Step right up folks, get your nice fresh crack right here, hot off the presses–Joss Whedon is writing X-Men! Let me repeat that, Joss Whedon is writing X-Men. Okay, for the non-Joss Whedon-is-a-god market, Astonishing X-Men is a Kitty Pryde-centric storyline. It is crack in written form I tell you. Ahem.
Professor Xavier and Jean Gray are gone. The Xavier Institute is being reopened under the new management of Emma Frost and Scott Summers. Kitty Pryde is back as a teacher, and more than a little dubious about the whole enterprise. As if relations at the Institute weren’t tense enough, a government researcher has just announced a “cure” for mutantism. This volume has all of Joss Whedon’s trademark skill. In six issues he has created characters you care about, who feel real, and are never one dimensional, without sacrificing a suspenseful plot. I’m looking forward to the next volume already.
The art consciously harkens back to an earlier era of X-Men canon. The uniforms have gone through a reverse transformation back to a more yellow spandex look. It works. I don’t know that I’d want to see it in real life, but in a comic book the look works. The look of the characters is iconic, but Cassaday doesn’t allow the characters themselves to be flat or false.
Astonishing X-Men, vol. 1: Gifted
ISBN: 9780785115311
By Joss Whedon
Art by John Cassaday
Marvel Comics 2004
