Comics by Chris Claremont, Roger Stern, Scott Lobdell, John Byrne, George Perez, Art Adams, Alan Davis, Terry Austin, Bob Layton. Front & back covers by Alan Davis & Mark Farmer. Collects Uncanny X-Men Annual #3, 10, and 17, New Mutants Annual #2, and Incredible Hulk Annual #7.
This collected edition contains various stories originally published in annuals. These are longer than the usual stand alone stories that appear in the monthly floppies since the annual format allocates a higher page count, albeit at a higher price point.
The artistic lineup in this collection features a murderer’s row of talent. The pencils of George Perez, John Byrne, Art Adams, Alan Davis and Jason Pearson grace the stories. Adams’ work is particularly a great treat. He rarely does whole arcs in the monthly installments as his art style is detailed intensive and he is too slow for a monthly shipping schedule. With the more relaxed deadline for an annual, Adams can really go all out.
Adams’ art alone makes this a must buy for me, and its bargain price made it easy for me not to resist, especially I discovered it among a stash of other Marvel trade paperbacks during payday, flushed with cash, I bought a whole stack.
These trade paperbacks released during the Nineties have this nice heavy stock textured paper. They seem to have a better archival quality than the current glossy paper Marvel uses for its hardcovers and paperbacks. They seem to keep dry very easily. I’m glad to have lucked into this stash as few years back.
Other than the crappy story with the X-Cutioner (which is at least Mastermind's farewell story), the five stories in this book are rather entertaining. My favorite is the one featuring Angel, Iceman, and The Hulk versus Master Mold. But the one where Arkon the Magnificent takes the X-Men on a sword-and-sorcery adventure is fun, too. Plus two Mojo stories.