X-men Epic Collection: The Brood Saga

Great read tradition x men

All of these collections are great every page in full colour amazing stories everyone of them good buy.

Even forty years later, Chris Claremont’s original Brood story arc is still spectacular and well worth the read. The main event for this terrific Epic Collection initially sees the X-Men fighting Alien-like bug creatures on Earth and ultimately brings them to outer space in another part of the galaxy (the core? I never understood the exact geography). The in-space part of the “Brood Saga” story is actually fairly simple, plot-wise, but stretched out over five consecutive issues it feels rich and complex. Without question it is heavily inspired by Star Wars and Alien, but at least for me there’s exactly zero things wrong with that. It pre-dated the alien hoard in Aliens, but certainly anticipated it. I especially enjoyed the sci-fi stuff as a 12-year-old, when it served as my introduction to X-Men comics and scratched precisely the itch I had for more colorful space opera material. Most of the art is handled by Dave Cockrum, and it looks terrific. Several of his covers, particularly for issues 157, 163, and 164, are iconic all-time greats. The spaceship and costume designs are wild and fun and exotic (except Binary's, which misses the mark a bit for me with the giant downward-pointing arrow and “star hair”); the action scenes are detailed and easy to follow; and all characters are distinct, with striking poses, etc. And then there’s Paul Smith, my all-time favorite X-Men artist (above even the magnificent Arthur Adams), who took over with issue #165. The cover and opening splash page of that issue admittedly do feel a little “thin” on linework, and with several panels without backgrounds on the next few pages you might be forgiven for thinking, at first, that his style wasn’t detailed enough. But it turns out Paul Smith’s art is exquisitely detailed. Every body pose, every facial expression, and every movement is just masterfully conveyed. There was also extraordinarily strong character work (both writing and art) in issue #165, particularly with Wolverine and Nightcrawler sharing beers and waxing philosophical, and with Kitty and Colossus deepening their relationship in a mature and delicately handled manner. Carol Danvers and Storm each feel like actual people struggling with self-identity issues. Issue #166, a double-size issue, feels slightly padded out, but again, there’s nothing wrong with that. It looks incredible and seems fitting as a finale to the space-opera portion of the story. Finally, issue #167 draws the saga to a satisfying close while simultaneously setting up future stories. Incidentally, anyone wondering why many teenage readers of the time had crushes on Kitty Pryde need look no further than several panels of Paul Smith’s art here; she’s adorable. This volume also contains two well-done Dracula stories drawn by Brent Anderson and Bill Sienkiewicz (just before Bill’s style got super expressionistic); they look great and veer slightly (and enjoyably) into horror. There's also a Belasco story that's fundamental to the character of Colossus's younger sister lllyana. The book concludes with a surprisingly entertaining short story from the Special Edition reprint issue featuring Kitty and Illyana exploring the X-mansion on Kitty’s birthday. Overall, this is an A+ X-Men collection, representing some of the best of the title and creative team during their continued rise in popularity in the early ‘80s.

Le he dado tres estrellas porque el precio me parece un poco caro y la edición mejorable. Sin embargo, el trabajo de Claremont y de Smith, sin llegar a las cotas del tándem de aquel con Byrne, es bastante bueno. Por otro lado, la inclusión del Anual 6 (1970) con Tormenta poseída por Drácula (con Bill Sienkiewicz a los lápices ) es una delicia. En resumen, se recoge una etapa destacable de la Patrulla-X en la que Cockrum cumple, como siempre, y en la que Paul Smith, en mi modesta opinión, hace uno de sus mejores trabajos en La Patrulla-X. Gracias.

This is my first Epic Collection volume and I'm absolutely impressed by the quality of the material. Back to my childhood, the issues were smaller and the kind of paper used for the printing wasn't so good. The book was delivered in excellent shape and much faster than estimated.