When I was a kid, around grade 4, my aunt gave me a subscription to The New Mutants. It got me into comics, and my interest intensified when I was able to borrow old issues of the X-Men from a cousin's friend. Of course, the problem with monthly comics is that the quality of the authors vary greatly over time. During the comics bubble of the nineties, I ended up collecting 5 X-titles per month. Eventually I guess I realized that the quality had become poor, and I stopped collecting entirely.
Fast Forward. I spent my weekends in Singapore browsing through the large selection of books at Kinokuniya. I discovered the Essential X-Men, classic issues reprinted phone-book style, thick, cheap, and black and white. Kinda like manga! Essential is a misnomer; each book reprints a solid run of issues, around 25 issues worth. Comprehensive would have been a better fit. Suits me fine, since I don't want to miss out on even the filler issues.
Fast forward again. In just a few weeks, I've gotten volumes 2-6. I'd get the rest too, but of course (state of comic book stores as they are) finding the more recent volumes is difficult, and finding the first nearly impossible.
As for the content, it's good stuff! I mean, really, when you track down your childhood favorites, you're supposed to realize that they sucked and you just didn't know (like, say the old Transformers cartoons). But instead, reading this makes me realize how much I loved comics.
Essential X-Men starts off by reprinting the introduction of the "new" team of Wolverine, Cyclops, Storm, Nightcrawler, and Colossus. And then you move on to Vol.2 with the Dark Phoenix Saga and Days of Future Past, two of the most definitive X-Men stories evar! No, seriously, it's good stuff.
Unfortunately, the curse of mainstream comics eventually takes its toll on the X-Men. Spin-offs and cross-overs plague the books by volume 5, and you can see Chris Claremont's amazing run begin to spiral down into madness.
In the end, it reminds me of why I hate comics too. Marvel needs to have famous characters to trademark and exploit, and good storytelling seems to take a backseat to simply churning out issues. Guys. Sometimes less is more.
