Customer Reviews

X-Men: The Fall of the Mutants (X-Men)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

X-Men: Fall of the Mutants Omnibus collects issues #18-26 of X-Factor, #336-337 and #340 of The Incredible Hulk, #252 of Daredevil, #339 of Captain America, #35 of Power Pack, #312 of Fantastic Four, #220-227 of Uncanny X-Men, and #55-61 of New Mutants, all of which were originally published between 1987 and 1988. Like other Marvel Omnibuses, this one features low-gloss archival quality paper, finished boards, and a sewn binding. Despite these features, however, the Fall of the Mutants Omnibus gives the general impression of having been rushed sloppily through production. The foil-stamped title on the front cover, for instance, looks terrible, having accidentally been left-justified instead of centered. The three individual pages of summarized back-story are amazingly sloppy as well: not only is the writing horrendous, but strange textual characters are accidentally mixed in amongst the text, weird formatting errors are evident, words seem to be missing, and sentences sometimes lack concluding punctuation. These pages are indeed so embarrassingly bad as to be almost comical. Extras include some house ads (randomly scattered throughout the book), a reproduction of a Fall of the Mutants Contest Reply Card, covers to the Fall of the Mutants trade paperback and Essential X-Factor vol. 2, a Fall of the Mutants article from Marvel Age #58, and (dreadfully done) combined cover spreads for each of the main books.

Plot-wise, Fall of the Mutants Omnibus contains three, largely separate stories, each running through one of the main X-Books of 1987. The first, written by Louise Simonson, sees X-Factor struggle both to protect themselves from their traitorous business manager and protect New York City from Apocalypse and his Horsemen. In the second story, written by Chris Claremont, Storm undertakes a quest to murder Forge (who has, ostensibly, become evil) while the X-Men rescue Madelyne Pryor from the Marauders and find themselves face-to-face with Freedom Force. In the last story, also written by Louise Simonson, the New Mutants befriend a strange bird-boy, who leads the group into a dangerous adventure that ends in tragedy.

All three stories contain big events important to X-Men history, including the first appearance of Archangel, Roma's gift to the X-Men, and the tragic death of one the New Mutants. New readers encountering these stories for the first time, however, are likely to find them something of a mixed bag. The X-Factor tale is woefully convoluted and--in this reader's opinion--somewhat poorly drawn by Walter Simonson (panels are spare and, with Bob Wiacek on inks, often appear sketchy). Luckily, the Peter David Hulk stories that cross-over into it are beautifully drawn by Todd McFarlane. John Romita Jr. and Al Williamson also provide excellent art for Ann Nocenti's interesting Daredevil cross-over. Chris Claremont's X-Men storyline makes for a more enjoyable read--particularly the now classic Storm segment--but, as with Simonson on X-Factor, Marc Silevstri's art for it (inked by Dan Green) is not his best. The New Mutants bird-boy saga, however, proves to be the most enjoyable of the three. Though by far the least epic part of the "Fall of the Mutants" event, this quirky story manages to be both comical and, thanks to Brett Blevins' gorgeous and sometimes gruesome art (inked by Terry Austin), genuinely nerve-wracking.

If you're a die-hard fan of the X-Men and don't already own the trade paperback version of X-Men: The Fall of the Mutants (X-Men), this edition is worth picking up. If you're a more casual X-Men fan or already own the previous version, however, there's no reason to buy this--especially considering its sloppy production quality.

The Fall of the Mutants Omnibus Collects:
X-Factor 18-26
Uncanny X-Men 220-227
New Mutants 55-61
Incredible Hulk 336-337; 340
Power Pack 35
Daredevil 252
Captain America 39
Fantastic Four 312

This is a massive 813-page volume. Taken together it is representative of Marvel in the late 1980s. The book itself is beautiful (and a great way to replace the old comic boxes you might have hidden away): the jacket is a thick glossy high-quality paper. The pages are made from quality paperstock that makes the artwork with look better than it ever did in the original magazines.

Given that Fall of the Mutants Omnibus collects so many Marvel titles, it represents what is great and not-so-great about Marvel at the time. Fall of the Mutants begins with X-Factor titles, which are by far the weakest of the collection. Unfortunately, X-Factor took some of the greatest X-Men, kept them in their original corny outfits and added an overly complicated cover story for them (something about helping mutants by disguising themselves as mutant hunters). Power Pack so-so.

While Fall of the Mutants Omnibus starts on weak note, it grows into a fantastic crescendo. By the time you get the Uncanny X-Men issues (about halfway through the omnibus), all the framework/set-up is out of the way. This leaves the X-Men ready to battle Adversary in a cosmic struggle that threatens the entire omniverse.

The X-Men issues ultimately redefine the direction of the series for several years to follow. These issues are critical reading for any X-Fan. Storm learns to balance her human abilities and desires with her God-like command of the elements. Wolverine is forced to become a team player. Colossus returns from a long recovery. The X-Men and Mystique reach a truce. There are great battle sequences between the Marauders and the X-Men (especially as Havoc is pitted against his love Polaris as possessed by Malice). Without giving away too much, the X-Men issues are phenomenal.

In summary:
Fall of the Mutants Omnibus could be a 5-star collection; however, the overly drawn out cross-over is both typical of Marvel in 1980s-1990s and frustrating. I don't believe the random tie-ins with Power Pack, Hulk, Capt America, etc were really necessary (Marvel's logic at the time was to encourage readers of their flagship X-Men to buy other titles). However, the highs outnumber the lows. Even if you skipped the weaker issues collected in this Omnibus, you would still have 500-600 pages of great reading. So I give it 4-stars: "I liked it."

If you liked the Inferno HC and Mutant Massacre HC I think they are pretty representative of what you are getting here. Still I wish it would be $20 cheaper without the crossover filling like the Inferno HC (the extra issues are ok but just cause disconnect with different writers & art.

I thought pretty good but I must admit I'm a bit disappointed for over $60. Pay an extra $10 and get the Thor Omnibus which in my mind is the best thing put out in the 80's -amazing.

I was a comic reader way back when...during what I consider the glory days of comics in the late 70s and early to mid 80s. I was a big fan of the X-men during the Byrne/Claremont years, but ran out of time to indulge my misspent youth shortly after X-Factor showed up. I'd noticed recently that the X-men seem to be everywhere, and more popular than ever, so I thought I'd give this novel a shot. Bad move. I've always enjoyed Walt Simonson's work, and Apocalypse is an excellent villain, so the X-Factor story was great. However, the X-men tale paled in comparison to the stories I remembered from the Byrne/Claremont days. These characters don't even feel like the same people that were around during the Dark Phoenix saga. It's a shame, because they're much less interesting and feel more like characters in a kid's story, where you can just make up something to solve a problem. The New Mutants storyline was difficult to comment on, since I don't really know the characters or their history. Ho hum. Also, if you're expecting three stories that are related in some way, you'll be disappointed.

"Fall Of The Mutants" is nothing special at all. It's not even a crossover as each of the x-teams have their own stories that don't interconnect one bit. The stories were not exactly that thrilling or climatic and I found myself bored reading parts of it.

The X-Men story takes place in Dallas where they must defeat the Adversary, who twisted the city by making an almalgam of different realities. Freedom Force also makes an appearence and helps out. The art is great, but the ending is ehhh. The big thing here is that the X-men pretend to die and move to Australia where they stay for a while. I was expecting some really good fights, but not really.

The X-Factor story isn't much better. You do get to see the first appearence ever of Archangel, which is memorable. But I found myself bored to death reading this. The horsemen are easily defeated and Apocalypse doesn't even fight X-Factor. The big drama is when Apocalypse sends his Ship rampaging through New York City, and it's up for X-Factor to save the city and help repair it. Along the way they deal with the bigotry of humans and blah blah blah. However, X-Factor does announce to the public that they are mutants and were masquerading as mutant-hunters, making this story important to their history.

My favorite story is the New Mutant's one. The art is great and so is the story. The students take their new friend Bird-Brain to Animator's island, filled with more animate hybrids like Bird-Brain. The New Mutants take on Animator and everything is looking good for them, until the Right and Cameron Hodge show up and give the animates and the mutants a pounding. Then Animator murders a New Mutant while the other mutants finish defeating the Right. It was really sad and emotional watching the kids deal with their friend's death. This story really came to life for me and was written really well.

All in all, this isn't the best book to buy. I basically bought it for the classic issues. Instead of buying this book, I recomend you to buy "X-Men: Inferno" or "X-Men: X-Tinction Agenda". Those were outstading x-overs in my opinion. "Fall Of The Mutants" is decent and your average run of the mill storylines. It did leave lasting marks on the lives of our favorite mutants, and that's what makes it good in a sense.

One of my biggest hopes realized when this volume was released. This is the story that made me love the X-Men when I was a kid. And finally it's in one handsome reprint volume. It collects the classic "Fall of the Mutants" themed story-arcs in the X-Men, X-Factor and New Mutants books. The whole thing is not a crossover, it's a themed-collection of stories. A turning point and one of the darkest eras in the X-history.

1) The X-Men dies in Dallas... in full public view.
2) The X-Factor face Apocalypse in Manhattan (in my opinion, the greatest Apocalypse story ever written and drawn)
3) The New Mutants confront issues of life, freedom and death... and loses their innocence.

What more do you need to know?

The only reason these issues are bound together is because they were run under the same banner when they were originally published in 1988. This isn't a crossover so don't get this expecting mutants from your favorite '80s X-books to team up in any way.

The Uncanny X-Men story is the only one you will probably enjoy; even though it is an endless fight scene the tactics are clever and well thought out and every character gets a moment or two to shine. This is also the only one with any emotion invested in it; you get intense battles, bits of humor and pathos and some nicely believable interactions that make for a much more complete story then the next two. Yes, the villain is cheesy but Claremont's stories aren't so much about beating bad guys as much as teamwork, heroic sacrifice and the human condition. The opening pages, with Colossus in Scotland befriending some kids who love playing X-Men, but flee in horror when his powers manifest has no bearing on the story but is nonetheless a nice commentary on how theory and reality are two very different things for the human mind to cope with. Silvestri's art looks more sketchy and unfinished then a normal comic but that's what gives it a sense of action and immediacy. All the many people running around the panels are easily recognizeable and never posed generically.

X-Factor is downright painful to read and I can't emphasize enough that it be skipped. The art is choppy, with word balloons inserted in awkward places that make reading difficult, and so awful I couldn't tell that one of the villains was a female until another character referred to them as a her. Some of the original art must have gone missing because photocopies of comic pages have been inserted in several places as an ugly replacement. The piece tries to convey how selfless helping will eventually alleviate bigotry but the humans we see go from little Hitlers to throwing tickertape parades overnight. This section also overlapped with a story in Power Pack but those issues aren't reprinted because they aren't an 'X' title so heroes pop up and baddies die with no explanation whatsoever. Most insulting is Cyclops' endless speechifying about how he never really loved his wife (Who we just saw sacrificing herself to save humankind) followed by a leap into the sack with Jean Grey. Um...your wife *just* died and your son is missing shouldn't you be worrying or grieving insead of spewing venom and bodily fluids all over the place?

New Mutants is an improvement over X-factor, but not by much. Characters have a tendency to repeat themselves and several suffer from 'cutesy speech syndrome' where alien creatures talk in annoying styles and fonts, ethnic accents fade in and out and people are perpetually dropping g's d's and sometimes entire words from their sentences. Over-the-top histrionics ruin what could have been a poignant look at teenaged heroes dealing with death in the line of duty. The art is weird and cartoony but works strangely well within the context of a pre-teen comic. Bret Blevins doesn't skimp on the details and he never draws the shape-shifting, techno-organic Warlock the same way twice

Claremont's work is serviceable; it's not as good as his heydey issues but when you write a book a month about the same characters for almost fifteen years the quality is bound to flag from time to time. Compared to the X-Factor and New Mutants sections his work reads like John Milton. Louise Simonson's characters come off as carbon copied and one dimensional. Her idea of recapping is having one person each issue reiterate that they possess super-powers...to a fellow teammate no less and her idea of a good story segue is to have the New Mutants leave the morgue where their friend's body lay and excitedly play dress-up in the attic.

None of these stories really overlap to form a cohesive whole and the end result is more like an overpriced anthology of what X-Men comics had sadly come to as opposed to the richer stories Vertigo was putting out at the same time. Invest your money, eyesight and time in one of the Essential X-Men volumes instead.

This is not a traditional cross-over. Normally, it's one story that takes place over several different titles. This one has 3 different stories. One for X-Factor, one for X-Men, and one for The New Mutants. Each one is its own story. This was probably the biggest comic event from the late 1980's. There's a lot of action and lots of drama. I can honestly say that one of the comics almost made me cry. Considering it's a comic (and I don't particularly like the author of that story) it's really saying something. Yes, I don't like the author of some of the stories, but that's a more personal matter. The stories here are great. Louis Simonson and the amazing Chris Claremont are the key writers of these collection. highly recommend it.

this book wasn't the best ever, but it was really good, & the average rating needs to be brought up. this has 3 separate storylines: xmen, new mutants, & x-factor. the x-men story is them fighting the adversary, & the world thinking they died. this set the stage for their australia years, which was a major part of x-history. the x-factor one had apocalypse attacking manhatten, x-factor learning what he did to angel, & them gaining SHIP. the new mutants one had a pretty stupid villain, but it also had the death of doug ramsey (cypher) which was very memorable & sad

This collection is highly unmemorable. The X-Men story is one of those stories that makes you wonder if Claremont really is the God we all believe him to be. The dialogue is uninspired, the characters don't mesh and the villain is unmemorable.

The X-Factor tale is the unveiling of Archangel, which is historic... but poorly executed. Appocolypse seems not like a dangerous villain, but a comical jack-in-the-box toy.

The New Mutants story is a joke.

I gave this collection two stars only because of the signifigance of the Archangel story.