A review by plaidbrarian
Essential X-Men, Vol. 5 by Barry Windsor-Smith, Steve Leiloha, Bret Blevins, Michael Golden, John Romita Jr., Chris Claremont

3.0

Still a fun mix of superheroics and soap opera elements, but at this point, the X-book inertia is starting to settle in. This is around the point when the X-Men started being insanely popular, have already garnered one spin-off (New Mutants), there's another not too far down the pike (X-Factor), the various spin-off mini-series are really starting to pile up, and everything's starting to passively crossover into one another. But we don't get all of those crossovers in this book (no New Mutants issues, nor the Kitty Pryde & Wolverine mini), so references are made to things happening in the other books, but as far as this one is concerned, that's all off-camera. It's a bit disjointed at times as a result.

If you're a fan, there's lots of fun reading here, but to be completely honest, this is the point where the Essential X-Men series pretty much stops being truly essential.