Uncanny X-Men, the Hidden Years, The Ghost and the Darkness; John Byrne

"Before House of M, before Onslaught, before the tragedy ofnthe Dark Phoenix, there were a handful of troubled teenagers and one man with a dream. Return to the X-Men's early days and discover the teams lost tales in this exclusive collection, expertly crafted by legendary comic book created John Byrne. The first seven issues of John Byrne's X-Men: The Hidden Years are collected in one titanic tome for the first time! This series chronicles the adventures of Marvel's original team of merry mutants after their Silver Age saga had run its course, and before the launch of the All-New, All-Different band of heroes. COLLECTING: X-Men : The Hidden Years 1-7"










This one is totally bizarre, a John Byrne scripted look back at the 'missing' adventures of the original X-Men team of Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Iceman, Angel and the Beast. Now, this is a time period ripe for rewriting, as it's widely agreed that the early first X-Men run was not very good, at least until Mutant Genesis and the second team came in.

The problem is that the idea of showing previously unseen adventures of the early team has been done better elsewhere, in First Class. Where as that contained a fresh start for the X-Men that welcomed new readers and old alike, this is a book that is only really relevant to those who have read the full early run, or at least enough to know about the Z-Nox and Professor X's decision to fake his death.

The behaviour of Iceman in particular only really works as part of a larger storyline, and casting the most (literally) chilled out of the original five X-Men as a hot head who quits the team in a huff seems a little bit odd. He's mostly absent for this story, which instead concentrate on Scott, Jean, Warren and Hank journeying to the Savage Land to find the body of Magneto and prove to the Professor that their enemy is truly dead.

Spoiler alert; he isn't.

Although he is a ghost for most of the book; because, the Savage Land.

The Savage Land is such a perfectly goofy comic book concept (mysterious zone in the antarctice circle where Dinosaurs, primitive humans and various other creatures still reside) that's so undervalued by the amount of time that's actually spent there. The stakes are always supposedly raised by a visit there and this never usually pays off, so it's nice to see something more than just the usual 'team turns up, fights a dinosaur, continues as normal' story, and some actual threat from the inhabitants.

Still, this lives up to the early X-Men reputation for being pretty weak. Definitely check out either First Class or All New X-Men instead.

Also Try:
Jeff Parker, X-Men: First Class
Brian Michael Bendis, All New X-Men
Mark Millar, Ultimate X-Men: Hellfire and Brimstone
Chris Claremont, Uncanny X-Men