X-Men: Mutant Massacre Omnibus

I've been making way through the entire run of Uncanny X-Men (mostly through the Masterworks), and this is the first big omnibus that I've hit. To get it out of the way: Yes, this collection is a little uneven, in places, but that's pretty par for the course with any of this longer Marvel omnibus collections. This was the very first big Marvel Crossover event, with parts of the story playing out in Daredevil, Thor, and.... Power Pack? Sure. Why not? It's actually a pretty impressive feat, given that they were doing everything over the phone and by mail. This crossover is more impressive for introducing a number of significant shake-ups that actually mattered. After the attacks in the tunnels, Angel is radically changed, Nightcrawler and Kitty are so badly wounded they're eventually dropped from the book (during the later, Fall of the Mutants story arc), we introduced to the rivalry between Sabretooth and Wolverine, and Ice Man is kidnapped by Loki and has his powers messed with, and the attack on the core group by the Maurader, Malice, sets the X-Men down a path that will eventually lead them to the Australian Outback. New characters are introduced to the team (Psylocke, Dazzler, and Longshot all join the team during this event, although some of that, weirdly, happens either in other books or off panel). That's just off the top of my head.

The artwork is typical of comics at the time, which, admittedly, makes it a bit of a mixed bag, but the presentation here is beautiful. There are some sections that really reveal some of the excesses of this era (e.g. pages that are needlessly overflowing with expository text), and there are some character inconsistencies (Sabretooth's depiction in Daredevil, for example, is *wildly* different than his other appearances), and the actual motive for the massacre is never discovered (nor, for that matter, who ordered it), but, if you're interested in the X-Men, this is kind of a must-read event. It also has what is easily one of my favorite story arcs, wherein Storm gets captured by Crimson Commando, Super Sabre, and Stonewall, who mistake her for a thief/arsonist, and she has to escape, using only her wits, since she, at that point, has lost her powers.

Great stuff!