While flipping through a couple of the "One-Minute Later" varieties of covers done by various artists, I paused on one that showed the Sentinels... and a co-worker walked up behind me and said, "Sentinels, eh?"
He had the X-men Sega game at one time, and the second level was set in a Sentinel manufacturing plant. I told him the cover I had paused upon, X-men #59 "The Last X-men" was an intense,desperate gamble for survival, and that it had never been equaled.
He expressed interest, and before I knew it, I was scanning eBay looking first for the originals, #57-58-59, and then reprints, and then after consulting the GCD, I remembered they had been collected in an X-men: Visionaries: Neal Adams collection that I bought once.
After searching for that, I found two versions of the same book, apparently two different Neal Adams covers for different editions.
My point is this: I see this volume contains X-men 56-57-58-59-60-61-62-63-65....No #54, 55...64, nor 66. And I'm wondering why they didn't start earlier in the run, with the appearance of Alex Summers, the best kept secret in the Summers family! Also, I had thought that #64, with Sunfire, was Neal Adams work. ( I KNOW that #66 is not, it's so damn cartoony, it should never have been drawn, in my opinion.)
When #57-58-59 were reprinted in Giant-Size X-men #2, a number of pages were removed, or skipped...included page 14 from #58
and a whole sequence in #59 from pages 13-14-15 and 19-20 or so and the top and bottom half of two other pages.
What exactly was removed, do we know? Has anyone read this edited compilation of the Sentinels return? How does it work, does it flow?
I am thinking of investing in a copy of one of these books for my co-worker so that he can enjoy the tale. Which do you recommend? (Don't say buy the Omnibus...nor the Masterwork...it's out of reach.)
Replies
I think I got the visionaries edition, just Adams stuff, with the pale blue cover. The missing chapters are a mark against it. They are part of the 'flow'. Probably they are written by the regular writer. The SUNFIRE story you menton looks as good as an Adams story. V slick.
The other mark against it is that they use some computer technique to give Iceman an icy pale blue delineation, and because it wasn't what Adams was originally trying to do, it looks wrong and distracting.
When I got the Essential collecting these issues, I realised what I was missing, and also that Adams and Palmer's work looked great in B&W, which was how these stories first blew me away in UK reprints in some of the earliest superhero comics I ever read.
Not only is GIANT-SIZE X-MEN #2 missing pages (one of the banes of 70's reprints), it's also got that UGLY Gil Kane cover on it!
I've also got a foreign hardbound reprint (with a bold red cover). Much better reproduction, I think.
But then, I've also got THE ORIGINALS, if I really wanna see what it's supposed to look like.
I guess several of these reprints decided to snub the beginning of the Alex Summer story, because it was by Arnold Drake, Don Heck, Werner Roth and Vince Colletta.
The Sunfire issue had art by Don Heck & Tom Palmer. DAMN good-looking, and you know, it probably has better visual storytelling. One thing that really screamed at me when I re-read all those issues a few years ago was, Heck was the BEST layout guy. He totally blew Steranko, Smith & Adams out of the water. But he wasn't as "flashy", so he kept getting shoved aside.
The Heck-Roth team was one of the best ideas anyone ever had back then. Heck's art was getting a bit "rough", while Roth's was not that exciting. Together, you had Heck doing exciting layouts, and Roth making the pictures look REAL pretty! What a shame, then, that Vince Colletta made a botch-job of the whole thing.
Not only is GIANT-SIZE X-MEN #2 missing pages (one of the banes of 70's reprints), it's also got that UGLY Gil Kane cover on it!
But then, I've also got THE ORIGINALS, if I really wanna see what it's supposed to look like.
Oh, I don't disagree at all...
When I arrived home, I dug out my Marvel Masterworks and read up on the original appearance of the Sentinels, in #14-15-16. Fortunately, I have the originals somewhere in my collection, courtesy of some fan who bought every marvel mag that year, so I have an unbroken run from 12-22 or so.
I also found the Masterwork that spans the Neil Adams year, and read up to find which sequences were eliminated. What I found was the elimination of at least one page of the capture of the Angel by the sentinels, and that wouldn't affect the story much. However, I also found that the pages from #59 that were removed were one of the sequences that I liked most...where Wanda, Pietro and Toad are being delivered and are intercepted by Hank, Jean and Scott, who then switch costumes with them to fool the Sentinels.
Now, this bridges from a panel where the Judge says he's not going to be talked into killing a mutant, to a panel where he's about to shoot Alex in the tube, as a Sentinel says, "There's a mutant charging into the room. Should I stop him or the human?" As a result, there's no explanation how or why he's in Quicksilver's costume.
The last sequence that's removed is the giant full-page of the Sentinel's disappearing into the sun, and not event making as much as a ripple. And the last page, the top half has the X-men cradling Alex but the last three panels at the bottom of the page are eliminated, where Dr. Lycos answers the phone, while torturing/draining some poor soul's life force while chained to the wall.
In effect, we're denied seeing how Scott slips into the compound, how Warren was captured, and both the final fate of the Sentinels and the tease for next issue's Sauron birth.
By morning light, I glanced at what pages were eliminated again, and realize that the arrival of Toad, Wanda and Pietro are still included, but the fight, trying to breach the central complex has been eliminated, so, there IS an explaination of why he's dressed in green, but we don't get to see them fighting in them.
Oddly, nobody asks Cyc later why he's dressed that way...no one ever says what happened to the costumes, and in the final image of all the evil mutants getting released, many are semi-nude, but among the clothed are Peitro, Wanda, and Toad. I suspect some of these characters, if they weren't in their colorful costumes, might not be recognized. Which ironically, will be precisely the twist that surfaces when Jason Wyngard shows his face in more than a decade later.
It would have been a pretty good moral question for Judge Chalmers about whether they should release the ":evil mutants" as well as the heroes.... after all, they've never been arrested, and they all were kidnapped to this "prison" by robots...and not duly authorized legal representatives of the law. I wonder how one would decide, "You get to go free, but the ugly one, I'm sorry, we're holding him out of the general population..."
Seems to me their might be an interesting side story or mini-series that could be spun here....a flashback...no unlike the recent Cyc in prison arc that set up the current status quo... what was that five part arc called? Aftermath? AvsV Consequences?
The entire 2nd Sentinels story strikes me as being "too big" to have possibly been covered properly in "only" 3 issues.
But far worse is the way the Sentinels have been brought back, over and over and OVER since, and none of the stories were nearly as good as this one.
You're right. Even though the first Sentinels story was very clearly three complete stories, the aftermath spilled over into at least the splash of the next issue with triage and medical treatment going on.
In the second RETURN story, the panels were all angled, and the figures of the over-sized sentinels were cut off, peering in, or
breaking into a hideout or rooms, ferreting out hiding mutants.
So it's not surprising that the adventure feels rushed, or crammed into three issues. In fact, the story also spills over into the next issue, with a couple of flashbacks that show the rest of the mutants being released and standing around.
And, don't forget, there's an appearance where Alex, on the run in the catacombs, is surprised by the Sentinels. and where Lorna is taken, and then where Bobby and Hank are watching TV and see the backstory of the revival of the sentinels.
So an argument could be made that the story spills over into four issues, more or less. But as far as covers go, only 3. but the aftermath, with the treatment of Alex by Dr. Lycos continues the story very quickly.
(PS: I always hate when the artists, Kirby or others, re-imagine or redraw the cover for reprints. They never match the quality of the original.)
I was flipping through the Masterworks volume that contained the whole Neal Adams year, and I was struck by a couple of things.
First, the artwork that started the Alex Summers story arc, and that of the Living Pharaoh was awful. By comparison, when Neal Adams takes over, the character of the Pharaoh becomes much more menacing The drama ratchets up a bit and the panel design just becomes weird...with odd angles, shards and diagonals...a tremendous sense of design.
In my opinion, the Sentinels was the high point of the arc, but the big reveal with Magneto in the savage land was pretty damn cool. However, we Sunfire shows up, the story just doesn't do it for me. It almost feels like a filler. But the final Z'nox story that reintroduced Prof X, seems incredibly sudden... with a rabbit out of the hat surprise. The cover is terrible, and doesn't do the issue justice... but the final Hulk guest-star also appears to be a desperate fill-in.
In short, while it's a high point of the series, I just don't think the Neal Adams stories hold up as well as I had remembered. But the Masterwork collection is definitely worth pursuing. I just looked on ebay and found that it is out of print, and highly over-priced! So. I don't know what to tell you... Look for it, but don't pay what the demand for this volume is doing to the price!