{"id":4166,"date":"2018-06-06T21:25:01","date_gmt":"2018-06-06T20:25:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=4166"},"modified":"2018-06-06T21:25:01","modified_gmt":"2018-06-06T20:25:01","slug":"x-men-red-annual-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=4166","title":{"rendered":"X-Men Red Annual #1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Or, as the logo has it,\u00a0Annual X-Men Red.<\/em> \u00a0I haven’t actually reviewed the first arc of\u00a0X-Men Red<\/em> yet, because it’s still going. \u00a0But this turns out to be a sensible place to start, because it’s a transition issue by regular writer Tom Taylor that bridges the gap from\u00a0Phoenix Resurrection\u00a0<\/em>#5 to\u00a0X-Men Red\u00a0<\/em>#1. \u00a0It’s the connective tissue that gets Jean Grey in place for the start of the series, shunted off into an annual to stop it bogging down those early issues.<\/p>\n

Let’s start with the art. \u00a0It’s… well, it’s got its problems. \u00a0Pascal Alixe has been around for a while, though it’s been getting on for twenty years since he did anything on the X-books. \u00a0He’s a pro. \u00a0And page one looks nicely dramatic. \u00a0He does a really nice firebird for the Phoenix. \u00a0Once we get into the story proper, though, things get a bit clumsier.<\/p>\n

There’s something a little over-rendered and awkward about Alixe’s figures that moves in the direction of photorealism but misses the mark just slightly too often. \u00a0There are some good character bits scattered throughout the issue; there’s a really nice double-page montage of Jean finding out what happened while she was away; the panel of Rachel waiting for Jean to enter the room is great. \u00a0But there are also panels where the expressions are a little off, or just a little too stiff… and for most of the issue, he really does do quite a bad Jean Grey. \u00a0It can’t help that he’s saddled with drawing her in her ugly late-sixties costume (because that’s what she was wearing at the end of\u00a0Resurrection<\/em>, and the story picks up immediately after), but she really does look like a middle aged cosplayer who needs to be gently told that perhaps she can’t carry this off as well as she could ten years ago.<\/p>\n

But anyway. \u00a0The point of this issue is two fold – motivate Jean to make the world a better place, since that’s her agenda in\u00a0X-Men Red<\/em>, and establish Taylor’s take on Jean, which tries to detach her from her years of continuity baggage (and even from her veteran status) and position her as the leader figure who’s going to shake things up. \u00a0There’s an intriguing idea that in some ways Jean is more formidable without the Phoenix, because she no longer has to spend so much effort thinking about pulling her punches.<\/p>\n

It’s not hard to make a case that Jean is an underdeveloped character who has unexplored potential if you use her the right way. \u00a0She may have been the star of the Dark Phoenix Saga, but for most of her history she was the token girl, or a character defined by her relationship with Scott and put on a pedestal by both him and the book, or just one half of the X-Men’s royal couple who served mainly as an iconic elder statesperson and team mother-figure. \u00a0So with Scott out of the picture, and Phoenix expressly taken off the board at the end of\u00a0Phoenix Resurrection<\/em>, the way is clear to do something else with her. \u00a0Traditionally you could do “this clears the way for Logan”, but Taylor sensibly makes a point of getting an exchange with Old Man Logan out of the way early, and moving on.<\/p>\n

So Jean’s take from everything that’s been happening while she was away is that the heroes have lost their way on internal squabbling and need to be better; that the X-Men are now living openly in the big city, which is surely a good thing and a sign that society is on the right path; and that at the same time, something dark and hateful is growing in society and emboldening hatred around it, which needs to be dealt with. \u00a0The point is fairly blatant: in so many ways, the world is getting more tolerant, But Also Trump.<\/p>\n

This leads to… well, in terms of this particular issue, something of a miscellany of scenes. \u00a0She meets Rachel, largely because that’s something which ought to be gotten out of the way. \u00a0She’s introduced to Laura and Gabby, because they’re going to be in the cast of\u00a0X-Men Red<\/em>. \u00a0She goes to see Black Bolt to build bridges with the Inhumans and forgive him for the death of Scott. \u00a0That’s clearly intended as the big “let’s put this behind us and move on” pay-off for the issue. \u00a0Trouble is, the X-books actually did move on from the Inhumans, and draw a line under it, a while back. \u00a0Sure, Jean wasn’t there to do that, and she could plausibly be angry that Black Bolt accidentally released poison gas that killed her husband, but from the reader’s standpoint she’s re-opening a closed story just to close it again instantly, and that’s not a particularly compelling piece of resolution. \u00a0So it kind of just stops.<\/p>\n

In many ways, this idealist \/ activist version of Jean makes perfect sense as an extrapolation of the character; it’s something of the role Scott used to play, but with less of the middle manager, more of the dream of a better world, and a hint of his more recent rebel persona. \u00a0Jean was always united with all that, but without Scott around, she can come to the fore instead of standing around in the background being supportive. \u00a0If anything, there’s a risk of her becoming a bit too wise and morally flawless, as she often feels like an authorial mouthpiece. \u00a0But Taylor is finding a new angle on her, and that’s all for the best.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Or, as the logo has it,\u00a0Annual X-Men Red. \u00a0I haven’t actually reviewed the first arc of\u00a0X-Men Red yet, because it’s still going. \u00a0But this turns out to be a sensible place to start, because it’s a transition issue by regular writer Tom Taylor that bridges the gap from\u00a0Phoenix Resurrection\u00a0#5 to\u00a0X-Men Red\u00a0#1. \u00a0It’s the connective tissue […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-x-axis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4166"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4168,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4166\/revisions\/4168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}