A Flawed Masterpiece
I'm struggling to find a point from which to start my thoughts on X-Men Origins: Jean Grey. I've never really read X-Men comics before, most of my knowledge comes from the films so I don’t know how much of this is a retcon and how much is a simple retelling. I do know this. What’s on offer here story wise is good. We see the birth of Jean’s powers, a moment of tragedy that sparks a lifetime of struggle. We are privy to the initial trainings and coping mechanisms that Xavier is able to give her over a period of months without her leaving home.
We then enter the terrain of X-Men issue one, as Jean tearfully leaves home, under the guise of further education but seemingly to join Professor X’s mutant militia. That may be a strange way of putting that but Charles and the writers have failed to really justify putting the lives of these teenagers on the line in this story. Perhaps I just need to give the main X-Men volume some more time, I mean it’s early enough again that the prejudice that lies at the heart of the X-Men comics has yet to come to the fore, but it is a striking oversight in what is ostensibly a modern retelling of these first X-Men stories to not provide better justification for the risking of these young lives.
The art on display is a similar mixed bag as of X-Men Origins: Beast. I am following a Marvel reading order and so may be reading them out of order of publication but they are ostensibly of the same volume; and it must be said that they share similar problems. Don’t get me wrong this is a beautifully drawn comic, some of the full spread images are breathtaking works of art, but there is something just a little bit off and it nags and nags at you until by the end of the comic it is almost intolerable. The faces of the characters just don’t look right in moments of extreme emotion.
It is like freeze framing a movie, in moments of emotion the human face scrunches up and it becomes a very ugly thing. In this realistic art style the more exaggerated emotions and expressions that so often make up key moments of comics just don’t look right. The small ones be they smiles, be they crying or anything in the spectrum between the two are fine. But the screams and the anger and the strains of inhuman effort just look kind of goofy in a realistic comic. The look goofy in the real world too but we see them for only a fleeting moment and we don’t have time to be cognisant of this.
Everything else though is wonderful. It is like a painting bought to life as only comics can be. In certain frames many of the characters, Jean Grey especially, looking truly striking. Some of the pages, especially those showing the mental struggles of Jean’s thoughts are as good as I have ever seen in comics. The comic’s cover is truly a thing of wonder offering a striking collision of the old and the new, those gaudy yellow costumes of earlier X-Men rendered with all the beauty of a modern comic book. It is something very striking indeed.
I have written too many words already on this book and I think the conclusion I can draw is that I am conflicted. It is both beautiful and off putting visually. A lot is told but not a lot happens and some of the story is under told which stands in stark contrast to the comics of 1963 I am currently muddling through. The moment Jean deserts the X-Men comes from nowhere and Xavier’s acceptance of this is similarly unexplained. This is a comic of mountainous peaks brought low by some of the difficulties scaling them. It is a flawed masterpiece in the artistic sense, yet the story is fairly plain. I think if you are a fan of the X-Men that knows the story of Jean Grey you will get far more from this than it’s assumably target audience of new readers.
But... We've Just Gotten Our Little Girl Back. Now You Want To Take Her Away From Us?
Elaine Grey