{"id":4289,"date":"2018-09-01T21:10:03","date_gmt":"2018-09-01T20:10:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=4289"},"modified":"2018-09-01T21:10:03","modified_gmt":"2018-09-01T20:10:03","slug":"x-men-grand-design-second-genesis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=4289","title":{"rendered":"X-Men: Grand Design – Second Genesis"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ed Piskor’s re-telling of\u00a0Uncanny X-Men<\/em> returns for a further two issues, covering the material from the 1975 relaunch through to Storm losing her powers in 1984 or so. \u00a0This is a curious project: a basically straight retelling of\u00a0the X-Men’s history, and with an indy sensibility about it. \u00a0As the\u00a0Grand Design\u00a0<\/em>sub-title would imply, Piskor’s focus is on the big picture, and the over-reaching story.<\/p>\n

This task should get somewhat easier now that Piskor has reached the Claremont run, which really was a single continuous narrative from 1975 through to Claremont’s departure in 1991. \u00a0What remains to be seen, and will stay that way until the final issue, is how Piskor will get around the problem that Claremont’s run doesn’t actually end on a note of resolution that ties up the saga. \u00a0But since\u00a0Grand Design<\/em> is more than willing to tinker with history, to revise and streamline, in order to get things to fit more neatly into a big picture, presumably he won’t feel too bound by that.<\/p>\n

Still, it’s those final issues that will really determine what it is we’re looking at here, and whether it can transcend being merely an exercise in editing. \u00a0For the moment, the main interest lies in the choices that Piskor makes in changing the source material to better fit a grand scheme, and in the technique which he brings to the re-telling itself.<\/p>\n

It’s tempting to ask what a book of this nature would be like if it was done in the regular X-Men style. \u00a0But the reality is that you couldn’t do it in the regular style because the very nature of the project requires such an insane degree of compression. \u00a0The only\u00a0regular\u00a0X-Men<\/em> issue to attempt anything similar was issue #138, the funeral of Jean Grey, which largely consists of Cyclops recapping the whole series up to that point. \u00a0But that’s an outlier. \u00a0The premise of Grand Design<\/em> dictates that individual stories are reduced to their bare essentials, or merely alluded to. \u00a0There’s little room for individual characters to breathe.<\/p>\n

So much of the skill in\u00a0Grand Design<\/em> lies in Piskor’s ability to use the art to gesture at broader character points, and give a sense of what the wider story was like, in a way that wouldn’t be possible in a prose recap. \u00a0Plus, there’s the sense of significance given by the moments when the series does zoom in on a scene of particular importance and show it in detail – Jean’s rebirth as Phoenix, for example. \u00a0And key themes are seeded throughout the book so that they can be seen developing – a lot of issue #2 is devoted to reminding us of Rogue’s character arc from villain to X-Man, for example. \u00a0 It’s an incredibly dense book, though coming at it from the perspective of someone who knows most of these stories backwards, it’s difficult to judge what somebody would make of it if they were coming to it new.<\/p>\n

Even though\u00a0Grand Design<\/em> isn’t imitating the style of earlier X-Men comics, it’s still presented on mock-aged paper. \u00a0That allows a clever colouring technique: some key elements, such as the energy aura around Phoenix, but also a particularly agitated speech balloon from Storm, are shown as pure white, with even the paper texture removed. \u00a0Since the book’s baseline has been set at “paper-coloured”, the result is something that feels whiter than white. \u00a0It’s very simple and hugely effective – particularly on digital copies, I suspect.<\/p>\n

What about the changes? \u00a0Piskor changed quite a lot in the first two issues, but not so as to alter the thrust of the series. \u00a0Rather, he simplified, streamlined, and made the changes that you suspect the original writers would have made, if they’d known where the book was heading. \u00a0Obviously, this is more of an issue with the Silver Age than it is with Chris Claremont, who really was writing a multi-year ongoing saga; the Silver Age fits into that vision of the X-Men not so much because it was intended to at the time of its creation, but because Claremont incorporated it as part of the backstory of his vision.<\/p>\n

So these two issues, dealing with Claremont’s run, don’t have quite the same pressures to re-write. \u00a0Still, there are plenty of false starts and dropped ideas even in those issues. \u00a0And Piskor makes some changes of his own, one of which is particularly surprising.<\/p>\n

The ill-advised leprechauns are sensibly removed from the Cassidy Keep storyline. \u00a0The first M’Kraan Crystal storyline now has Phoenix re-creating the universe over “seven billion years”. \u00a0Proteus never makes it off Muir Island because Phoenix just zaps him (presented as an early sign of ruthlessness brought about by Mastermind’s tinkering) – this is a smart move to sideline a character who would otherwise distract from Phoenix’s status as a character vastly more powerful than everyone else. \u00a0Lady Deathstrike shows up during the Hellfire Club sequence during the Dark Phoenix Saga, to lay the groundwork for Cole, Reese and Macon showing up in the next volume as members of the Reavers. \u00a0Wolverine is noticeably more violent than he was in the original series, though probably no more violent than he would have been if the Comics Code hadn’t been an issue.<\/p>\n

Issue #2 goes beyond tinkering. \u00a0Arcade is omitted, even from stories that he actually appeared in, presumably on the grounds that he’s absurdly out of tone with the rest of the series – which is fine as a diversion in the ongoing title, but a nuisance for the project here. \u00a0Scott’s rebound girlfriend Lee Forrester is deleted, and the gap is filled by debuting Madelyne Pryor a little early. \u00a0Madelyne, in turn, becomes much more obviously sinister from the word go, and Scott’s decision to marry a woman who looks exactly like his dead girlfriend is presented explicitly as a sign of seriously poor judgment and denial (which of course fits with how she eventually turns out).<\/p>\n

But most striking is what happens to “Days of Future Past”. \u00a0It gains an additional element in the form of\u00a0Rogue’s debut and her encounter with Carol Danvers. \u00a0That actually took place in an\u00a0Avengers\u00a0<\/em>annual, but it plainly belongs as part of the X-Men story. \u00a0And there’s room for it, because “Days of Future Past” loses its time travel elements. \u00a0Entirely. \u00a0The X-Men never actually show up to stop the assassination; instead, the Brotherhood successfully kill a different\u00a0<\/em>senator, leaving Kelly as his heir apparent. \u00a0Now that is not a choice that I saw coming. \u00a0This is a signature X-Men story, and changing it is a big deal.<\/p>\n

Then again, Rachel Summers is on the cover of the next issue, so it can’t be gone entirely. \u00a0Perhaps the thinking is that all the dystopian future stuff is better covered in relation to Rachel when she shows up, and that makes the time travel elements of DOFP simply redundant in the bigger picture. \u00a0If so, I can see the point. \u00a0(Before someone asks: in the original series, Rachel showed up\u00a0just<\/em> before the cut-off point for issue #2. \u00a0But only just, so shunting it to the start of the next issue works fine.)<\/p>\n

This is certainly an interesting read if you know the original material and want to see an attempt to reshape it with the benefit of hindsight. \u00a0How it will play to people who aren’t familiar with the source, and whether there’s ultimately more to it than simply a skilful exercise in editing and narration, remains very difficult to judge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ed Piskor’s re-telling of\u00a0Uncanny X-Men returns for a further two issues, covering the material from the 1975 relaunch through to Storm losing her powers in 1984 or so. \u00a0This is a curious project: a basically straight retelling of\u00a0the X-Men’s history, and with an indy sensibility about it. \u00a0As the\u00a0Grand Design\u00a0sub-title would imply, Piskor’s focus is […]<\/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,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4289","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\/4289","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=4289"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4289\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4290,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4289\/revisions\/4290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}