Essential X-Men, Vol. 7

Essential X-Men #7

by Chris Claremont, Barry Windsor-Smith (Illustrator), Alan Davis (Illustrator)

In the wake of the Marauders' Mutant Massacre, the X-Men go mobile to plan their next move--but recruiting Dazzler and Havok brings them even more catastrophe! And with a teammate's life on the line, the mutant marvels are forced to fight the Fantastic Four and seek the genius of Doctor Doom!

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, X Men, Marvel, Comic Book, Superheroes, Science Fiction

560 pages, Paperback

First published April 10, 1988

About the author

Chris Claremont is a writer of American comic books, best known for his 16-year (1975-1991) stint on Uncanny X-Men, during which the series became one of the comic book industry's most successful properties.

Claremont has written many stories for other publishers including the Star Trek Debt of Honor graphic novel, his creator-owned Sovereign Seven for DC Comics and Aliens vs Predator for Dark Horse Comics. He also wrote a few issues of the series WildC.A.T.s (volume 1, issues #10-13) at Image Comics, which introduced his creator-owned character, Huntsman.

Outside of comics, Claremont co-wrote the Chronicles of the Shadow War trilogy, Shadow Moon (1995), Shadow Dawn (1996), and Shadow Star (1999), with George Lucas. This trilogy continues the story of Elora Danan from the movie Willow. In the 1980s, he also wrote a science fiction trilogy about female starship pilot Nicole Shea, consisting of First Flight (1987), Grounded! (1991), and Sundowner (1994). Claremont was also a contributor to the Wild Cards anthology series.

Reviews

[Baba · Rating 4 out of 5]

After the devastation of the Mutant Massacre, the devastation caused by the Marauders decimates the mutant community leading the team to get a slew of new members in Havok, Dazzler, Longshot, Psylocke joining Storm, Wolverine and Rogue. Most of this volume is spent outside New York, mostly in San Francisco, as the alongside the Marauders the mutants have to deal with ever ratcheting up anti-mutant and hence anti-X-men hysteria. Very much peak X-Men culminating in the televised(!) fate of the team in Dallas in the amazing 'Fall of the Mutants' event!

This book also includes one of the lesser appreciated but one of the finest Limited Serials of the 1980s, X-Men vs. Fantastic Four in which a desperate X-Men seek aid from the Fantastic Four to save Kitty, only for Reed to be trumped by Dr Doom! A key work that includes the bonding of Franklin and Kitty, the strengthening of the Fantastic Four family and The FF hopefully coming to terms with the new heroic Magneto. A clever book that more about emotion, empathy and self belief than it is about conflict - a very strong Four Star 8 out o12 Ltd Series.

This is such a delightful dark time for the X-Men with three core members out of action, multiple new members and the incessant and lethal attrition waged by the Marauders on them and the wider mutant community. This volume also sees the coming of the downright deadly Malice! Never before had the X-Men been under so much non-stop pressure! An 8 out of 12, Four Star read. This volume covers The Uncanny X-Men #214-228, Annuals #10 & #11 and the Fantastic Four vs X-Men Limited Series.

2024, 2017, 2014 and 2010 read

[Malum · Rating 2 out of 5]

Claremont is getting more experimental at this point (or just strapped for ideas) and it just doesn't work for me that much. A good chunk of popular characters are effectively off the team and replaced with C and D listers like Dazzler and Longshot. The end of this volume had the X-Men presumed dead, they can't be recorded by any electronic devices, and they move to Australia. You didn't just have a seuzure; that is a whole lot of random stuff that Claremont dumps in your lap because he just can't figure out what to do with this book anymore. On the bright side, Storm finally gets her powers back.

Notable first appearances: Mr. Sinister

Notable events: "Fall of the Mutants"

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

This seventh Essential X-men #7 contains uncanny x-men #214-218 & annual #10-11 & fantastic four vs. the x-men #1-4.
The x-men are hurt after the Morlock massacre that claimed a few wounded on the x-men side which leaves them understaffed. Storm without her powers is still the leader and her quest for a chance of regaining her power leads to the death of the x-men when they show that they are the good guys who are willing to fight for mankind. These comics are of course about racism where the majority of mankind is afraid of the super powered hero's unless they are somehow leashed. With the exception of the Avengers & the Fantastic Four who are always on the edge but have saved mankind so often that they are looked upon favourably.
The x-man are scary which can be understood by the likes of super mentat Charles Xavier or even Wolverine.
These comics in the Claremont period are just excellent, sometimes he meanders a wee bit when the comics should be powering along. But it is certainly a very golden age for this particular team.

Always a pleasure to read. And then there is that cameo of a certain Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart after a clean up after a fight with the Juggernaut in Scotland.

[Elliot · Rating 4 out of 5]

All the Forge/Storm stuff is amazing, as is anything with Doctor Doom

[The_Mad_Swede · Rating 4 out of 5]

This seventh Essential X-Men volume collects Uncanny X-Men # 214-228, Annual # 10-11 and Fantastic Four vs. the X-Men # 1-4 and features the writing of Chris Claremont with artwork by a number of artists, including Art Adams, Barry Windsor-Smith, Alan Davis, Marc Silvestri and Rick Leonardi.

The volume opens with the Art Adams pencilled tenth Annual introducing the character of Longshot as a new member of the X-team. What follows are the aftermath issues to "The Mutant Massacre" crossover that ended the previous volume. It is a tough era for the team and a lot of hard choices need to be made. It is all about how a relatively inexperienced X-Men team consisting of Rogue, Dazzler, Psylocke, Longshot, veteran Wolverine and team leader Storm (who at this point has lost her mutant powers) need to find their footing and face the rough times ahead, after having lost several memebers (Shadowcat, Nightcrawler and Colossus) to injuries in the Marauders conflict. The volume also features the return of Havoc to the roster as well as one of the injured parties.

The weakest points of the volume would be the FF vs. the X-Men mini, mostly because Claremont's characterisations of both the FF and Doctor Doom seem slightly off, and Annual # 11, which despite being beautifully drawn by Alan Davis does not quite measure up.

The volume on the whole, however, is solid and the arc (more or less) going from issue # 220 to # 227 (including the three X-Men issues tied into "The Fall of the Mutants") is pure gold.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is something truely magical about the 1980s run of The X-Men. It is quite possible that some of the best work being done at Marvel was being done on this book (though major kudos to Peter David on The Incredible Hulk).

The Pros: There is some amazing artists and artwork in this volume. There is also the birth of a number of really excellent ideas and story lines that pop up here.

The Cons: Nobody is still talking about the things that take place in this volume. Mutant Massacre takes place in #6, and Inferno in #8. Fall of The Mutants just doesn't hold a candle to those other stories.

Its also the time when the team is the weakest. Cyclops, Beast, Jean Grey, Ice Man and Archangel are all kickin' it in X-Factor and doing their own thing. Nightcrawler and Kitty are pretty much out of it the whole time (in preperation for Excalibur). Storm is having her Native American adventure and Colussus only shows up towards the end.

So it's pretty B-Squad. There is Psylocke (but before the cool ninja version), Dazzler (whose super power is evidently complaining about being useless), Longshot, Rogue, Havok (with a serious case of horse face) and Wolverine.

It's obvious that Clairmont wanted to shake things up and spend a little bit of time playing with some new items in the toybox, but while the stories are solid enough they just can't quite compare to some of the bigger stories of the time.

[Sam Poole · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not the strongest volume but ties up so many threads and firmly adds four characters to the team. Resolution of storm and forge's story line was perfect. The fact that Storm and Wolverine are such good leaders here is a testament to Claremonts unique vision and capability with these characters. The stories are not too hard to follow and show the xmen in arguably the most heroic moment of their lives- sacrificing all for all in Dallas. I honestly can't even describe the flood of emotions I felt through these stories, all of which were intense but refreshingly not too dark. Idk. Easy 5 stars ad some of rhe most thought provoking stories the whole of uncanny xmen.

[Nadia · Rating 3 out of 5]

You can't really tell from this rating that I think that the story that ends this volume is epic and that also Dazzler vs Juggernaut is one of the best fights of all time. But everything else dragged and this is the first volume I've gotten bored with since the very first one.

edit: Rereading it now and it's way better than I remembered and my appreciation of Madelyne Pryor on her own is growing so I bumped it upto a 3. I still think it's weaker than the last couple of volumes but my upset at the major lineup changes biased me a bit.

[Kathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has some great stories. It begins with the anual where Mojo turns the heros into the X-babies. Pretty cute :) I didn't much care for the X-men versus the Fantastic Four, but the stuff with Storm and Forge was wonderful. Lots of great characterization for Storm. One complaint is that Nightcrawler is in a comma until the very end of the book. I had to read his four pannels over and over to get my Nightcrawler fix.

[Stephen Snyder · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a great read for any X-Man fan who would like to relive their adventures in the mid to late 1980s.

Thank you for the loan Franklin Public Library.

[Ed · Rating 3 out of 5]

Even more than the previous Essential X-Men collection, this book covers stuff that varies wildly in quality. It covers Uncanny X-Men 214-228, annuals 10 & 11, and the Fantastic Four Vs. The X-Men miniseries.

The first arc (214-219) is very eclectic but I really enjoyed it. 214 has some great art from Barry Windsor-Smith and finally uses the Malice/Dazzler plot thread. Storm & Wolverine battling WWII-era heroes gone bad in 215 & 216 is great fun stuff. I also enjoyed the b-team adventure in 217 & 218, especially Juggernaut fanboying out at Dazzler. 219 has a totally insane cover from artist Brett Blevins and it's a really interesting way to bring back Polaris & Havok.

Issues 220-227 are also in the Fall of the Mutants collection and I review them there. In short, I found these pretty weak but I did enjoy some of the Storm/Forge stuff and I loved the beach party battle with Polaris in 222. Issue 228 wraps it up with a good minimal spy story starring Dazzler & Wolverine.

I reviewed Annual 10 in New Mutants Classic Vol 6. Annual 11 is a massive disaster. It's a poorly done metaphorical sci-fi story with a terrible villain (Horde) and is filled with dumb concepts. I didn't like the Fantastic Four vs. X-Men mini-series either. There's some nice art (especially Wolverine battling Reed) it's just a bunch of out-of-character plot hammering with a lame ending.

[Greg Callahan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the one that's gonna make me take a break before I race for the finish line (or crawl, depending on how the final 4 Volumes intrigue). I enjoyed the story arcs and the emotional weight of the volume as a whole, but the ending became so weirdly convoluted and disproportional to everything else they've faced that my head was swimming and not in a great way. Plus, I'm less in love with the team structure now than I've ever been so far. Not a fan of Dazzler and Havoc, not a fan of Wolvie as a leader (though I think he did pretty well), and fairly unattached to Longshot who just kinda waltzed onto the team somehow. Maybe I missed it or forgot. It certainly took me long enough to read. Still, Storm got her powers back in the end and praise be, I'll give that an extra star on its own.

[Jdetrick · Rating 2 out of 5]

More Claremont, although the Fantastic Four vs X-Men limited series is actually quite good, with Claremont again proving that he knows the FF very well.

[Daniel J. Rowe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really enjoyed reading this. It was the first time reading one of these big ‘essential’ volumes and really the first time digging into the X-Men. Very interesting and exciting.

[Jonno · Rating 2 out of 5]

Shockingly bad, but a welcome diversion from the scary world we're living in.

[Mike Clooney · Rating 4 out of 5]

The mid-to-late 1980s were largely a rocky period for Marvel Comics, quality-wise. Most of their superstar creators (Miller, Byrne, Perez, et al) from earlier in the decade had jumped ship to the Distinguished Competition, and the next crop had yet to emerge. But good ol' Chris Claremont was still faithfully at the helm of X-MEN, as he had been since 1975, and it was still a highlight of the Marvel line. This volume contains stories originally published between 1986-88, and center on Storm's quest to find Forge and regain her powers; the ongoing war with the Marauders amid growing anti-mutant hysteria; and a big shake-up in the X-Men roster with several new members.

While Claremont's long X-Men run is beginning its decline at this point, it's nowhere close to bottoming out, and still several cuts above most of the other super-hero fare from this era. His writing is text-heavy as always and his dialogue sometimes cliche, but the plot and characterization remain top-notch. There's a veritable cavalcade of great pencillers illustrating this volume, and the art (by Marc Silvestri, Arthur Adams, Alan Davis, Barry Windsor-Smith, and others) is uniformly excellent.

On the downside, these late-era Essential volumes do suffer a little more from the translation to black-and-white than the 1960s and 70s material does. With the trend toward greater detail and heavier inks in modern comics art, it all starts to look a little jumbled without color to keep everything visually separated. If you're on a budget, though, the line still can't be beat for value at $16.99 for 500+ pages of comics.

[Rick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Despite a plethora of extremely talented artists, this volume has one over powering flaw: Chris Claremont. In the same way that actors are only as effective as the scripts they're given, the artists who contributed to these issues can't really be held accountable for cliché and hackneyed dialogue where every character sounds like every other character, right down to the slang they use, the stilted syntax and the charming nicknames they give to each other (if I have to read one more hero or villain refer to Dazzler as Lightengale I think I'm going to puke). This volume starts off well and just steamrollers through mediocre and into cliché with the speed of a runaway locomotive. The stories here effectively end the enjoyable years of Claremont's tenure on the X-Men. What's left is a slow downward spiral, with a few brief spots of creative brilliance, to the all but unendurable endless stream of pointless, feckless and ineffectual crossover after crossover as Marvel struggles in vain to regain readers who were dropping this title like bees on a steady diet of pesticides.

[Jean-Pierre Vidrine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here we have the X-Men at their most Marvel. Character flaws, arguments, social rejection, and overall soap opera are given the spotlight. At times, this spotlight outshines the action of the stories, but not so much as to make you wince. This is still truly comics though, as bare-knuckle brawls occur right next to all manner of cosmic strangeness. This collection also has a treat for comic history buffs as we see the beginning of Freedom Force, a minor Marvel super team (sort of like their answer to Suicide Squad) that really should have gotten more attention. Good reading!

[C. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Still good, but the begining of the long decline of Claremont's run on the X-Men. The Fall of the Mutants still hits hard, but its somewhat difused over the dozens of tie-ins, having to read issues of Thor (Thor?), and the weird, magical nonsense that starts with The Adversary and then leads into Inferno. Plus you have to read "The X-Men v. The Fantastic Four", one of the shallower excuses for a tie-in ever.

[Timo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Claremont not at his best. Quite a lot text and a bit silly drama.
But some nice art.

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Barry Windsor-Smith and Alan Davis on X-Men. Oh my, this is the good stuff, folks.