X-men: The Dark Phoenix Saga (Book Review)

X-Men: The Dark Phoenix Saga
Written by Chris Claremont
Co-plotting and art by John Byrne
Published by Marvel Comics, 2017
Price: FREE with Amazon Prime

After watching the second underwhelming movie version of the Dark Phoenix saga a couple of weeks ago, I made of point of finally reading the original comics. What made it even better is that with my Amazon Prime membership it was FREE! I don't work for Amazon but I think lots of people do not know that are a selection of manga and graphic novels available in the Amazon Prime Reading section.

Anyway, even though I've been aware of the general outline of the Dark Phoenix Saga I had never read the actual comics. I started reading X-Men the issue after this storyline ended so I completely missed it back in the day!

Jean Grey, also known as Phoenix has shown glimpses of almost god-like powers in some of the issues preceding this collection. Up till now, she has used those powers for good. But there is something weird going on in her mind. Jean seems to be psychically time slipping into a past life in 1780 in which she is immigrating to America with her husband, Jason Wyngarde. She's very much in love. This has been happening but the time slips are getting longer and more frequent. It's almost a precursor of Outlander!

Jason Wyngarde is in actuality a member of The Hellfire Club, a 150 year old exclusive gentlemens club in present day New York. Its purpose is, dare I say it,  to take over the world. Wyngarde is using his psychic bond to corrupt Phoenix to the dark side to aid in their nefarious goals. Unfortunately
once Jean succumbs to her darkest desires, it won't be just the Earth that's in danger but the entire universe!

The first thing that blew me away in this book was the art by John Byrne and Terry Austin. I grew up on Byrne's run on the Avengers in the early 80's and loved it. I wasn't a big fan of his Fantastic Four art. He made everyone look old and emaciated and the colors were always dark and dull. I had only read a few of his X-Men issues so I was blown away by the art in this book. It was masterful, crisp, and colorful. I couldn't believe how well the art has held up. Byrne is like George Perez. He's so great that his style never looks old. He seemed to be comfortable drawing all the characters and took a lot of time and effort even on the backgrounds. There was never a point where I said "That art looks rushed" or "That looks awkward".

The writer, Chris Claremont,  also hit his peak in this book. In fact, I can't even remember another book that he wrote. I just always associate him with the X-Men. We are dealing with a  universal theme that has been around since the beginning of literature thousands of years ago. Namely, that absolute power corrupts absolutely. No human can contain the power of the Phoenix. I mean if anything you think becomes reality, what human mind could control itself?

The thing that shocked me the most was the fact that the story effected me EMOTIONALLY. I mean I already knew Jean Grey's fate before reading the book but it got to me anyway. The writing and art are so good that you get involved with the story. I felt sorry for Jean and especially Cyclops who sees her struggling and feels powerless to help her. I mean, could ANYONE have helped her? You probably needed some cosmic entity like Eternity or something that could have given her advice. Instead, in addition to fighting against herself, she also had to deal with the psychic manipulations of Wyngarde. I feel as though she was doomed no matter what she did. It's a tragic storyline that modern comics cannot pull off. I mean universes are destroyed and reborn almost YEARLY at DC and Marvel. There's no sense of finality anymore in comics. There's no sense of grandeur or epicness when you have an "EVENT" every year.

This was a great book. If you were disappointed in the movie adaptations of the story, please give the comics a try. See what could have been done if budgetary considerations weren't a factor.

My Grade: A+

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The Quickening Maze by Adam Foulds (Book Review)

The Quickening Maze
By Adam Foulds
Published by Penguin Books, 2009
Print Price: $15

The time is 1837 England and the poet John Clare has been committed to an asylum by friends and family for spells of depression, lunacy, and violence. Most of the time he is sane, but on occasion he thinks he is other people like Lord Byron, and sometimes sees and speaks to his childhood love, now long dead. He does still write poems when the mood strikes him but his popularity passed decades ago and his style is out of fashion and nobody cares about his works.

Alfred (Pre-Lord) Tennyson arrives at the asylum seeking help for his depressed brother Septimus, but could also qualify as a patient himself, suffering as he is from the death of his closest friend. Tennyson's arrival causes quite the stir in the establishment's owner, Matthew Allen, and his family. They are excited to have a young poet around, even though his first works have bombed. Especially enthralled is young Hannah Allen who has all the romantic notions of a young and handsome poet running through her mind. And Alfred doesn't disappoint. He's brooding in all the right ways.

The Quickening Maze isn't a book that is powered by plot. Its strength is in the characters. Foulds does a great job showing the inner workings, longings, and frustrations of its cast. John Clare is trying to separate his past from his present, or in some cases surrendering to them both at the same time. Alfred Tennyson is attempting to come to terms with the death of his best friend and figuring out where his poetry will take him. Hannah wants to fall in love and get married or get married and fall in love or something along those lines. Matthew Allen thinks he is doing good work but feels unsatisfied and thinks maybe his talents are being wasted.  Other supporting characters such as the mad Margaret, who sees angels and feels she is a messenger of God, are given rich treatment as well.

The great thing about a work of fiction that is based on fact is that it makes you want to investigate and see what parts of the story actually happened. It also got me interested in reading Tennyson and Clare. Of course everyone has heard of if not read poems by Tennyson, but Clare is rather neglected. While I have heard his name, I've never read one poem by him. So a book like this reignites interest in authors that might have fallen by the wayside.

I enjoyed the book. Once I figured out it wasn't going to have a lot of plot but instead was going to focus on character interactions and motivations, it was a nice read. Foulds gives the story the "feel" of a 19th century novel with great atmosphere. It also gave the reader a taste of what was considered mental health facilities and treatments in 1837. In other words, practically ZERO treatment except confinement, abuse, and ignorance for those most severely afflicted. For those that were more "harmless", a lifetime of meaningless drifting from day to day and being kept out of trouble.

I felt Hannah was the weakest of the cast because she was so stereotypical of the women of that time period. It seemed like she fell out of a Jane Austen novel, she was so obsessed with a figment of her imagination and her desire to just get married. Besides her hollow character, the rest were intriguing and interesting.

My Grade: B+

Dark Phoenix Movie Review

Dark Phoenix
Directed and Written by Simon Kinberg

A funny story from the dark days of my childhood in the 80s was that for my allowance I was paid in weekly comic books. I can't remember exactly how many but I was allowed to get 4-5 comics and there wasn't a comic store near me in those days so I just had to make do with whatever I could find at my cornerstore. They didn't get the same titles every month so you couldn't really "follow" any books.

For some reason none of the stores I ever went to had X-Men. The closest I ever got was Amazing Adventures which reprinted the early issues of the X-Men from the 60s. The first issue of the "New" X-men I got was issue 138, which was the issue AFTER the end of the whole Dark Phoenix saga. From what I remember it was the aftermath of her death and Cyclops was leaving the team. To this day I've still not ever read the original comics this movie was based on. I just know its general outlines. But I do have the trade on Kindle so it's gonna be my next comic read. From issue 138 and the arrival of a comic store finally I started reading X-men and was a big fan up till around issue 170. Now there's so many X-titles and Jean Grey is alive in 20 different forms that I no longer care about what's going on with the comics.

I've never been a big fan of the X-men movies except Logan and Apocalypse. The others to me have been mediocre at best. But I try to keep an open mind so even after hearing that this movie sucked and that it was bombing I wasn't going to let that deter me.

The time is 1992 and while the X-men are rescuing a disabled American space shuttle in orbit, Jean Grey is struck by what they first surmise to be a large solar flare. It was actually something a bit more insidious. At first her friends think she is dead but Jean is MORE than alive. Her powers have grown to an almost godlike level. She's not really the best instrument for those powers because she's always had a problem controlling herself, which led even to the death of her parents at the beginning of the movie. As the plot progresses the mutants become split between those that want to save Jean and those that want to kill her. Throw in some space aliens that want to use Jean's powers for their own ends and you've got a pretty entertaining film, well, relative to the X-Men movie franchise.

I liked this movie, even if Quicksilver (um, does he ever even get a name in these movies), who is my favorite character, gets hurt early on (probably to save money) and is out of action for the rest of the movie.

The space aliens were kind of generic. I thought at first they were gonna be Skrulls but they look more like the aliens from Signs.

The acting was hit and miss. Fassbender and McAvoy were pros and would do a good job no matter what movie they were in. Jennifer Lawrence's performance was so phone it in that I thought they CGed her in from the Hunger Games. At times she seemed a vegetable. Sophie Turner has a slight double chin developing and that's about all I remember about her. She was serviceable. But really, I don't think ANY Game of Thrones actors are going to have much of a future. Because away from George RR Martins epic plots and characters none of them have a bevy of charisma. Having Sophie Turner as your star draw isn't a good bet. Jessica Chastain just looked WEIRD. Like an female albino with man hands. Alexandra Shipp as Storm was interesting and I would like to see more of her, especially if her origin is anything like that of the 80s comics. But most of the mutants in the film were just window dressing and you didn't have a lot of attachment to them. I guess that's why i like Quicksilver so much. Evan Peters for as little screen time as he gets puts a lot of personality and charm into that character.

To me, the problem with the movie or the franchise is its been around too long. The first movie came out like 20 years ago. People that grew up with it are sick of it, and others are too young to have any attachment to it. They've grown up on MCU. And another thing is at least to me, Last Stand doesn't seem THAT long ago, or maybe it's just that the Dark Phoenix saga is such a part of comics mythology that I don't need to see ANOTHER movie about it. But I wonder if in 10 years the MCU will be experiencing the same symptoms of declining returns as the X-men is currently. I wouldn't be shocked. I think you have to give a franchise or universe time to breathe.

Star Wars took a 10 year break between Revenge of the Sith and The Force Awakens and had a lot of pent up demand. I think with the way Disney works today, there is no pent up demand. People start taking the movies for granted. There's no hype because there is no waiting time. There's ALWAYS a Marvel movie on at the theaters. Hell, at MY theater Captain Marvel is still on AND Avengers Endgame. It's the Call of Duty and Madden sickness. Put out a movie every year even if it stinks. I will see a Marvel movie completely bomb in my lifetime. They put out so many there's bound to be a dud. Hubris never ends well.

This is not a bad movie. It was better than Avengers Endgame. And a tiny bit better than Captain Marvel. Is it something I'm going to buy for my home or ever watch again? Probably not. But there aren't a lot of movies that stand up to second viewings these days. I still have a lot of hope for the DCU because at least they're still finding their way and fumbling in the dark is much more interesting than following a formula.

I'm definitely going to be reading the original Dark Phoenix Saga comics and will review that trade soon.

My Grade: B

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