Saturday, March 05, 2022

Saturday Splash Page #10

 
"Jean's Dragon," in X-Men: First Class Special, by Jeff Parker (writer), Paul Smith (artist), Pete Pantazis (colorist), Nate Piekos (letterer)

After X-Men: First Class wrapped up, Marvel released this larger-than-normal (36 pages doesn't seem like it merits "giant-size") one-shot, consisting of several stories. The best known is the one-page Colleen Coover-drawn story where Xavier tasks Jean with studying baby ducks, in the hopes mutants can learn to adapt some of their lovable traits to be better accepted by humans.

No doubt Magneto was studying fully grown swans to better learn how to be an asshole.

Beyond that and two other short Coover comics, there's one story about Iceman and Beast visiting a museum of oddities to figure out what's haunting it, drawn and lettered by Kevin Nowlan. Nick Dragotta pencils a story about a mutant beatnik doing a hallucinogenic poetry jam in the X-Men's favorite coffee shop, inked by Mike Allred and colored by Laura Allred.

Finally, there's this one, drawn Paul Smith, about Jean Grey befriending Dragon Man and him staying with them for a time. Not sure where Jean got "Rhino Chow" from to feed it, or why a synthetic creature brought to life through alchemy would eat rhino chow. It's framed oddly, because Parker presents it as Cyclops telling Kitty Pryde about this, sometime after she got Lockheed. 

In-story, Jean's sad about ultimately having to say good-bye to her pet dragon, but it had to be done. While Scott told Kitty this nice story as an attempt to connect with the newest student, even though it's painful for him because Jean's dead. I mean, because Jean's busy sleeping in an energy cocoon at the bottom of the East River.

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