I had a lot of fun with the previous X-Men collection so it’s cool that I had the next volume at the ready! We get a pretty nifty guest star here and the mysterious Factor Three organization also decides to show themselves. A lot happens here for sure and while there may technically have been issues with higher stakes and better guest stars here, I feel like the last collection had better subplots on the human side of things. Either way, this is another solid collection.

Before the team can strike back at Factor Three, The Juggernaut rises to fight once more. As always, he proves to be a difficult opponent to take down. It’s fun to see how the power levels were back in the day as the heroes exclaim that Juggernaut can destroy a tank and it was extremely impressive at the time. Nowadays, such a feat wouldn’t merit reactions that were quite so fierce. This two part adventure was fun, even if the X-Men were extremely outmatched at the time. They didn’t have any real power hitters on board to counter the Juggernaut.

After that, The Factor Three plot took center stage and covered at least 4 issues. Spider Man appears, which was a nice treat. After all of the hype, I can’t say that I was very impressed with the leader of the group. The whole thing was very….interesting. It was fun to see the old villains again, but after all of the hype, I wouldn’t have minded some new faces. The Blob and Unus are all right, but I don’t consider them to be heavyweight champs or anything like that. Still, this plot was certainly one that lasted and seeing the arc end was fun. This was probably one of the first true arcs to ever appear in the X-Men comics.

After that, it was back to the one shot adventures. Frankenstein’s monster appeared in one of the issues. Another one had a guy called Grotesque who decided to beat the heroes up. He didn’t have a whole lot of motivations, but he was powerful and he did the unthinkable. He managed to destroy Professor Xavier, which was a pretty impressive feat. I’ll miss the leader of the X-Men, but it’s safe to say that he won’t be dead for very long. In the comics, iconic characters just can’t stay dead for too long or else the fans will riot.

The art is pretty solid as per usual. The X-Men also manage to get real costumes for the first time. They had costumes before the issue, but they all wore the same thing. Now each character has his own look and that would just be the start as just about every super hero team uses the same concept. After all, why should everyone look the same. The Angel’s costume takes the most getting used too, but the others all look good. The Angel’s isn’t bad either, it’s just not what I would have expected.

The writing is also great, but we don’t get any moments that stand out quite as much as those in the last graphic novel. It’s hard not to chuckle when we saw Cyclops go up against the Locus and get sucker punched. That was definitely an intense bout. In this collection, the best lines are probably the ones where Cyclops and the Beast are insulting the villains or when Spider-Man is around. It’s safe to say that you will not get tired of the banter anytime soon as it’s a blast and a half from start to finish.

Professor Xavier looks very shady in this collection as he starts to keep the X-Men out of the loop. His reasoning wasn’t great and I still don’t really see what his angle was. It just brought dissension into the ranks and hurt the trust factor between teammates. Cyclops was bold enough to decide that he would bypass Xavier’s orders if necessary, but luckily things didn’t come to that. It was a little foreshadowing for when Cyclops would resent the Professor’s leadership in the Uncanny X-Men days. Of course, that just makes the Professor’s death even more tragic as he didn’t leave on very good terms.

The rest of the X-Men are essentially unchanged from the last collection. At least the Angel is pretty much over Jean as he finds a new friend to hang out with. I remember her from another X-Men comic so she definitely stays around for quite a while. He certainly comes in handy to the team with his flying even if he isn’t very powerful. The Beast is an interesting member as the others treat him like the strongest member of the team at times. I would disagree with that since I think that Iceman or Cyclops could beat him with ease. His verbal gimmick is always enjoyable though as you know that he’s doing it all on purpose. Unfortunately, Jean chooses the Professor over the team, which I didn’t think was a good move. The heroes could have died against the villain because Jean and Prof X decided not to help and that really shows why his plan was so bad. At that point, it didn’t matter what his reason was for deserting the team, he nearly ended the X-Men. If they had died there, that certainly wouldn’t have been good.

Beyond the main comics, there’s also a backup story about how Cyclops first joined the team. It plays out at the end of each of the final issues and Cyclops gets to go up against a guy who is now The Living Diamond. It’s certainly an interesting story and Cyclops shows why he is one of the true heroes. His origin story is also interesting because I’m not too familiar with it. The one sad part about having a backup story is that the normal issues end up being shorter, but I suppose that it is a worthy sacrifice.

Back to Spider-Man, it was also cool to see that the comic essentially admitted that he could beat the whole team. The X-Men started the fight this time so Spider-Man was just playing serious, but things changed once he got serious. He can easily handle them all thanks to his Spider Sense and he did a good job of keeping them all tangled up. That’s one thing that a lot of villains seem to take advantage of. In terms of raw power, the X-Men are essentially powerless. As I mentioned earlier, the Beast is physically the strongest member of the group and he’s barely any stronger than a normal human. So….the team really needs a power hitter. As it is, they’re lucky that they haven’t fought a really strong villain yet or that a lot of other factors were at play when the Juggernaut was around.

Overall, This was a fun collection. Besides Spider-Man, we didn’t have many notable appearances by any big players. It was a very dry collection. Juggernaut was a fun villain to have, but that’s essentially it. I wouldn’t consider The Blob or Unus to be too popular. The Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch appear for a very brief cameo, but they don’t really get to do anything so it barely counts. You really need to just enjoy the X-Men members a lot to enjoy this collection and luckily the writing is very good here so they are enjoyable protagonists. With Factor Three out of the way, it’s time for Magneto to step back into the equation. It’s been a while since he appeared so it’s certainly about time. With Prof X out of the equation, can the heroes really handle him? I suppose that we’ll find out once I am able to check out the next volume. Until then, you can expect a review for an Avengers collection soon.

Overall 8/10