Posted in: Comics, Marvel Comics, Review | Tagged: marvel, new mutants, x-force, x-men, X-Men/Fantastic Four, X-ual Healing - The Weekly X-Men Recap Column

What's Old is New Again in Giant-Size X-Men: Jean Grey and Emma Frost #1 [X-ual Healing 2-26-20]

Published Tue, 03 Mar 2020 13:33:53 -0600

by Jude Terror

Comments

There were five X-books out last week: X-Men #7, X-Force #8, Giant-Size X-Men: Jean Grey and Emma Frost #1, X-Men/Fantastic Four #2, and New Mutants #8. In addition to that, I missed New Mutants #7 from the prior week, so I'll be recapping that too. Let's find out what happened in last week's X-books…

Sworn to sell comics for Marvel executives who feared and hated the fact that Fox owned their movie rights, The Uncanny X-Men suffered great indignities, but thanks to a corporate merger and a line-wide relaunch, the X-Men can finally get back to doing what they do best: being objectively the best franchise in all of comics.

GIANT SIZE X-MEN JEAN GREY & EMMA FROST #1 DX
DEC190780
(W) Jonathan Hickman (A/CA) Russell Dauterman
The first of five essential X-tales specially designed to showcase some of Marvel's best artists! First up, Russell Dauterman, superstar artist of THOR and WAR OF THE REALMS! When Storm is in danger, it's going to take two of the most powerful telepaths on Earth working together to make things right. Jean Grey and Emma Frost, together again for the good of Krakoa!
Rated T+
In Shops: Feb 26, 2020
SRP: $4.99

What happened in Giant-Size X-Men Jean Grey and Emma Frost #1?

Some mutant kids are flying around Krakoa when they see a lightning bolt behind a hill. They investigate and find Storm lying unconscious, blood pouring from her mouth. Cyclops, Wolverine, Jean Grey, and Emma Frost meet up in a hallway in a scene that looks like the start of a porno, but it turns out Jean and Emma are going into a healing room with Storm to try to figure out what's wrong with her. They enter an astral plane world which is a big empty field with a vagina tree in the middle of it. They interact with some spectral animals, like some lions, a snake, and an elephant with butterfly wings. Eventually, Storm's face appears in the sky next to a staircase surrounded by eyeballs, so they climb it and fall until they end up in a room with a big orange egg in it. They scramble the egg and a flower grows out. They pluck the flower and a naked Storm appears, but her face melts away to show a robot with a countdown clock on it. They leave the room and tell Scott and Logan the Children of the Vault put a virus in Storm that will kill her in thirty days.

Look, a recap column is probably the worst possible venue to discuss an issue that contains exactly one plot development and very little dialogue.

Was it any good?

Rich Johnston wrote an article about how this issue was a love letter to New X-Men #121. Of course, any silent issue is also paying tribute to Larry Hama's G.I. Joe #21. Additionally, I included the opening scene in my Wolverine two-dick trutherism article last week. This issue sure was nice to look at, and if you're buying comics to appreciate them as art, then you got your money worth I guess. If you're just interested in comics for the story and drama in the same way one watches a soap opera, this could have been accomplished with a single page and a five-dollar issue seems unnecessary.

I'm sure that, right about now, you're thinking, Jude Terror, you Philistine! You've got to appreciate the art form! And that's fair enough. But it's also fair to point out that an artistic flexing-of-the-muscles like this is more impressive the first time around and less impressive when it's literally rehashing the ideas of a twenty-year-old comic practically verbatim. Just sayin'.

That may seem harsh, and for what it's worth I enjoyed reading this, but just like with HoXPoX before it, do Hickman and Dauterman really deserve the credit here, or do Morrison and Quitely? Let my murder in the comments section commence.

Next up: X-Force…