X-Men: The Complete Onslaught Epic - Book One

X-Men: Onslaught - The Complete Epic

by Mark Waid, Peter David, Terry Kavanagh

Collects X-Men (1991) #53-54, Uncanny X-Men #335, Onslaught: X-Men, Avengers (1963) #401, Fantastic Four #415, Cable (1993) #34, Incredible Hulk #444. It begins here! The saga that literally re-made the Marvel Universe of the 1990s is collected in chronological order across four volumes! The psionic force of nature known only as Onslaught sprang forth from the fractured psyche of mutant mentor Charles Xavier and the genetic terrorist called Magneto. Powered by his progenitors' rage, Onslaught laid siege to humanity -- touching off a cataclysmic conflict destined to deprive a world of its most revered icons!

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

235 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 19, 2007

About the author

Mark Waid (born March 21, 1962 in Hueytown, Alabama) is an American comic book writer. He is best known for his eight-year run as writer of the DC Comics' title The Flash, as well as his scripting of the limited series Kingdom Come and Superman: Birthright, and his work on Marvel Comics' Captain America.

Reviews

[Baba · Rating 3 out of 5]

Boom! Onslaught is here and it feels like the Marvel Universe cannot stop him despite the team up of 4(!) X-Men teams, Cable, X-Man, the Fantastic Four and their allies... the Avengers! And what about the Hulk, will he be a friend or foe?

Not the greatest 'Marvel event'. but one of the most important of the 1990s bringing most of the Marvel mainstream characters together. This volume covers X-Men #53-54, Uncanny X-Men #334-335, Avengers #400-401, Onslaught: X-Men, X-Man #18, X-Force #57, Cable #34 and Incredible Hulk #444.

[Ray · Rating 2 out of 5]

It may have started as an intriguing follow-up to Age of Apocalypse, but let’s be honest: Onslaught was a disappointment.

It was all building up to the big mystery reveal… and then it just felt forced and didn’t really go anywhere. A real shame, as Mark Waid (replacing the dependable Fabian Nicieza) coming to the X-titles was supposed to be a big deal. After a great run on the Flash, he was already an esteemed writer by this point and it was a real get for Marvel. In my humble opinion, he’s usually a better fit for DC.

The problem with epic crossovers every year, is that it eventually becomes impossible to outdo what’s come before. Compared to Apocalypse, Onslaught couldn’t keep up no matter how much the dialogue repeated how shocked everyone was. Waid did bring his signature focus on characterization, as the personal betrayal was supposed to be the focus of the story.

There were interesting things going on for Waid to write. Beast was replaced with his evil version, and Wolverine was going through a weird time as he mutated into a monster with no nose for reasons. The soap opera drama is what makes X-Men work, not end-of-the-world spectacle.

So, here’s the spoiler that was supposed to be the big hook making this work. Ready? Professor X was Onslaught, the traitor to the X-Men foreshadowed all along that Bishop had prophesized years prior, and they even incorporated that glitchy Jean Grey recording—which seems unnecessary since Bishop is from an alternate future but anyways.

And make things more complicated, Onslaught was rather a psionic entity created when Xavier merged his mind with Magneto and was “controlling” the professor. Don’t worry, nothing was irredeemable with that explanation in place.

Also, Onslaught’s ultimate power was very undefined. He kept defeating any other powerful characters in whatever random ways, such as Juggernaut, even though how exactly was only psychic superpowers supposed to do that?

It was all very editorially-decreed. Furthermore, the rest of the Marvel Universe showing up may not have fit in an X-Men crossover. Then again, when the world is under threat I suppose it does make sense for the Avengers to show up. Crossovers are indeed fun for that reason. And seeing Joe Madureira and the Kuberts draw Captain America and Thor etc. is always great!

The Fantastic Four were there too, ostensibly because of their mutant son Franklin Richards. A lot was going on, like if you ever wanted to see Cable fight the Hulk or Spider-Man worry about New York being overrun with Sentinels. Very colorful.

Of course, this eventually led to the much-maligned Heroes Reborn, the most forced of the forced of the 90s. To be concluded next post…

[Brian Garthoff · Rating 4 out of 5]

There’s a lot I could be more analytical about, but I love 90s comics just the way they are. And while Onslaught is certainly over the top and corny, I just love reading it.

Bold, weird choices were made in this era of not only X-men but Marvel and they make it a real rollercoaster of an experience. Wolverine is straight up wacky, he looks and talks like a total weirdo in this. Magneto is de-aged and suffering from amnesia. Xavier becomes the edge-lordiest of villains. Then you toss in Fantastic Four, The Avengers, Hulk, etc. and the entire thing just runs wild with campy action.

Onslaught is by no means a masterpiece, but it is fun, and fun is what I’m looking for right now.

[Tawfek · Rating 4 out of 5]

Honestly after i finished the onslaught event i had this nagging feeling that maybe i missed an issue here or an issue there and i couldn't get over this feeling
so i got to the book and looked what i might have missed
turns out as far as the first book goes i only missed 2 pages from two different comics so yay for me.
when i read the onslaught event and i was really done with another comic event over at superman called the final days of superman and i was really fed up with events but i have to say that near the end i enjoyed it immensely that's why i hated to skip any back issues even if it will hold me back from my x men reading for a while.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very fast moving book that I always wanted to read as a kid. Onslaught is a great villain and the action starts almost immediately. The crossovers to Avengers and Fantastic Four are also well done.

[Cee Sturdy · Rating 3 out of 5]

The '90s were a rough time to like comics, but luckily we didn't know any better at the time. In retrospect, yikes this is rough.

[Alex E · Rating 3 out of 5]

The events of the Fatal Attractions storyline come to a head, when Magneto's psyche mixes with Professor Xavier's to create: ONSLAUGHT.

I remember reading this back in the day and thinking it was one of the best things ever. The power of Onslaught was awe inspiring and the fact that all the Marvel heroes were …essentially powerless to even slow him down was an amazing thing to a kid in his teens. However, reading it now, I can definitely see some flaws in it. It's very much a product of it's time. The 90's aesthetic reigns supreme in the dialogue, the atmosphere, the costumes, everything is geared for the X-Treme!!! -ness of the 90's.

However it was still an enjoyable read. The plot makes sense, in a "comic booky" way, and the threat seems very very real. The fact that the entire Marvel roster of heavy hitters is involved gives the book a definite weight and danger to it. I think for a villain of this magnitude, it only would've worked if they brought the entire Marvel U into it, and not just the X-Men.

The art is some of the best in this book. A personal favorite, Joe Mad, really starts to find his style in this run, but all the artists on it are doing some great work. The only thing that bugs me about the art at times is that they cant seem to agree on how Onslaught's helmet should look/work. I personally like the "obscured by shadow except the eyes" look, but some artists allow you to see the face plate - which then can move and show Onslaught's emotions? Doesn't really make sense to have a metal plate have a furrowed brow at times but meh - not a huge deal.

This volume is just the setup, from here on out the real battle begins, and I cant wait to read volume two for that.

[James Bowman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Probably the last great Marvel crossover event of the 1990s. The title villain has a interesting concept and origin, but admittedly isn't very well-defined beyond being a powerful world conqueror... yet the premise helps a lot. This first volume is largely setup, though there are still many memorable moments. (B+)

[Andrew · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is an event that gets judged more for it's effects than itself. Just reading this story alone is at least entertaining. Potentially confusing considering the massive amount of titles and characters that crossover on it. But honestly it does what a crossover event needs. Then unfortunately they decided to turn the event into a gimmick to restart a bunch of their classic characters that needed new life. And things went downhill from there. But that is more the effects on things outside this story itself. Just reading this collection gives you some entertainment, a spattering of characters, some decent artists, nothing too spectacular on the writing side. Though the conclusion actually worked better for me than I remembered.

Anyhow, in and of itself, I feel Onslaught is entertaining. The aftermath in Heroes Reborn and the precedent they set in screwing up continuity that had been holding solid for some 45 years were just kicks in the gut to all the fans who had been following these series, and it would take them a long time to rebuild the mess they created. It's like Crisis on Infinite Earths except it screwed up the continuity more than fixed it.

There's some needless titles in here. And some of these issues are gonna give you stories that you just won't care about cause you weren't following what happened before. But again, finally getting the whole story really did make for an entertaining read. I won't necessarily recommend paying for it, however...

Decent artists you can see herein: Joe Madureira, Andy Kubert, Adam Kubert, Carl Pacheco, Mike Wieringo (but before he had solidified his style, and an issue that is mostly unnecessary), Chris Bachalo (!), and umm, many many others.

[Holden Attradies · Rating 2 out of 5]

Since I've gotten into reading Super Hero comics I've mostly started from the beginning and only occasionally jumped ahead. But when I have done so the new stuff I've read has been very current, after 2000 current. So this book was probably the first book I've read that's really heavy in the 90's feel.

Almost immediately I saw why that decade of comics has a bit of a bad rep. Although the art in this comic was fairly good there were aspects of it that were painful to look at. Every muscular man is drawn as if he's the hulk, and in fact when the hulk does show up there is a cover with Cab;e looking buff like the Hulk and Hulk just looking gross and stupid. These pictures tend to look even more off because the heads never seem to be drawn buffed up, only drawing attention to the fact that the muscles are so unrealistically big.

The other thing I noticed right away was the cross referencing to other comics to try and sell them. Yes, I know it's tradition to point out when something has happened in another comic, I like that, but it was VERY clear they were trying to sell comics here. They literally tell you to go out and by other comics. Multiple times on one page. It came off not as a fun way to have different characters inhabiting one world but simply as a gimmick to sell comics.

The story it's self was also so drawn out and over so many titles that it went so slow it was hard to follow. I'm sure at one point I'll get my hands on the other three volumes to read, but I'm not rushing out to get them.

[Brian · Rating 2 out of 5]

I absolutely adored this decade of x-men comics growing up. Sadly, this collection doesn't begin to hold up to the excitement of my youth. Far from being complete it begins with a very cursory summary of the storyline, which had been building up since the appearance of Bishop in UXM#283, so unless you already have a good handle on how the how thing unfolded you are lost from the beginning. On top of that several issues are reprinted as one page excerpts of "relevant text" rather than full issues. In short whoever compiled this basically killed its shot at getting an audience, since informed readers will be ticked off at the random inconsistencies of inclusion and new readers are excluded due to a lack of backstory.

[Umur · Rating 4 out of 5]

Going over all these books that I wanted to but could not afford when they were published has been quite the disapointment to me :) But, after reading like 75 issues of Onslaught, I've come to like the corny dialog (I will destroy you with my mighty X strike!!!! - Your powers are no match for my might!!), now cliché cliffhangers and the art of spanning the storyline to 20 different titles. It's been kind of a nostalgic run. Maybe if I had read it when it was published and before I had read thousands of titles, I would've rated higher. Still, why not a four star?

[Ma'Belle · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm only reading this because Warren Ellis was listed as one of the writers (minimally, and only in Volume 2) but I'm starting to feel like it's a waste of time. Nothing but deception, chase sequences, and trash-talking, all in the most cliché ways. I'm seeing more and more why so many readers of comics - presumably the ones who like to actually learn from them - lost interest in Marvel in the '90s.

[Labyrinth Rossiter · Rating 2 out of 5]

The primary writer behind the opening of this story will go on to help give us Heroes and Lost. I think this is a good indicator of what this feels like so far. The story is too big. It wants to be TOO epic. It has too many plot threads and doesn't seem to know where it's going. It's confusing. Does it substitute this sort of confusion as suspense? I keep reading, wondering where this is all going, much the way people watched Lost and Heroes.

[Addison · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really did not want to write a review for this one. It saddens me to say that I simply could not get through this book. There was a lot of effort put into reading this but I had to put it down. By the time I got to the point where the Avengers got mixed in I was just really not interested in what was going on.

[Ian · Rating 1 out of 5]

No scenes, just characters expositing in the speech bubbles, and spelling out subtext in the thought bubbles. Waid's come a long, long way.

[Jdetrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Now that this event is finally underway, it's actually kind of fun, in a silly blockbuster sort of way.

[Silas · Rating 4 out of 5]

I knew a lot about Onslaught, but my comic book reading dropped off with the Age of Apocalypse, and didn't really recover until the mid-2000s, because of college, so I had never actually read it. This first volume was pretty enjoyable. I remember some of the characters and what was going on, and what I didn't know didn't seem all that important to the gist of this story. The quality of some of the tie in issues was variable (I found it odd how much the FF looked down on the X-Men, and the art in the Hulk issue at the end was simply atrocious), but overall, this was an interesting read, and I'll probably work my way through the rest of the volumes in the near future.

[Erik Dudek · Rating 4 out of 5]

There was a lot of material in the preface that wasn't covered in the "Road to Onslaught" series. The story was nice and linear, they did a good job touching on past story lines that helped to build up to this point. A lot of the information you want going into this is covered in "Road to Onslaught" and "Age of Apocalypse" so I didn't feel left out of the loop. I didn't feel like I was missing much back-story when they introduced plot lines from the Avenger's, Fantastic Four, Cable, and Hulk.

I like the little touch they added where they have Onslaught constantly messing up how he refers to himself and correcting himself.

[Michael Keskeys · Rating 4 out of 5]

This crossover gets a lot of flack for its convoluted, excessive nature, but I enjoyed it back in 1996 and I enjoyed it just as much now in 2020. It’s a lot to take in, and it delves into the continuity of a lot of series , but nowadays thanks to Marvel and their Marvel Unlimited app, all of those series are practically at your fingertips so reading all the stories prior and during have never been easier.

Some really cool moments and it wraps up some long standing plot threads in fun and interesting ways as well. On to the second half of the event but this first half? So much fun.

[Mat Brewster · Rating 3 out of 5]

I gotta stop reading these big crossover events. Or at least every single issue in which any character that even mentions the main events is included. There are so many different characters from different comics doing so many different things I found it hard to keep up. Especially since most of them are from comics I've never read before.

I like who Onslaught really is and the concept is interesting, but the delivery was a mess. I just read it and I'm not entirely sure what happened. I liked the final comic more than I liked most of the story.

[Matt Shaqfan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This shit takes me back. The exposition is a heavy and redundant, but that's how things were then. Also, while we got some great art from the Kuberts and JoeMad at his peak, the rest of the art is downright hideous. Total 90s classic everything.

[Bekka · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting concept - the idea of Charles and Erik's minds melding and creating the villain of Onslaught.
Loved the cameos from various characters outside of the X-Men universe, and to finally meet Franklin Richards, who I've only ever heard about before!

[Billy Lewis · Rating 1 out of 5]

Disappointed

Blatantly ignored character development, powers, relationships, and poorly written. I tried to hang on as long as I could but the hulk section did it in for me. No wonder marvel almost went broke in the 90s if this was what they were putting out

[Michael Rickard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good art (for the most part). The storyline is interesting but like most "epics" from the 90s, it is incredibly dragged out which makes for a lot of padding. A fun crossover if you don't mind reading what seems like 3000 parts.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loving the story arc.

[Indika de Silva · Rating 3 out of 5]

X-Men: Onslaught Saga part 1...

One has to read this book head on with no interruptions...

Now for part 2...

Wish me luck!

[Jimmy · Rating 5 out of 5]

The golden age of comic art love love love

[Lillian Francis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read a few extra books that aren't included in this list.
X-Man
X- Force

Enjoying this for the most part.

[Jordan · Rating 2 out of 5]

The story is confusing too me but the art work is cool. The last issue with cable doesn't make sense too me and I reread it multiple times.