{"id":5696,"date":"2020-10-03T20:33:09","date_gmt":"2020-10-03T19:33:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=5696"},"modified":"2020-10-03T20:33:09","modified_gmt":"2020-10-03T19:33:09","slug":"giant-size-x-men-tribute-to-wein-cockrum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=5696","title":{"rendered":"Giant-Size X-Men: Tribute to Wein & Cockrum"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

GIANT-SIZE X-MEN: TRIBUTE TO WEIN & COCKRUM<\/strong>
“Second Genesis”<\/strong>
by Len Wein and… well, about 60 names would be listed here.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is certainly unusual. It’s a remake of Giant-Size X-Men<\/em> #1, using the original script, but with modern artists doing a page each. I’ll be honest – the main reason I bought this was just in case they sneaked in something significant in the art. They don’t. It’s exactly what it’s promoted as: a straight cover version of “Second Genesis”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It goes without saying that Giant-Size X-Men<\/em> #1, now 45 years old, is one of the most significant single issues in X-Men history. Most people with a vague interest in the franchise have read it (and needless to say, it’s available on Marvel Unlimited)<\/a>. It’s the issue that relaunched the series after several years in reprint, and it’s the introduction of Storm, Colossus, Nightcrawler and Thunderbird, as well as the point where Wolverine and Banshee join the team. Len Wein didn’t stick around beyond this point, which Chris Claremont swiftly taking over – but Dave Cockrum hung around for quite some time, which gives it more sense of unity with the run that follows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

So sure, it’s important. But is it any good? After all, 1963’s X-Men<\/em> #1 is important<\/em>, but it’s hardly Lee and Kirby’s best work. It’s not even close to being their best issue of X-Men<\/em>. And Len Wein only got one shot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The original Giant-Size X-Men<\/em> #1 is a mixed bag. It opens with an extended sequence of Professor X gathering his new team, all of whom get their own recruitment scene. Then it has to bring them together as a group, and put them together with Cyclops. And then it has to send them off on their first group adventure, to rescue the previous<\/em> X-Men team from Krakoa the Living Island. It has an awful lot of ground to cover. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The battle with Krakoa is the book’s weak spot. Krakoa is a gimmick monster villain, and he has no particular resonance with the X-Men. It’s a bit of a giveaway that in the decades that followed, a period when many writers were obsessed with referencing old continuity, few people felt inspired to do anything with Krakoa. You wish there was a story at the heart of it that tied more closely to the X-Men.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But what Giant-Size<\/em> does well is to introduce a large number of characters in a short period of time, give them all their day in the sun, and then use the Krakoa scenes to sell you on the idea that watching these guys as a team sounds like fun. Dave Cockrum has to cram a vast amount of action into 36 pages and he keeps it flowing dynamically. His character work helps to round out the new cast. And yes, it’s not a seamless team dynamic in the first issue – Sunfire, Thunderbird and Wolverine are all<\/em> playing the role of team grump, and you can see why two of them were swiftly jettisoned – but it’s a good first issue when it comes to selling the series.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So… why do we need this? If you were being snarky, you might wonder whether the best way of paying tribute to Dave Cockrum was to remake one of his best known comics without the Dave Cockrum. But we’re in the territory of the tribute covers album here, not something you often see in comics. And while Cockrum’s art isn’t on the page, his presence is there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That’s a mixed blessing. In theory, the idea of getting different creators to interpret the story is quite interesting. The problem is that they want to stick to Len Wein’s original script, and so there’s little scope for serious departures in pacing or layout. The scope isn’t there for artists to go crazy and reinvent a scene from scratch, or to interpret it loosely. Besides, Giant-Size <\/em>is a dense book by modern standards, often running at 6-8 panels a page, so if you’re doing it page for page, you’re not really going to get a modern artist’s interpretation of the same story. It winds up tied closely to the choices that were originally made. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So if you read it side by side with the original, you’ll find that the vast majority of it is just a panel for panel rendition of the original. Many of the most striking differences come from the use of subtler modern colouring (often also credited to the page artist). It often deviates quite drastically from the original, and accounts for much of the change of mood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s somewhat interesting to spot the individual panels which artists chose to change or tweak – Marguerite Sauvage gives much more prominence to Wolverine popping his claws for the first time, which is clearly the right choice in hindsight. Carmen Carnero and David Curiel seem not to have got the memo about using the original layouts, and deviate wildly for a looser sequence that abandons conventional panel borders – but that’s a sensible choice, since it’s the locals coming to worship Storm, and it could use a bit more mysticism to it. Bernard Chang drastically reworks his page too, to give Sunfire a more striking debut – it’s a particularly tricky page to work with since it features the tail end of one scene, a mere two panels for Sunfire’s intro, and the start of another scene. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The brief scene in Colossus’ family home is shown from slightly different angles so as to show more of the decor and better establish the location. Thunderbird’s buffalo chasing sequence is reworked in horizontal panels that look rather better to modern eyes. Leinil Francis Yu sticks to the original panel layout on his page but frames almost every panel differently, following the brief while trying to find his own angle on it. The giant crabs on Krakoa are given a bit more spotlight. Krakoa’s emergence is done in a more modern style as well, shifting to a splash page with inset panels – and yes, the original page does seem a bit staid in 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the points of interest are on that sort of level. It’s unlikely anyone would choose to read this over the original, because even though the individual pages are of a high standard, the very nature of jam issues makes the book uneven. It’s an intriguing curio and worth a look if you have the chance to compare them side by side, but it’s a little too faithful to the original to allow the impressive range of artists to fully bring out their own approach to the scenes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

GIANT-SIZE X-MEN: TRIBUTE TO WEIN & COCKRUM“Second Genesis”by Len Wein and… well, about 60 names would be listed here. This is certainly unusual. It’s a remake of Giant-Size X-Men #1, using the original script, but with modern artists doing a page each. I’ll be honest – the main reason I bought this was just in […]<\/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":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5696","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=5696"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5696\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5698,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5696\/revisions\/5698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}