Cartoonist: Ed Piskor | Editor: Chris Robinson
X-Men Group Editor: Jordan D. White | Editor-in-Chief: C.B. Cebulski
And a bunch of other stupid credits I don't want to type out, because Marvel likes to credit every executive who took so much as a single sideways glance at every comic they publish.
X-Men Group Editor: Jordan D. White | Editor-in-Chief: C.B. Cebulski
And a bunch of other stupid credits I don't want to type out, because Marvel likes to credit every executive who took so much as a single sideways glance at every comic they publish.
Unfortunately, what goodwill Piskor had gained from his first installment is squandered by this one.
The two issues contained in this book cover the entire Claremont/Cockrum/Byrne/Smith run mentioned above, opening with the events of GIANT-SIZE X-MEN #1 and concluding shortly after the "From the Ashes" storyline. Issue 3 opens with the X-Mansion deserted. We're told it's been this way for months, and the implication is that the X-Men have been trapped on the sentient island of Krakoa for that entire time -- which seems a bit odd; the story in GIANT-SIZE X-MEN #1 has always read to me as a very compressed timeline, with the X-Men missing for a few days or a week, tops.
At any rate, Piskor uses this absence to allow the Hellfire Club to bug the mansion, erasing from his retelling the story in which the club sends their operative, Warhawk, to do the job in X-MEN #110. Again, as I mentioned once or twice last week, I like some aspects of Piskor's work in this series. Here, he sets up the Hellfire Club as the main antagonists of this entire era, presenting them early on as a shadowy cabal spying on the X-Men. This is the sort of thing I feel a retelling of this sort should do -- set up an overarching plot where originally none existed, or where one was later retroactively established, as would be the case with the Hellfire Club's involvement in both the Warhawk episode and the attack of the Sentinels in issue 98.
But I'm jumping around the timeline now. Piskor mostly stays true to the Cockrum run, showing the death of Thunderbird at Valhalla Mountain, the attack of Havok, Polaris, and Eric the Red at the airport in issue 97, and the appearance of Stephen Lang and Project: Armageddon (here presented as an effort funded by the Right) immediately thereafter, which, as in the original stories, leads to the debut of Phoenix. From here, he moves the action to Cassidy Keep for a fight with Black Tom and Juggernaut, and then pits Phoenix against Firelord and sends the X-Men into space to battle the Shi'ar Imperial Guard and repair the fabric of reality.
If the above reads like a whirlwind, it's not without reason. Piskor covers a ton of ground here, encapsulating close to fifty issues in this single chapter. (Compare with the first part of GRAND DESIGN, which retold approximately sixty issues in two chapters!) As a result, some things need to get drastically cut or excised entirely. What we wind up with is a story starring Jean Grey as the main character all the way through. Cyclops still plays a major part and there's a bit of development given to Wolverine, but otherwise the new X-Men are pretty unremarkable through the entire thing. I can't help feeling this era would've been better served as two issues of GRAND DESIGN rather than one, to give Piskor more room to work with. Claremont/Byrne is, to this day, still considered definitive X-Men, so to see it whittled here to nothing is disappointing. Forget "Dark Phoenix" and "Days of Future Past"; the "world tour" and Proteus are my favorite parts of the run, and altogether, those stories are given a whopping four or so pages in GRAND DESIGN.
Plus Piskor messes with some aspects of the continuity that I'm unsure needed to be touched. He has Beast still among the X-Men on Krakoa, even though the character had left the team and joined the Avengers by that point in the original timeline. Later in the issue, Beast is established as an Avenger, so I'm unsure of the point of this change. Piskor also has Xavier and Lilandra literally like fifty feet away when the X-Men are kidnapped by Mesmero, compared with their vacationing in the Mediterranean originally when it happened (which makes much more sense). We also see Emperor D'Ken of the Shi'ar phone up Galactus and ask him to send Firelord to attack Phoenix, which is absolutely absurd on its face, regardless of the fact that the timeline also doesn't make sense (Firelord had left Galactus's service by the time he battled Phoenix). And for some reason, Jean and her parents travel to Ireland for that attack, rather than it simply happening in New York as previously.
(Reading some of this stuff feels like Piskor did it all from memory and couldn't be bothered to get certain details right. I'm sure that's not the case at all; he's likely quite familiar with the material and simply wanted to make changes to streamline his narrative, but some of the choices are arbitrary and questionable at best.)
Piskor pits the X-Men against Magneto, introduces them to Caliban, sends them into space to fight Deathbird and the Brood, then returns them to Earth for "From the Ashes" -- though again, he departs from the original continuity. Mastermind never shows up here; Cyclops marries Madelyne Pryor with a minimal amount of fuss. After this, it's into the John Romita, Jr. run as Piskor presents, among other things, Forge's neutralizer weapon removing Storm's powers to close out the volume.
I have to say, I was pretty excited to see Piskor apparently skip Storm's mohawk & leather phase; she still has her normal costume and long tresses past the point where she changed her appearance originally -- however it turns out he merely delayed it, showing Storm with a mohawk as she recovers from the neutralizer under Forge's care. There are, as always, other modifications to the timeline in this book. Piskor skips SECRET WARS entirely, and as noted above, he doesn't bother with the "Future Past" part of "Days of Future Past". But perhaps the biggest and most questionable change is that he introduces Madelyne Pryor far, far earlier than Chris Claremont originally did. Here, Piskor excises Lee Forrester from the X-Men's story and has Madelyne as the captain of the fishing trawler Cyclops spends some time on following Phoenix's death. It's weirdly jarring and unsettling (which may be Piskor's intention) to see Madelyne show up so quickly after "Dark Phoenix". I'm not sure I like it.
But then, I really don't like this entire affair. As noted last time and above, there are bits and pieces i'm on board with, but it's really hard for me to get into Piskor's artwork -- plus the script is so dry and boring; it's like reading a textbook. I don't think I mentioned it previously, but the entire thing is told by the Watcher, and it's done about as dryly as possible (which is a little odd since the Watcher generally has pretty dramatic and flowery dialogue). And again, I get that this is a huge undertaking -- encapsulating the X-Men's history like this would be a Herculean task for anybody. I just feel like it would've been a better task for anybody else!
I've no doubt this is a labor of love for Ed Piskor, but it's too "indie" in its style and takes too many unneeded and/or ill-advised liberties for my liking. Plus, while I was willing to forgive some of those liberties in the first volume, which covered material I've read very little of, here it feels almost insulting to see some of the changes made to the original stories. Like I said above, this is definitive X-Men for me. My favorite run of all time. I can quote UNCANNY #94 - 176 chapter and verse. I know, by heart, what happens in every one of those issues. So seeing so much of it either condensed down to nothing or modified beyond recognition is a painful experience for me!
Which isn't to say I won't keep reading it -- I'd say it's likely I'll pick up the remaining volumes on sale after they're released, but more as curiosities than out of any genuine love for the project.
No comments:
Post a Comment