Sunday 20 February 2011

Marvel Girl has issues... and I don't want to read about them.

Marvel Girl one-shot
Written by Josh Fialkov
Art by Nuno Plati

Action Ash
I'm not going to beat around the bush. This was a bit rubbish really.

The X-Men characters are dear to me, and this series of one-shots looking at each of the original line up looked fairly interesting. This one, however, was not interesting. It was nonsense. The plot was boring, Jean was written unlike any portrayal of her that I've ever read and the way the overall story played out was, quite frankly, a bit whack.The art however was pretty good and the last page features a splash panel that would make a nice poster. Nuno Plati has a really interesting and stylised European art style that I totally dig. It gave the story a great look and I can imagine Plati doing character designs for an animated series or cell shaded video game. The tacky Roger Cruz cover, however, was not very good.
I suppose I should warn you that the next paragraph contains spoilers, as I'm going to give you an Action Ash abridged version of the story. Here goes:

The book opens with Cyclops and Angel fighting over Jean. Scott being the jock, douche bag that he is, wants to lay claim to his woman. Angel glides down elegantly and punches him in then face, while calling him a "Jerk!". If Warren Worthington III was real I'd fist bump him and buy him a beer. Jean breaks it up and shouts at them. Iceman  makes a comment to Beast about never wanting to date her. Jean hears and psychic blasts the shit out of them even though Beast didn't do anything. Perhaps they should change Jeans codename to  Unlikable Harridan.
Cut to Prof. X's office and he tells her that she should take a break from the team because she's out of control. She shouts at him too and then agrees to go home. When she arrives home her parents give her a hug and tell her that they've missed her. Apparently Jean doesn't like this so she decides to run out and go to the mall. While there she starts seeing psychic flash backs of her friend Annie and herself. They talk to a boy in the arcade who tells Annie she's a spaz (I lol'd) and Annie runs out crying. Jean then realises that everyone she knew as a kid is still there. She contacts the Professor with her mind and is all like "OMG there's a monster here keeping everyone under a spell", instead of coming to the conclusion that people in her home town are just boring and unmotivated to do anything with their lives.
She finds ghost/flashback Annie, who accuses Jean of moving on with her life after Annie was hit by a car. To be fair Annie, you were dead!
Then ghost/flashback/figment-of-Jean's-imagination-brought-to-life-by-her-powers Annie, transforms into a monster. Jean's all like "You're not Annie, she's nice and you're a jerk" The monster goes away, Jean talks to herself as a kid and then Prof. X comes. Jean says "ZOMG there was no monster it was just my pure bitch evil". Xavier says "Duh, This is all in your mind stupid. Check yo'self fo' you wreck yo'self" Jean says "I'm going to stop being such a dick and come back to the X-Men."

THE END

TL;DR = Waste of time!

The nonsense adventures of an unrecognisable Jean Grey out of  a possible coherent and well executed story.

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