X-Men #35 pg 23 (Sharp pencils, Riggs ink, Nicieza story) - SUNSET GRACE

SUNSET GRACE

From the creative geniuses of Nicieza, Sharp and Riggs comes a piece of beauty that was the X-Men in the mid 90’s, from issue #35. This storyline takes place soon after Scott and Jean were married, just returning home from a decade plus of being gone as they traveled to the future to raise their son, Nathan Christopher Summers, but to their world they were only gone a few hours.

Grace Lavreaux, aka Sunset Grace, created a dimensional fissure that slowly destroying life on eart as we knew it. She was broken and in pain, her powers had returned and she was dealing with decades of grief after losing her husband and son years earlier, sending them through a portal that she could no longer access. It’s a sad story, I guess my favorite kind in the land of X. Even sadder knowing the truth to the story, that both her husband and son died in a car crash and she only sent the car wreckage through the portal. In this beautifully done page we see Grace reunite with her family (as they have all aged), in a land she created called NEVER NEVERLAND. She creates the reality she wants/needs in order to move forward. Jean helps unlock what Professor X locked away years earlier (so Grace wouldn’t have to deal with this huge loss), and releases the memory of her family, so she can live with them in her own reality and closes herself off from Earth, negating the issue at hand.

This storyline precedes the Phalanx Covenant which started right after this one-off issue. This was a great time to grow up with X-Men and their stories. This particular one-off story was rich and full of great character depth and amazing art. This is my first Liam Sharp page and hoping to have more. His line work and design so absolutely gorgeous, full of emotion and intent. Almost every page in this book feels like a splash page with story flowing all around it. Making it feel a lot more unstructured and free flowing, like being in someone’s mind and seeing their thoughts. This worked perfectly for the type of story being told and pairs well with Nicieza’s ideas/writing. I’ve always loved these art pages that have an overall outer shape of a head/profile but you get lots of imagery radiating inside and out of the main figure. I may have to find more of these.