Book Review: New X-Men Omnibus by Grant Morrison

So as often happens I go through phases with my library requests.  Earlier this year I went through a crazy graphic novel omnibus phase.  While this was not actually the book that I requested I thoroughly enjoyed it anyway so it wasn't such an issue.

Most of the story arc's flowed easily one into the next and I found a lot of the characters very interesting and different then other incarnations. The U-Men and Cassandra Nova were particularly terrifying incarnations of villains and I really liked the idea that ***spolier***being Xorn had begun to affect Magneto.***end spoiler***

I liked the students that we met, however I really wish we had been allowed to get to know them better. I often wonder if Marvel wouldn't benefit from doing a storyline on the students. Not the traditional X-Men as students but "nameless students" that will not necessarily go on to join the team with only passing mention of the X-Men as teachers; sort of like how DC does the Gotham Central books that are just about he precinct where Batman is only an incidental character sometimes or maybe just as a series of one shots.

I was very confused by the final story arc that took place in the future. I didn't quite understand how Hank became Sublime. I'm not sure if it was explained and I didn't understand or if they just never bothered to explain it and considered Jean being reborn as the Phoenix enough to keep it connected to the previous story lines in the omnibus. 

There's a lot of interesting extras here as well.  Morrison's proposed outline for the series was probably one of the most interesting. I found it intriguing to see where changes were made and found it a little bit funny that someone who claimed to have read all the X-Men trades wasn't aware of some characters deaths. I also thought that it was intriguing that he was very focused on having it be a series that new readers would have an easy time with however I often felt that some previous story lines were weaved in (such as the Shi'Ar) that without previous knowledge were confusing. (i.e. I know who the Shi'ar are but didn't remember enough to understand Lilandra and Charles relationship.) There are also some scripts and lots of pretty covers. 

As with most omnibuses where the artist's are not kept the same throughout the entire series the artwork was at times downright ick and at other times it was phenomenal, making allowances for my personal taste of course.