Giant-Size X-Men: Jean Grey & Emma Frost annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
COVER / PAGE 1. Jean Grey and Emma Frost, as part of some sort of psychic imagery. Cyclops and Wolverine’s faces are visible in the background, each with an X in place of their mouths – presumably to do with the silence gimmick that takes up most of the issue. Logan’s hands and claws are clearer in the original art, but they’re partly obscure by the logo. There’s also a big evil face in the top left that’s harder to place, but resembles what we see in the snake within Storm’s mind later.
Jean is wearing her early 90s costume but in her late-60s colour scheme.
PAGES 2-3. Recap and credits. The recap page refers to Storm fighting Orchis (in X-Men #1) and the Children of the Vault (in X-Men #5). The story is “Into the Storm” by Jonathan Hickman, Russell Dauterman (who gets a co-writer credit) and Matthew Wilson. The small print on the credits page is the usual from X-Men.
PAGES 4-6. Two young mutants find Storm lying unconscious.
Not quite sure what the symbolic opening panel is adding, with everyone staring directly at the camera.
PAGES 7-10. Emma and Jean prepare themselves to enter Storm’s mind.
This issue is a homage to New X-Men #121, in which Jean and Emma attempted a psychic rescue on Professor X. That issue was part of the “Nuff Said” month of silent issues. You don’t need to know the original story in order to follow this one, but you’ll get more out of it if you do.
The Krakoan sign reads SILENCE – PSYCHIC RESCUE IN PROGRESS. The same sign appeared, in English, at the start of the original story.
Again, we’re reminded of the three-way relationship between Jean, Scott and Logan. In the original story, Jean gives Scott a peck on the cheek, and then makes the “sh” sign. This time, she kisses Logan (though she’s holding hands with Scott as she arrives), and it’s Emma who puts her finger to her lips.
PAGES 11-25. Jean and Emma make their way through Storm’s mind to find her.
The page of symbolic swirling mirrors a similar page in the original story. That story, however, proceeded to a sequence of Jean and Emma trying to rescue Charles from a symbolic tower; this story goes in Storm’s direction instead.
On page 12, the symbol over the tree is Storm’s head-dress from her original costume. On page 14, Jean and Emma find two lions, one of them with a mane resembling Storm’s hair. It’s not entirely clear if the other one represents a different side of Storm’s personality or someone else, but it seems to be the former. Of possible significance, the original New X-Men story includes a three-page flashback to Charles Xavier and Cassandra Nova as twins in the womb, which seems to be paralleled in giving Storm a double here. (Edit: Or, of course, maybe they’re meant to be panthers, in which case the other one presumably represents T’Challa – they do seem to be holding their heads in a yin-yang symbol of sorts in their first panel.)
The lions ask whether Jean and Emma are friends, apparently not recognising them. The women respond by showing images of their past with Storm. Jean shows an image of herself embracing Storm in Uncanny X-Men vol 1 #242, where they were reunited for the first time after Jean’s return from the dead. That issue is part of the Inferno crossover, which is why Storm is wearing an odd, tattered version of her costume and has ridiculously big hair. Emma has no such heartwarming memories to share, so she offers that time she swapped bodies with Storm in Uncanny X-Men #152. Predictably, the lions are unimpressed.
Page 23 alludes to Storm’s claustrophobia, which ties back to being trapped in the building where her parents were killed. It’s been one of her signature hang-ups since the 1970s. Presumably the idea is that Storm’s mental defences are based on the concepts that she herself finds most horrifying.
In the original story, Emma is sidelined by the psychic defences at an early stage and Jean effectively completes the “rescue” on her own. This story is entirely different – Emma remains by Jean’s side throughout, and despite the very different attitudes of the two women, they work consistently as a team.
PAGES 26-31. Jean and Emma reach an egg which contains Storm’s personality, but is surrounded by technology.
Storm has been infected with a nanovirus by the Children of the Vault, presumably when fighting them in issue #5. This rather disturbing sequence shows Storm’s persona freed from the egg, but badly corrupted by the virus, which is turning her into a machine. Again, post-humanity and machine upgrades are a big theme of the Hickman run, and generally a Very Bad Thing Indeed – on top of the obvious horror of the scene itself.
PAGES 32-33. Emma and Jean report their findings.
This is a direct imitation of the ending of New X-Men #121 (which also ended on a one sentence plot synopsis, and “We need to talk”).
PAGES 34-35. The Krakoan trailer text reads NEXT: NIGHTCRAWLER.
Bit disappointed with this one – it was thin. While I love the idea of a homage to the Quiet Please Psychic Rescue issue, this instead felt derivative. Very *very* pretty artwork, but said little about the characters themselves. For a journey into a character as interesting as Storm’s psyche, or for an exploration of Jean and Emma (and Ororo’s!) complex relationship, we learnt nothing new.
And like the original issue, it cheated on using words and letters!
‘Nuff Said was a terrible gimmick anyway. Morrison’s issue was better than most of the others.
Surprised by how much I loved this issue. One of my favourite issues of this run so far.
The art is genuinely stunning throughout, and the idea of citing/rewriting the issue through such a distinctive aesthetic and thematic lens impressed me a lot. Loads of lovely work in the details throughout:
– the first page’s “X”-shaped panel layout;
– Dauterman’s freedom with broken or jagged panel-formations;
– how the prominent floral motif calls back to Storm’s old garden at Xavier’s;
– how the “egg” containing Storm revisits the scene of resurrection with techno-organic stylings;
– how certain tropes are kept: the spiral, the central edifice, the shock reveal, the unprotected body, the force of enclosure…
– most of all, how each psychic landscape is rendered in such distinctive, beautiful and horrible terms.
One note, though: isn’t the outfit Jean wears throughout actually a recoloured variation of the X-Men Red outfit?
On the fence about this one. I appreciate the homage, adore the art, but agree that it felt derivative instead of adding anything new to the original or to the characters.
Like HoX #2, this was a wasted opportunity to flesh out some of Hickman’s main female characters. Except for Destiny and Mystique, most of the female characters in the overarching story so far do a lot but don’t say a lot. I mean, we’ve heard more from Moira’s journals than we have from the character herself, which seems strange since much of this story is ostensibly about her.
(I realize books like Marauders are a big exception, but I’m talking about Hickman’s writing specifically.)
Probably a stretch, but in that Storm / Magik miniseries in the 1980s, Storm had a giant tree there too in her garden.
I didn’t hate Nuff Said back in the day, and I liked Morrison’s the best because of Frank Quitely (I noticed they were specially thanked on the first inner page). And the art was equally good at storytelling and detail.
In fact, it was so much of an homage that it felt like I already read this 20 years ago.
I don’t regret buying it, even for the art alone, but Emma and Jean have so much potential for interactions that making it an homage to an old issue rather squanders that.
I read “We need to talk” as a direct complaint from Morrison to Quesada on behalf of his characters about the stupidity of the event.
I thought the “lions” were actually panthers (given Storm’s marriage to T’challa, and the whole thing was homage to (or at least referencing) the ancestral plane from the Black Panther movie.
Also, I think that scene that Jean shares is the one her dialogue from the resurrection ceremony in HoX/PoX comes from?
> One note, though: isn’t the outfit Jean wears throughout actually a recoloured variation of the X-Men Red outfit?
Yeah.
I liked the homage personally.
New X-men 121 I remember fondly and particularly for the controversy grabbing interview Grant did in the lead up to it coming out ( Jean Grey covered in sperm, Emma Frost in the nude!)
I love that Hickman two key runs that he homages/references are Claremont and Morrison, the two more influential runs of the series.
I only have vague memories of the Morrison/Quitely issue, and I’m not sure if that helped or hindered my enjoyment.
I liked the issue a lot. Light on character work maybe, but not on characterization itself, if that makes sense. Though I actually felt the visual storytelling was unclear in one or two places, where I had to double back and furrow a brow before figuring out what was being depicted. Like the elephant using its body to shield Emma and Jean against the lightning, for example.
@Paul
“Not quite sure what the symbolic opening panel is adding, with everyone staring directly at the camera.”
Straight from Dauterman’s mouth: “The opening page is meant to show Krakoa as a mutant paradise: the setting is calm, the X is made of Krakoan vines and flowers, the kids are smiling, and the X-Men are together. Things go downhill from there!” (https://www.newsarama.com/49149-russell-dauterman-giant-size-x-men-jean-grey-emma-frost.html)
Yeah, I don’t think Morrison had any interest in the Nuff Said event, which is why he kept breaking the rules (rule?). Funny that the story he didn’t want to do is now being homaged.
I gotta say, I buy comics for the words, not the art, so a comic with very little to read in it like this doesn’t really rev my engines. If I’d known it was going to be mostly silent, I might not have been so quick to pre-order it.
Ah well.
A bit of fluff.
But Russell Dauterman is a beast.
Just gorgeous stuff, totally underrated.
And I’m glad Jean found some pants.
@YLu
Looks to me like it was Emma moving the elephant to block the lightning. At least her power signature was active in that panel.
Did not notice it was the elephant until you said it, thought it was part of the tree first!
I also felt it to be slight but come one, Dauterman’s Art is amazing. And it seems more likely after reading it that these Giant Size issues will relate to one another in some way, maybe even tell a complete story? I had thought they’d each be stand alone stories, like annuals, but I guess not.
Hickman talked about the Giant-Size issues at AIPT recently.
https://www.adventuresinpoortaste.com/2020/02/17/x-men-monday-48-jonathan-hickman-answers-your-giant-size-x-men-questions/
“Jonathan: We actually weren’t going to do Giant-Size one-shots, they were going to be five annuals, written by me, of all the other Dawn of X titles. However, there was some kind of concern about numbering, or solicitation, that would complicate that, so we switched to the title “Giant-Size,” which then led to some other problem I can’t remember and we eventually landed on Giant-Size: Character name.
Which really only partially reflects the content of the books. I dunno what to say, this isn’t a perfect world we live in.”
@JCG
You know, I think I would have preferred to see the original version of all this, where Hickman did his take on each of the other titles.
I don’t think the planned content changed, just the titles.
These were always going to be artist centered comics.
I don’t know about that. You can hardly release a Magneto solo story as a New Mutants Annual or whatever. I don’t think there’s any way to line up this particular character selection with the five titles.
You absolutely can, you just need to play up the ‘Magneto was their headmaster once’ angle in a scene or two.
As for this issue – I have mixed feelings. The art’s fantastic and some of the ideas are cool (Storm’s mind burying the intruders in her own claustrophoby). I read that this was going to be an homage to NXM#121 but I wasn’t expecting it to be basically a remake of it. And repeating an interesting idea without adding to it (other than the new art) isn’t very interesting at all.
Like Michael said, I guess I’m more interested in the words than the pictures (although I do like Dauterman’s art – he was good on Thor). I have no recollection of the Morrison story this was homaging, so this book didn’t work for me on that level. Also, reading it after X-Men (which was pretty substantial), it just felt like fluff. I was expecting something weighty, and ended up with a bunch of silent pages that I just skimmed through.
This issue looked great, but it wasn’t different enough from the Morrison – Quitely issue to be very interesting to me.
If you are so blatantly inviting comparison to those creators, you better really have something special.
The last page was a good example of this. Jean says that Storm has a machine virus and 30 days to live. Not bad, but, in New X-Men,
“Professor X tried to kill his twin sister while they were both still in the womb.”
You can’t top that! And so you’ve already lost before you even try.
I’m not sure where this story is going to continue.
In the next issue of Giant Size?
The solicitations seem to be a completely different story.
Plus, what is the next issue?
It was originally solicited as Magneto, but the “next issue” blurb tells that it’s Nightcrawler.
Is the Magneto book delayed?
I wanted to read the Magneto issue.
The Magneto and Nightcrawler issue release dates were switched around.
There will be a Giant Size Storm issue, I think, so maybe that’s where the story will be picked up.
@Adam K
Challenge accepted.
“Nightcrawler tried to remove the tag from his bed mattress that reads “Do not remove”
We need to talk.”
I enjoyed this one a good bit; sometimes just enjoying nice art is good enough. I’m fairly new to reading and collecting X-Men, so I pulled out Uncanny 242 to see what you were referencing, and was amused to see Wolverine planting a big ol kiss on Jean on the first page.
I was surprised to see Jean wearing a different outfit in this issue.
I realize that Hickman said that characters could switch between costumes, just like anybody else would with their clothes each day.
It was weird that Jean chose her skirt and to call herself “Marvel Girl” though.
Marvel Girl is a pretty demeaning name for a woman who has been married.
Maybe it could be a sign of Jean’s wish being granted by Krakoa.
I remember something in that Rosenberg Astonishing X-Men Annual, where the remaining original X-Men meet the resurrected “X”.
Everyone except Iceman was miserable with how their life turned out.
Jean seemed like she was saying she was happier dead.
I was thinking that maybe Jean’s wish was to go back to a simpler life from before she became Phoenix.
I like “Fury” as a codename for Jean. Think I might’ve gotten that from the old preamble for New Warriors where Marvel Boy is described as a “telekinetic fury”.
Of course, won’t happen because of Nick Fury, but believe it or not, they almost didn’t call Ororo “Storm” because of Susan and Johnny Storm.
“I realize that Hickman said that characters could switch between costumes”
Probably a way to cover up any future “mistakes” or preferences made by artists when drawing the characters in different costumes, like here.
And it also makes sense which does not hurt.
Really no reason for a character to switch costumes only every 3-4 years or so.
On the other hand, there is a reason to keep costumes consistent – what with the artist changing every other issue and characters appearing in multiple titles and way too many artists not varying the body types of the characters they draw at all – the costume is often the only way to identify a character. Mix it up too much and even that goes away.
To a certain extent, but most characters have distinctive elements across their multiple costumes to the point where it’s fairly easy to recognize them.
Whenever Wolverine gets a brand new costume, we can still instantly tell its Wolverine, even before he pops any claws.
They debuted new costumes for the upcoming X-Factor cast, and I’d wager most of us were able to immediately recognize who all but one or two of the characters were supposed to be.
@YLu
Funny story about that, though. When I first saw the X-Factor cover art, I first thought The Anarchist from X-Statix had joined the team and got pretty excited. Then I realised it was Prodigy. (Has anyone noticed how they practically have the same costume?)
To be clear, I’m not debating, and it doesn’t counter you point. You did specify “but one or two characters.”
However, it is an example of the type of confusion that is bound to increase as the character switch costumes more often and get drawn by more and more artists.
For me, it’s a small price to pay for the X-Books dismantling certain comic book conventions and carving a distinctive identity at that level. But it is a price, I suppose.
Ah, but Wolverine has one of the most distinct cowls in the business. 🙂
As for the new X-Factor – can’t say that I would. Rachel, Polaris and Prodigy, based on color schemes, maybe. (And in case of Polaris and Prodigy – only color schemes). But the rest? I wouldn’t have a clue. Unless we factor in character traits – so not just costume but the overall design, then we get Daken’s tatoos and Trevor’s eyes…
But more to the point – I think the distinctive elements argument works only for the actually iconic characters. Well, maybe even most main characters. But the x-books are mostly team books, so sometimes the individual costumes give way to team uniforms and sometimes a character just… doesn’t get a unique costume. For example, Shadowcat had one that was hers alone, the loose blue thingy from the mid-80s, but apart from that she wears a basic ‘X-Men trainee’ uniform.
@Dimitri
I thought that was Anarchist too at first. (I also used to confuse civilan-clothed Cyclops and Daredevil.)
X-Statix could fit into the status quo as an Xavier owned, X-Force-sanctioned media distraction system. I could see Sage or Beast sending them on suicide missions for lots of $$$.
I remember looking at the cover of Powers of X #6 before it came out and thinking, “Is that Jubilee?! The last X-Man?” solely due to the jacket.
Anarchist, Prodigy, and the latest Power Man, the one who was in U.S.Avengers, all seem to have the same tailor.
@Krzysiek Ceran –
Yeah, I meant overall appearance, not just the costume specifically. It’s not like Eye Boy is going to show up without his eyes.
Shadowcat’s an odd case where I’d argue we’ve come to think of the trainee costume (or variations of it) as her “look.” You see a young-ish looking woman with that costume on a cover, with that hair, you assume it’s Kitty Pryde.
Yeah, it’s interesting how many characters have gotten stuck in their “trainee” costumes over the years.
Most of the New Mutants, for example, should have moved on to something more individual at this point. Aside from a few distinguishing details, though, all but Cannonball seem to have only the one costume in their Krakoan closets. Same for at least some of the Gen X kids.
With Kitty/Sprite/Ariel/Shadowcat/Kate, it seems like not being able to land on a costume or a codename was part of her character for a while. And when her last good costume fell out of fashion, she kind of landed in “generic costume and no codename” territory. Guess no writer wanted to pick up on that trait once Claremont left or something.
Also, just realized that Kate is the name older Kitty was using in the original Days of Future Past story. (At least I’m 95% sure that’s right without checking.) Hickman may just be suggesting that the character is growing up, or he might be tying her more closely to a story that heavily utilized Mystique and Destiny much like this current one.
Yes, she was Kate Pryde in Days of Future Past.
I’m thinking that characters are going to have an “eternal recurrence costume”: eventually you’re going to go back to the costume you were during very popular arcs.
What was Kate wearing around DoFP? Trainee uniform, natch.
I was partial to her Mutant Massacre era costume; with some tweaks that could be modernized.
IIRC, one of the things I talked about with Paul on the podcast was “which version” of characters might we get, including which costumes.
I do like the idea of them having all of their old costumes in the closet and just randomly choosing them.
Logan “I’m just gonna wear that imperial guard costume today just for the hell of it.”
I think the New Mutants have been locked into the trainee outfits in part because most of their individual costumes were awful – both the “graduation uniforms” and the Blevins designs. I guess Blevins’ Moonstar design was alright. Much as it pains me to type this, Liefeld’s redesigns were better. Especially adding the goggles to Cannonball, which has stuck.
It doesn’t help that for three of them – Sunspot, Wolfsbane, Magma – you can’t even see their costumes once they use their mutant powers. And for someone like Chamber, it doesn’t really matter. The flaming hole in his face and chest (or bandages covering them) is the identifying factor. He could be wearing sweatpants and it’s still clear that it’s Chamber, so nobody needed to give him a definitive costume.
To me, Chamber’s disheveled hair and long trenchcoat are as much a part of his look as the big hole in his chest. Like, AOA Chamber (mask over eyes, no flaming hole) is still Chamber to me, but if you gave him a straight bowl cut or stopped putting a coat over whatever uniform he’s wearing, I’d feel like you just murdered the character.
Must be because I grew up in the 90s or something.
I was partial to the Adam Pollina-era X-Force costumes: same color scheme, some little variations between them all. Really gave the team some cohesion. I think Tabitha wore that one all the way until Nextwave? At least through Tieri’s Weapon X?
“most of their individual costumes were awful”
I liked the one Art Adams designed for Illyana in that X-men annual her drew, back in the 80s.
Kitty Pryde had settled on a code name. She was Shadowcat for -years-. Then Whedon got rid of it for no good reason because it post-dates the era of his nostalgia. I’ve always been annoyed by that.
I find it fascinating how some stuff can get entrenched for no other reason than inertia. We have characters heavily associated with the trainee suits just because nobody bothered to come up with something better. And Forge to this day doesn’t have a real name for some bizarre reason. He has a military record and everything so presumably the -character- all know his name but just never bring it up. Like, even the most obscure nobody villain you can imagine probably has a real name, courtesy of the Handbook, but not Forge.
@YLu: Is the Whedon run when Kitty went back to the trainee costume, too? Or did that happen earlier?
I think that Art Adams and Alan Davis (as the go-to Annual artists in the ’80s) had a few good ideas for the New Mutants’ grown-up/graduation costumes. They leaned really heavily on ethnicity, though, which is never great. I mean, at one point wasn’t Karma wearing a yin/yang symbol on her chest? Ugh.
As for Gen X, Chamber always kind of stood out from the pack, yes? And Husk seems to have grown into something new. Characters like Skin and Synch are stuck in generic costumes, though. Maybe not their original generic costumes, but nothing distinctive either.
Seems like all of the trainee costume crew are victims of the inability to age that plagues the Marvel universe.
Kitty went back to the gold & blue costume (not the trainee costume, but a variation of it) around the time of Fatal Attractions.
Her profile entry needs an update, but here are all the costumes she wears up to circa Uncanny X-Men #529. Personally, ouufit #4 is my favorite of hers.
https://uncannyxmen.net/node/5817/page/0/8
I just reread the issue, and wwk5d is correct, the gold and blue costume debuts in the Fatal Attractions crossover issue. She’s wearing the blue costume for most of the issue, and then randomly is wearing the new suit on the last page splash unveiling the “new” Excalibur, which is just Kurt, Kitty and Rachel. Which is a hell of a stretch of the use of the word “new.”
@ Dimitri conceded on the point re: Chamber’s hair and coat being core to his look. Even when he adopts team uniforms, he always has a long coat.