Whats everyone reading?

[Colin YNWA]

One thing I forgot to say about Claremont is he did combat really well. I always found that the superhero battles he did felt 'real' and convincing and had a real tension to them. You really didn't know who was going to come off the best and he respected his villains which made them all the more scary.

I remember really thinking fighting a Sentinel was hard (alas no more), Freedom Force were at least as powerful as the X-Men and that battle in the park with Nimrod and The Hellfire Club was just brilliant.

[TordelBack]

... that battle in the park with Nimrod and The Hellfire Club was just brilliant.

That was a truly brilliant sequence - Claremont had a way of making everyone involved relevant to a fight scene, and his handling of that type of three-way was terrific, the interplay of powers and attitudes.  That particular run - from Secret Wars II to the Barry Windsor Smith Wolverine issue through the Mutant Massacre - does hold up better than most. Things start slipping as Mojo and the ridiculous Mr. Sinister come to the fore (IMHO). I also have a soft spot for the Power Pack issues that cross over around that time (a love of Louise Simonson's run on Power Pack is my secret shame).

[Greg M.]

My personal Claremont highpoint is the Australia-era and the destruction of the team. As has been suggested, Claremont is (was) very good at creating a real sense of peril, and the way the X-Men get whittled down to the point of irrelevancy (deliberately so) is one of my favourite aspects of this era. Rogue goes through the Siege Perilous, Longshot quits, Logan's too busy taking care of his own business, Havok accidentally 'kills' Storm – they're falling to pieces as a team, but their struggle to fight on is very appealing. Their foes in this era, the Reavers, come across as extremely menacing and very, very dangerous, and the bit when they advance on the hopelessly outgunned and isolated X-Men (down to just Dazzler, Havok, Colossus and Psylocke by this point), ready to kill them, is one of the high points. (Of course, Psylocke telepathically manipulates the other three into going through the Siege Perilous to be reborn – the team is forced into the most complete act of running away it's possible to engage in.) Love it.

[Colin Zeal]

The Reavers were great. Until they turned up in The Punisher and he put on some stupid exo-skeleton armour type thing to fight them. I loved (and still do) that Punisher series but that bit stank.

[Greg M.]

The Reavers were great. Until they turned up in The Punisher and he put on some stupid exo-skeleton armour type thing to fight them. I loved (and still do) that Punisher series but that bit stank.

My friend was a big Punisher fan at the time, but those were the only two issues I bought, 'cos the Reavers were in 'em. In a rather nice continuity touch, in a later Jim Lee-era issue of X-Men (I think it's the one where Rogue returns) we see Prettyboy wearing The Punisher's shirt, with a red circle with a line through it painted over the skull. But yeah, the Reavers were brilliant. They crucified Wolverine! And not metaphorically, either.

[Colin YNWA]

I also have a soft spot for the Power Pack issues that cross over around that time (a love of Louise Simonson's run on Power Pack is my secret shame).

Heck on that front I'm out and I'm proud. I picked this up a while back at mart after having fond but vague memories of them from some Marvel UK comic (I forget which) and read them a couple of years back. They are bloomin' brilliant. I might have even said so here. Strangely in that time of grim and gritty a comic about a punch of kids was the most 'mature' thing Marvel was doing. Louise Simonson did that rarest of things too in mainstream comics, she wrote children in comics that were like real children of age they were meant to be.

Brilliant stuff.

[TordelBack]

Louise Simonson did that rarest of things too in mainstream comics, she wrote children in comics that were like real children of age they were meant to be.

Agreed - there was real cleverness in the setup too.  For example, there was huge character mileage in setting up Katie, the youngest (and is this context that's very young), as superficially the most powerful, and in her resistance to being used as a weapon by her bossy brother.  Also, when their powers were swapped, and Alex became the point-and-shoot guy he'd always wanted to be, his dismay at seeing his brother put his own former 'useless' power to new and amazing uses.   The way the powers and their adventures caused the relationship of the siblings to develop was like a really good novel of childhood.

So definitely demand for a support group, then.

[Colin Zeal]

I was tempted to buy the collected Power Pack while in FP the other week, but the price of £22.50 put me off. I'll have to see if I can get it online cheaper.

I assume the Reavers/X-Men run has been collected in a trade. Anyone know what it's in?

[Greg M.]

I assume the Reavers/X-Men run has been collected in a trade. Anyone know what it's in?

It's in Essential X-Men 8 & 9. The first Reavers story is the first issue in 8.

[locustsofdeath!]

Has anyone started A Dance With Dragons? I need someone to chat with about it!

[Colin Zeal]

I assume the Reavers/X-Men run has been collected in a trade. Anyone know what it's in?

It's in Essential X-Men 8 & 9. The first Reavers story is the first issue in 8.

Thank you.

[Colin Zeal]

Last couple of questions on the Essential X-Men trades. Are they b&w or colour? If b&w are they collected in colour anywhere else?

[Greg M.]

They're b & w, phonebook-style. Colour collections... nothing in-print that I am aware of re: the Reavers stories, though I'm pretty sure there's a colour collection of the Infero stuff (which falls in the middle of the Australia era) out there, plus definitely earlier stuff like the Mutant Massacre.

[Colin Zeal]

Yeah, I've got those trades already. Wouldn't mind collecting more of a run of the stories. The b&w doesn't really bother me but would prefer to have them in colour. They can go on my long list of trades to buy that I don't have the money to pay for.

[SmallBlueThing]

A lot of claremont's xmen run is collected in a series of colour uk 'pocketbooks', and available in whsmiths, etc, for under a fiver each (3.99 i think) usually found in the kids books or graphic novels. They're small, and the paper is disgusting, but they're fantastic value for money. But remember to also buy reading glasses of a magnifier at the same time.
SBT