Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #876916 in Books
• Published on: 1996-07
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback

Customer Reviews

Artistic excellence, and that's about it
At times, I have difficulty with the concept of Marvel's "Visionaries" books. When the book focuses on a writer (like Chris Claremont) or a writer/artist (like Walt Simonson or Frank Miller), it's good, as you get grade-A stories that signalled changes in direction for certain books. When the book focuses solely on an artist, however, it's not so good, as no matter how good the art is, there's no telling what you'll get in terms of story quality. Also, you only get issues with that artist's work, so incomplete stories and fragments can be quite prevalent.

Such is the case with X-MEN VISIONARIES: NEAL ADAMS, spotlighting the 1969 X-Men issues illustrated by one of the greatest comic artists of all time. One thing that you should be aware of is that, in 1969, the X-Men, currently the world's most popular super-team, was in the dumpster. The stories were not that great, the art was generally horrible, and as a result, no one would touch this series with a ten-foot pole. But then came Neal Adams to spice things up a bit, drawing issues 56-63 and 65, knocking people out with his realistic depictions of our beloved teenage mutants. Artistically, these issues are excellent, and they rightly got the attention of readers. Even with this artistic jolt, however, Roy Thomas' writing is painfully melodramatic, and no amount of good art can fix that. In addition, Adams' artistic chores began in the middle of an ongoing story, and as this book contains no non-Adams material, you won't get a complete story. Also, the recoloring of these pages is horrible, so even though Marvel trumpets Adams' work, their lack of care in reprinting it doesn't back it up.

So, this book is a great artistic experience combined with some laughable stories. You do get a few great moments in X-Men history, such as the return of Professor X and Magneto, the intros of Sauron and the Savage Land mutants, and cameos by Ka-Zar and the Living Monolith, but X-MEN VISIONARIES: NEAL ADAMS is proof that Marvel should focus on either writers or writer/artists for these books.

More color complaints
Seriously, what were they thinking when they gave the coloring job on this the green light? For those who love great artwork in comics, this short run by Neal Adams on X-Men in the late 60's is really one of the highlights. So why would Marvel treat it so poorly? One reviewer mentioned the previous print job as being worse but I disagree. This is a mess; costumes change color from page to page, some pages are flat, saturated color while others are dot printed (which looks far worse on high grade paper than on newsprint!). I also hope they give this a third, improved printing. For those of you who can't wait, the great artwork is still there, it's just buried under an inept rush-job. Personally, I would've prefered the thing in b&w.

Neal Adam's brilliant nine-issue run on 'The X-Men" 1969-70
You have to remember before issue #56 of the "X-Men" came out in 1969 that the comic book was hurtling towards oblivion (which meant it would became a reprint title for Marvel). Jim Steranko had come in and done a few wonderful issues but then we had issue #53, which we all thought was the worst drawn comic in the history of the world. The artist was some young kid off the boat from England named Barry Smith who was clearly trying to imitate Jack Kirby (what we did not know was that Smith had literally drawn the pages sitting on benches in Central Park. In what was clearly a final but big time effort to save the X-Men, Neal Adams was brought in as the artist, the pages inked by Tom Palmer, the stories written by Roy Thomas and then Dennis O'Neil. For those who had suffered through issues drawn by the competent but uninspiring Don Heck, the nine issues drawn by Adams raised the bar for what the art in a comic book could look like. Whereas Steranko was the master of style, Adams provided a realism that was just great, as he went on to show while drawing Batman and Green Lantern/Green Arrow for DC.

Collected in "X-Men: Visionaries - Neal Adams" are issues #56-63, and 65 of "X-Men," published originally in 1969-1970, and since all of them run for over $100 in proverbial near mint condition, this is a nice way of enjoying these great comic book stories. Issue #56 has the Living Pharaoh, #57 the start of an awesome Sentinel trilogy, #58 offers the first appearance of Havok, #59 has Cyclops as the last X-Man standing against the Sentinels, Issues #60-62 offers the Sauron trilogy, which gets the X-Men back to the Savage Land and a meeting with Ka-Zar, #63 is a nice Magneto story (picking up on the Steranko bit of the devil having a daughter), and #64 is admittedly a lame monster story. These were just above well above average stories with the longer storylines working to the advantage of the characters and the artwork. I did not understand the importance of using the name "Sauron" as a villain, since I was still a few years away from reading the Lord of the Rings, but it was cool to have a monster that was a flying dinosaur. The Havoc costume was pretty cool too and I still remember the way Adams introduced Magneto without his helmet in one of the great reveals of all time. There was one more original issue after the run by Adams and then the title started reprinting issues #12-45. Granted, the run by Chris Claremont and John Bryne when the X-Men were brought back as an international gang of merry mutants in 1975 is the highpoint of the series, but the issues by Adams comes in a strong second.