Quicksilver's runs:Roy Thomas on Avengers (late 1960s), which made it bearable;Peter David on X-Factor (1991-1993), the only run where he is a main character; there solo series from 1997-1998 ; Son of M (2005); And Uncanny Avengers(2012-2014).
This classification must begin with an uncomfortable clarification: this character has almost never been the subject of what he is going through.
He's appeared in hundreds of issues since 1964, spread across at least five different teams — and the number of stories belonging to him can be counted on the fingers of one hand.
Top 1 — Peter David (X-Factor, 1991-1993)
Screenwriter: Peter David | Designers: Larry Stroman, Joe Quesada
The only run where the character is treated as a subject rather than a temperament.
The contribution is precise: instead of writing his irritability as a character trait, the author looks for the cause - someone who thinks and perceives more quickly than everyone else spends their existence waiting for others.
This corpus places this run at the top for this reason. This is the first time that an author explains the character instead of suffering him.
Segments to target: the numbers of the period, very accessible, and particularly those where he led the team.
Top 2 — Roy Thomas (Avengers, late 1960s)
The period when the character ceases to be an adversary and becomes a difficult member.
It's not much, and it's decisive: without this passage, he would have remained a silhouette of the first generation of mutant antagonists.
⚠️ Collection side, these issues belong to the Avengers file much more than to his own. They are valued by a considerably broader demand.
Top 3 — Son of M (2005)
The limited series which deals with the consequences of a major event on him - and which has the rare merit of taking him as a unique subject.
The story works because it concerns a loss, a situation in which the character finally becomes legible: deprived of what defines him, he reveals what he is.
Recent and abundant period, very little researched.
Top 4 — The solo series (1997-1998)
The only long series to its name.
It has the quality and the fault of the series obtained late: it has nothing to inaugurate, therefore nothing to promote, but it can devote all its space to the character.
Issues from the late 1990s, an unloved and very accessible period. This is the best content-price ratio in the file.
Top 5 — Uncanny Avengers (2012-2014)
The modern period where he finds a place in a leading team, with an assumed ambiguous status.
Nothing defining, but just some scenes about what it's like to be perpetually on the wrong side of a family reputation.
Recent, heavily printed, with the usual precautions on alternative covers.
What these runs have in common
An observation which explains the form of this classification, and which applies to an entire category of characters.
The five segments selected have one thing in common: they all arrive After that someone decided to be interested in him. None are the product of public demand or editorial plan; everyone cares about an author who found something to say about it.
This is the ordinary diet of enduring secondary characters. They are never programmed, they are recovered— and their quality therefore depends entirely on who collects them.
For a reader, this means that there is no continuous thread to follow: the file is a series of isolated attempts, separated by long periods where the character is only an extra.
For a collector, this is good news. A discontinuous work is not collected in series but by segments, and a segment of a few numbers always costs less than a run to follow.
How to collect these runs
A practical remark which governs the whole file.
Four of the five segments above belong to recent and abundant periods. They come together in full for a modest sum.
The fifth — the Avengers from the late 1960s — is significantly more expensive, and for reasons that have nothing to do with it: these issues are valued by the Avengers file.
The consequence is clear, and this corpus formulates it as follows:on this character, the content and the expense are in two different places. What we pay dearly for contains almost nothing of itself; what actually contains it costs almost nothing.
A collector who accepts this dissociation creates a rich file for a paltry budget. A collector who follows the price hierarchy buys issues of Avengers.
For the overview, check out ourcollection guideand ourcrossovers.
Track each run and identify missing numbers with ourcollection management application.