X-Men: Odd Men Out One-Shot
By Roger Stern and Michael Higgins
Published by Marvel Comics
Release Date: 07/30/2008

I was really torn about this read, because I love the X-Men, and the work of the late Dave Cockrum is wonderfully nostalgic, but the two stories were wordy and frankly, boring.

The first story, Odd Men Out essentially recounts the X-Men’s history via a conversation between Professor Xavier and his old friend, and former FBI Agent, Fred Duncan. While it’s sometimes fun to review the history of your favorite superheroes, I found this to be a little wordy and if you are already familiar with the history of the X-Men, none of the story is news to you. While the art took me back to my childhood, the story was not interesting enough and it was a struggle to get through the whole thing.

Unfortunately, the second story, Stan Lee Presents: New Mutants! Think Again! is just as irrelevent. The New Mutants go up against The Mad Thinker (I know, sounds enthralling), who annoyingly narrates every single thought that pops into his feminine hair cut. Now, in all fairness, the best part of this entire one-shot does come at the climax of The New Mutants’ battle with The Mad Thinkers’ Apocalypse-esque android, it was the only part of the read that I actually found myself a little enthralled with.

Overall, the nostalgia factor of these two stories is not strong enough to hold up a weak story and I found myself thinking at the end that what I had just read was either already known, or just completely irrelevent.