Crushing Krisis

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X-Men Unlimited

Oversize X-Men: A map of every existing omnibus, plus what’s missing (Part 3: 2001 to 2008)

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I’m back with a third installment of the ultimate X-Men omnibus mapping, finding a way to squeeze just about every issue of X-titles into a cohesive bookshelf of handy omnibus volumes.

Okay, they’re not actually all that handy. Most of them could probably be wielded as a deadly weapon.

Today’s era begins with Grant Morrison’s run on New X-Men starting on #114 in 2001 and ends with the final issue of Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men, which is the last thing that happens to any X-Men prior to Messiah Complex. Of course, there are a lot of other series contained in that material – you’ll immediately note that neither of those historic runs address a single issue of Uncanny X-Men!

Every one of those issues is covered in this post. Why? To give you ideas for the The Most Wanted Marvel Omnibus Secret Ballot, where you vote for the comic runs you’d most like to see in an oversized format. Monday I covered all of X-Men from 1963 to 1991, and yesterday I covered 1991 to 2001.

There are 25 potential omnibus volumes in this material! Many of their contents are high debatable, but that’s part of the fun – collected edition mapping is a contentious pastime. Heck, I don’t even agree with how Marvel does things half of the time! If you have a correction or disagreement don’t hold back – sound off in the comments below.

Now, prepare to be fully educated in the seedy underbelly of this period of all-star X-Men writers, including some books I am sure you never knew existed unless you are a superfreak of a walking Encyclopedia-X like I am.

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Oversize X-Men: A map of every existing omnibus, plus what’s missing (Part 2: 1991 to 2001)

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X-Men is one of the most popular comics franchises in history, and in the 90s it rode the crest of the speculator wave to over half a dozen ongoing series and at least twice that many crossover events.

However, when it comes to coverage in oversize editions, you’d think that those crossover events were all there was to X-Men in the 1990s. That’s not the case, and there are hundreds of issues outside of those events that haven’t seen oversize collection – including many that have never been reprinted.

Every one of those issues is covered in this post. Why? To give you ideas for the The Most Wanted Marvel Omnibus Secret Ballot, where you vote for the comic runs you’d most like to see in an oversized format. Yesterday I covered all of X-Men from 1963 to 1991 and how it could be collected by omnibus volumes, and tomorrow I’ll be back to cover the Morrison and Whedon era of X-Men.

There are 28 potential omnibus volumes in this material! Collected Edition mapping is a trivial pursuit (in both senses of the phrase) that is up to a lot of personal interpretation, so if you have a correction or disagreement don’t hold back – sound off in the comments below!

I think of this era as everything from X-Men #1 and Uncanny X-Men #281 in 1991 through the end of Onslaught and continuing to the beginning of Grant Morrison’s take on the X-Men in 2001. We’ve already got a number of omnibus-sized oversize hardcovers clustered at the beginning of this era, but after Age of Apocalypse things get spotty across all of the titles.

Are you ready? (I’m not sure that you could possibly be ready.)

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