Review # 125: "Avengers West Coast - 'Vision Quest' and 'Darker Than Scarlet'"

Talk about a great Comiccon find: the out-of-print "Avengers West Coast" run with John Byrne as writer/artist for 30 bucks. I like ordering online, but there's something to be said about shelf-diving.

Review # 109: "Marvel Masterworks - The X-Men Vol. 6"

Before Len Wein, Dave Cockrum and Chris Claremont came along the X-Men sucked. Flat out sucked. Issue after issue of one-note characters taking on terrible villains in forgettable stories. Given how memorable the work of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby was in the early 60s, it's stunning to find a book so empty outside of some very rare exceptions. As a result, I was 100 percent certain for years that I would never pick up another pre-"Giant Size X-Men" collection again. I wasn't interested in seeing more pale shadows of these characters that I love - Cyclops, Jean Grey, Iceman, Beast, Angel, Charles Xavier, Magneto, etc. - ever again.

Review # 4: "Operation: Galactic Storm"

The early-to-mid 90s were a weird time for The Avengers. Thor was replaced with a human imbued with his power; Iron Man was possessed by a villain, died, and was replaced with a teenage version of himself; Wasp became half-woman, half-insect; then, in 1996, they were all "killed off" and handed over to the folks at Image Comics (Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld et al. who quit in order to theoretically make more money by having full control of their own characters) to rebuild their, well... image. The truth was the series just wasn't on the same level as the X-Men sales-wise and Marvel was pulling out all the stops to try to get people to buy in.