Book Review: Marvel Masterworks: X-Men Vol. 3 by C. Claremont et al.

Marvel Masterworks: X-Men Volume 3 written by Chris Claremont, penciled and co-plotted by John Byrne

Magneto attacks again, this time kidnapping the X-Men and taking them to his Antarctic base underneath a volcano. While they are trapped, he works on his orbiting base. The X-Men just barely manage to escape, though they are split up and each group think the other has died. Beast and Jean Grey make it to the Antarctic surface where they are discovered by a search plane. They return to New York where Jean tells Professor X the others are dead. Xavier closes up the school and leaves with the new love of his life, the space queen Lilandra. He leaves for her kingdom while Jean goes to Scotland. Beast goes back to the Avengers.

Meanwhile, Cyclops, Storm, Banshee, Colossus, Nightcrawler, and Wolverine have escaped by tunneling away from the base. They wind up in the Savage Land, an Antarctic pre-historic jungle heated by geothermal sources. They have adventures with the local inhabitants, finally escaping to the sea where they wind up on a Japanese science vessel that's in lockdown until they return to Japan. Six weeks later, in Japan they try to contact Xavier only to find no one answering. That's just as well, because a supervillain threatens Japan. The X-Men team up with Japanese superhero Sunfire to take out the threat. They almost make it back to America--the Canadian government detours their plane so they can get Wolverine back. He was a multi-million dollar experiment and part of a plan to develop a Canadian superhero team.

The world-travelling nature of the story keeps things interesting, as does the human drama of dealing with the supposed deaths of their comrades (even by the end, no one finds out the others survived). The plotting is fantastic and fun, making this a very enjoyable read.

Highly recommended.