Once again, the comics industry has contrived to ship an insanely large quantity of comics in a week when I can barely find time to read most of them.  So I find myself on Sunday night with a pile of un-read, let alone un-reviewed comics, glaring at me accusingly.

Sigh.

Never mind, let's get under way. Giant-Size X-Men #4 is the latest in Marvel's programme of old reprint material combined with eight pages of new material with a price tag of five dollars - not altogether unreasonable if you don't have the reprint stuff already, but tooth-grindingly irritating if you do.  After previous issues in this format for the X-Men, Spider-Woman and Spider-Girl, Marvel seem to have given up on them for now, and I can't say I'll miss them.  The sales on Giant-Size Spider-Woman #1 were pretty dreadful, which suggests the format simply wasn't a winner.

This issue, for some strange reason, is themed around Thunderbird, the X-Man who joined the team in Giant-Size X-Men #1 and got himself killed almost immediately on their next mission.  Frankly, it's not hard to see why Thunderbird was deemed surplus to requirements.  He was more or less a cross between Wolverine and Colossus.  That's not such a bad starting point for a character, and the second Thunderbird had a decent run in X-Force with a rather similar set-up.  But the original was a cross between Wolverine and Colossus on a team that already had Wolverine and Colossus, and there was just no place for the poor guy in the team dynamic.  So hell, might as well kill the guy off and create an "anything can happen" vibe.

Our eight pages of original material, "Finding Home!", were originally due to be pencilled by Paul Smith, but he's ended up being replaced by Rick Leonardi - strangely, the second time running that they've had artist problems with this book.  I've always enjoyed Leonardi's curiously twisted art, which often has a lot of style and momentum, so I'm not too bothered about the trade-off.  This isn't his best stuff - it looks a little bit rushed at times, but then chances are it probably was, being a last-minute fill-in.

The actual story is a vignette set during the new X-Men's initial training, the idea of which seems to be Thunderbird feeling out his place in the team.  Since he doesn't have one, it doesn't really work.  There are a couple of nice throwaway bits with the new X-Men settling in, but really, this part of X-Men history has already been exhaustively covered and there's just not much left to say.

The reprints cover the obvious candidates for a Thunderbird issue - which is to say, it's not like they had much to choose from.  X-Men #94-95, the first two issues after the book stopped running reprints, are dug out so that we can enjoy Thunderbird getting killed in a fight against Count Nefaria and the Ani-Men.  This is from the very brief period when Len Wein was plotting the book and Claremont was scripting, and while it's certainly of some interest, it's decidedly rough around the edges. 

Aside from the baffling choice of villains (the Ani-Men?!), it's got all the over-ripe dialogue you expect from superhero comics from thirty years ago.  ("The X-Men!  By heaven, this is too rich a jest!")  Of course, there's a certain charm to that sort of thing, but it dates the story tremendously.

"Mourning" is the back-up strip which originally appeared in Classic X-Men #3 alongside the reprint of Thunderbird's death.  Thunderbird's younger brother steals his body to hold a traditional funeral for him.  It's a nice little story - Classic X-Men had some really good material in the back-ups.  Incidentally, it seems to have escaped notice that Classic X-Men ran its credits on the inside front cover, not on the story itself, since the story is completely uncredited in this reprint.  It's by Chris Claremont and John Bolton, if you didn't know.   

Since there's still space for another reprint, "Warhunt 2" from Uncanny X-Men #193 gets the slot.  It's the first story to really spotlight the second Thunderbird, although he'd been hanging around as one of the Hellions for a while by this time.  The new Thunderbird finally goes after the X-Men in revenge for his brother's death, and needless to say, things do not go quite as planned. 

Like most stories from the mid-1980s, it doesn't really lend itself to being reprinted in isolation, since it's full of ongoing storylines and subplots - some of which, to be honest, could have been happily excised with no real damage to this reprint collection.  We really don't need the epilogue about Nimrod, for example.  But the central story holds up well, both as a good solid superhero story and a strong character piece for James Proudstar, who at that point was a relatively underdeveloped character.

The selling points here are the Classic X-Men back-up, and "Warhunt 2."  Thunderbird's actual death is more of historical interest, and if you're into that sort of thing, Essential X-Men represents better value for money.  As for the original eight pages, they don't make much impact on the whole package.  But the two final stories may well be worth picking up the book for, if you don't already have them.

Rating: B

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