Saturday, February 19, 2022

Saturday Splash Page #8

 
"All The Ninjas Ship Jean/Logan" in X-Men Forever Annual #1, by Chris Claremont (writer), Sana Takeda (artist), Tom Orzechowski (letterer)

So one of the things Claremont did in X-Men Forever was go ahead and put Logan and Jean in a relationship, at least the early stages of one. Which sort of makes sense. Claremont did send Cyclops off into the sunset of husband and fatherhood with Maddy Pryor and The-Boy-Who-Would-Be-Cable, only to have that thwarted by whatever genius demanded there be a team book with the original five X-Men. Which did bring Jean back from the dead, but Cyclops mostly refrained from restarting his relationship with her, even if he never seemed to get around to mentioning being married and having a kid.

Going from that perspective, I could see those two not getting back together, even if Inferno apparently played out the same as it originally did (since X-Men Forever doesn't diverge from what actually happened until a few years later. More's the pity for Maddy.) Or Jean's just in a different headspace after spending however many years in a cocoon and finding out everybody kind of moved on with their lives. And here's Logan, still carrying some sort of torch, but maybe matured (or civilized) a bit over the years by having to be a more responsible member of the team.

This annual (which didn't come out until the ongoing had reached its final four issues), was how those two crazy kids hooked up, prior to the ongoing series actually starting. It involves a mission for Nick Fury, and pretending to be a married couple. The Hand are involved, obviously, somehow able to block communications and Jean's telepathy. Logan's weakened condition - due to burnout, though they don't know it yet - makes him vulnerable to demonic possession, but Jean's able to get through to him with emotions. She tries to moonwalk it back immediately after, but that doesn't work and away they go.

It's a nice enough story, and Sana Takeda makes it look very pretty, and at least remembers Logan is kind of a hairy guy. There's a few staging things I question. The four X-Men that come to the rescue arrive with Nightcrawler and Psylocke somehow punching through what appears to be a cave wall. It seems rather odd the guys Shadowcat sees chanting around some glowy purple thing are in lab coats. Stuff like that.

Like I said, though, it's a little weird to do this story when Claremont killed Logan off without doing more than hinting vaguely towards the fact Jean and Logan's connection had grown more intimate, but that's life in the X-Offices.

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