X of Swords Hardcover – January 19, 2021

One of a kind

This event is a bitter sweet...The main story is the best part of the event, the krakoa vs arakko tournament is a kind of smash only enjoyable if you are a great fan of the x men. But the book is a must have just for the fact you get the retrocontinuity backward for Apocalypse and his true family, that is the spine of the book. The art of the main issues is pure art in terms of comic book ilustrations, with pepe larraz at the head. Creation, Destruction and Stasis are the best issues. But along the book you not will be dissapointed with the great work done with wolverine issues and Hellions, X-Men issues bring you context and Excalibur give you a deep background for the arcanum conflict.The presentation of the book is the weakest part, with the simplicity that follows all the projects of Hickman stretched to the limit, but is not a huge problem when you open the book and take path troughtout the illustrations and the story.Talking about the stronger part of the physical aspects; the book has A LOT of pages (22 issues + extras is not a minor amount!) and you have all the variants inside. Also, the book has a new kind of binding who gives you a margen in white to when you open the book you can see the pages without lossing a part like occurs with anothers old binding format in previous hardcovers.In conclusion, a milestone that sooner or later will be reedited in formats like Marvel epic collection or the x men milestones itself, but never like this experience in wide format.

Howard and Hickman are great writers along with the rest of the current creative crew including . So I was not expecting alot generally I hate crossovers and the last good X-men one was probably Age of Apocalypse and before that the Claremont era ones like Inferno and Mutant Massacre. Was surprised how much I greatly enjoyed this crossover event. I've been really engaged in the new Krakoa era and this crossover did not disappoint. Until the x-office completely dissolves or Chuck Austen comes back make mine X-Men

X of Swords is a strange sort of sequel, choosing to pivot away from the main conflicts of Hickman's run to something entirely different. It's Hickman's attempt at writing Otherworld, which has never been my favorite corner of the Marvel universe, but you really can't do worse than all of Claremont's terrible Exiles and X-Men Reload stories set there.X of Swords has more of the superb world-building that Dawn of X is known for. Prose pages detail the various realms of Otherworld, each with their own backstories and recent upheavals. Most don't factor into the narrative however. Hickman provides the same detailed backstory for each of the titular swords, though once again, most of them don't end up being that relevant to the story.After Amenth invades, the core conceit is that Saturnyne forces a tournament between Krakoa and Arakko to decide who can pass through Otherworld, or...something. The dialogue is often very ominous and abstract and so concrete details are hard to come by. Saturnyne herself is very ill defined, seemingly godlike at times and mortal at others. A lot of her reasons for doing any given thing are just hand waved away under the excuse of "it's magic."Almost the whole first half of the book is dedicated to the collecting of the swords the champions will need to fight. Some of these issues are interesting, such as when Storm goes to Wakanda to steal their most treasured cultural artifact. Some feel very been there done that, such as when Wolverine goes to hell to get a samurai sword. But the result of all these side stories is that the tournament doesn't get underway until over halfway through the book, when it probably should've started after the first act of the story. It also bumped for me that the tenth sword is missing, and no one comments on this until the very end.There are a couple chapters depicting a pre-tournament feast where the Krakoans and Arraki get to know each other. This leads to an exposition-laden sequence with Wolverine discovering what would happen if he killed Saturnyne, but aside from that, we do get introduced to the champions of Arakko, and they are rather interesting for the most part. There are multiple times in X-Men history when a new team of evil mutants needed to be introduced, and they all seemed conceptually jumbled and generic. Hickman avoids that here, with some genuinely unique mutants such as the White Sword, Arakko's healer who was the only one not to be corrupted by Amenth. There's also Isca the Unbeaten, whose mutant power is that she can't lose. And I like Bei the Blood Moon, who speaks in a weird warble that no one can understand.But here's where the story really trips itself up - as other reviewers have noted, the tournament we get is not the tournament that was promised. We expect to see each pairing of champions cross swords. And while that may have gotten tedious to see ten times in a row, I think there is a way Hickman could've gone about it that would have been engaging. Instead, he completely betrays his premise and instead depicts a tournament wherein Saturnyne gets to make up arbitrary contests that obviously disadvantage the Krakoans, but that also have nothing to do with the swords.There's everything from an arm wrestling contest to jigsaw puzzle challenge. It's very silly. Why would either side submit to this when they were promised a straightforward tournament? It's also unclear why Saturnyne wants to torture the Krakoans so much. Does she just not like the X-Men because they've come into conflict in the past? Because Betsy is one of them and she has driven a wedge between Saturnyne and Brian? I don't even really care about the answer. That's how weak that corner of the story is.But every few chapters, there is an actual sword fight, some of them with great action and big consequences. I don't want to spoil, but I'll say that Storm vs. Death, Wolverine vs. Summoner, Cable vs. Bei and Gorgon vs. the White Sword are all very satisfying.One plotline that doesn't work at all is the Hellions' - their first issue is promising, showing them on a black ops mission to steal the swords of Arakko before they can be used. But then the tournament starts, and the Hellions aren't around, so we have to assume they failed. In the next Hellions issue it's revealed that they've just been uselessly traveling around Otherworld the whole time. Sinister is somehow altered by a mutant of Arakko, but that is left unresolved.The conclusion to the whole thing is suitably epic, though there's another story beat that bumps for me when Annihilation loses control and just starts swarming Otherworld. Why didn't she just do that in the first place? Saturnyne seems somewhat powerless to stop her, and so again you wonder what her plan was all along. She randomly assembles the "pieces" of Betsy from her failed fight against Isca. This summons a new Captain Britain Corps, which, to her chagrin, is made up of Betsies, not Brians. Why this is the case is unclear. Otherwise, Cyclops and Jean decide to come to their fellow mutants' aid, which is a satisfying character turn set up in an excellent scene at the Quiet Council.The final sword is revealed to be SWORD itself, the giant space station, and the mutants use it to unleash a swarm of borg-like beings at the Amenth horde. This kind of seems like replacing one problem with another, but then Saturnyne is able to scoop all of these guys up and force them to work for her. So she was helpless before, but she can do something that major now? Doesn't make sense.There is a decent change to the status quo. A few mutants are "dead." Apocalypse goes to live in Amenth, while the island of Arakko and its inhabitants go to live alongside Krakoa. Cyclops and Jean decide to reform the X-Men, which is exciting, but also makes me worry that Marvel is already chaffing at the permanency of the Krakoa era.Art is superb throughout. Those aforementioned fight scenes are brought to life by the likes of Pepe Larraz, Phil Noto, and Stefano Caselli.That brings me to my ultimate point, which is that, despite this story's many flaws, it's still presented in a compelling way that kept me reading. I can't help but measure any X-Men comic I read against every other X-Men comic I've ever read, and so really it's hard for a lot of more modern stuff to ever hit me as negatively as some of the worst stories of the 90s and early 2000s. At least here there are strong character moments, beautiful art, and a plot that is easy to follow even if it doesn't always make sense. It's disappointing sure, but it still goes down smooth. And if you've made it this far into Dawn of X, it's not like you're not going to keep going through Reign of X, Hellfire Gala, and Inferno.

The list of unlikely heroes in this title is MORE than enough reason to pick it up. The writing is top shelf the artwork is gorgeous and the world building is the best I have experienced in recent memory. The execution of a very engaging plot blurs the lines between heroes and villains, and sets the stage for new plot lines and directions for both the reviled and celebrated characters for years to come!One last thing! Big shoutout to DOUG. You’ll see why! Thank me later!

It is definitely a good read!

Just a great product and great care taken with getting it to me. It was wrapped in several bubble mailers so it felt like christmas and i was confident in it's protection at the same time. Thank you! I've been looking through it all weekend.

Amazing from start to finish. Great crossover! And just has me more excited to see what’s next. The ending was a bit of an emotional rollercoaster but the ride well worth it

A parada é a seguinte: se você é fã do Capitão Britânia do Moore, do Delano e/ou do Claremont (a partir de Excalibur), você vai gostar dessa saga. Tem todos os elementos e mitologia que fizeram do Brian Braddock e da Betsy Braddock personagens diferenciados e interessantes, além de magia, cores, loucura surreal e Saturnyne fazendo o que quer.Se você só é fã de X-Men ou de esgrima, você talvez não goste muito dessa saga, já que tem pouca lutinha, nenhum paralelo com causas sociais e as espadas são praticamente inúteis. Talvez seja melhor gastar o valor em uma edição extravagante de Deus ama, o homem mata ou X-Men Grand Design. Por outro lado, se você é fã de tarô, talvez tenha algo interessante aqui para você.Se eu tivesse que dar uma nota, seria 10. 2 por ser muito boa, 2 por ser divertida e mais 6 por irritar tanta gente que esperava um torneio de espadas e recebeu isso.

I'm biased, I know, but Hickman is a great architect. His X-Men stories are some of the most daring and original, and X of Swords is no different. The art is amazing (from Pepe Laraz and Cassara especially) and most of the issues are epic in scope.It's cool, it's fun, it's deep, it's action packed.

After over a decade of bad stories and crossovers this is a much needed breath of fresh air.Does it directly continue the threads started in hox/pox? No. But it ties up a lot of the threads seeded in dawn of x (especially Excalibur).As some have mentioned in comments. this is a little bloated, with the first half being dedicated to set up / gathering the swords, but is that a bad thing? We spend some one on one time with most of the prevalent cast before they enter a life and death contest and get much needed characterisation in what is otherwise a big group book.Could this have been slimmed down? Yes. And originally I believe it was meant to be a lot smaller, but do extra issues like the hellions issues detract? No. And do having a couple of issues to sell the contest itself make me enjoy this more? Yes!This is a big book but filled with some fantastic concepts and fun beats. Only negative is first book did come a bit damaged, the pages had clearly been whacked.Find this often happens with books delivered from Amazon, but then they always do send another if requested and my second was perfect so keeping at 4*s.Recommend this. Especially if you’re tired of crap like battle of the atom.

La mejor saga de comics de 2020. Lo que está haciendo Hickman con los x-men es genial, después de tantos años dejados a la deriva y quitándoles importancia por la lucha de derechos del cine entre Marvel y Fox. Los dibujos son espectaculares, sobre todo el trabajo de Pepe Larraz y Marte Gracia. ¡Quién pueda que lo compre!

Overall it's not bad, but it's also not great. House/powers of x was astonishing, but this story thread never comes close to that level.