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Crushing Comics S01E083 – X-Statix emerges from X-Force (+ X-Men, Diversity, & Acceptance)

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I’m down to just two books left to unwrap. I know exactly what they are, but not which one is which, so I’m 50% surprised to unwrap the massive X-Statix omnibus.

X-Statix is an indie-style, deconstructionist take on mutantdom that features ongoing themes of addiction, teenage pregnancy, promiscuity, and racial identity/discrimination. I talk a little bit about X-Statix’s story, but spend a lot of the episode discussing diversity and comics. If you reject a (great) comic for having a same sex relationship, then have you been paying attention to the X-Men in the first place?

(You might recall this story from when I originally told it on CK over half a decade ago; it is still one of my favorite posts of all time.)

Want to start from the beginning of this season of videos? Here’s the complete Season 1 playlist of Crushing Comics.

Episode 83 features the X-Statix Omnibus, which is covered in the Guide to X-Force.

Crushing Comics S01E042 – My Macabre Childhood Favs + X-Force Omnibus by Rob Liefeld

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In this episode my Clue t-shirt sends me on a brief trip down memory lane about all the macabre stuff I liked as a kid. What was your totally peculiar interest as a child?

Afterwards I unwrap one of the most mainstream comics of my childhood: the initial run of Rob Liefeld’s X-Force! It’s at once the perfect metaphor from mutants moving on from an eternal high school and a bit of a let down when it comes to the big ideas behind the guns and pouches.

Want to start from the beginning of this season of videos? Here’s the complete Season 1 playlist of Crushing Comics.

Episode 42 features the X-Force Omnibus, Vol. 1. For more information, head to the Guide to X-Force.

Crushing Comics S01E22 – X-Force by Kyle & Yost Vol. 1 & Vol. 2 and X-Force/Cable: Messiah War

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In part two of unwrapping a big brick of X-Men, I tackle 2008’s X-Force revival as a Wolverine-led team of violent fixers, including how I went from a skeptic to a fan and how Messiah War shouldn’t be mentioned in the same breath as Messiah Complex and Second Coming. (Go even more in-depth on this run with my Most Wanted Omnibus post!)

Want to start from the beginning of this season of videos? Here’s the complete Season 1 playlist of Crushing Comics.

Episode 22 features X-Force, Vol. 1 & Vol. 2 by Kyle & Yost OHC (Amazon Vol. 1 / Amazon Vol. 2 / eBay) and X-Force/Cable: Messiah War (Amazon / eBay), but I also discuss X-Necrosha (Amazon / eBay) and X-Men: Second Coming (Amazon / eBay). Find the full collection details of all of those books in the Guide to X-Force.

 

Cable & X-Force Omnibus, Vol. 1 – The #55 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017

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Cable & X-Force Omnibus, Vol. 1 is the #55 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.

What Is It? This is a shared volume between X-Force (1991) and their leader Cable (1993), whose titles were tightly intertwined in this period from March 1994 to February 1995.

While it’s usually not productive to assume Marvel will group related titles together in this way, they’ve already set the precedent with the forthcoming Deadpool & X-Force Omnibus beginning to collect Cable’s solo series.

Past Ranking: This year is the book’s debut placement in the ballot results.

Creators: Written by Fabian Nicieza (with Glenn Alan Herdling, Scott Lobdell, Larry Hama, and Jeph Loeb III) with pencils by Tony Daniel and inks by Kevin Conrad on X-Force (with Terry Dodson and Paul Pelletier) and army of artists on Cable and the crossover issues.

Probable Contents: Collects X-Force (1991) #32-43 & Annual 3 and Cable (1993) #9-20 along with crossovers into New Warriors #45-46, Excalibur #82, and X-Factor #106, and Wolverine #85.

This is a slim, unsurprising set of contents that cover just a year of storytelling. All of the contents have been previously collected across four volumes (as well as five issues from the Phalanx Covenant oversize hardcover). In fact, it would make a future Volume 2 a little simpler if this volume covered a bit more, but a major direction change in both titles after Age of Apocalypse makes that unlikely.

See the full map in Oversize X-Men: A map of every existing omnibus, plus what’s missing (Part 2: 1991 to 2001). Note that Cable #20 is part of the “Legion Quest” crossover, but has already been collected once without the direct crossover issues.

Can you read it right now? Yes! You need to pick up X-Force: Child’s Play, X-Force: Phalanx Covenant, Cable Classic, Volume 2, and Cable Classic, Volume 3. Find out more in the Guide to X-Force and Guide to Cable.Cable_1993_0009

Unfortunately, Marvel Unlimited currently stops just short of this run in its coverage of X-Force (1991) and they only have a handful of the Cable (1993) issues.

The Details:

You could easily subtitle this period of X-Force and Cable “Family Matters,” as the runs of both books are deeply concerned with the connections between long-serving teammates in X-Force and generations of family in Cable.

X-Force begins this period with one of its more entertaining line-ups – Cannonball, Boomer, Richtor, Shatterstar, Warpath, and Siryn – plus frequent co-stars Cable and Domino.

It’s a truly delightful cast of characters, a trio of whom would later become mainstays in Peter David’s X-Factor, which plays out the theme of Richtor and Shatterstar’s unlikely friendship that developed in these issues.

This run begins with a four-issue “Child’s Play” crossover with New Warriors. We tend to have a modern view of crossovers as disconnected plays for increased sales, but that wasn’t necessarily the case with this Fabian Nicieza’s story. [Read more…] about Cable & X-Force Omnibus, Vol. 1 – The #55 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017

X-Force by Kyle & Yost Omnibus – The #57 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017

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X-Force_2008_0002The X-Force by Kyle & Yost Omnibus is the #57 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017 on Tigereyes’s Secret Ballot – and I’ve included the complete X-Force reading order (and casualty count) below!

Visit the Marvel Masterworks Message Board to view the original posting of results by Tigereyes.

What Is It? X-Force (2008) maintained the proactive mandate of 1991’s X-Force iteration but added a no-holds-barred bloody approach to the X-Men’s take on counterterrorism.

That’s what you get when Cyclops appoints Wolverine to lead a team of hunter-killers, although he’s not too happy about his line-up. X-23 is there – despite Wolverine trying to steer her to non-violence, as is Warpath – a reluctant killer, both Angel and Rahne – not entirely in control of themselves, and later Domino, Vanisher, and Elixir.

X-Force (2008) ran for 28 issues and one annual from April 2008 to September 2010.

Past Ranking: This year is the book’s debut placement in the ballot results.

Creators: Written by Craig Kyle and Christopher Yost with art by Clayton Crain along with pencils by Mike Choi, Alina Urusov, Carlo G. Barberi, Gabriele Dell’Otto, and Jason Trent Pearson, inks by Sandu Florea, colors by Sonia Oback, Edgar Delgado (AKA Pato), and Dave Stewart, and letters by Jeff Eckleberry and Cory Petit.

Probable Contents:  X-Force (2008) #1-25 & Annual 1, X-Force: Sex & Violence #1-3, Cable (2008) #13-15 (and material from #6-7 & 12), Messiah War one-shot, X-Men: Future History – The Messiah War Sourcebook, X-Force/New Mutants: Necrosha One-Shot, X-Necrosha: The Gathering, and X-Force Special: Ain’t No Dog, as well as some background material. See below for a full reading order.

[Thanks to John S. on FB for catching two of the one-shots I omitted!]

Click to expand a discussion of further content for this volume.

Can you read it right now? Yes!X-Force_2008_0007

With the exception of Messiah War and Second Coming, X-Force has now been released in four formats! A pair of oversized hardcovers – Volume 1 and Volume 2 – are the quickest way to collect the non-event issues, but Complete Collection Volume 1 and Volume 2 paperbacks add the Necrosha material.

See the Guide to X-Force for every possible iteration. Or, just head to Marvel Unlimited – every issue is available there (although, note you have to type “X Necrosha” to find the Necrosha one-shots in search.

The Details:

There no other way to say it: X-Force was a shock.

Up to this point it the X-Men’s 40 years of history we had seen plenty of bloody panels – many of them courtesy of Wolverine, Cable, and Deadpool, but also some in books like X-Statix. Yet, even when the X-Men were at their most proactive and forceful, they were rarely a team of killers. That’s something we associated more with their enemies, like the Marauders or Omega Red.

(And of course, there were some major-scale genocidal wipeouts courtesy of Dark Phoenix (billions!) and the mega-sentinel at the beginning of Grant Morrison’s New X-Men (millions!).)

X-Force was the first time that we had an X-Men team devoted to merciless killing. [Read more…] about X-Force by Kyle & Yost Omnibus – The #57 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017

Oversize X-Men: A map of every existing omnibus, plus what’s missing (Part 4: 2008 to 2015)

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This is the end, my friends! The last in a series of four posts covering how Marvel could cover every X-Men comic book in omnibus volumes.

This post covers every X-Men series from Messiah Complex to the end of Marvel Now in an effort to give you maximum ideas for the The Most Wanted Marvel Omnibus Secret Ballot, where you vote for the comic runs you’d most like to see in an oversized format. Monday I covered all of X-Men from 1963 to 1991, Tuesday I reviewed 1991 to 2001, and yesterday I broke down 2001 to 2008.

With 21 more omnibuses from Messiah Complex to AvX and another 10 from Marvel Now, this edition brings our grand total of potential X-Men volumes to 113 possible omnibuses – which begs the question: How many of these could we possibly see in our lifetimes before books become completely obsolete and comics are downloaded directly into our brains?

At Marvel’s current rate of only a handful of X-Men omnibuses a year, it’s never going to happen.

Yet, with most Marvel omnibuses selling between 1,000 and 2,500 units in their first week, it makes me wonder how many of these books we could see if Marvel abandoned the outdated Direct Market model for determining their pre-order volume and sell-through.

Picture this – in October 2017 Marvel partners with Kickstarter plus one of the big online comic book sellers as a distributor to introduce the new “X-Men Omnibus Club: Year 1.” [Read more…] about Oversize X-Men: A map of every existing omnibus, plus what’s missing (Part 4: 2008 to 2015)