Post by Dizzy D on Sept 30, 2018 15:06:25 GMT -5
Page 21: Wolverine and Storm are cured from their Brood infection, but the others are not so lucky. The Brood Egg in Carol has some unforeseen consequences and she transforms into a new form of herself, purging the Brood Egg and the energy she generates kills off the other Brood eggs, saving the other X-Men. Kitty find a small dragon which she befriends. Carol with her new powers takes care off the remaining Brood and the X-Men escape on board of their spaceship.
Observations: In the original comics, Carol's transformation into Binary is a result of Brood experiments, here it is the unforeseen result of a Brood egg in a human/Kree hybrid. Lockheed was a ferocious hunter of Brood in the original comics, we see none of that here. Kitty just befriends the little dragon. In the original, the Brood were nearly wiped out here by Carol's new powers, here she manages to destroy much of their fleet, but just secures their escape.
Page 22-23: The Starjammer returns to Earth, where Xavier has gathered a new group of mutants to save them. Xavier has not left his office for days though, overtaken by the Brood egg inside him. The X-Men and the New Mutants team up to take down Xavier, but Wolverine stops short of killing him when Xavier's consciousness still is active within the Brood. Dr. Sikorsky of the Starjammers transplants Xavier's brain into a new cloned body.
While the X-Men and the Starjammers were busy with the Brood, Lilandra's sister Deathbird has taken over the Shi'ar Empire. On Earth, Cyclops discovers that Madelyne is the survivor of a plane crash, the same day Jean became the Phoenix. In New York, Xavier receives a distress call from Warren Worthington and Nightcrawler investigates: Nightcrawler follows the kidnappers into the tunnels below New York.
Observations: Corsair apologizes that the Starjammers were not present to fight the Brood, so they left Xavier alone on the Starjammer apparently. Also Cyclops doubts about Madelyne's history were manipulated by Mastermind in the original comics, but he doesn't seem to be present here.
Page 24-25: The X-Men find and fight the Morlocks who have kidnapped Angel. Kitty agrees to marry Caliban in order to save her teammates, but Storm challenges Callisto, the Morlock's leader to a duel. Storm wins, nearly killing Callisto, who is only saved by the Morlock Healer. As their new leader, she offers the Morlocks sanctuary at Xavier's mansion, but they refuse to leave their home.
Observations: No changes here.
Page 26: Rogue arrives at the X-Mansion looking for help. The New Mutants are hostile, knowing that she was responsible for the attack on Carol Danvers, but Xavier offers her help. Carol is not as forgiving and attacks Rogue with her new powers. Xavier explains why he wants to help Rogue. Carol is not pleased, but will not fight him and leaves. Xavier tells Rogue that she can return and that nobody will hurt her.
Observations: In the original, the X-Men are there when Rogue arrives, here the door is opened by the New Mutants. Their hostility towards Rogue is a bit weird as they hardly know Carol Danvers at this point, but perhaps they have come to know her in these couple of days.
Page 27-29: Cyclops contacts Xavier to see if he has discovered anything about Madelyne. Xavier thinks that all the similarities are just coincidence. Logan has invited the X-Men to Japan for his wedding to Mariko, but is shocked to see that Rogue has become a member. Mariko is not pleased with Logan's attitude towards her and proves herself a better host than her future husband. During a tea ceremony, the X-Men are poisoned. Only Rogue and Wolverine recover quickly due to their powers and find that Mariko has been kidnapped. They follow the trail and find Mariko's half-brother the Silver Samurai behind the plot. Rogue frees Mariko, but is wounded by the Silver Samurai's allies as she protects Mariko from their Vibranium bullets. Wolverine lets the Samurai escape so he can save Mariko and offers his healing powers to Rogue. When both are recovered, Mariko calls off the wedding until she has stopped her half-brother.
Observations: Three major changes in this story compared to the original: during this story Storm met Yukio, a meeting that would change her attitude and looks. The Silver Samurai's allies are just regular Yakuza here (though Yakuza with very advanced weaponry). In the original comics, the Silver Samurai's lover, Viper, is a well-known villain herself with ties to HYDRA and A.I.M. In the original, Mariko calls off the wedding under the influence of Mastermind, but he's not seen here (he could be an influence off-panel though).
Page 30: Cyclops asks Madelyne to marry him, but is still wondering about her ties to the Phoenix/Jean Grey. He asks her outright, but she hits him. For a second, she looks like Dark Phoenix, but then returns to herself.
Observations: Like with Mariko in Japan, Mastermind was influencing Scott and Madelyne's relationship with his illusions. Something which was a lot easier for him, because Scott and Madelyne were also invited to Japan instead. Here they are in Alaska while the others are in Japan, so it is unlikely that Mastermind is pulling the strings.
Page 31: Several short scenes that give some background to events that happened in the original comics. Xavier gives Kitty the go-ahead to design her own costume. Illyana is not impressed with her green Sprite-costume, but likes the blue Shadowcat one. Xavier tells Rogue that physically, she is completely healthy, but there are still traces of mental trauma due to recent events. He can't do anything about the remnants of Carol Danvers in her mind. Storm shares her symbiotic relationship with the Earth with Charles, showing him how she sees and feels the world. Carol Danver meets up with her lover Michael Rossi, who has been tasked by Nick Fury to find a mole within S.H.I.E.L.D.
Observations: The series skips over Kitty's short-lived demotion to New Mutant. The scene with Storm is probably here to emphasize how important Storm's powers are to her. In the original comics, Michael and Carol would not meet up again for years; Carol left Earth when Xavier invited Rogue to the mansion and went into space with the Starjammers.
Page 32-33: Despite missing Jean, Cyclops marries Madelyne Pryor. H.P. Gyrich orders deputy director Raven Darkholme to get the power neutralizer from Forge so they can test it on Rogue, a terrorist involved in the death of Senator Stern. Gyrich does not know that Raven is Mystique, Rogue's foster mother. To protect her daughter, Mystique orders the Brotherhood to attack Colossus, while she infiltrates the mansion to kill Xavier and free Rogue. The attack on Colossus leaves him frozen as a statue, but Rogue protects Xavier against her mother and convinces her that the X-Men can help her better than she can. Mystique relents.
Observations: No big changes here as far as I can tell.
Page 34-35: Caliban has kidnapped Kitty to hold her to her promise to marry him. She agrees, hoping that the Healer can help Colossus. Storm appears and turns Kitty's request into an order. The Healer is unable to help Colossus though; he can heal flesh and disease, but not a man of steel. Rogue absorbs Colossus power (and wounds), allowing the Healer to heal Peter's human body. Before touching Colossus, Rogue touched Wolverine and his healing factor restores her. Storm tells Rogue that she has now earned her place with the X-Men. Kitty thanks Caliban and agrees to come with him, but Caliban releases her from her promise, having seen that she loves Colossus and not him.
Observations: Not much change here from the original. In the original story, Kitty is not immediately kidnapped by the Morlocks, but first tries to find help at the Baxter Building. Touching Colossus so that the Healer can heal him was suggested by Xavier in the original, here it's an act of sacrifice by Rogue herself to help her new teammates.A change I like a lot, because it helps with Rogue getting more and more accepted by the X-Men after risking her life at various points to help them.
Page 36-37: Rogue overhears a call from help from Michael Rossi and the part of her that is Carol Danvers immediately comes into action. She goes to the S.H.I.E.L.D helicarrier to save Rossi from a corrupt S.H.I.E.L.D agent who works for the Hellfire Club. Shaw orders the agent to eliminate all witnesses after finding out the Rossi knows his name, but is knocked out by Rogue. Rogue saves Rossi, thinking that she's Carol. Rossi realizes who she is and chases her away. On the helicarrier, the traitor is wounded but survives and tells Fury that Rogue attacked and killed his fellow agents.
Observations: The main difference in this story is that Michael has already met Carol after her fight with Rogue, so knows what happened to her. In the original he is confused for a long time why this girl thinks she's Carol and is shocked to find out what happened to her.
Page 38: The death of senator Stern plus the death of several S.H.I.E.L.D agents brings Rogue to the top of the most wanted lists and Gyrich is now determined to test out Forge's device on Rogue. Raven's attempts to keep the device out of Gyrich's hands failed, because Val Cooper managed to get the device from Forge. Raven decides to contact Forge who is furious when he learns that the weapon is to be used on a living subject.
Observations: Minor changes again, but nothing major.
Page 39-40: Storm joins Rogue and finds out how Rogue first discovered her mutant powers; by kissing her first boyfriend who immediately falls unconscious. Storm shares her power with Rogue to make her feel better, but Gyrich tries to shoot Rogue with the device at this point. Forge tries to stop him, but throws off his aim, so he hits Storm. Forge takes Storm home to take care of her, but Gyrich does not feel like he did anything wrong. Xavier can no longer discover Storm with Cerebro and keeps searching. Forge tries to convince Storm to find new reasons to live, but Storm remains depressed.
Observations: This is the point in this version of the story where Storm changes her hairstyle to the mohawk. A major difference here seems to be that Storm is aware of Forge's role in the loss of her powers.
To be continued next year in issue #5 or rather X-Men Grand Design: X-tinction #1.
So, we're four issues in at this point. Piskor has made a lot of changes some minor, some major to turn the story of the X-Men into a single greater narrative. Some of the changes work for me, some changes not. There are a few changes that mystify me.
So the major changes that I liked:
In the first part, Piskor expanded the effect of Namor's attack on New York City in the late 30s/early 40s on human/mutant relations. As the “first” mutant of Marvel an attack on a major city in the US would definitely colour the feelings regular Americans would have regarding mutants.
Linking the interest many alien species have in humanity and specfically in humans to the Phoenix force on the look for a host helps to explain why so many alien species are interested in Earth. Merging several of these alien species into a single, united group (Lucifer's Quill, Mutant Master's race and the Z'Nox) helps the Grand Design. A problem with the story here is caused by the many retcons regarding the Phoenix over the years; does the Phoenix possess a host or replace them? All the stories of the Phoenix past talk about possession, but in case of Jean she is clearly replaced by the entity.
The minor changes that I liked:
Expanding on the motivations of some characters at the time (for instance linking Count Nefaria's first battle with the X-Men to just a small part in a bigger plan he had.)
Putting Mesmero with Magneto's X-Men cleans up some issues later on when Mesmero is retconned into working for a Magneto duplicate.
Minor things I disliked:
the disappearance of Banshee without comment from the team is the biggest one.
Changing the Changeling (no pun intended) from a mutant that wanted to redeem himself to a mindless android. I don't think that added anything to the story/removed elements that were making the story too convoluted.
I did not like how the Proteus story, still one of the best X-Men stories IMHO, almost completely happens off-screen.
We also skip completely over Days of Future Past, another classic X-Men story. I'm willing to oversee this change though, as issue six of this series will deal with this future timeline.
Then there are the changes that did not make much sense to me. I understand that a lot of the minor characters were left out of the series to keep things flowing: we never see Amanda Sefton or Candy Southern or Fred Duncan and so on, but some of the characters left out of this series, did play an important part in the development of certain characters. In the last issue, we never see Yukio or her influence on both Storm and Wolverine. Destiny is never seen with the Brotherhood, while she is very important to Mystique and Rogue. Viper only plays a minor part in these stories, but her part is taken by some random Yakuza member assisting Silver Samurai. But we do keep Spider-Woman appearing in the first Caliban story, even though she plays no role on page.Or Machine Man inserted into Magneto's escape from the Stranger's planet.
Some loose ends regarding some characters could also have been adressed:
How did Beast change?
What happened to Quicksilver and Scarlett Witch after Magneto left (something we all know, but still nice to have it on paper).
Both small questions with short answers that would have taken up a panel or 2 max.
Observations: In the original comics, Carol's transformation into Binary is a result of Brood experiments, here it is the unforeseen result of a Brood egg in a human/Kree hybrid. Lockheed was a ferocious hunter of Brood in the original comics, we see none of that here. Kitty just befriends the little dragon. In the original, the Brood were nearly wiped out here by Carol's new powers, here she manages to destroy much of their fleet, but just secures their escape.
Page 22-23: The Starjammer returns to Earth, where Xavier has gathered a new group of mutants to save them. Xavier has not left his office for days though, overtaken by the Brood egg inside him. The X-Men and the New Mutants team up to take down Xavier, but Wolverine stops short of killing him when Xavier's consciousness still is active within the Brood. Dr. Sikorsky of the Starjammers transplants Xavier's brain into a new cloned body.
While the X-Men and the Starjammers were busy with the Brood, Lilandra's sister Deathbird has taken over the Shi'ar Empire. On Earth, Cyclops discovers that Madelyne is the survivor of a plane crash, the same day Jean became the Phoenix. In New York, Xavier receives a distress call from Warren Worthington and Nightcrawler investigates: Nightcrawler follows the kidnappers into the tunnels below New York.
Observations: Corsair apologizes that the Starjammers were not present to fight the Brood, so they left Xavier alone on the Starjammer apparently. Also Cyclops doubts about Madelyne's history were manipulated by Mastermind in the original comics, but he doesn't seem to be present here.
Page 24-25: The X-Men find and fight the Morlocks who have kidnapped Angel. Kitty agrees to marry Caliban in order to save her teammates, but Storm challenges Callisto, the Morlock's leader to a duel. Storm wins, nearly killing Callisto, who is only saved by the Morlock Healer. As their new leader, she offers the Morlocks sanctuary at Xavier's mansion, but they refuse to leave their home.
Observations: No changes here.
Page 26: Rogue arrives at the X-Mansion looking for help. The New Mutants are hostile, knowing that she was responsible for the attack on Carol Danvers, but Xavier offers her help. Carol is not as forgiving and attacks Rogue with her new powers. Xavier explains why he wants to help Rogue. Carol is not pleased, but will not fight him and leaves. Xavier tells Rogue that she can return and that nobody will hurt her.
Observations: In the original, the X-Men are there when Rogue arrives, here the door is opened by the New Mutants. Their hostility towards Rogue is a bit weird as they hardly know Carol Danvers at this point, but perhaps they have come to know her in these couple of days.
Page 27-29: Cyclops contacts Xavier to see if he has discovered anything about Madelyne. Xavier thinks that all the similarities are just coincidence. Logan has invited the X-Men to Japan for his wedding to Mariko, but is shocked to see that Rogue has become a member. Mariko is not pleased with Logan's attitude towards her and proves herself a better host than her future husband. During a tea ceremony, the X-Men are poisoned. Only Rogue and Wolverine recover quickly due to their powers and find that Mariko has been kidnapped. They follow the trail and find Mariko's half-brother the Silver Samurai behind the plot. Rogue frees Mariko, but is wounded by the Silver Samurai's allies as she protects Mariko from their Vibranium bullets. Wolverine lets the Samurai escape so he can save Mariko and offers his healing powers to Rogue. When both are recovered, Mariko calls off the wedding until she has stopped her half-brother.
Observations: Three major changes in this story compared to the original: during this story Storm met Yukio, a meeting that would change her attitude and looks. The Silver Samurai's allies are just regular Yakuza here (though Yakuza with very advanced weaponry). In the original comics, the Silver Samurai's lover, Viper, is a well-known villain herself with ties to HYDRA and A.I.M. In the original, Mariko calls off the wedding under the influence of Mastermind, but he's not seen here (he could be an influence off-panel though).
Page 30: Cyclops asks Madelyne to marry him, but is still wondering about her ties to the Phoenix/Jean Grey. He asks her outright, but she hits him. For a second, she looks like Dark Phoenix, but then returns to herself.
Observations: Like with Mariko in Japan, Mastermind was influencing Scott and Madelyne's relationship with his illusions. Something which was a lot easier for him, because Scott and Madelyne were also invited to Japan instead. Here they are in Alaska while the others are in Japan, so it is unlikely that Mastermind is pulling the strings.
Page 31: Several short scenes that give some background to events that happened in the original comics. Xavier gives Kitty the go-ahead to design her own costume. Illyana is not impressed with her green Sprite-costume, but likes the blue Shadowcat one. Xavier tells Rogue that physically, she is completely healthy, but there are still traces of mental trauma due to recent events. He can't do anything about the remnants of Carol Danvers in her mind. Storm shares her symbiotic relationship with the Earth with Charles, showing him how she sees and feels the world. Carol Danver meets up with her lover Michael Rossi, who has been tasked by Nick Fury to find a mole within S.H.I.E.L.D.
Observations: The series skips over Kitty's short-lived demotion to New Mutant. The scene with Storm is probably here to emphasize how important Storm's powers are to her. In the original comics, Michael and Carol would not meet up again for years; Carol left Earth when Xavier invited Rogue to the mansion and went into space with the Starjammers.
Page 32-33: Despite missing Jean, Cyclops marries Madelyne Pryor. H.P. Gyrich orders deputy director Raven Darkholme to get the power neutralizer from Forge so they can test it on Rogue, a terrorist involved in the death of Senator Stern. Gyrich does not know that Raven is Mystique, Rogue's foster mother. To protect her daughter, Mystique orders the Brotherhood to attack Colossus, while she infiltrates the mansion to kill Xavier and free Rogue. The attack on Colossus leaves him frozen as a statue, but Rogue protects Xavier against her mother and convinces her that the X-Men can help her better than she can. Mystique relents.
Observations: No big changes here as far as I can tell.
Page 34-35: Caliban has kidnapped Kitty to hold her to her promise to marry him. She agrees, hoping that the Healer can help Colossus. Storm appears and turns Kitty's request into an order. The Healer is unable to help Colossus though; he can heal flesh and disease, but not a man of steel. Rogue absorbs Colossus power (and wounds), allowing the Healer to heal Peter's human body. Before touching Colossus, Rogue touched Wolverine and his healing factor restores her. Storm tells Rogue that she has now earned her place with the X-Men. Kitty thanks Caliban and agrees to come with him, but Caliban releases her from her promise, having seen that she loves Colossus and not him.
Observations: Not much change here from the original. In the original story, Kitty is not immediately kidnapped by the Morlocks, but first tries to find help at the Baxter Building. Touching Colossus so that the Healer can heal him was suggested by Xavier in the original, here it's an act of sacrifice by Rogue herself to help her new teammates.A change I like a lot, because it helps with Rogue getting more and more accepted by the X-Men after risking her life at various points to help them.
Page 36-37: Rogue overhears a call from help from Michael Rossi and the part of her that is Carol Danvers immediately comes into action. She goes to the S.H.I.E.L.D helicarrier to save Rossi from a corrupt S.H.I.E.L.D agent who works for the Hellfire Club. Shaw orders the agent to eliminate all witnesses after finding out the Rossi knows his name, but is knocked out by Rogue. Rogue saves Rossi, thinking that she's Carol. Rossi realizes who she is and chases her away. On the helicarrier, the traitor is wounded but survives and tells Fury that Rogue attacked and killed his fellow agents.
Observations: The main difference in this story is that Michael has already met Carol after her fight with Rogue, so knows what happened to her. In the original he is confused for a long time why this girl thinks she's Carol and is shocked to find out what happened to her.
Page 38: The death of senator Stern plus the death of several S.H.I.E.L.D agents brings Rogue to the top of the most wanted lists and Gyrich is now determined to test out Forge's device on Rogue. Raven's attempts to keep the device out of Gyrich's hands failed, because Val Cooper managed to get the device from Forge. Raven decides to contact Forge who is furious when he learns that the weapon is to be used on a living subject.
Observations: Minor changes again, but nothing major.
Page 39-40: Storm joins Rogue and finds out how Rogue first discovered her mutant powers; by kissing her first boyfriend who immediately falls unconscious. Storm shares her power with Rogue to make her feel better, but Gyrich tries to shoot Rogue with the device at this point. Forge tries to stop him, but throws off his aim, so he hits Storm. Forge takes Storm home to take care of her, but Gyrich does not feel like he did anything wrong. Xavier can no longer discover Storm with Cerebro and keeps searching. Forge tries to convince Storm to find new reasons to live, but Storm remains depressed.
Observations: This is the point in this version of the story where Storm changes her hairstyle to the mohawk. A major difference here seems to be that Storm is aware of Forge's role in the loss of her powers.
To be continued next year in issue #5 or rather X-Men Grand Design: X-tinction #1.
So, we're four issues in at this point. Piskor has made a lot of changes some minor, some major to turn the story of the X-Men into a single greater narrative. Some of the changes work for me, some changes not. There are a few changes that mystify me.
So the major changes that I liked:
In the first part, Piskor expanded the effect of Namor's attack on New York City in the late 30s/early 40s on human/mutant relations. As the “first” mutant of Marvel an attack on a major city in the US would definitely colour the feelings regular Americans would have regarding mutants.
Linking the interest many alien species have in humanity and specfically in humans to the Phoenix force on the look for a host helps to explain why so many alien species are interested in Earth. Merging several of these alien species into a single, united group (Lucifer's Quill, Mutant Master's race and the Z'Nox) helps the Grand Design. A problem with the story here is caused by the many retcons regarding the Phoenix over the years; does the Phoenix possess a host or replace them? All the stories of the Phoenix past talk about possession, but in case of Jean she is clearly replaced by the entity.
The minor changes that I liked:
Expanding on the motivations of some characters at the time (for instance linking Count Nefaria's first battle with the X-Men to just a small part in a bigger plan he had.)
Putting Mesmero with Magneto's X-Men cleans up some issues later on when Mesmero is retconned into working for a Magneto duplicate.
Minor things I disliked:
the disappearance of Banshee without comment from the team is the biggest one.
Changing the Changeling (no pun intended) from a mutant that wanted to redeem himself to a mindless android. I don't think that added anything to the story/removed elements that were making the story too convoluted.
I did not like how the Proteus story, still one of the best X-Men stories IMHO, almost completely happens off-screen.
We also skip completely over Days of Future Past, another classic X-Men story. I'm willing to oversee this change though, as issue six of this series will deal with this future timeline.
Then there are the changes that did not make much sense to me. I understand that a lot of the minor characters were left out of the series to keep things flowing: we never see Amanda Sefton or Candy Southern or Fred Duncan and so on, but some of the characters left out of this series, did play an important part in the development of certain characters. In the last issue, we never see Yukio or her influence on both Storm and Wolverine. Destiny is never seen with the Brotherhood, while she is very important to Mystique and Rogue. Viper only plays a minor part in these stories, but her part is taken by some random Yakuza member assisting Silver Samurai. But we do keep Spider-Woman appearing in the first Caliban story, even though she plays no role on page.Or Machine Man inserted into Magneto's escape from the Stranger's planet.
Some loose ends regarding some characters could also have been adressed:
How did Beast change?
What happened to Quicksilver and Scarlett Witch after Magneto left (something we all know, but still nice to have it on paper).
Both small questions with short answers that would have taken up a panel or 2 max.
