Excalibur Omnibus Vol. 1

Excalibur was the X-Men book set in Britain, launched by Chris Claremont and Alan Davis with a cast assembled from survivors: Nightcrawler, Kitty Pryde, Rachel Summers, Captain Britain and Meggan. This third volume is the Warren Ellis stretch, when the book drops the whimsy and becomes a story about black ops, Britain's superhuman bureaucracy and Pete Wisdom. Including Pryde and Wisdom matters: it is where the Kitty and Wisdom relationship gets its own miniseries and is otherwise very hard to find.

The final chapter of the original Excalibur series, collecting the team's last adventures before the book's cancellation and relaunch. The roster continues to evolve with new members while classic relationships are tested. Bryan Hitch and Salvador Larroca provide dynamic art as the team faces threats from both the multiverse and closer to home. This omnibus also includes the Colossus one-shot exploring Peter Rasputin's grief after Illyana's death, New Mutants: Truth or Death, the Kitty Pryde Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. mini-series, and X-Men: True Friends — a Kitty and Rachel time-travel story by Claremont. It's a comprehensive collection that brings closure to one of the most distinctive X-Men spinoffs ever published.

The second Excalibur omnibus covers the years after Alan Davis leaves, when the book cycles through creative teams and finally settles into something darker. This is the transitional volume, and it carries the crossover chapters with the main X-Men books that the earlier era avoided. It also collects four specials that have never been reprinted elsewhere, which for a title as scattered as Excalibur is the main reason to buy the omnibus rather than hunt issues.

Arthur Adams drew relatively little for Marvel and influenced almost everyone who came after. This gathers all of it: the Longshot debut, the X-Men annuals that made his reputation, and a large section of pencils, covers and unused art.

A dark new era dawns for Excalibur! Meggan and Nightcrawler face despair as Captain Britain and Cerise are ripped from the team. Phoenix holds the key to Brian's return, but is the cost too high to bear? And what has Brian become? As Excalibur relocates to Muir Island, Nightcrawler learns a startling secret - and a Phalanx invasion introduces a strange new, or old, ally.

Concluding the classic original run of the most unexpected X-title of all! When the mystical Dragons of the Crimson Dawn target Brian Braddock, a sacrifice must be made to save the world! Even with Spiral as their unlikely ally, can Excalibur stop the Dragons’ interdimensional scheme in time? As Kitty Pryde comes to terms with Douglock, the Phalanx in the shape of her dead best friend, S.

Mutant Massacre is the crossover where the X-Men stop winning. This omnibus covers the run-up: the last stretch of Chris Claremont's book before the Marauders walk into the Morlock tunnels. The value is in what it gathers around Uncanny: the founding of X-Factor, the return of Jean Grey in Fantastic Four #286, and the Longshot and Nightcrawler miniseries that fed straight back into the main title. Read in this order, the Massacre stops being a shock and becomes the consequence of a year of pressure.

The complete X-Tinction Agenda crossover in one oversized hardcover. Chris Claremont and Louise Simonson reunite X-Men, X-Factor and New Mutants against Cameron Hodge and the mutant-enslaving state of Genosha, with early Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld art. The turning point that closes the 80s era and sets up the 90s relaunch.

Cosmic X-Men gathers the storylines where the team leaves Earth entirely: the Shi'ar Empire, the Starjammers, the Brood and the Summers family's very complicated space genealogy. The X-Men's space material is usually scattered across decades and hard to follow; putting it in one volume makes the through-line visible — the Shi'ar keep coming back because the Summers family will not stop marrying into their problems. It also contains the run that gave Carol Danvers her cosmic power set.

In 1975 Giant-Size X-Men #1 replaced a cancelled book's cast with an international team, and a young Chris Claremont took over the writing. He stayed for sixteen years. This is the foundation of everything the X-Men have been since: the Dark Phoenix Saga begins here, Jean Grey becomes Phoenix, and the book shifts from a cancelled sixties title to Marvel's flagship. Claremont's habit of writing soap opera around the superheroics starts on page one of #94.

X-Men: Blue & Gold – Mutant Genesis Omnibus captures the explosive early-90s relaunch energy of the X-Men, with Chris Claremont and Jim Lee reshaping the team’s visual identity for a new era. It is bright, crowded, dramatic and built around the moment when mutant comics became the centre of Marvel’s pop force. Collectors come to this for the Jim Lee moment, but the volume also matters because it captures the X-Men becoming a pop-cultural machine: team design, roster energy and soap-opera tension all sharpened for maximum impact.

Inferno Prologue gathers the year of setup before the demons arrive: Madelyne Pryor's slow collapse, the X-Terminators, and the subplots Claremont and Louise Simonson had been feeding since Mutant Massacre. Inferno is famous, but it only works if you have seen Madelyne abandoned, her child taken and her offer accepted — and that is all here. This volume also contains the Australian era at its best, with the X-Men presumed dead and using that freedom to operate as outlaws.

New Mutants was the first X-Men spin-off, launched by Chris Claremont and Bob McLeod in 1982 to do what Uncanny no longer could: follow teenagers actually learning to use their powers. Including the graphic novel that launched the team and the Magik miniseries matters: Illyana's seven years in Limbo are the darkest thing Marvel published for a young cast that decade, and they explain the character every later writer keeps returning to. Bill Sienkiewicz arrives near the end of this volume and changes what the book looks like entirely.

In 1991 Chris Claremont's seventeen-year X-Men run entered its final stretch with Jim Lee on art, a pairing that redefined how the characters looked and led directly to the best-selling comic of all time. This is where Lee arrives and the book changes register: the team is officially dead to the world, operating out of the Outback, and Claremont uses that freedom for some of his strangest material before the 1991 relaunch. Jubilee's debut in #244 alone makes the volume historically necessary.