I didn´t want to write this kind of post again but since I decided to bring my affairs in order while I still can I am finishing up on comicbook series I have started and one of them is Ed Piskor´s X - MEN : GRAND DESIGN.
Now what I meant with " this kind of post "is one where I basically take a comic completely apart and dismantle it bit by bit. Because that can easily be seen as bashing somebody´s work. Which I don´t do. What I DO is call B.S. when I see it because a. ) I don´t suffer B.S. in comics lightly and b. ) since I don´t get any review copies neither from Marvel Comics nor DC Comics nor any of the other comicbook publishers big or small ( never have and never will ) and have to pay for every comicbook I discuss or write about here from my own pocket I don´t have to sell their propaganda.
Speaking of propaganda, naturally I went online before starting this post to see if there already was a post or video like this out there but it seems that apart from Zoe Tunnel´s review on COMIC BOOK HERALD everybody is singing the praises of Ed Piskor´s retelling of the X - Men history. And when there´s one thing I can´t stand it is when everybody is falling all over themselves in pimping a comicbook that is crap. Plain and simple.
You might ask why I feel the need to write this post when there is already a review about this but Zoe Tunnel only talks about the general problems and not the specifics. And I want to go into detail here. But first what are the general problems ? First up, Ed Piskor is condensing 30 years of already dense continuity into 3 books. Which can be done but not without having the story suffer. And this is the first causality of X - MEN : GRAND DESIGN.
One reason why UNCANNY X - MEN by Chris Claremont and Dave Cockrum and subsequently ChrisClaremont and JohnByrne became Marvel Comics best selling book is the story. The exciting super hero adventure, the outer space opera, the grandeur and majesty, the great characters that evolved throughout it, the triumphs and the failures, the big moments that affect the fates of whole galaxies as well as the small, quiet moments that happen between two people in love. That´s what made the X - Men.
And you still have a lot of that in X - MEN : GRAND DESIGN but in order to blaze through 30 years of X - Men history you don´t have time to give the iconic story beats a moment to breathe. What´s even more important is that a great writer still would have found a way to give us the characters we all know and love. Sadly Ed Piskor is not a great writer. If you have read my post about book one of X - MEN : GRAND DESIGN you know I am not diminishing Ed Piskor´s accomplishments. But I also don´t feel the need to cover up his shortcomings as it seems everybody on the internet does.
To say it bluntly, not only does Ed Piskor seem to twist, alter, ignore and change X - Men history and important events at whim thus depriving the story of its greatest appeal he also forsakes every nuance in the heroes personality and turns them into distorted caricatures of themselves. One reason why the X - Men captured the imaginations and hearts of so many comicbook fans worldwide were the storyarcs for the individual characters - especially the strong women which at that time was not as common as it is Today - that went one for decades. Some of the greatest storyarcs are reduced to simple dry plot points the reader is supplied with with not a lot of content. And if I still had hopes that Ed Piskor would treat the DARK PHOENIX SAGA with respect - because that was what he was obviously working through in book one - that all went flying out the window here.
Anyway, before we start I have to say that I am not somebody who goes through comicbooks fine combing them for errors. On the other side these are stories I read again and again so I am pretty familiar with them and I can tell when something is off. So while I won´t address every little error and wrong detail - like the fact that Sunfire didn´t join the team just to meet Jean Grey or that Ed Piskor felt the need to change the flying vehicle Count Nefaria tried to escape in when Thunderbird jumped upon it and ( needlessly ) found a fiery end - I will go through every alteration that I found. Please feel free to write me if there are others I missed.
The first big mistake that caught my attention is this confrontation between Erik the Red who has brainwashed Havok and Polaris and the X - Men. In Ed Piskor´s version the X - men are in their civilian clothes and Cyclops doesn´t put up much of a fight against his brother Polaris. He comes off basically like a whimp ( which is how writers paint him Today ) and stares after the villain saying : " I need to talk to Jean right away. "
Longtime readers know that Cyclops is one of my favorite team members of the X - Men ( at least he was when Chris Claremont was writing the title ) and over the years I have gotten particularly annoyed at how he is often portrayed in cartoons, movies or comicbooks just to make other characters - in particular Wolverine - cooler or more engaging. Don´t get me wrong, I love Wolverine. But in the Scott Summers / Jean Grey love triangle Wolverine was always the third wheel. No matter how much the mainstream comic muggle may " ship "the relationship between Wolverine and Jean Grey Scott Summers was always her man. They were destined for each other and while Wolverine may be fun or good to annoy Scott they both knew that Jean Grey would always end up with Scott Summers.
You will see how this trope of making Scott Summers more of a whimp at the expense of other characters - especially Jean Grey - is an ongoing theme in this book. But let´s take a closer look at how things really played out. First off, the X - Men were all in costume when they were fighting Erik the Red and the braiwashed Polaris and Havok. Secondly, it was a much bigger fight and Cyclops fought Havok to a standstill. It was only when they made their getaway that he couldn´t bring himself to shoot his brother in the back - as this would have probably killed him. Also, Storm chided Wolverine for trying to bite Cyclops head off. I wonder why that was taken out since it shows Storm as a strong female and already hints that she may be willing to take more of a leadership role within the team.
You might have noticed that it took me quite some time to upload these 8 pages from X - MEN issue 97 ( they only changed the name of the title to UNCANNY X - MEN much later ) and put them in the right order and position. That is because for some unknown reason blogger felt the need to change its interface and now everything takes up four times as long.
For a time you could switch back to the old interface and if I hadn´t done that constantly I would not have been able to finish up the last posts.
There was an option that you could keep the old interface but it seems blogger has changed its mind about that and has now switched all blogs to the new interface no matter if you want it or not. Once again blogger hits you in the back when you least expect it. But hey, will all the bad things that have happened in 2020 so far this is only another kick in the face.
Speaking of another kick in the face, we have a slew of little changes and omissions in THE PHOENIX SAGA from the point where Jean Grey, Sean Cassidy and Wolverine are kidnapped by the Sentinels up to when the team fights Black Tom and the Juggernaut. But those are too many and of minor importance so we can overlook them. As Ed Piskor overlooked the entire issue 104 of X - MEN in which the team fights Magneto since this doesn´t happen in X - MEN : GRAND DESIGN - SECOND GENESIS. Next we have another change for Ed Piskor´s endgame here : while in the original story Erik the Red tricked Firelord into helping him by attacking Jean Grey in Ed Piskor´s version Firelord is " on loan "to Shi´Ar emperor D´Ken from Galactus ( you can find more original art from these issues in this post).
Now we are in the JohnByrne era and what happens when the X - Men are inside the M´Kraan crystal and this particular scene has be re - written, retconned and layers upon layers added to it over the decades that I won´t count " Jean Grey recreates the universe which takes her seven billion years "as a mistake. In the original version it was more of giving the universe a jump start and it also was more of a group effort. In Ed Piskor´s version it seems almost like Jean Grey does it all by herself.
Ed Piskor skips another entire issue and this time it´s a doozy since this is X - MEN 109, the first appearance of James Hudson a.k.a. Weapon Alpha ( later called Vindicator or Guardian ), the future leader of Alpha Flight .
Besides Storm in a bikini ( which is always a plus ) we get a bit more background info about Wolverine who is practically absent without leave from the canadian government. They sent Weapon Alpha to recapture Weapon X but James Hudson botches the job and we would only learn years later in an issue of ALPHA FLIGHT ( where JohnByrne cleverly reused most of his pages for X - MEN 109 ) how he escaped from them.
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