The reason why I wrote the post about this era of Marvel´s merry mutants is that a lot of these original art pages have accumulated and aside from the occasional pages I post every year on Traci Bingham´s birthday I have not written that many posts from this period in the X - Men´s history.
Which is mainly because I am still hoping to do my DEATH IN COMICS - THE DEATH OF JEAN GREY and DEATH IN COMICS - THE DEATH OF JAMES HUDSON posts ( I have already written the ALPHA FLIGHT PRELUDE post ).
But apart from such important stories like THE DARK PHOENIX SAGA or DAYS OF FUTURE PAST there is a lot of material I have just collecting dust which is not an acceptable situation for me nor for my faithful readers.
Another reason is that I have something new to say about the X - Men. I already started to write about this in my latest black power women spin - off post but one thing that is rampant in the current Marvel universe - and one of the many reasons why I mostly stay away from their current output and concentrate on their old stories - is the either total lack of interest for their own history or the almost malicious fervor to twist, change, retcon and retroactively alter it in order to fit their current political and social agendas no matter how many decades of good stories they destroy with it. Not to mention pooping all over the work of comicbook legends.
Initially this was going to be a very general essay about no stories in particular but just Today my copy of Ed Piskor´s X - Men : Grand Design arrived so I have a specific example for how things work now at Disney.
So far I was only aware of Ed Piskor´s work from the FREE COMIC BOOK DAY issues of Hip Hop Family Tree which did not impress me much. Besides the unattractive artwork the constant attempts to make hip hop history and hip hop artists look cooler than they really are or were by fabricating the most ludicrous similarities to comicbook characters or comicbook history were really getting on my nerves. Not only because it was so desperate and obvious pandering but also because I have lived in those times and I know for a fact that back then none of these artists would have outed themselves as comicbook fans. But now it is chic and in vogue and cool to have a knowledge about comicbooks or be a comicbook guy - well, unless you are a guy who is actually making comicbooks and not just consuming them or talking about them. Everybody has always been a comicbook fan.
Which was the reason why I never got more issues of Hip Hop Family Tree.
Nevertheless I had an idea who Ed Piskor was when X - Men : Grand Design first came out and after the constant raving of comic readers, comic afficionados, comic critics and comic creators alike I have finally given in and decided that I had to check it out for myself. So far I have read the first issue and the first half of the second issue but I have already come across four instances where Ed Piskor either didn´t do his homework or chose to ignore the real history. Or - what is also quite possible - was told by the higher us at Disney to make certain changes to not contradict the newest retcons or to be more in line with what was established in the tv shows and the movies. Which we all know are more important now - at least to the powers to be at Disney - than the actual source material.
Now before we go any further I want to stress that the purpose of this post is not to trash Ed Piskor´s work, neither as an artist nor as a writer.
While I said that I found his art in Hip Hop Family Tree unattractive and it looks only slightly better to me in X - Men : Grand Design it is very solid, worked through thoroughly and his storytelling, layout and panel design is beyond reproach. With a project like this it can be confusing to see what is happening and who is doing what. That never happens in this comic and you can not only always tell what the characters in this comic are doing but in most cases what they are feeling which is no small feat in itself.
And while I wish they had enlisted an artist who would be better suited for a superhero story from the ranks of veteran comic creators which are readily available and whom I would have loved to see back in comicbooks I know there are two reasons why this didn´t happen. First of all as far as I know Ed Piskor is a writer / artist which means he prefers to illustrate the things he writes and like with other such creators like Stan Sakai or Mike Allred you know going in what you get. Which means you have to accept the art which in the case of Mike Allred didn´t excite me that much at the beginning. Like the great late Jack Kirby it is more of an acquired taste.
Second and maybe more important Ed Piskor´s art looks like what most people think of as the independent comic look and since this comicbook is for the greatest part aimed at either comic readers who don´t read much superhero comics, comic readers who mostly read independent comics or people who don´t read much comicbooks to begin with this is exactly what Disney is looking for. I am not going to speculate how much the possibility of regular comicbook fans buying this explicitly because it does not look like their regular reading material but I´m sure it´s another factor.
Speaking of which what exactly is the purpose of this comic ? Well, in the case of Ed Piskor it is very clear why he made it. He is obviously a huge X - Man fan and this is his love letter to their adventures. The reason why there was and still is so much hype about it is that it connects a lot of minutuae detail and throwaway stories from X - Men history to one big picture. We will come to a few of the mistakes in it in a moment but for the most part he achieves what other stories - like Avengers : Earth´s Mightiest Heroes - failed to do : present old, classic stories in a new way that is engaging for old readers as well as educational for new readers .
Which is much easier when you know where you going instead of making things up as you go along which is what the original creators did. It is one reason why the attentive reader can immediately guess the purpose of this comic because a lot of it centers on Jean Grey and the Phoenix.
That was no big surprise with the new movie that failed to bring The Dark Phoenix Saga to the big screen. It may be just speculation on my part but it is very probable that this comic was done to introduce people to the world of the X - Men. I don´t know how successful that can be since like with Avengers Forever there is a lot in here that will go over the head of comicbook newbies but Disney wants something they can put into the hands of people who don´t want to go through hundreds of back issues.
So basically this is a comic for people who don´t like to read comics. Now this is not the first comic that was done to establish a certain continuity - longtime readers may recall The Untold Legend Of Batman ( which also had some artwork by John Byrne ) and we have to see if it will be redundant as quickly as DC´s Legends. Now I said that there are some mistakes in the story and since I am always ready to give people the benefit of the doubt I am not going to assume that Ed Piskor included them on purpose since the changes might as well have been mandated by Disney. Nevertheless I want to point them out for the uninformed who might take them as truth. And I don´t claim to be the biggest expert on Marvel history so there might be more changes but I am addressing the ones I caught in this comicbook.
Already ten pages in we have the first case which is the relationship of Magneto with Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch. I know from what I read on the internet that somebody had the great idea that Pietro and Wanda are not Magneto´s children thus crapping on decades of stories so this one was to expect. So instead of having two kids Magneto has only one child and his wife is killed and does not desert him to bear two children like it was revealed in the original The Yesterday Quest written by Mark Gruenwald, Steven Grant and David Micheline and penciled by John Byrne.
Next we have the backstory of Cyclops´ father from the Starjammers that was altered. In this version his wife is disintegrated while trying to avoid capture while in the original story the pervert Shi´ Ar emperor Dekan used her as his personal sex slave and killed her in front of Corsair after a failed attempt on his life. I´m not sure why they put the kid friendly version in this but I suspect it has something to do with a possible appearance of the Starjammers crew in phase four of the Marvel cinematic universe.
The last and third one I found concerns Namor, the Avenging Son, who did not regain his memory through being dunked in the Hudson River by an unnamed sailor with an eye patch but thanks to Johnny Storm a.k.a. The Human Torch in Fantastic Four issue 4 which every comic fan worth his salt should know. I also don´t remember him encountering Magneto opon his return to Atlantis who makes him an offer to rise up against the people of the surface world together. I am not sure why that was changed but it fits with Disney´s general attitude of ignoring the Fantastic Four in all of their comics or trying to replace them with either the X - Men or the Inhumans.
Like I said, the purpose of this post is not to trash Ed Piskor´s work but rather illustrate how Disney´s marketing is changing their comic book history to fit their current ideology. And why this is off putting for readers like me since it is in most cases totally unnecessary. This is only one comic book and already we have three cases of retroactive continuity change.
As you can see from the title I expected to write more about a certain X - Men storyline but I guess at this point I have rambled on long enough and it´s time to wrap things up. Nevertheless as a last word on misinterpreting X - Men history, now that Hollywood managed to botch The Dark Phoenix Saga - for the second time I might add - there are a lot of videos where the SJWs put their own spin on it to further their political propaganda.
The story was not about diversity or representation or emancipation or female empowerment or any feminist agenda that is now retroactively associated with it. It was not only a story about Jean Grey but about her and Scott Summers and all of the X - Men. It is a story about power and the price we have to pay when we start to loose ourselves and start to abuse this power. Not as women but as humans. Another mistake that is generally made is the attempt to put it all into one movie. The story is much too big for that since The Phoenix Saga - in which Jean Grey first receives the power of the Phoenix - is also a part of it. And last but not least, what most people who talk about this either ignore or don´t know is that John Byrne not only drew the story he was also a co - writer. And like I explained in my post about Dark Phoenix : The Untold Story it was supposed to have a different ending. So go seek out the original story.
One thing that happened while I was reading X - Men : Grand Design is that it felt like watching an episode of Comicbookgirl19´s Epic History X - Men only without the cool music and not as thoroughly researched. I have already posted all three parts but because of the release of the new Dark Phoenix movie and people still not being willing to read the original story she has re - released it in nine shorter totally remastered installments. I was thinking about which part I should post and in the end I chose part six because you have a lot of Dave Cockrum artwork in the first ones ( which just illustrates how long this story went on ) and this post is supposed to be an appreciation for John Byrne. Also it´s where The Dark Phoenix Saga kicks into high gear. In any case I am including part 1 , part 2 , part 3 , part 4 and part 5 since you should watch them in chronological order as well as part 7 , part 8 and part 9 for all those that want to know how it all ends.
As you can see I could write about John Byrne ad nauseum so it should not surprise you that I already wrote a lot of posts about him, too many to link them all but I want to include a few for my newer readers : the most recent ones are two birthday posts I did in 2016, one about his work at DC Comics and various independent comic companies and one with his work for Marvel Comics and two posts on Jerry Ordway who inked John Byrne on the last leg of his legendary Fantastic Four issues. The first one is a special Valentine´s Day post with the infamous issue where Alicia Masters dumped Ben for Johnny ( which went against the bro code but it was okay because that Alicia turned out to be a skrull which is a subject we will discuss in detail if I ever get to my FANTASTIC FOUR FRIDAY WITH PAUL RYAN series ) and the other one about the birth of Malice who has the second best costume after the special " 4 " - shaped boobie window ( which also first appeared during the FANTASTIC FOUR run by Paul Ryan ).
One of the upsides of dividing the John Byrne birthday post into two parts ( click here for the DC Comics part ) is that the posts are shorter while one of the downsides is that I have to split up the birthdays which might get confusing next year. Be that as it may we start the anniversary rundown with Kevin Hart who turns 40. Since he´s in so many movies I can´t list them all but I want to mention two. The first one is Ride Along 2 - to which we will come in a moment - and Scary Movie 3. Now I have looked on every internet resources there is but can anyone tell me the name of the body / boob double for Anna Faris in Scary Movie 3 ? She is not mentioned anywhere and I think she really deserves more credit !
And giving credit where credit is due I clearly didn´t give Anna Farris enough because I never even considered checking out The House Bunny.
But from what I have seen in Observe & Report she won´t be needing any body doubles in the future as she has matters and boobs well in hand .
I freely admit that Anna Farris´ cleavage was the main reason I watched the movie because I saw the ad on tv and thought that even if the movie was bad there was at least something worthwhile in it. And sometimes that´s better than the alternative because they show so much crap. We have Anna to thank for the best scenes of the movie : she decided that her character should always show a lot of cleavage since she feels that wardrobe is very important. " When I´d wander around the set with my cleavage popping out as Brandi, people treated me differently than when I would wander around in my pajamas or my baseball cap or whatever. "
And for all those who say that she got a boob job I hate to disappoint you but as you can read in this interview she was wearing a push - up bra that is just enormous. Anna has a big positive impact on the movie and she is totally fearless in portraying her character as shallow and vain. Which makes it even weirder that she had to fight for the role as she freely admits. One of the reasons why she was so willing to do a lot of nudity was she often had to shoot sex scenes which didn´t end up in the films.
She thought the same would happen with the date - rape scene and the sex scene with Ray Liotta in the backseat of a car ( which is the reason why he accepted his role ) but to her surprise it ended up in the movie.
Now the reason why I mentioned Ride Along 2 is that 50 Cent is on the soundtrack of the movie and he celebrates his 44th birthday Today. Even though I don´t have any of his albums I am a big fan of his work and his music videos even if they were only shown after midnight. I don´t watch much music television now but when I did it on a regular basis I waited for his videos with the hot Olivia and especially P.I.M.P. in the uncut version.
Hasians are my kryptonite and the oriental sexbomb with the big double airbags is right up my alley. So far all I know is that her name is most likely Angel Maya and she may be a model. Can anybody deny or confirm that ?
Speaking about busty dreams Geoffrey Rush turns 68 who was not only in The King´s Speech, Pirates Of The Caribbean and played super villain Casanova Frankenstein on Mystery Men he was also in The Tailor of Panama where Pierce Brosnan got to feel up mega MILF Jamie Lee Curtis.
Pierce gets a good handful. Jamie was not always a sex symbol and started out in horror movies like Halloween and The Fog ( which also starred cult siren Adrienne Bareau about whom you can read more in this brand new spin - off post ) where she quickly became very famous for her impressive set of lungs as one of Hollywood´s premiere scream queens. Although she later became quite literal famous for her impressive set of lungs as her boobs had busted out and she quickly got the nickname " freezeframe " because her scenes in movies like Trading Places or Perfect became the most paused on the vcr thanks to her sexy 34C - 22 - 34 measurements.
She is best known for her incredibly hot striptease on True Lies, the best striptease in movie history - at least according to a poll conducted in 2007.
Which is all the more impressive if you keep in mind that Jamie Lee Curtis was 36 at the time. So she did her best movie scene when her body was in remarkable shape - she exercised every day for this - and I cannot even begin to imagine how epic it would have been if she hadn´t kept on her underwear and gone full monty frontal nudity. Because James Cameron had seen her in A Fish Called Wanda and wrote the role of Helen Trasker specifically to see her nude body. A lot of other actresses auditioned for the role and while I could definitely see Demi Moore in that part ( who is the number one in my Top Movie Stripteases thanks to her spectacular performance in Striptease ) or even Kim Basinger, Michelle Pfeiffer, Geena Davis, Rosanna Arquette, Madonna, Jennifer Jason Leigh and possibly Lea Thompson or Sharon Stone I thank God that it wasn´t given to Emma Thompson, Melanie Griffith, Debra Winger, Anette Benning or Joan Cusak.
I have already done a number of posts on JaMILF Lee Curtis : the original post which mostly contains pictures with links to animated GIFs , one post with all the pictures I could find , a re - posted version with a few GIFs added and the post I did on her in 2016 which has lots of spectacular GIFs.
Speaking of spectacular GIFs, the reason why I am mentioning Demi Moore - besides the opportunity to feature her - is I wrote a new version of her cult siren entry ( part 1 / part 2 ) with more GIFs of Demi girating her booty than you can shake .... okay, I´m not going to finish the sentence.
Now Jamie Lee Curtis is the daughter of actress Janet Leigh best known as the lead role in Psycho she also would have celebrated a birthday Today.
But coming back to Geoffrey Rush he was also on Frida with Salma Hayek who .... no, she doesn´t have her birthday Today but it is Frida Kahlo´s anniversary. I haven´t seen the movie yet because despite the prospect of seeing Salma naked there is too much drama in the movie for my taste. At the moment my quota of " all evil in the world comes from men and that is why we women have to suffer " movies for the month is full. And to think that Salma Hayek is one of the women who complained the most about Harry Weinstein and what she had to do to get Frida made. A film nobody wanted to produce and which would not have been produced if Harry Weinstein hadn´t insisted on the nude scenes. Which are the only reason anybody watched the movie. Is it just me or do women nowadays expect men to realize their dreams and showering them in tons of money without giving anything in return ? Anyway, thankfully there are movies which are not as drama filled where you can see Salma Hayek get naked.
Coming to a totally different subject I didn´t have to think twice about which music video I would include in this post. Especially since it has been quite a while since I posted a blind audition from The Voice of Germany.
I don´t know if this was the push up that Anna Faris used in Observe & Report but this could be helpful for all the women out there who want to improve their cleavage without having plastic surgery. For a strange reason these UpBra videos also seem to be very popular among my male followers.
Since I mentioned Namor in this post here is a rare find from the original cartoon series. Yes, the animation was minimalistic but at least it was based on the original artwork. These days they have all the technical resources at their disposal but in most cases they won´t even make an effort to have the art look like in the comicbooks like in the recently released Gotham By Gaslight which doesn´t look anything like Mike Mignola´s brilliant artwork. Which made up at least 60 percent of the mood. That it can be done differently can be seen in the ( rightly so ) oscar - winning Spider - Man : Into The Spider - Verse animated movie.
Okay, An American Christmas Carol may not fit the season but with the current heatwave that is hitting Germany the sight of a bit of snow may help you cool down during the hottest summer in decades. Also I don´t make that many posts around Christmas time and there are just too many versions of Charles Dickens classic to possibly fit them all into the posts I manage to do. And I really would hate to see this one fall to the wayside.
While I don´t like it when they do an adaption and feel it necessary to make some changes this is one where it really works. It´s a nice change of pace to have the story set in America and I bet it didn´t hurt that Henry Winkler a.k.a. Fonzy played the role of the american Ebenezer Scrooge.
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Once upon a time, there was a woman named Jean Grey, a man named Scott Summers.They were young. They were in love. They were heroes.
