The Incredible, Edible X-Men

Astonishing X-Men

Looks as though I haven't ranted for a while. Mostly that's due to me just working all the time, and I've ranted about work enough, it seemed kinda silly to keep on doing that. Luckily, I have stumbled across a couple of nifty things I can discuss here.

For starters, I picked up the first three issues of Astonishing X-Men in a little omnibus, and gave that sucker a read. To preface, I don't normally read comic books. That was just one of the media I never got into, not for any lack of interest... more a lack of funds. Doesn't help that most comics are 3 bucks or so a pop now. I look at it like "new DVD or two comic books I'd like to read..." Movies always win.

Is that shallow? Maybe it's weirdly shallow.

That being said, I picked up Astonishing because Joss Whedon, the Buffy dude, wrote it, and I dig his writing. Astonishing was pretty good... but dammit, the title is really long... I'll call it AX-Men now...

I dug the writing on X-Men. The usual plethora of pop culture references and funny quote abound through the title, the sorts of things we associate with Joss. Up to where I'm at in the series we've had a supposed "cure" for the X-Gene, as well as a psycho killer alien thinger.

Oh, and the X-Men have returned to their old costumes. Yellow, blues and such. Very spiffy. I like the older costumes better than the current black style outfits as seen in Ultimate X-Men and the movies.

The artwork was really groovy. This should indicate how long it's been since I read any real comics, but I'm actually amazed at how much detail and color they are using. I am used to shit like the Archie comics my sisters used to use, and lacking the savvy to pick up comics on my own normally, the artwork wowed me.

That being said, I don't care for the way the artist has drawn some of the faces. Cyclops tend to have a very scrunched face, which is rather off-putting. Minor quibble though.

I guess the biggest thing I can say about the comic is that I'm interested enough to want to pick up more issues of it.