I read this collection for one reason, and it wasn't because of the X-Men title, nor was it because I'm a fan of Longshot (who is?), nor was it even for the great artwork by a young Art Adams. No, I read this because I have a morbid fascination with Ann Nocenti's utterly bizarre use of dialogue.
All the way up to her current work at DC Comics, Nocenti's dialogue defies any sense of realism, and if I thought it was purposely written in a surreal fashion, then it'd be brilliantly weird. As it is, she's always been the Tommy Wiseau of comics dialogue, having people spout bizarre things in bizarre ways, often with little bearing to the context of the scene. It's not like they're just saying random things, though, it's just that it's always close but... off.
She writes the dialogue equivalent to the Uncanny Valley. To read her is like reading a badly-translated manga while high on acid. Seriously, everyone always holds up writers like Grant Morrison for writing trippy comics, but Nocenti's writing more realistically conveys what it's like trying to read something while on drugs, where your brain just can't quite connect the words you're seeing into something that makes total sense.
To give an example, the first issue features of a moment where our amnesiac hero has just escaped a mob of gawkers who think he's a new superhero. After a brief, random meeting with a wacky survivalist-type, Longshot wanders down the streets of a small town and thinks aloud, "What was he talking about? Outrunning those people was easy. This whole sluggish place moves in slow motion. Oh, help. I must know who I am. Of course I do. Everyone knows who they are. I know the language. I must know the planet. Ha heha haha what a great joke... oh, this is a riot... hahaha who am I... haha well, somebody must know." Try imaging those lines delivered by Tommy Wiseu, and it works all too well.
It just gets more bizarre from there on out, and if this were just prose, the story might be unreadable. Thank god for Art Adams, whose work here is great, albeit a bit rougher than his later work. Then again, the 80's coloring doesn't do him any favors in that regard. This volume includes some small images of Adams' original uninked pages, and they're so gorgeous that I'd much rather see a whole book of them, free of both the coloring and Whilce Portacio's inking.
I could try talking about the story itself, but there hardly seems to be a point. For me, this was a rare case where the story takes a distinct backseat to the creative team at the helm. I wholeheartedly recommend for those who likes to enjoy things that are distinctly (and possibly unintentionally) off-kilter.