Marc Silvestri drew Uncanny X-Men through the darkest stretch the title ever had — the years when the team was presumed dead, operating out of the Australian outback and losing people regularly. Then he left Marvel to co-found Image, and the industry changed shape behind him.
His shelf here is that late-eighties period, and it is unusually coherent for an artist's shelf: almost all of it belongs to one continuous story.
How to recognise a Silvestri page
Sharp, angular figures. Everything is edges. Jaws, shoulders, hair and costume all resolve into points, which gives even calm scenes a tension the script does not always ask for.
Heavy blacks and cross-hatching. He builds shadow with dense linework rather than with flat masses, and the texture is why his X-Men look worn out rather than glamorous.
Faces with visible strain. His characters look tired and frightened. During a period when the X-Men were losing constantly, that was exactly the right instinct.
Anatomy pushed past realism. Long limbs, exaggerated musculature, poses held for effect. It is the visual grammar that the 1990s took and amplified, and you can see it forming here.
The main run
Uncanny X-Men Omnibus Vol. 6 at 1,208 pages is the most concentrated dose of him, inside the run described in our Chris Claremont guide.
This is the Outback era: the team faked its own death, moved to a ghost town in the desert and started operating as something closer to a guerrilla unit. It is the strangest stretch of the franchise's classic period and his drawing is a substantial reason it works — the book looks isolated and exhausted because he drew it that way.
The crossover omnibus
Three of the mutant line's biggest events sit on this shelf, and they should be understood as line-wide books rather than as his showcase.
X-Men: Mutant Massacre Omnibus at 952 pages is the one that changed the tone: a slaughter in the tunnels beneath New York that the team does not win, after which nothing in the franchise is light again.
X-Men: Fall of the Mutants Omnibus at 864 pages and X-Men: Inferno Omnibus at 1,240 pages continue that arc, Inferno being the demonic invasion of Manhattan that resolves years of subplot at once.
All three collect several titles by several creative teams. Buy them for the era.
Wolverine and after
Wolverine Omnibus Vol. 4 and Vol. 5 carry his solo work on the character, and Ghost Rider by Jason Aaron Omnibus at 536 pages is the much later return covered in our Jason Aaron guide.
X-Men: The Messiah Trilogy Omnibus at 1,160 pages is the modern crossover material.
The whole shelf is on the Marc Silvestri page.
Where to start
One recommendation: Uncanny X-Men Omnibus Vol. 6. It is the largest continuous stretch of his work, the Outback material is genuinely unlike anything else in the franchise, and it holds together as a story rather than as a crossover.
If you want the famous event instead, Mutant Massacre is the one people remember, with the caveat that he is one artist among several in it.
Who should skip this shelf
This is the X-Men at their most tangled. The Outback era assumes you know a large cast and several years of subplot, and the crossover omnibus assume more still. It is not a shelf to enter cold — the ranked X-Men list is a better starting point for that.
Stylistically, the angular exaggeration that makes his pages distinctive is also what dates them. If the visual language of late-eighties and early-nineties Marvel is something you have bounced off before, this shelf will not change your mind.
Comments
No comments yet. Be the first to share your thoughts.