How the Dark Phoenix Saga Made Me the Kind of Fan I Am

I first read X-Men: The Dark Phoenix Saga in a trade paperback published in 1991, meaning I had just really started getting into comics. Trade paperbacks weren't common at the time, so they only collected the landmark issues with high demand. Dark Phoenix came out in 1980, meaning 11 years had passed and it was still in high demand.

How the Dark Phoenix Saga Shaped Me as a Fan

by Duy

First of all, I want to point out this beautiful cover by Bill Sienkiewicz.

Seriously, in the mid-90s, we loaned this comic out to a friend, who promptly lost it and only found it again 20 years later. I refused to buy a new copy of the book, because Bill's cover was no longer issued, and I refused to buy it with any other cover. I think it's that gorgeous.

Rereading it now made me realize how much this one particular story truly shaped me as a fan. There is so much in here, and most of it is gold. It's got the introduction of the Hellfire Club, including Emma "The White Queen" Frost. It's got the debut of Dazzler and Kitty Pryde. And it's got Wolverine and the sequence that's so famous as being his breakout moment.

Wolverine wasn't Wolverine yet, not yet the franchise player for Marvel that he'd later become, meaning that he could lose, he could be hurt, and it's really just that he didn't fear death.

But most of all, it had Jean Grey and Scott Summers, and their love for each other holding the story together.  When Jean is mind-controlled by Mastermind and becomes the Black Queen, flirting with the other members of the Hellfire Club, Scott manages to keep his cool and his patience, waiting for Jean to break out of it and save him.

When Jean finally loses control and takes down the X-Men, Scott shows up to reason with her. You can almost hear background music shifting from something fast and suspenseful to something soulful and emotional.

When Jean's life is in the hands of the Shi'ar for killing a whole solar system, the X-Men all go through internal debates as to whether or not they can fight for Jean. Scott never wavers.

And when Jean loses control of herself and becomes Dark Phoenix again, she saves Scott, and the universe, by sacrificing herself.

Yes, I know that this may constitute as fridging, the story of the woman who can't control power, and it's very possible that if I'd read it for the first time now, I'd feel differently. But back then, and still now, all I saw was a love story with life and death repercussions. And the entire ending sequence still gets to me, today, 27 years later. The fact that a bunch of this isn't shown from the characters' points of view, forcing you to fill in the blanks yourself, makes it more powerful. John Byrne tells a dynamic enough story with the rest of the details; Chris Claremont's prose brings it home.

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.
Today, they will prove it beyond all shadow of a doubt.

I loved it.

Soon after I read the Dark Phoenix Saga, I read X-Men: X-Tinction Agenda, published in 1992. The first scene had Jean Grey back. Not only that, it was explained that Phoenix was never Jean Grey at all, but a completely separate entity that thought it was Jean. In the interim, Cyclops had married Madelyne Pryor, a woman who looked exactly like Jean, had a child with her (he grew up to be Cable), and then she turned evil. Much later on, Jean would die again and Cyclops would get into a relationship with Emma Frost, and by the time I'd read Avengers: Children's Crusade in 2013, I thought, wow, Cyclops is a jerk.

Except none of that matters to me.

I get that because of these changes, some readers may think Dark Phoenix was cheapened. That it wasn't really Jean; that Scott isn't really a character to sympathize with. That it may as well not have really happened.

Except it didn't really happen. It's fiction. It's as real as you make it, as real as what you put into it. And in my book, Jean Grey died as Dark Phoenix, sacrificing herself to save the universe. In my book, Cyclops isn't an insufferable tool. Any stories I enjoy afterwards with them in it are bonuses. They're nice to have. And it's not hard to reconcile them in my head, because it's fiction. They fit together however you want it to. I guess I could have said they ruined the story and that I could never read The Dark Phoenix Saga again because of what happened, but I can, because I do genuinely love that story.

The Dark Phoenix Saga impacted my comics reading habits in many ways. It taught me that, yes, you can judge a book by its cover. It taught me the importance of character development, of establishing character dynamics so your readers can pick up on anything, any scene, with just the visual shorthand. It taught me that you didn't need to start a comic at the beginning in order for it to have an impact on you. But most of all, it taught me that stories can be powerful, and that the only person who can take that impact away from you is the person looking back at you in the mirror.

George Perez's Swan Song: Sirens

George Perez has said he's basically retired. George is my favorite artist of all time, the most important artist of my life, and I've talked about him at length. I've talked about JLA/Avengers. I've gone over his Wonder Woman. I've discussed his New Teen Titans and his run on the 1998 Avengers. Sachs and Violens was one of the first comics I reviewed for The Comics Cube. Most recently, I've gone over the Infinity Gauntlet. I've even gone over Crimson Plague. Most recently, I've covered his very underrated CrossGen run. Today, I'll be going over what turned out to be his swan song: Sirens, from Boom! Studios.

George Perez's Sirens

by Duy

In 2013, George Perez left his exclusive contract at DC Comics, citing the desire for more creative freedom, and signed with Boom! Studios. In 2014, what was supposed to be his first series, Sirens (originally titled She-Devls), debuted. Sirens is like Perez's previous creator-owned work Crimson Plague in the sense that every character in it is based on a real person, but that's pretty much where the similarities end. Crimson Plague was a solo book; Sirens was a team book. Crimson Plague asked for fans to submit their photos so Perez could use them as models; Sirens uses Perez's friends, most notably a number of cosplayers whom he cast as the leads. And of course, Crimson Plague never finished; Sirens did.

Fanisha, bottom center, is based on Perez's wife, Phoenica Flynn.

The first thing that'll pop out at you when reading Sirens is that it's all over the place, mainly because it's a time-traveling jaunt. It starts in Viking times, with dragons and barbarians, and before long we're in the Wild West, Victorian England, 1980s New York, samurai-era Japan, and the Roman Empire. You can kinda tell that it's Perez writing stuff he wants to draw.

Perez clearly had fun designing these costumes as well, and he even has the Sirens' leader, Highness, providing commentary on female superhero costumes.

There's a bit of a debate among superhero fans about the appropriateness of female superhero costumes. They're impractical, and no one would wear them into battle, for the most part — but this is a series based on cosplayers, and it's obvious that they love dressing up in these things, so practicality takes a backseat to looking aesthetically pleasing, not just to the male gaze but also to what women would like to see themselves dressed up in.

For my part, I've long thought it's got more to do with posing and how people are drawn rather than the costume itself. A great artist can make anyone look imposing, threatening, and respectful, while an artist determined to be salacious can take a fully clothed woman and pose her in such a way that would still be deemed inappropriate. Adding to that argument is the character of Agony, based on professional wrestler April Hunter, and who dresses up like a professional wrestler:

I get a little weirded out with the number of scenes with sexual overtones in this series, knowing full well that Perez has always been a vocal and open advocate of sexiness in comics. It's always a little weird to see male artists put female characters into such sexually compromising positions, so often. Highness gets introduced while naked and in chains, having been a prisoner and "rented" out to various men during captivity, before she breaks out. Akira/Kage is a geisha walking away from that life. And Skywire is a Victorian-era prostitute who makes no apologies for it.

I think there are three things that ultimately make it okay for me. The first is that Perez is a friend of all the women involved, and they absolutely adore him, so presumably they all consented to their corresponding portrayals. The second is that I'm fairly certain if a woman wrote the same thing, I wouldn't even be thinking about it. And the third is the fact that all of these circumstances are an inversion of power. Kage is a geisha who's also the world's greatest samurai. Highness is introduced in chains so she can break out of it and lead this team. Skywire lures in Jack the Ripper, specifically so she can kill him.

Perez also is fairly literally ambitious with this story, employing some overt symbolism. A Macguffin in this story is the blade of a villain named Perdition, Highness' former lover:

And here's the ship the Sirens travel in:

But the true ambition comes in how Perez attempts to explain all the time travel and the alternate realities it causes. Perdition's blade cleaves time and space, so we have a near-infinite number of realities (and how fitting is it that Perez's swan song comes with a multiversal crisis?), and it's there where the character of Chan Everest, aka Bombshell, takes center stage. Here she is trying to prevent Highness in the Sirens ship from colliding to Earth:

She fails, and then we see this page:

Yep, it's a comic-within-a-comic. While hiding out in the mid-80s, Chan Everest drew comics of the Sirens, with the story ideas coming to her in her dreams.  That leads to some sequences that are depicted in various stage of comic book production:

Chan's inability to change the Sirens' fate in the comics belies another artistic debate about just how much of the narrative is in the control of the creator, and just how much of it is the characters taking over their own lives.

It does all ultimately tie together, though I won't spoil how here. Does it tie together well? You'll have to judge that for yourself, as I've read it three times and I think my answer is no, not really. I think the ambition gets the better of Perez in this one, unfortunately.

A couple more gripes I have with this book can be illustrated with this close-up of Bombshell.

The coloring is flat, with gradients looking like they have more distinctive endpoints and demarcations than a smooth fluid transition from one shade to another. In today's day and age when the colorists have more of an impact than ever, this just seems like a really weird choice.

But the other thing is not even something I can really legitimately gripe about, and that's that Perez's skill is so clearly fading that it makes me sad to see. He suffered tendinitis in his drawing hand in 2003, and before he signed with Boom!, he had eye surgery. This is, all things considered, still pretty good work, and if you're not a Perez fan, maybe nothing looks off at all. But I've read George Perez's work since I could read, and to see it get to a level below his overall standards, for reasons he can't control (it took two years for six issues to even come out), is just heartbreaking.

So it isn't Perez's best work, but you know what? If I could have my last work be something I created from scratch, my own project, and have it involve my family and friends? If I could get them all to see themselves in this thing I was doing? And if, among all that, I could place the woman I love front and center in this story?

 I'd say that's a pretty damn good way to go out.

Hidden Gems: George Perez at CrossGen

George Perez has said he's basically retired. George is my favorite artist of all time, the most important artist of my life, and I've talked about him at length. I've talked about JLA/Avengers. I've gone over his Wonder Woman. I've discussed his New Teen Titans and his run on the 1998 Avengers. Sachs and Violens was one of the first comics I reviewed for The Comics Cube. Most recently, I've gone over the Infinity Gauntlet. I've even gone over Crimson Plague. As it's pretty clear that there probably will be no new Perez series for me to read from this point forward, I can at least do the next best thing: reread his old stuff and write about them. Today, we go over some of his lesser-known stuff, from an ill-fated company called CrossGen.

George Perez at CrossGen

Hidden Gems

by Duy

I stopped collecting comic books in late 1999 due to financial constraints, and didn't get back into it until I was in college and making money working various on-campus jobs in 2005. A huge thing I missed in the interim was the rise and fall of a company called CrossGen, short for Cross Generation Entertainment.

CrossGen was notable for a number of things. Off the page, owner Mark Alessi utilized guaranteed, exclusive contracts — then a rarity for the industry — as well as a studio setup, in which all the creators moved to Florida and worked together in the same physical space, in a time when they were used to working freelance in whichever locations they wanted to work. They also provided creators with a steady salary (Perez has said the fixed salary for 10 issues a year matched what would have been his page rate) as well as medical and dental plans. This was a very forward-thinking company.

On the page, however, CrossGen was a well-oiled machine, already having their characters and universe created by Alessi and Gina M. Villa even prior to launch. The shared universe, known as the Sigilverse, has a simple concept: every single series takes place on a different planet, with the protagonist receiving a sigil branded onto their skin. The sigil would give them powers. That's it. It's that simple. It kept all their series self-contained while at the same time making it clear that at some point or another they would cross over, and there'd be a culmination.

My introduction to CrossGen happened, as with my introduction to the DC Universe and the Marvel Universe decades prior, because of George Perez. I'd discovered the DC Universe due to Crisis on Infinite Earths and George Perez's Who's Who in the DC Universe covers; the Marvel Universe got me with The Infinity Gauntlet. And the reason I got back into comics in 2005 was Infinite Crisis, which George was a part of. So of course after that, I had to see what he'd been up to, and there it was: CrossGen Chronicles.

CrossGen Chronicles was a bimonthly series where each issue was devoted to telling the history of an already-running series. Each issue was therefore written by the writer of the series being spotlighted, and ostensibly would have a different artist per issue. But out of eight total issues, George Perez drew four. And comics as a medium is all the better for it.

Let's start with issue #2, featuring Scion as written by Ron Marz (the original series artist was a young Jim Cheung, making it worth reading for that alone). Scion tells the tale of Ethan, the youngest prince of the Heron Dynasty, currently at peace with the Raven Dynasty after centuries of fighting. The coming of Ethan's sigil comes at the worst possible time, instigating war and rekindling old generations-long vendettas. This issue of Chronicles tells the tale of Admirals Edvin (Heron) and Alexi (Raven), and how they brokered the peace between the two dynasties.

For those of us used to seeing Perez for absurd detail and group shots, they're still there. But this issue allows him to stretch his wings both in terms of content (swords! boats!) and layouts.

It's really the 3rd issue, focusing on Barbara Kesel's Meridian, that's the standout of the group, however. The story takes place on Demetria, a world composed of floating island city-states. The main character, Sephie of Meridian, is one of the two sigil-bearers, the other being her uncle Ilahn, who is out for total control. This issue of Chronicles tells the tale of how Ilahn tried and failed to win over Sephie's mom, and has one of the most beautiful covers I've ever seen.

Sephie's mom was an artist and drew the story of Meridian on her scrolls, which Perez uses to great effect in this issue. Again, if you're here to see Perez with his trademark crowd shots and lavish detail, it's all here:

But it's also here where Laura DePuy's colors really come into play, as with this shot of Sephie's mom boarding a ship:

The story itself is quite touching, a tale of courtship and true love, though tragic since you know Sophie's parents don't survive. You don't need to have read Meridian to enjoy this one-off, which is actually true of all the Chronicles issues since they all stand on their own. But it's true more so for this issue than any of the others.

We meet the cast of Mark Waid's Sigil in the fourth issue, detailing main character Samandahl Rey's feud with the Tchlusarud, a Saurian of Tcharun. This one's a fairly standard sci-fi story.

But the magic (this is a pun, and you'll see why) comes back with the next issue, featuring Ron Marz's Mystic (see? I told you.). Giselle, the main character of this series, is a reluctant wielder of magicks, and thus a reluctant Guild Master in the island of Ciress. Ciress is made of six houses of magick, and this issue of Chronicles tells a hidden history. The opening sequence is one of the most inventive I've seen:

Look! It's just a book! But it's moving and it's pretty.

Turns out, there used to be eight houses of magick on Ciress, and this tells the story of how there came to be only seven.

The resulting story is, like Meridian's issue, simultaneously touching, impactful, and tragic. Mystic, if I may, is my favorite of all the CrossGen series that I've read. It's fun, it's fast-paced, and it tells a story of two sisters who grow stronger because one is given the gifts that the other one wanted. It's very human. And yet, very magical.

There were other series, such as Ruse, a sigil-based Sherlock Holmes story, or Sojourn, which has a medieval-type setting and focused on an archer named Arwyn trying to kill the sigil-bearer of her world. But as far as Perez was concerned, he drew the ongoing series Solus, with a godlike being named Solusandra.

As it turns out, Solusandra is the creator of the sigils.

So her story was supposed to lead into the big culmination, called Negation War. But it wasn't to be — due to poor management, financial troubles, and a host of other things that have nothing to do with the medium and artform of comics, CrossGen folded in 2004, eventually selling their assets to Disney. Marvel tried reviving them in 2010, but it didn't take.

And so folded CrossGen, but not before producing some pretty fine comics, including some of the best work of George Perez's career.

"I will always be grateful to Mark Alessi," Perez says in George Perez: Storyteller, "and the entire CrossGen staff for the incredible respect they paid me and all the concessions they made for me. I'm enjoying a great deal of success now, and CrossGen helped get the ball rolling."

The biggest concession Perez is referring to is a clause in his contract that said he could be released if DC and Marvel were to finally do a crossover between the Justice League of America and the Avengers, and if he'd be tapped as the artist. The contract for JLA/Avengers came at the last possible day delineated in his contract. And so the greatest crossover in comic book history was made, but not until after he'd stretched his wings farther and stepped out of his comfort zone on CrossGen Chronicles and Solus, which unfortunately will likely never be collected.