the status quo and challenging traditions. Morrison's run introduced a major new villain, unleashed a new wave of Sentinels, destroyed Genosha, killing 16 million mutants, and made Emma Frost an A-list character...and that's just the first four issues! Throughout the run we're treated to a Scott/Jean/Emma love triangle, revelations about the Weapon Plus program that created Wolverine, Xorn, the U-Men, the destruction of the Shi'ar Empire, a riot at Xavier's School, a completely unhinged Magneto, a disturbing vision of the future, and an unforgettable night on the town with Wolverine and Cyclops. Morrison smashes through the X-Men Universe with punk rock-like abandon and uses the shards to put together something new and exciting that would, for a while, make the X-Men an edgy, must-read comic once again. And his movie-inspired uniforms were a huge improvement over the old costumes.

The artwork sadly, is not as consistent as the writing. Nobody managed to stay on the book for more than four consecutive issues, but at least the artwork was (mostly) high quality. I've come to absolutely love Frank Quitely's quirky style, so his issues are my favorites. Ethan Van Sciver (Green Lantern) also shines here, as does Chris Bachalo, who's drawn pretty much every X-book by now. The occasional issue by Leniel Yu, Phil Jiminez, and John Paul Leon are well done, but Igor Kordey's artwork is the low point of the book. His style is just not suited to this kind of title. The final issues were drawn by former X-Men artist (and current Witchblade/Darkness hotshot) Marc Silvestri, who definitely helps end things with a bang.

This is a shining example of what comics in the 21st century can be, and will go down in history as one of the three most important X-Men runs ever. The fact that you can get all of the issues in one mammoth hardcover volume is just the icing on the cake.