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| Thursday, March 1, 2007 01:32 PM |
| Phoenix Rises - Comic Books Borrowed from EverMike Volume 4 |
 by Fëanor |
Just finished reading the Dark Phoenix saga, as collected in a book rather mysteriously and uselessly entitled simply The Uncanny X-Men - no subtitle, no description/summary of what it contains, except a short intro by Stan Lee. I'd link you to it on Amazon, but I'm having a hard time finding it, for obvious reasons (every book and item having to do with the X-Men is called some variation of The Uncanny X-Men).
When I started reading, I had the feeling I'd read at least some part of this story before, and when I got near the end of the book, I realized I was right; many of the panels in the last couple stories were very familiar to me. I'm pretty sure we ended up with one or two of the original issues of the comic book when my brother and I inherited most, if not all, of our cousin's comic book collection way back. I wonder if we still have those, and how much they're worth?
Anyways, it's a pretty good story, and did manage to evoke some pretty strong emotions from me by the end. But the writing is, as is typical from this period in comics, pretty over-the-top, overdone, melodramatic, etc. The comic as a whole (written by Chris Claremont, IIRC) is extremely wordy; they make extra sure you're totally caught up on the whole story by retelling practically the whole thing in each comic book, and you're never left curious as to what any of the characters are thinking about what's happening, because if they don't speak their thoughts aloud in great detail, they think them aloud in great big thought bubbles of doom.
The story is indeed quite a bit different than the one told in the X3 movie. This book doesn't include all the backstory as to how Jean Grey originally died and resurrected as the Phoenix entity with nearly god-like powers (which is disappointing; I may have to track that down, as I'm curious now), although it does hint at it. The book actually starts a bit after that, as Jean is experiencing what she thinks are time-shifts where she's reliving the life of an ancestor, but what are actually false imaginings implanted in her head by an evil and mysterious enemy. He's using them to turn her against the X-Men (although how living with some hot colonial guy in the distant past makes you hate and want to kill your friends is a bit unclear), but what ultimately happens is that they help break down her inhibitions and the psychic circuit breakers that have been holding back the enormous power of the Phoenix. With her inhibitions gone, the absolute power corrupts her absolutely, and she becomes Dark Phoenix.
Near the end of the story, after much shenanigans (which involve the introduction of two new good mutants, one cool [Kitty Pride], and one incredible lame [The Dazzler], and a bunch of other villains, some of whom are also mutants), Prof. X manages to reestablish the circuit breakers, with Jean's help, everything seems okay, but then they're teleported to the spacecraft of an alien race ruled by Prof. X's girlfriend (talk about long distance relationships!), who feels it necessary to destroy Phoenix so she can never harm the universe again - see, while she was evil, she blew up a sun and a whole planet full of people. Whoops!
Prof. X demands trial by combat, helpfully volunteering all the X-Men to fight instead of him (that bastard). But here's the bit I don't understand: why in hell would they allow Jean Grey to fight on the side of the X-Men in this combat, when the entire point of it is to decide her fate, because she could be too dangerous to allow to live, because when she uses her power she becomes Dark Phoenix?! Um, dumb mistake!! So inevitably she does indeed become Phoenix again during the fight, but this time sort of on purpose so she can... get a random laser gun booby trap to shoot her and kill her. Again, kind of weird.
The book also pointlessly introduces (and then really doesn't do anything with) the character of the Watcher, your typical all-knowing alien who must watch all that goes on in the universe but never interfere. He seems to be there just to make ridiculous pronouncements about what this all means to his robot friend (for whom, of course, none of this computes).
Frankly, the story in X3 makes more sense, and I enjoyed the movie more than I did this book. Still, it was a pretty good book, and a hugely historically important story arc as far as comic books in general are concerned. And I did find the writing here better than that of some of the other classic authors (Marv Wolfman, for one), even if there was too much of it. Plus, there are seeds dropped in here for things that will happen later - this secret society hidden within a powerful gentlemen's club manages to make the X-Men look very, very bad to the police and other authorities (which frankly isn't that hard), and suggests that maybe Sentinels are needed to keep them under control. Oh noes!
It was good to see some of these characters in action again, too. I haven't read an X-Men book in forever, but I remember Colossus and Nightcrawler and Angel and Cyclops and Wolverine like old friends (I never was a big Storm fan, though. Weather powers? Boring!!! Plus, totally the lamest character in the movies). |
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