Publisher: Marvel Comics
Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Artist: Stuart Immonen
Release Date: 12th February 2014

From a personal standpoint, I find the whole idea of ‘The Trial of Jean Grey’ kind of rubbish, with the entire Shi’ar race seemingly incapable or purely refusing to understand that this young Jean Grey hasn’t actually committed any crimes against them yet. In their minds, she is clearly guilty anyway, so why bother with the whole galactic tribunal?

Credit, then, to Brian Bendis for still managing to make this story so entirely readable, even for someone like myself who started off skeptical. Of course, it helps that he is crossing over two of Marvel’s best current titles with All New X-Men and Guardians of The Galaxy, but the truth is that many writers might struggle to handle this many major characters on this big a scale in just five issues.

This issue spends it’s time establishing some chemistry between the two teams, and clarifying Jean Grey’s predicament, but while it all rolls along at a really fun pace with snappy dialogue and some great character interactions, the last page opens up a whole new can of worms, which left me wondering if two more instalments will be enough to wrap up this crossover without things getting very rushed.

Luckily, ‘The Trial of Jean Grey’ is plenty entertaining enough to keep readers interested, and Stuart Immonen’s art on this title is as pretty and accessible as always. Immonen doesn’t push his skills to the limit in this particular issue, but the work is strong nonetheless, and you can safely assume that as the scale of this story expands, Immonen’s art will follow suit.

Ultimately, I’m not honestly expecting much of a payoff from this crossover, but with Bendis at the helm, I know I may be proven wrong, and whatever happens, ‘The trial of Jean Grey’ is still pretty entertaining at its mid-point.

Rating: 3/5.

The writer of this piece was: Alan Shields aka (Al)
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