Hello all and welcome to the final This Week in Marvel Unlimited… for November. (Sorry, sorry… just couldn’t resist for some reason. 😀 ) It’s Monday again, so let’s get into it!
On the “new” side of things, from the week of May 22nd, 2019… it’s the War of the Realms show! This week we have nine, count ’em, NINE crossover titles hitting Marvel Unlimited! By contrast, the X-Men crossover “Age of X-Man” only has one book, The Amazing Nightcrawler.The X-Men as a whole are reasonably well represented this week; besides the two crossover books there are four more X-titles this week plus a Nightcrawler story in Marvel Comics Presents. That one’s written by none other than Chris Claremont, so I’m definitely going to have to check that one out!
This week is also a good week for younger super-heroes, with Miles Morales, Moon Girl & Devil Dinosaur, Shuri and the Runaways all with “new” issues.
There’s one more “new” book I’m going to talk about, but I’m saving that one for last. Skip to the end of the column if you really want to know!
The back catalogue gets a smattering of X-Men issues this week, including the Xavier Institute Alumni Yearbook, which is exactly as advertised: a yearbook for the X-Men’s school. There’s an Xtreme X-Men Annual by Claremont and Salvadore Larocca I’ll probably re-read some time. (I own all of Xtreme X-Men. What can I say, I’m a big Claremont fan.) There’s a one-shot called Wolverine: Switchback that I’ve never heard of. An issue of X-Men Unlimited that ties into Kurt Busiek’s enjoyable Maximum Security crossover (circa 2000.) And, before we get to the final couple of back-issue X-Men, I’ll mention there’s also an Avengers sourcebook (called Strikefile) from 1994 and the Avengers Annual for 1993.
Now on to the most interesting additions to the back catalogue, at least for me: Ben Raab & John Cassaday’s X-Men/Alpha Flight two-part limited series from 1998. Now, I’m a huge Alpha Flight fan (more on that later) and this was an enjoyable period piece set around the time just before Alpha got its own series. For the most part I enjoyed Raab’s writing (I was a fan of his run on Excalibur) although the plot had a few aspects that strained disbelief. (And yes, I know I’m talking about straining disbelief in a Marvel comic book series.) For the X-Men fans, this story purports to show Kitty Pryde’s first date with Piotr Rasputin, which of course goes horribly, horribly wrong. Fans of the Van Lente, Pak & Eaglesham 2011 Alpha Flight series will find that Gary Cody is once again playing into a super-villain’s hands. (This is a recurring theme for Cody, who has done so at least three times over the years.) Plus, the always reliable John Cassaday provides some lovely art.
I already own this LS in electronic format: Amazon occasionally has phenomenal sales on Marvel trades and I took advantage. Still, the Alpha Flight fan in me is happy to see the material available to the Marvel Unlimited audience.
Which brings us to the final comic book I wanted to discuss here, which was part of the “new” stuff… but only technically. I’ve mentioned before that Marvel has been celebrating their 80th anniversary by targeting the nostalgia market in various ways. One of their initiatives are the “Facsimile Edition” comics, where they not only reprint the story from an issue, but all the ads from the time as well. This week the Facsimile Edition of Alpha Flight v1 #1 (1983) joined Marvel Unlimited.
This book is special to me. It’s the book that started me collecting comic books. I was ten years old, and my family was going to drive to El Paso, Texas, to see relatives. I was already a fan of comic books, and my mom decided to let me get some from a drugstore in Baddeck for the trip. I had never seen a book like this one before:
The thing that really caught my eye was the guy in the Maple Leaf uniform. I was fascinated, and AF #1 joined the small pile of comics I was allowed to buy.
Then my mom hid all of them away so that they’d be new to read during our big trip. Grrrr. 😀
While we were away on our trip I found #2 and #3. When we got back home my brother and I managed to talk our parents into letting us subscribe to a number of Marvel comics (as I recall, the more you subscribed the cheaper the individual subscription.) And the rest, as they say is history.
I’ve read a lot of comic books since that time of my life. Alpha Flight still has a special place in my heart though. I get a real kick out of being able to read the first issue with everything just like it is in the copy in my longbox.
Hope you’re all reading some good comics and I’ll see you again next week!