Astonishing X-Men Volume 1 Hardcover for $25.64
I’m a fan of Joss Whedon and some of his TV shows, but never did I think to myself, you know what would make a good X-Men series? Joss Whedon writing it. Imagine my surprise when it turned out he wrote a perfectly solid X-Men story.
Whedon certainly doesn’t shy away from some ambitious writing in this twelve issue run. He brings back a popular mainstay of X-Men comics, Kitty Pryde, to have a starring role in a school now led by Emma Frost and Scott Summers. He also creates two major villains, one which changes a considerable amount of X-Men history, brings back a major character long thought dead, and quite a bit more. A nice touch was while a Whedon fan would be able to notice his influence in the writing, he manages to stay away from spicing up the dialog as if it were a Buffy episode.
A significant thrust of the story is the hope of a mutant cure, which isn’t necessarily a unique idea for the X-Men, but I’d have to say it’s implementation was better in this than most of the times it’s been brought up. This isn’t the hamfisted X-Men 3 take on a mutant cure, this has real characters with authentic motivations interested in it, with real consequences. As more details emerge about the mutant cure, things certainly aren’t as simple as they seemed.
The main villain, while slightly doofy in certain parts of the story, is written well enough and has solid motivations for his actions. That already puts him a step above most villains. The secondary villain is the longer lasting of the two, having appeared in a number of X-Men storylines after this series.
One thing that may be an issue is that without understanding X-Men history to some basic degree, this story won’t be nearly as enjoyable. It draws upon people having an understanding of the characters and at least some of their previous actions. It’s a good story regardless, it’d simply be confusing without that knowledge.
The art for the most part is solid and some of the covers are spectacular. I’d go so far as to say this has some of the most memorable covers in X-Men history.
4.5/5. One of the better X-Men reads available.
