This is a really fun little graphic novel, loaded with great artwork and a decent storyline. I wouldn't recommend it as a first-time read for anyone unfamiliar with the X-Men - taken out of context from the overall series - it might be a somewhat confusing introduction. But for those who know the characters and have a general idea of what is going on, believe me, this one delivers the goods.

In the past, I have generally hated the X-Men's adventures in the Savage Land, or whenever they would go to outer space or get into really super sci-fi type situations. I always felt the X-Men stories worked much better when they were grounded in very normal, down-to-earth settings, because it made the X-Men themselves stand out and seem that much weirder. But this book is an exception to the rule. It's a big, crazy, larger-than-life adventure, part of which takes place in the prehistoric Savage Land, and part of which gets hyper technological, and it works out OK.

The artwork is tough and gritty. Jim Lee draws a mean, shadowy, ugly Wolverine who kills lots of villains and looks like he needs to take a shower very badly.

And Lee's women - whoa. This book contains more gratuitous cheescake shots than any X-Men graphic novel I've seen, but it's all very pleasing to the eye. Especially the scenes with Rogue, whose bare skin can kill anyone she touches and thus, understandably, was always the one major female character who kept herself completely covered at all times. This was the first storyline in the series where they finally drew her as a scantily-clad, sexy heroine. A real treat for male Rogue-fans who'd been reading the series patiently for years.

This storyline also chronicles the transformation of innocent young Psylocke into a mature woman trained in the art of Ninjitsu, and she becomes an ultra-violent, sexy bad girl. And then there are cameo appearances by other Marvel superheroes, namely Captain America (from the Avengers series) and The Black Widow (from the Daredevil series). All in all, it's a satisfying, action-packed, well-drawn, crowd-pleasing comic book in trade-paperback format.

X-Men Visionaries Jim Lee trade paperback Is a great X-Men graphic Novel by Jim Lee! the book reprints Uncanny X-Men issues #248,#256-258,#268-269,#273-277 are reprinted together in this wonderful Marvel book collection! This book contains the early Uncanny X-Men issues that made Jim Lee famous! All the issues are written by Chris Claremont with artwork by Jim Lee. These issues lead to the popular Claremont/Lee colaboration on X-Men#1 in 1991. Most of the artwork was done by Jim Lee. Uncanny X-Men #273 was done by various artists. Buy this book if your fan of X-Men and Jim Lee. Highest Possible Recommendation!

This is a great X-Men: Visionaries Jim Lee graphic Novel! This is Jim Lee's early work on the Uncanny X-Men series! This Marvel Tradepaperback reprints Jim Lee's early years when he was the comic book artist on Uncanny X-Men. In this book reprints Uncanny X-Men#248,#256-258,#268-269, #273-277. His early work on the Uncanny X-Men in the early 1990s, lead to to the critically aclaimed Clarmont/Lee work on X-Men #1 in 1991. All the Uncanny X-Men issues are written by Chris Claremont. Most of the artwork is drawn by Jim Lee. Unncany X-Men#273 is drawn by various artist. Buy this book if your a big fan of X-Men and Jim Lee. Highest Possible Recommendation.

After picking this book up at a Sam's club out of curiosity I found that I couldn't put it down and ended up putting it in the cart. My companion is a begining Astronomy buff and he couldn't get enough eighther. We were reading it to each other and trying to read it at the same time. We have learned alot from this book and have put it to good use with his new telescope. I highly remommed this book to the person who has always wanted to get started in astronomy!

This beautifully produced book is a superb addition to the library of any backyard astronomer or anyone from eight to eighty. It's a best buy for several reasons.
The first is its outstanding quality. The second is the BEWARE!.
This book is actually a softcover, otherwise identical reprint of "Advanced Skywatching", ISBN: 0783549415, published in 1997, also by Time-Life.
Perhaps Time-Life used this subterfuge to catch unwary on-line shoppers that already own "Advanced Skywatching" (as I do), since you can't view the contents on-line to discover you already own the same book under a different name.

The complaint on the star charts about this book (or its twin) not covering the entire sky is not critical.
There isn't room on anyone's bookshelf for all the possible fun sky-hops, of which this book and its twin present abundant excellent examples. There are more and different, also challenging and instructive ones in another fine volume, "Turn Left at Orion", and many others.

Not to worry if you get sucked in. This one makes a fine gift for your favorite grandchild as mine will.
Add this to your "must have" list if you don't already own its twin. If you do, buy it anyhow and give it to someone special.
The price is astonishingly low for the fine content.

After the death of Lex Luthor and an exhaustive search for an heir to his empire, a charming young man claiming to be the long lost son of Luthor brings Metropolis out of dissaray and even wins the favor of his father's detractors. Can Superman discover the truth behind this mysterious "heir" before his twisted plans come into fruition?

Lex Luthor is to Superman's mythology what the Cigarette-Smoking Man is to the X-Files. This book not only presents a major turning point in Luthor, but also what makes him Superman's greatest foe, bar none.

I know that this collection is mainly about Lex Luthor, but, being a huge Supergirl fan, I bought this book for her alone. Supergirl is back on Earth after her trip in space, and she makes the big mistake of falling in love with Lex Luthor. Even though this Supergirl is Matrix, not Linda Danvers as in her own later series, she's an interesting character. Matrix is so naive and blindly trusting. If you like Supergirl (or Lex), get this collection!

I was looking at webcams for a Xmas gift for myself and didn't have any idea where to start or what to look for. This book not only helped me pick out a webcam, now I've got a whole bunch of new ideas how to use it.

I had received a web-cam for Father's Day and was confused about exactly what I was supposed to do with it. Went and got this book, and suddenly it is all starting to make sense. Got a webpage set up and now I talk with my daughter, who is studying abroad, almost every day with my web-cam.

It looks like the authors are also redoing their website at mycamguide.com. They've got all the web references mentioned in the book online, so you can go right to them. I've been very happy with my purchase!

I wanted to thank the authors of this great book. I am 64 years old and have NEVER used a Webcam before. The authors of this book walked me through the entire process of getting my Webcam up and running, from the way to configure my computer to the proper lighting in my computer room.

Most computer books, like those Dummies series, are way over my head. But neither author here takes themselves too seriously. They gave me the facts, and made it interesting too. Now I have weekly Webcam chats with my granddaughter in college and we both very much enjoy the time we spend together. This book made that possible.

If I can use this book to become a Webcam expert, then anyone can. I would highly recommend it to anyone.

I am not very familiar with Byrne so I don't know if this is typical for him but he writes a little too mundain and run-of-the-mill for such a fantastic story with great art like Hellboy. His dialogue and monologue for the villain in this book are horrible. It is completely boring and skippable. In fact that's the worst part, it is ENTIRELY skippable. This is even worse because at points there's PAGES of it. This villain just drones ON AND ON about a bunch of ..., and you can literally skip those whole sections and not lose ANYTHING. The stuff is just barely relevant and Byrne does nothing to it to make it interesting or write it with any originality. One could argue that Hellboy is a very "pulp" comic and that as such, the sort of writing and dialogue can be expected to be of a certain (read DULL AND TRITE) nature. But it's too much to be asked of the reader to settle on the writing when the story and art are so compelling.

Recap: Hellboy = original, Byrne's dialogue for it = horribly plain and done.

Seeds of Destruction is a nice place to begin because it deals with where Hellboy hails from, no pun intended, plus its actually one of Mignola's more heavily Lovecraftian tales. The coloration is also darker in graphic novel form, giving it more of more horror appeal than the pervious comic releases did. There are more than enough Nazis, plots leading into the next Graphic Novel (Wake the Devil) to want you to go on without stranding you in a half-read story, not to mention the fact that its so wonderfully dark.
Something that all other reviews seem to be leaving out, something that affected my purchase of this particular graphic novel for a while, is the fact that it isn't simply the Seeds of Destruction story. Included within it are also two other stories, earlier works of Mignola, that are oftentimes overlooked and are quite the pain to find in their original formats.
1) This is a story from San Diego Comic-Con Comics #2, a little tale involving squibs of storyline and drying up towns in the desert, not to mention Anubis.
2) There's another story from Comic's Buyer's Guide dealing with Herman Von Klempt, everyone's favorite Nazi "Nazi head in a bottle" and his Brutus, his super gorilla.
Also included is a little section entitled "Where did Hellboy come from?," a section delving into the early promotional art showing Hellboy off, plus some nice pictures by artists including Art Adams and Gary Gianni.
Tentacled things = Happiness!

The art was awesome! The story was very strong! My only problem would be that there was a couple of parts to the story that I found to be weak. Because of this the story could only be very strong instead of awesome. I will follow the adventures of Mike Mignola's "Hellboy" for the rest of my life.

This book was so good that I only intended to briefly look it over before I read the second Hellboy collection that I have recently bought. After looking over the first couple of pages I couldn't help myself but to get involved with the story and art all over again. It is very rare that I will re-read a book. This book is so good that I had to do it again.

"Hellboy: Seeds of Destruction" is the highest form of what a graphic novel can be. I will rate it five stars. Even with a couple of weak links in the plot it is still material of the highest caliber.

I started with an expectation of something that would be fast paced; however, this was not to be. Sculley's style is repetitive and slow. He makes a point in a couple of paragraphs and then goes on and on about the same thing. He also gives too much importance to his personal life in the book.

Mr. Sculley describes how Steve Jobs lured him to Apple, and blithely exposes his thought processes behind the decision to go. Among other things, he insisted upon a lucrative compensation/house package, explaining that he simply could not be burdened with any personal financial considerations while dedicating his self-appraised tremendous powers to running Apple. The Apple folks agreed, Sculley got his huge salary and his new house, and under his hand the company tanked down the tubes forthwith.

Sculley presented management lessons as his narrative progressed. He did not directly discuss the matter of incentives, and the complacency which unearned wealth induces so quickly, electing instead to present that lesson by his own example. Perhaps if Mr. Sculley had been more concerned about his own financial condition as a function of the company's success or failure, he would have been more highly motivated to do a better job running the firm.

At least one member of every corporate board of directors should read this book, and keep this lesson about incentives in mind whenever it's time to hire new executives and develop their compensation packages.

I just bought the flat-screen iMac in Mar 2002 and was eager to know the history of Apple. This book gives excellent insights to the contrasting corporate cultures between Pepsi and Apple. The former follows protocol, and place huge emphasis on winning market shares, while the latter is about freedom, creativity, learning and creating market shares.

The style is simple and direct which makes it an easy read. Readers who are looking for style more than content may be disappointed though.

You will read about Jobs' infamous quote to Sculley: 'Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water, or do you want to change the world?'

Although published in 1988, the book still has a great appeal to anyone who wants to learn about Sculley, Jobs or Apple. After reading the book, I found myself regularly drinking Pepsi in front of my iMac! It gives great motivation for anyone who wants to start a new business or introduce new way of doing things.

A must read for all Mac users!

An invaluable guide to this very difficult problem. Ogden, perhaps the world's leading expert in this field, makes a compelling case for deliberate long term planning, tailored to an enterprise's specific needs. His laserlike focus and penetrating analysis seem like a hidden national treasure.

Corporate titans and politicians who would like to be statesmen ought to read this book and heed the lessons offered.

Shareholders naturally assume that boards have succession for the CEO and other top executives all figured out. WRONG! A well kept secret is that many CEOs try to stall in this area, as a way to make themselves more secure.

Even the companies that work in this area can be unprepared. A young CEO may suddenly jump to another company (as Ray Gilmartin did from Becton Dickinson to Merck), die unexpectedly of a heart attack (as Jerry Junkins did at Texas Instruments), or fail to perform to the board's expectations (as has happened to many companies). Couple that with the fact that irresistible forces may mean that the style that worked well in the past won't wash any more, and apparent succession preparation can equal being totally clueless.

The authors are headhunters with Spencer Stuart and share what they learned in interviews during 1996 and 1997 at Met Life, Caterpillar, Hewlett-Packard, Mobil, Continental Grain, SmithKline Beecham, Delta, Mellon Bank, Bestfoods, Foster Wheeler, Hercules, and GTE. They also interspace other examples. One of the difficulties with a book like this is that things don't always turn out as they seem. A lot of praise in the book goes into Coca-Cola's preparation for the unexpected death of Roberto Goizueta. Douglas Ivester is quickly invested, which is where the book ends. But we know that he also was almost as quickly divested as he turned out to be a poor replacement. This replacing CEOs is a tough business. As irresistible forces become stronger and more volatile, replacements will probably occur even more frequently.

The book concludes that 10 key practices are required: Have a strong, involved board; continually expose the top management team to the board; encourage the next generation of CEO prospects to get early experience with outside boards, the media, and the financial community; create an active executive or operating committee so more executives get exposure to an overview of the company, its strategy and issues; do succession planning on an on-going, real-time basis; take as much human drama out of the process as possible (it's especially hard on number twos); tie some of the CEO's compensation to succession planning and progress; have the directors be paid in stock and make additional investments in the company's shares; calibrate the internal candidates with external ones; and develop a culture that encourages succession (a la Built to Last).

So much for the summary. Here are the problems. Although this book purports to be a best practice book, it does not investigate enough companies to succeed. This is actually a limited survey of practices, with picking out some that seem to work better. To be accurate, such a survey would have had to consider in equivalent detail at least 400 companies. A handful won't cut it.

Second, they have to measure of success in succession. They obviously like some better than others. Without some success measure, you cannot pick out best practices.

Third, the book plugs a service that appears to be from Spencer Stuart in callibrating internal and external candidates. To me, that made the book read like a virtual ad rather than a book about management practices.

Fourth, the audience spoken to was mostly boards and CEOs. There are a lot of other stakeholders out there, like customers, employees, suppliers, distributors, and the communities the companies serve. Shouldn't their reaction be considered in deciding which successions work well and which do not?

I could go on, but you get the idea. The authors needed someone to help them design a methodology before they started. Without one, they have produced a book, and some of what it says seems to make sense. With an appropriate methodology, I am sure they could have produced a much better book.

If you want more information on the subject, your best source in my opinion is to read the case studies in Directors & Boards, a magazine devoted to corporate governance. The material I have read in that magazine is consistently superior to what is in this book.

Good luck in overcoming your disbelief stall that people who recruit CEOs should know how to determine best practices in the area of CEO succession.

Authors Dennis C. Carey and Dayton Ogden present a thorough, insightful guide to choosing a new Chief Executive Officer in this nicely written, concise book. Offering plenty of inside information and real-life corporate examples, the authors explore their ideas without resorting to fluff or to the dry, dull prose that often fills such books. Given their experience helping corporations choose CEOs and other executives, the authors know what they're talking about and understand the tricky issues involved in putting any advice into practice. Their book delivers what it promises, and given that it can be repetitive, it delivers on some of those promises two or three times (but we're quibbling, some of those lessons do bear repeating). We [...] recommend this book to anyone involved in executive succession and recruitment, especially board members (read it now, before you ditch your CEO, not after).

This large, black and white trade handily lives up to its name, at least for a while. With this, the reader is treated to the first 23 issues of the regular series, for a great price.

The venerable Chris Claremont scribes the first third or so of the issues, and his are the best. You get Wolvie in top form, as he finds himself inside a web of intrigue in the seedy underworld of the fictional city of Madripoor. Claremont excels with the supporting cast, creating many memorable characters. Aging flyboy and reluctant adventurer Archie Corrigan is perhaps the best. He behaves the way any of us would if we were the ones playing sidekick to Logan, known in Madripoor as the mysterious "Patch". Former Spider-Woman Jessica Drew joins the cast as a tough P.I. protecting her flaky at times friend, Lindsay McCabe. After the first six-part story, Joe Fixit (the Gray Hulk) drops in for a painful and very humorous two-issue visit. After that, Claremont finishes his run with a couple filler issues, including the first (and possibly the best) encounter between Logan and Sabretooth. John Buscema provides excellent artwork throughout, aside from an Ernie Cowan fill-in. Worthy of mention is the Bill Sienckewicz inked Sabretooth issue, as it has some fantastic art from two of the masters, far better in black and white than in color.

Peter David takes the reins for the following six issues, titled "The Gehenna Stone Affair". Not quite as good as Claremont's run, it's still a great story, full of action and humor. David also nails the supporting cast as totally faithful to Claremont's characters from the first story arc. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, the quality of the pictures takes a slight dive. Instead of just black and white, there are grays, which takes a lot away from the amazing Buscema and Sienckiwicz linework. Other than that, everything is great.

The final run of the volume is from Archie Goodwin and John Byrne, and frankly, it stinks to high-heaven. The story is contrived and weak in the first place, and only gets worse. And while John Byrne at his best produced some superb artwork, this is a far cry from his amazing X-Men and Fantastic Four runs. This is in no small part due to Klaus Jansen, whose inks just do not mix with Byrne's pencils. It's really not even worth reading, a stark contrast to the rest of the volume, which is classic.

To sum it all up, the terrible ending story arc doesn't come close to keeping me from recommending this. The first 16 issues featured are some of the best Wolverine stories you'll ever read, even if he doesn't actually suit up as Wolverine until the tail end.

I know many have complained about the format this book is in (cheaper paper stock and the black/white issue) but I felt that my enjoyment of the stories inside wasn't troubled by the lack of colour at all. Even though the original books had been in colour, 'Essential's black and white gives it an almost 'Sin City' feel, making the gritty stories of Wolverines first issues in his own series all the more grittier. As for the paper stock, if getting all these issues in one book for less than 20 bucks means cheaper paper, then sign me up. All around, this book is a great read for Logan fans and a fantastic bargain for the collector.

The only problem is that it is in black and white. However you will be surprised how little this matters. This book is about one of the best heros ever written. This book has everything Humor,Actionand some of the coolest plots ever.

DC I now , Marvel I Know , but this mix with Amalgam Age is very hard to swallow , though the story line are very good & the details is as amazing as can be , but its all very new , its almost as writers cram each two charicters together in one side & their enemies in the other and make a manulel or a summory of them and start with 4 stories here & other stories in the other book . but let me say this Batman + wolfrain character is the top story if it was in all the comic book it would worth at least 5 stars , but since not 3 all the book worth

The most interesting thing about these stories to me was that unlike the "Marvel verses DC" story where characters were matched up to fight based on the similarity of their strenghts and powers (ie Hulk vs Superman, Sub-mariner vs Aquaman, Batman vs Captain America), characters in this book were matched up based on their personalites. For instances, Wolverine and Batman were combined into a charater called Dark Claw. Despite their differences both Wolverine and Batman are dark characters, loners. Superman and Captain America were combined into Super Soliders. Both of these characters are role models and heros in every sense of the word. The orgin of the Amalgam character is a mixture of the two characters he os she is based on and usually were combined in interesting and unique ways. There were exceptions to this story formula, such as "Bruce Wayne: Agent of SHEILD". This story tells how Bruce Wayne's parents were spys killed by Hydra and Bruce has entered Sheild and used his power and money to turn it into his own private army. The issue opens with Bruce launching an attack on Hydra island in a personal war he has started. We can see a corruption here that has never really been used in the Batman stories, this gives a chance to redo certin characters in a new way, areas that fans won't allow writers to take with tried and true characters. My only complaint would be how many different stoies were combined. There are a few stories in the book everyone will enjoy, a true Marvel and DC fan will enjoy most of them, but only the most diehard fan be familar with all the characters. But this slight flaw is compentsated for by the fact that the stories themselves are interesting without knowing the characters behind them. All and all a great read.

If you are a fan of Marvel and DC superhero material; this one is for you. Especially the Wolverine Batman combination in this volume! This is where the comic companies should be expending their efforts. It's experimental mini-series titles like this that make the genre interesting again. Another I loved was Dave Gibbons Captain America/Superman hero the Super-Soldier. There should be a sequel to this series! It's too good to pass up!

REVIEW: If one word could sum up Jack Welch's career at GE it might be "results". And this is why many people will want to read this book. It is basically an autobiography of Jack Welch's GE years and does not dwell on deap management theory. Those readers expecting a lot of new business theory or to learn how to repeat Jack's performance by reading about his secret methodology may be disappointed.

The management insights that Jack does reveal seem to me to be generally built on fairly well established (but poorly executed) management practices. Jack has just embraced them and used focussed passion coupled with an obsession on people to execute superbly and produce great results. For example, some of his major initiatives could be said to have been derived from existing management principles: 1) "No. 1 or 2" Jack admits is derived from Peter Drucker, 2)I believe six sigma is derived in part from Motorola, 3) "Boundaryless behaviour" can said to be based on Peter Drucker's observation that there are no profit centers inside an organization, and 4) Jack was clearly not an early pioneer on "E-business". Yet he recognized the opportunities and produced results from them. The book probably won't become a classic, but it is still recommended reading for today's and tomorrow's managers and especially those interest in the man himself.

STRENGTHS: The book is a fairly easy and interesting read full of anecdotes and insites. It does a great job of showing the management task as art and discipline that can be learned, improved, and mastered rather than as personal charisma or other common stereotypes of leadership.

WEAKNESSES: The minor weaknesses of the book relate to Jack's strong, competitive personality (and maybe ego) that show through in his writing. Despite that author's initial disclaimer to read "I" as meaning "we" I found Jack's lack of distinction between himself and GE to be minorly annoying. Parts of the book are filled with phrases like "I bought this $$$$$ company" when clearly "We" is appropriate [I know, I'm nit-picking]. Second (and this is almost excusable in an autobiography) Jack rarely gave the "other side" of the story when discussing major GE crises. For example, he never explains the EU's reasons for blocking the Honeywell merger, assuming that it is so obviously wrong it's not worthy of explaination.

First half of the book is about childhood-to-retirement. Second half is dedicated to a few popular topics: Globalization, Six Sigma, eBusiness, Honeywell, etc. How can you summarize a guy's life in just a few pages... especially Jack Welch. I did enjoy the overall inspiring story, but it lacked substance. It'fs more a biography rather than a business 'gtool'h book.

For instance, Jack'fs first limelight was an obscure unit in the plastics division. It obviously propelled his career and got him out from under 'gthe pile'h. But, all the story says is that the people diligently developed a robust plastic (after many months) and suddenly $100+ million unit was born'c well'c. I'fm sure there'fs a lot more to the business challenge than that. Jack writes about what he remembers and naturally that tends to have holes. Those holes lead one to believe that business was much simpler than it really was.

The other criticism is that specific people within and outside of GE are named in stories, which sound unobjective. One must look at these characterizations with somewhat of a challenging eye. As expected, Jack isn'ft going to criticize Henry Kissinger and Larry Bossidy, but one would hope that he would put more beef into Gary Wendt'fs firing. Rather, Jack saves most of his critical commentary for the EU Commission, more specifically Mr. Gonzales-Diaz.

A light hearted reader can take this book for what it is: a fun and entertaining biography, but not a serious business book.

His advice may seem obvious to some, but how often is it actually practiced? I shouted "yeah!" to myself over and over as I read a couple chapters of this book.

For example: the chapter about rating and rewarding his employees was excellent. For example, giving Class A employees 3x the salary increases over Class B employees-- Great!! Giving NO increases to Class C employees, and getting rid of them sooner rather than later...what can I say, I LOVE IT!!

He's so right about the fact that it's more cruel to let Class C workers attain and maintain an certain income level (that they are not really worthy of), and waiting til they're older, with a large mortgage and kids in college before finallly telling them that they're not making the grade.

I've worked with some people in the high-paying tech arena that, because of either blatant incompetence, bad attitude, and/or pure laziness, never should have gotten to where they are today. As far as I'm concerned, some never should have gotten past working in the food service industry.

Eventually those people *do* get weeded out (I'm seeing it happen right now in this economy). Sooner is better than later, both for the employer and the employee. I also enjoy not having to work with those types.