We all have pet peeves about our favorite comics companies, right?  My top Marvel peeve has got to be 'using Jean Grey's picture to sell books she's not actually in.'  There's a nice grand tradition of this, going back to the last time she was dead, after "The Dark Phoenix Saga," and this character -- whose current state of being differently-alive goes back over four years at this point -- keeps showing up on various covers, for reasons that are beyond me. 

With X-men: Legacy 211, though, I actually held out some hope.  Since this series is about Charles Xavier rediscovering his past, and since Jean was his longest-running student, and one of his closest friends and advisers over the years, it seemed possible that we'd actually get a substantive scene.  Seriously, Marvel, you've had four years to think of one.  So I was excited -- Jean is my favorite X-man and, like I said.   FOUR YEARS.  Then I got about 19 pages into this comic and was saying, 'Dammit, they got me again!'   But then we actually got a two-page flashback of an actual scene between Charles in Jean, and -- I don't know what to think? 

This presumably takes place at the beginning of the Dark Phoenix saga, when Charles examines  Jean on Muir Island.   If I manage to overlook some is-that-really-necessary half-nudity, and one particular panel that seems to have been traced from different-sized pictures of three different women and slapped together in an anatomically suspect pose, this is kind of an interesting scene.  The dialogue is a little too much the warmed-over Morrison ("I can touch the atoms of the air and the spaces between them. . .I feel like I'm kissing the whole universe on the lips") -- that seems to be the only way anyone knows to write about the Phoenix anymore.  I'm not sure what else I expected, but it would be nice if somebody remembered that Morrison's Jean didn't just go around spewing mystical what-the-hell.  She was also smart and politically savvy and charismatic and in charge, and -- Jesus, can  you tell how much I miss this character?  It would just be nice to see a little more humanity in these scenes, considering what a major figure Jean was in Charles' life.  If this turns out to be a tease for more to come in future issues, but here it just feels like another check in the 'have we mentioned this month that Jean Grey is dead' column.

Oh, and apparently there were 20 other pages in this comic.  Seriously, I liked them.  The background on Xavier's father is mostly new to me, and -- while I'm not really sure that it's necessary to retcon Mister Sinister into everything -- I keep thinking they'll actually use the character in an interesting way this time.  So far so good and possibly a nice continuity point with issue 208.  I just reread that one, and in a flashback scene with Moira McTaggert, Xavier is discussing the possibility of prior contact with Cyclops by someone at his orphanage.  Which, if I remember my eight-million-different retconned versions of Scott Summers' life story, was Milbury or Essex or Sinister.  I'm starting to think there may be a story arc lurking in this title.

I think Mike Carey has been writing the most interesting of the regular X-titles for a while now, and definitely since 'Messiah Complex'.  There have been a lot of interesting threads in each issue and, while I'm not sure exactly where it's headed yet, I'm interested in watching the pieces fall together.

In the 'unfortunately' column -- I'm basically okay with Scott Eaton's art in the 'present' sequences, though Frank D'Armata's colors are too shiny for my taste.  And the basic idea of having a different artist do the flashbacks is a cool one.  But last issue, that meant Greg Land (teenage mutants with pornface, how special), and in this case Brandon Peterson.  Peterson's art either just isn't that different from Eaton's, or the way it's inked makes it all look more or less uniform.  So instead of a noticeable change from past to present, I kept squinting to see where one timeline ended and the other began. 

Also, since when can telepaths talk to to pigeons?