Generation X arrived on the verge of the X-Men franchise’s glory days starting to spoil in the Onslaught era. For that reason, many fans tend to write it off – or, they weren’t even around for it.
Yet, the comic readers who stuck by the X-Men through the 90s know that Generation X wasn’t more of the same compared to other X-Men books of the period. A huge part of that was the Scott Lobdell and Chris Bachalo creative partnership that lasted through the first few years of the series.
Generation X, Vol. 1 AKA by Lobell & Bachalo is the #36 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017 on Tigereyes’s Secret Ballot.
Visit the Marvel Masterworks Message Board to view the original posting of results by Tigereyes, and head to my Guide to Young X-Men to see how many issues of this series have already been reprinted in collected editions.
Past Ranking: #26 in 2016
Probable Contents: This volume would certainly include Generation X #1-25 & Annual 1995, 1996, 1997, and material from Generation X Ashcan Edition, San Diego Preview, and material Generation X Collector’s Preview. It wouldn’t be surprising to also see Uncanny X-Men #316-318 and X-Men #36-37 duplicated from the Phalanx Covenant OHC.
That makes for a somewhat short volume that slightly cuts off the end of the Lobdell/Bachalo run, but it marries to the Operation Zero Tolerance OHC, which begins at #26. Alternately, this book could duplicate #26-31 from that volume to include the complete works of the original creative team, also adding #-1 – pencilled by Bachalo.
(It could also add Daydreamers #1-3, which continues from Generation X #25 and has never been collected.)
Either way, the remainder of the series could likely be knocked out in a single additional volume starting from #32.
Creators: This run is primarily written by Scott Lobdell and drawn by Chris Bachalo with Mark Buckingham and Scott Hana on inks.
An army of pencillers fill in for the year where Bachalo is away – notably including Roger Cruz and Tom Grummett. Issues #28-31, if they were to be included, were written by James Dale Robinson.
Can you read it right now? No. There’s are a pair of Generation X classic trades that run from #1-11, but then you’re stuck with floppies until #26. Guide to Young X-Men covers that and all the rest of the series.
It’s the same story on Marvel Unlimited – #1-11, then straight to #26.
The Details:
Generation X was the totally weird X-Men book that no one knew they wanted but everyone was strangely happy to have when it launched in 1994.
It used to be that New Mutants was the book with the young, school-age cast and Excalibur was the oddball book full of humor. That had changed in the prior year, with X-Force focusing more on a proactive approach to preserving the mutant race and Excalibur finally being sucked into all of the standard X-Men crossover drama.
That left a hole to be filled by a quirky book set at a school. That is what Marvel launched out of the Phalanx Covenant crossover, which introduced a new generation of mutant coveted by the race of techno-organic life forms.
Generation X wasn’t just quirky. It was something altogether different and more transgressive than any X-Men title that had come before. It was a book full of superheroes who wore uniforms but hardly acted as a team. If they had any unifying theme, it was that their powers were metaphors for adolescence that doubled as body horror. [Read more…] about Generation X, Vol. 1 – The #36 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017