This is EASILY my favorite “page” of the entire set. Between the comics and the animated series, I’m quite familiar with all nine of these characters.
It’s kind of amazing to consider how far they’ve all come in the past 20 years; through multiple solo titles and mini-series, and their various developments in the “main” X-Men titles.
Storm’s card is probably the only one I’m not particularly thrilled with here; all the others look quite good to me individually as well as put together for the single image. Archangel benefits the most, I think, from the larger whole of the cards put together…and Magneto’s card looks fantastic even taken by itself…that energy burst blocks out most of the context of the image for his part, making it work especially well taken on its own. Wolverine’s also works well, with the bottom border being the main thing really indicating it’s even part of a larger image.
Because of the X-Men cartoon, I know I would have been quite aware of these characters from that alone, and with these costumes. I may not have been as familiar with Archangel at the time, though even he had appeared in a couple episodes of the cartoon by the time this card set was out.
While the X-Men “posing” doesn’t make much sense with Magneto (then an arch-nemesis) powered-up behind them doesn’t make much sense, on the whole I would absolutely QUITE enjoy having a poster of this image.
Perhaps it’s that I like these characters, at this time so much, but I think this is also some of my favorite artwork in this entire set, as well as the page makeup on its own.
Filed under: Marvel Series IV Revisited, The '90s Revisited | Tagged: 1993, Archangel, Beast, Bishop, Cyclops, Gambit, magneto, MARVEL, Marvel Trading Cards, Marvel Universe, Marvel Universe 1993, Marvel Universe Series 4, Marvel Universe Series IV, Rogue, Skybox, Storm, trading cards, Wolverine |
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