X-Men: Phoenix - Endsong

There are few invariants in this life. It rains in Seattle. All governments waste money. Everybody dies (at least once). And Jean Grey loves Scott Summers. This is how it has always been! To watch the Grey-Summers marriage unravel under the authorship of Grant Morrison in New X-Men violates the existence of the known universe and all principles of being a good writer and a good person.* Therefore, my enjoyment of Endsong is unfairly diminshed before the story even begins. However, if you suspend your disbelief enough not to retch at their attempts to make Emma Frost into a kind, caring enough person that Scott might fall for her (and, to be fair, I have not actually read the issues wherein that happened), you might actually enjoy the story.

The story of the Phoenix Force and its effect on Jean, Scott and the rest of the X-men has turned out to be the quintessential X-men storyline. Sure, human-mutant tension, Magneto's army, the Age of Apocalypse, etc., were interesting and meaningful. But a cosmic life-force and an alien galaxy ended up providing the most human emotions of all -- so much so that the story just won't die. (Haha. Pun intended.)

It's been covered so many times, in fact, that most of Endsong feels recycled. The symbolism is heavy-handed ("Scott, I want to see your eyes!" And what was with the ridiculous Shi'ar language?). Beast's and Jean's abilities, among others, strain credulity almost to the breaking point, even within the Marvelverse. They squeeze in recent additions to the Marvel canon (Quentin Quire and the Stepford Cuckoos). It's like a terrible soap opera with lots of beautiful fire. But there are some excellent tender moments (including Wolverine being forced to relive his experience killing Phoenix, and the amazing climax, which actually made me cry), and if you discount the last page (which undercuts everything the rest of the climax achieved), the ending is great.

The primary and basically only reason to buy or even read Endsong is the utterly magnificent art by Greg Land. It's like reading a series of paintings. (The inker and colorist deserve their share of the credit.) Truly, I question whether the human form has ever been so beautifully captured. Even the stereotypically superheroic implausibilities, such as every woman being overflowingly well-endowed, look as realistically as possible like implausibly ample bosoms would look if they were squished into Superbras and spandex costumes. Land's art is so beautiful that it even makes up for its own deficiencies, which are small but evident. (The women are often undistinguishable except for their coloring and occasionally don't look the same from one frame to the next.) I'd accuse him of tracing photographs if not for the latter fault (because if he were tracing photos, surely he'd trace the same one for each person...? But I'm not the only one to say he does too much "photo-referencing").

It's only a middling story, but Land has made a lifelong fan out of me.


*Seriously, we all know he's doing it just because he can, just to do something different. Mike and I were recently discussing who was the loveliest of the X-Men -- they're all beautiful, but who has a good soul, too? -- and we determined it was pretty much Jean Grey, with barely a second place. All Morrison has done is try to make Emma more like Jean and vice versa. Not to mention he could hardly have picked a less likely candidate to suddenly become nice, both from a Marvel history standpoint (though, conveniently, Emma has rarely been linked with any other men) and from a storywriting standpoint (because she was such a freaking awesome villain. Her name's Frost, for Pete's sake!). So although their personalities remain relatively unchanged, their characters -- the beauty of their souls -- has been perverted. But enough with the ragging on Morrison.