My X-Men reading journey next brings me to X-Tinction Agenda. One thing to note this time around is that I found and reviewed an older collection (which I found on ebay for super cheap). Since then a newer collection has been released, making the story much easier to find, better print quality,  and at a good cover price. I’ll take a quick look at both.

The Edition I read (pictured above) is ISBN 0-87135-922-7. It’s full color, 224 pages, and collects Uncanny X-Men #270-272, The New Mutants #95-97 and X-Factor #60-62. Interestingly, it seems to be in the same printing format as the Cable & The New Mutants collection I reviewed recently. This gives it the same features and problems as that collection: the binding is really nice, featuring thick pages and a cover with fancy, reflective foil. However, it has the same issue with the printing, where every so often a word is missing, leaving a blank space in the text, and there are footnotes that are empty or missing as well. Also like the Cable & The New Mutants collection, the covers of each issue are converted into a matching color and style and and scaled down to fit a theme, but this makes the actual covers hard to make out.

It’s mainly for this reason that I’d recommend picking up the recently released Milestones Edition, which is also full color, and includes all of the issues collection in the older edition I read, plus Uncanny X-Men #235-238 as well (ISBN 978-1302919689).

While I haven’t gotten a look at it myself, I’m going to assume Marvel has went ahead and made sure all of the issues with the text are no longer present. (The Milestones Collection for Inferno that I read was really great quality all around, with no text issues.)

As for the story itself, I’d definitely recommend reading it, as it’s one of the major events. As usual, I won’t spoil anything, but I did enjoy it. Featured is the Island Nation of Genosha, where mutants are enslaved. Several X-Men are captured, bringing the X-Men, X-Factor and the New Mutants together to rescue them. The main villain is Cameron Hodge, this time in a crazy new form. He’s pretty over the top, but it’s one of those wacky things that makes the story fun.

Whether you’re on a quest to catch up on all the major X-Men stories like myself, or just want to read a major event if you haven’t yet, I’d recommend this one.

4/5

-Clint