X-Men: Grand Design - Second Genesis #1 Preview

[vitruvian]

When Newsarama asked Piskor if this story is meant to be viewed as canon, he said :

"Here’s the thing, as a cartoonist, I really can’t be bothered with that kind of stuff. I’m just trying to tell my story, my definitive X-Men comics. I’m trying to make a graphic novel out of 8,000 pages of periodical storytelling.
If Grand Design is used that way later, I have no control over that, but this is really my love letter to Claremont and crew. I think it’s silly to cry about “canon.” The comics you loved as a kid, they still exist, so don’t worry about it. Let people tell the story the way they want to tell it."

Think of it as a personal interpretation of the X-Men mythology where Piskor is trying to streamline the old continuity and stories that were told between the 60s and the 90s in order to give a clearer picture of the franchise for new fans while also adding new things inspired by other medias making the story feel fresh and entertaining for old fans too.
For example in the first issue you can see Wolverine and Captain America meeting a young Max Eisenhardt, it never happened in the current continuity but it happened in X-Men Evolution, same for Xavier who lost his legs when Cain Marko became the juggernaut while in current continuity he lost them after a battle with Lucifer (the first time at least). Of course not having Colossus defeat Proteus is disappointing ( same as the 90s cartoon where Proteus was "defeated" by Xavier), but who knows maybe Piotr will have his big moment later.

So to answer your question it's just a cool story that the writer wanted to tell, it has no ambition to replace the original continuity it's just a modern take on the franchise influenced by the comics/cartoon/movies and by Piskor own experience as an X-Men reader, that's why I said I was happy he didn't include Deadly Genesis because I can't stand this story. Deadly Genesis, House of M and their consequences are what ruined the X-Men for me.

Of course it's just my opinion and I can understand why other peoples don't like the writing (the retcons especially) or the art so of course for them the story doesn't mean a thing but for me it's just a fun book that reminds me of why I used to like the X-Men a long time ago.

What's weird about a lot of the retcons sprinkled throughout here is that they don't seem to serve a purpose of tying later story threads in better or making things more consistent, but just completely random instead.

[Hush]

So, the X-Men still all faced Proteus in Scotland, Colossus was instrumental in stopping him, and Piskor's definitive version of the story where Phoenix stopped him before the rest of the team got there is simply wrong and will probably never be referenced again. Got it.

The bit about D'Ken negotiating with Galactus by threatening to destroy his food supply and actually getting Firelord to attack Phoenix as a consequence, as opposed to Eric the Red tricking him directly, was also ludicrous, for several reasons. One, the idea that Galactus would deign to negotiate in that manner, as opposed to possibly start eating his way through Shi'ar space and dissuade D'Ken from messing with the crystal that way, is pretty silly. Two, Firelord was no longer Galactus' herald at that point, so he wasn't taking orders from the big guy anyway.

What's weird about a lot of the retcons sprinkled throughout here is that they don't seem to serve a purpose of tying later story threads in better or making things more consistent, but just completely random instead.

Well again, Piskor isn't following the 616 continuity to the letter so the D'Ken/Firelord/Galactus retcons and characterizations may seems "silly" to us but streamlining 30 years of X-Men stories in 6 issues was bound to give us some retcons in total contradiction with what we used to know in order to serve Piskor's "definitive" version of the X-Men history and to introduce new readers to the X-Men universe.

I do agree that some of these retcons really seems random for now (Colossus/Proteus especially) but I think it's a little premature to say that what happened in Scotland will never be referenced again (especially with Legion being present during this scene) because the serie isn't over yet. We still have 3 more extra-sized issues left, so who knows maybe once the serie is done everything will make sense

[AbnormallyNormal]

I find this enjoyable. No it does not have the same emotional impact as reading the actual runs does. And some of the changes I dislike. But other changes are clever and do help make more sense out of things (especially for the 60s era!).

[baltiroo]

I am in awe of Ed Piskor and what he's done with X-Men Grand Design. I do have some issues with what he chooses to keep in and what he tosses, but overall it's a monumental task and he's hitting it out of the park. I actually made a review of the issue here. Hope that you enjoy it - but let me know if you agree or not. I'd love a discussion.

[Mike_Murdock]

I didn't see a preview for issue #2 and wanted to see what people thought.

To me, this seemed to lean too heavily on pushing that retcon button. Maybe it's because I don't have as much loyalty to Silver Age X-Men, but some of the changes here bothered me. I felt Ms. Marvel could still have been tossed off a bridge and rescued by Spider-Woman without disrupting the story. I definitely didn't see the need to combine Lee Forrester and Madelyne Pryor together, but I at least understand that. I liked the cut to Wakanda during Storm's claustrophobic weather disruption, though. I'm on the fence but leaning towards being positive that Storm offered the Morlocks to come to the mansion. It's one of those subtle attempts to make the bad things seem less bad.

That being said, the art was great (I liked the facial expressions and I loved that sunglasses shot), the story was fun, even in this very abbreviated form, the Brood were as terrifying as ever.

I like that this book does a good job of trying to tie elements together thematically. I'd argue this one was Storm-focused. It included the Dr. Doom moment, T'Challa, the Morlocks, even her accomplishments in space. It's also, of course, Rogue and Ms. Marvel centered. The nice thing with what Claremont did is it gave him the ability to tell Ms. Marvel stories through Rogue. Fortunately, the two tie well together with Storm getting depowered instead of Rogue. It felt like a good place to end the book.

[yogaflame]

This one was much messier than the Silver Age one, which was already ridiculous. Personally, it feels like a child trying to edit down Beethoven into a little sound byte, and too much of beauty and worth is being twisted or discarded. And while the art is occasionally expressive, overall I don't like the style. He especially seems to have difficulty with the female characters, which is gonna be a problem in Claremont lore. I don't like this series, I find it hard to understand why Marvel pushed this through.

[Uncanny X-Man]

I didn't see a preview for issue #2 and wanted to see what people thought.

To me, this seemed to lean too heavily on pushing that retcon button. Maybe it's because I don't have as much loyalty to Silver Age X-Men, but some of the changes here bothered me. I felt Ms. Marvel could still have been tossed off a bridge and rescued by Spider-Woman without disrupting the story. I definitely didn't see the need to combine Lee Forrester and Madelyne Pryor together, but I at least understand that. I liked the cut to Wakanda during Storm's claustrophobic weather disruption, though. I'm on the fence but leaning towards being positive that Storm offered the Morlocks to come to the mansion. It's one of those subtle attempts to make the bad things seem less bad.

That being said, the art was great (I liked the facial expressions and I loved that sunglasses shot), the story was fun, even in this very abbreviated form, the Brood were as terrifying as ever.

I like that this book does a good job of trying to tie elements together thematically. I'd argue this one was Storm-focused. It included the Dr. Doom moment, T'Challa, the Morlocks, even her accomplishments in space. It's also, of course, Rogue and Ms. Marvel centered. The nice thing with what Claremont did is it gave him the ability to tell Ms. Marvel stories through Rogue. Fortunately, the two tie well together with Storm getting depowered instead of Rogue. It felt like a good place to end the book.

I agree with pretty much everything you said. I feel as the series progressed towards the 80s period my enjoyment of it started diminishing a bit: I think the approach worked really well when adding complexity to the inane 60s stories, a bit of foreshadowing of future events, giving more depths to certain things... as we delved into the Claremont/Smith/Romita Jr period though, which was already very complex, relatively fast-paced and very rich with characters old and new, Grand Design became more about condensing events to cover a lot of ground in the available pages, with mixed results. I still enjoyed the Carol Danvers parts, and I actually found the other characters' interactions with Madelyne hilarious ("Who is this Jean?")... but yeah, very little room to let any of the events breathe properly.

[vitruvian]

Well again, Piskor isn't following the 616 continuity to the letter so the D'Ken/Firelord/Galactus retcons and characterizations may seems "silly" to us but streamlining 30 years of X-Men stories in 6 issues was bound to give us some retcons in total contradiction with what we used to know in order to serve Piskor's "definitive" version of the X-Men history and to introduce new readers to the X-Men universe.

So, the point IS to replace the current continuity and confuse new readers if they ever read the back issues?

New readers, if any ever read this thread - don't believe the lies. Colossus killed Proteus the first time.

[vitruvian]

I didn't see a preview for issue #2 and wanted to see what people thought.

To me, this seemed to lean too heavily on pushing that retcon button. Maybe it's because I don't have as much loyalty to Silver Age X-Men, but some of the changes here bothered me. I felt Ms. Marvel could still have been tossed off a bridge and rescued by Spider-Woman without disrupting the story. I definitely didn't see the need to combine Lee Forrester and Madelyne Pryor together, but I at least understand that. I liked the cut to Wakanda during Storm's claustrophobic weather disruption, though. I'm on the fence but leaning towards being positive that Storm offered the Morlocks to come to the mansion. It's one of those subtle attempts to make the bad things seem less bad.

That being said, the art was great (I liked the facial expressions and I loved that sunglasses shot), the story was fun, even in this very abbreviated form, the Brood were as terrifying as ever.

I like that this book does a good job of trying to tie elements together thematically. I'd argue this one was Storm-focused. It included the Dr. Doom moment, T'Challa, the Morlocks, even her accomplishments in space. It's also, of course, Rogue and Ms. Marvel centered. The nice thing with what Claremont did is it gave him the ability to tell Ms. Marvel stories through Rogue. Fortunately, the two tie well together with Storm getting depowered instead of Rogue. It felt like a good place to end the book.

It's a travesty, in that it completely removed Days of Future Past as published. The X-Men are not shown to have any impact on the new Brotherhood's senatorial assassination scheme at all, they succeed in killing the previously unknown Senator Stern if not Senator Kelly, and there isn't even a hint of Kitty Pryde being inhabited by her future self's mind.

[Hush]

So, the point IS to replace the current continuity and confuse new readers if they ever read the back issues?

New readers, if any ever read this thread - don't believe the lies. Colossus killed Proteus the first time.

It won't replace the original continuity, it's just Piskor's personal interpretation of the X-Men mythology as I told you before. That's what he thinks is essential to the X-Men history and he's trying to tie everything up to make it more streamlined for new readers who wants to discover the X-Universe or for old readers who just wants to rediscover those stories in a new way.

And yeah streamlining everything was bound to give us some nasty retcons like what happened with Colossus, the "merging" of Lee Forester and Madelyne Pryor and more surprisingly the lack of the time travel elements from the "Days of Future Past" story in the last issue which was really disappointing. And I'm not sure about the confusion, new readers are not dumb if they like what Piskor wrote and wants to learn more about the real history of the X-Men they can read the classic stories just fine, just like it's mentioned at the end after Piskor's notes with the Marvel Unlimited ad.

Honestly we're going in circles, I like what I read from Grand Design even if the last issue disappointed me especially because of what happened with Days of Future Past but no it will never be as good as the real stories it's just a fun little experiment nothing more, nothing less.

[Mike_Murdock]

I honestly didn't even realize that was supposed to be referencing Days of Future Past. I was wondering what I was missing.

[vitruvian]

It won't replace the original continuity, it's just Piskor's personal interpretation of the X-Men mythology as I told you before. That's what he thinks is essential to the X-Men history and he's trying to tie everything up to make it more streamlined for new readers who wants to discover the X-Universe or for old readers who just wants to rediscover those stories in a new way.

And yeah streamlining everything was bound to give us some nasty retcons like what happened with Colossus, the "merging" of Lee Forester and Madelyne Pryor and more surprisingly the lack of the time travel elements from the "Days of Future Past" story in the last issue which was really disappointing. And I'm not sure about the confusion, new readers are not dumb if they like what Piskor wrote and wants to learn more about the real history of the X-Men they can read the classic stories just fine, just like it's mentioned at the end after Piskor's notes with the Marvel Unlimited ad.

Honestly we're going in circles, I like what I read from Grand Design even if the last issue disappointed me especially because of what happened with Days of Future Past but no it will never be as good as the real stories it's just a fun little experiment nothing more, nothing less.

Isn't that exactly the problem, though? If it's not meant to either replace or fully reflect the 'actual' story, as presumably remembered by and affecting the characters in the current X-books, and if it's admitted that it will never be as good, what exactly is the point of rehashing (and in some parts making a hash of) these stories in this manner?

I mean, seriously, it would be one thing if I could see how the choices of which parts to gloss over, or simplify, or introduce elements that only 'really' came along later, actually served to make the overall story fit together better and seem more like of a unified story... but a lot of the changes honestly either seem pointless, or even to do the opposite. I mean, glossing over or actually rejecting the Kate Pryde of DoFP inhabiting her younger self and warning the X-Men of the assassination attempt on Kelly is going to make it difficult to make sense of Rachel coming from her similar future when Piskor gets to that point, while introducing Stern from the MCU served basically no purpose at all and was therefore a waste of limited panels and words.

I guess my complaint is generally that a story titled Grand Design should show some evidence of the story serving an intelligible grand design incorporating the elements of the classic Lee, Thomas, and Claremont runs, rather than seemingly getting in its own way at certain points.

[baltiroo]

A little late, but made a review on the second issue of Second Genesis in preparation for the next issues to come out. Overall, Ed has really been killing it on the series and I appreciate his take on one single narrative approach. Anyone else going to be getting Grand Design: X-Tinction?

[Uncanny X-Man]

Yes please, this is my favorite X-reading whenever it comes out.

[ermac]

And yeah streamlining everything was bound to give us some nasty retcons like what happened with Colossus, the "merging" of Lee Forester and Madelyne Pryor and more surprisingly the lack of the time travel elements from the "Days of Future Past" story

To me, this seemed to lean too heavily on pushing that retcon button. Maybe it's because I don't have as much loyalty to Silver Age X-Men, but some of the changes here bothered me. I felt Ms. Marvel could still have been tossed off a bridge and rescued by Spider-Woman without disrupting the story. I definitely didn't see the need to combine Lee Forrester and Madelyne Pryor together, but I at least understand that. I liked the cut to Wakanda during Storm's claustrophobic weather disruption, though. I'm on the fence but leaning towards being positive that Storm offered the Morlocks to come to the mansion. It's one of those subtle attempts to make the bad things seem less bad.

IMHO Piskor's best retcon were the Madelyne/Lee thing (which I think strengthened her relationship with Scott) and Prof X being crippled on the same event as his brother becomes Juggernaut (Lucifer adds nothing to the overall story).

On Storm's offer to the Morlocks, I view as positive too. She is supposed to be a great leader but her tenure leading the X-Men is full of missteps and strange decisions. She clearly failed the Morlocks and oversaw the dismantling of the team since Fall of the Mutants. It's arguable that calling her a great leader doesn't make sense IN-STORY. So, any retcon that tries to show some quality to her leadership is positive to me.