Action/Adventure

Astonishing X-men

Grant Morrison is a very tough act to follow. When he’s on fire he’s better than most writers in the comic book field, when he’s not on fire, he’s just really really weird. Unfortunately for Joss Whedon, Grant was firing on all cyclinders for his run on New X-men. He just made the X-men that much cooler and I will be reviewing his series in due time for sure. However since I just finished reading Joss Whedon and John Cassaday’s foray in the world of the X, I thought it would be better to review this book first. The volume in question collects all 12 issues from Joss Whedon’s run, in a new book called Astonishing X-Men (last time this name was used was during the Age Of Apocalypse run).

To be honest Joss was fighting a loosing battle from the start. I’ve already read some unbelievable X-Men stories in the last couple of years. Epics by the likes of those two scottish bastards, Morrison and Millar. They’ve already recreated the characters several times over and given them distinct voices and shown us these characters in a whole new light. How exactly was Whedon going to shine? His solution was to go back to their superhero roots, costumes and all. This is after Morrison gave them the leather coats and just made them a team and made the school feel like a school, so I didn’t really buy the reasons that Whedon came up with.

Whedon then decided to do something very cool in creating a completely different villian that the X-men had to tackle. Ord had the potential to be a great villian, however he just came across as weak in the eyes of these little humans everywhere. He was being talked down to when he should have been ripping heads off and just being pure evil. Instead he’s slightly well mannered in some cases. Also what’s with the name? I mean seriously, wtf is Ord?

As always however Whedon does concentrate on the character interation because that is what he is at his best. That is where he shines. It’s when the characters are talking with each other, when they are arguing with each other, that is when I enjoyed this book the most, and to his credit he does this better than just about anyone else attached the X-franchise. The story follows a core collection of X-men who are trying to become accepted as Superheroes again in the Marvel Universe. Their mentor (Professor X) is not around (for some reason, I don’t really follow the x-universe closely enough to know what the deal is there), so it’s up to Scott to lead the team. He’s brought in Kitty Pryde onto the team as well.

Some of the ideas that Whedon introduces are interesting, however even I’ve seen some of these ideas before, and like I said I’m not even a hardcore X-men follower, so it’s a bit weak to see this sort of thing again. I don’t want to be too specific because I try and write spoiler free reviews.

Ultimately I’ve got to say that Joss failed me in the overall story he chose to write, the villian he’s chosen to create and introduce and the final ending of the series didn’t come across to me as something great. I tend not to write bad reviews about writers, however I had very high hopes for this series, and maybe that’s the problem. It’s not a bad book per say. It’s just not as amazing as the first set of stories by Morrison, or the first 30 issues of Ultimate X-men by Millar. If I was to rate this series on it’s own it would seriously rank very high up there, but because I’m comparing it to stories that were written 1 to 2 years ago, it’s not that high.

John Cassaday handles the art chores and I’ve got to say that the man is great as ever. He is a pro and his work oozes with character. Not every panel is superb but the overall feel you get from the book is this larger than life feeling to the characters. His facial expressions are spot on as always to the extent that Whedon doesn’t have to use thought dialogue or whatnot to get some of his other ideas across.

On board for the ride was Laura Martin (or as I have known her for years, Laura Depuy). Laura is easily the best colourist in the business, bar none. When she was Crossgen exclusive it was very hard for the Planetary team to continue that level of quality. Luckily Cassaday made it a point to have her on his side for this series. She seriously elevates the artwork in ways I honestly can’t help to describe. You’ll notice that for the ‘cover’ of this post I’ve not put the cover of the book itself, but rather my favourite cover of the entire series which is the one to issue 2. It just shows the subtle use of colour and just how powerful the imagery all can be when the colourist is that the top of their game.

This team has commited to actually coming back to this series and continuing the story where they left off. I’ll probably be getting it because I have faith in these creators to deliver a fun yarn, it won’t redefine the characters for me, but it’ll be a good few hours of escapism of the prettiest order.