Astonishing X-Men Volume 2 Hardcover for $23.09
Whedon continues his smash hit run on the X-Men with this final 12 issues of Astonishing X-Men. While the series continues after this, he’s not the writer on it. So how do these final 12 issues stack up?
This was the second art of the Whedon run of Astonishing X-Men, coming in at another 12 issues. There were a lot of story elements that Whedon set up in the first arc and he does quite the admirable job of taking an intergalactic X-Men story and tying up the loose ends.
The general gist of the plot is the X-Men decide to head to the home planet (Breakworld) of the primary villain from the first arc. They combine forces with SWORD, basically SHIELD in space, and they fly across the galaxy to prevent Breakworld from setting in motion a plan to destroy the Earth.
While this story is still a memorable one in X-Men history, it suffers from more issues than the first arc did. It’s not as interesting for one, the Kitty/Colossus situation can be seen from a mile away (though it’s satisfying that they finally build their relationship), and there’s a few outright stupid moves that were mind-boggling.
The primary stupid movie is the way that Breakworld’s inhabitants are planning to destroy the Earth…it makes no logical sense why they waited for the X-Men to arrive, and once they did arrive, why the Breakworld peeps didn’t immediately fire the weapon. It’s ridiculous to pretend all of Earth’s major heroes couldn’t figure out a way to stop one giant object. If they can take out Galactus and Thanos while he was wearing the Infinity Gauntlet, they can take care of this problem. The second issue was when Cyclops commits his clever ruse. It takes roughly 2 seconds to figure out why this “clever” idea would’ve failed, and by that, I mean he would’ve been disintigrated.
3.5/5. Very much worthwhile reading, and the story has pretty huge consequences for two of my favourite X-Men characters. While not nearly as good as the first Astonishing X-Men, that story feels incomplete unless you read this as well.
