X-Men Epic Collection: It’s Always Darkest Before the Dawn (2019)
Reprints Amazing Adventures #11-17, Amazing Spider-Man #92, Incredible Hulk #150, 161, 172 & 180-182, Marvel Team-Up #4 & 23, Avengers #110-111, Captain America #172-175, Defenders #15-16, and Giant-Size Fantastic Four #4
Written by Steve Englehart, Len Wein, Gerry Conway, Stan Lee, Roy Thomas, Archie Goodwin, Mike Friedrich, Tony Isabella, & Chris Claremont
Art by Sal Buscema, Tom Sutton, Herb Trimpe, Gil Kane, Don Heck, John Buscema, Bob Brown & Jim Starlin
This is the easiest to pass up of all the original X-Men Epic Collections. It takes place in the gap between the initial run and Chris Claremont’s takeover in 1974, so we have a lot of short arcs with the X-Men guest-starring in other books. That was my mindset at first, but the more I’ve thought about it, the more I see this as a flame carried by people who loved these characters. It would have been easy to let the X-Men slide into obscurity like many other characters whose books got canceled. They could have fallen into comic book limbo, but because writer/editor Len Wein believed in the concept, he and other creators kept finding places for these mutant heroes to pop up.
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