Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
X-Guide, 19 April 2003
The X-Men, mutants with special abilities, born into a world that hates and fears them. They use their powers to defend the world from all manner of threats: from mutants who believe in survival of the fittest, from aliens and from mankind itself.
Having run for forty years, the X-Men are a global thenomenon. The comics are some of the most popular in the world, with various titles available. A cartoon series in the 90's was extremely popular whilst recently a blockbuster film and its sequel have widened the audience.
This book focusses on all aspects to do with the X-Men. Charting its rise in popularity, the book looks at the varying success of the comics throughout the decades, starting with the first issue in 1963 to the most recent incarnations of today.
This companion features profiles on the members of the X-Men and their enemies, giving detailed accounts on their unique powers and the history of each character, even including issue numbers of the important events in each mutants lives.
Considering the changes that the characters have gone through due to different writers, and the sheer history 40 years of comics contain, it is a wonder to see it all nicely packaged in one collection.
Images are also here, showing the characters in various uniforms and displaying their mutant abilities. The images tie in perfectly with the writing, allowing you to read about the changes of each character and to see it infront of you.
Profiles are precise and clever, obviously showing that much research has gone into this guide. However, it is not just the comic books that are studied. The aforementioned cartoon of the 90's, the new Evolution cartoon and the movies are also represented. Information is given on the process of transferring the characters to cartoon and film, aswell as behind the scenes information of the new movie, X2.
Covering so much history and so many events and characters should be hard work, yet this book delivers. The foreward by Stan Lee, creator of the X-Men, is entertaining and informative, as is the backword by Chris Claremont, the man who reinvented the X-Men in the seventies when the series was struggling to maintain an audience.
This guide is perfect for all fans. Fans of the comics will love the detail and artwork and will no doubt find it useful to have a refernece guide. New fans who wish to begin reading the comics will be able to gather 40 years of history in an easy to use book, letting them catch up on events old and new. This guide is perfect in every way, simple to use and containing plenty of detail, yet never seeming like it is too full.
Recommended!
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Invaluable reference for fans: informative intro to newco, 16 Jun 2003
This'll give newcomers interested in the movies plenty to introduce them to the characters and situations in the two movies. There are several sidebars which outline the differences between the comic book heroes and situations with those of the movie. It's a great coffee table book as long as you're not ashamed of an interest in comic book heroes, and you shouldn't be. Printed on high quality paper, and profusely illustrated with panels and covers from the original comics, this is an intelligent and comprehensive volume that all present and future X-Man fans should have.
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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The definitive X-Men resource, 20 Jan 2001
The popularity of Marvel's mutant superheroes has hit fever pitch in the UK, but while our US cousins have been reading the comicbooks since the 1960's, they are slightly harder to get hold of over here. Thankfully, us Brits can now get up to speed with Ultimate X-Men. This lavish encyclopedia delves into every major character, storyline and event ever to take place in the X-Men comics, as well as detailing the numerous costumes, vehicles and paraphanalia the spandex vigilantes have utilized. There's comparissons with the movie versions of the characters, plus articles on the animated series, a foreword by Stan Lee, an afterwood by Chris Claremont....everything. Peter Sanderson, author of the terrific Marvel Universe, avoids his psychological exploration of the characters for simple, straight forward prose, but in doing so he pulls off the seemingly impossible; he makes 40 years of tangled continuity understandable, even to the most unexperienced reader. Fans of the blockbuster movie are positively welcomed, and will be facinated by the scope of the printed X-Universe. Fans of the comics will find a huge ammount of spectacular artwork and trivia to pore over. A delight for X-Fans of all ages.
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