(Meant to get this up right after the comic came out, but illness and workload nipped my good intentions in the bud. Better late than never, I suppose...)
My friend, Patrick, reviewed the first issue of Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men #1, and my thoughts are pretty much in line with his.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: It’s not that it’s bad, it’s just not particularly good. In a textbook example of the current “dramatic decompression” approach to comics, there’s not really a story. And there’s no real emotional punch anywhere in this issue (which I’ll get into in more depth shortly). Whedon introduces us to the version of the team he’s going to run with for the time being, drops a little characterization (some nice, some dull by virtue of having been done to death already), and launches what looks to be the first story arc of his run.
If I were reading this issue as part of a trade paperback collection I might not mind reading twenty-something pages just to get the plot rolling, but had I waited for thirty days (or longer, with all the hype) for this installment, I’d feel a bit left down (of course, that’s only one of my gripes with this “decompression” nonsense anyway).
So let’s look at this in more detail…
(Warning: Here there be spoilers.)
The issue begins with Kitty Pryde returning to the X-Mansion. As she’s walking in, she sees ghost images of herself in scenes from past X-Men comics, a device I actually liked here. If memory serves (I don’t have the issue in front of me), all of the ghost images save one are from before issue 170. I find this interesting, I suppose, because the Kitty Pryde we see here doesn’t look anything like Kitty Pryde, yet through the ghost images we see that the artist can draw Kitty the way she used to look. The thing that’s confusing for me as someone who hasn’t read the X-Men in a long time is that I have no way of knowing if this is simply the artist’s idea of what an older Kitty should look like (and honestly, do we have any idea how old Kitty is supposed to be now?), or has something happened in-continuity that has changed the way Kitty looks (some trip to an alternate future that turned her into a ninja clone or something)? Either possibility is equally likely for an X-Character. Whedon also slips in a few Buffy-esque one-liners for Kitty, but they fit her personality (at least they would have the last time I read Kitty Pryde) so I didn’t mind.
In any event, it appears that Whedon’s intent here is to continue Morrison’s run in a sense, as he’s using Scott, Emma, Hank, and adding only Kitty so far. To be honest, I’m a little disappointed in this lineup. I have no intention of reading any other X-Books, and I was hoping to get some different characters here, Nightcrawler and Storm in particular (Colossus as well, although I’m told that he’s still dead…for now). My interest level in the Morrison group is pretty well tapped out; I don’t see a whole lot here for Whedon to do, characterization-wise, with this group that Morrison didn’t already cover.
Apparently, Whedon doesn’t either, at least in the early going. In the only vaguely emotionally charged scene in the issue, Wolverine and Cyclops (wait for it…) have a fight. Brilliant! You know, I think I first read this scene in the 70’s. It’s not that this isn’t necessarily believable or logical character interaction between these two characters, it’s just that it’s tired and uninteresting. We’ve seen this song and dance too many times before. Hopefully Whedon was just getting it out of his system.
And that concludes the rambling portion of this post. Mainly, the comic spends twenty-whatever pages to set up two things: That Cyclops has decided they need to look and act like superheroes again, and that a scientist has somehow come to the conclusion that genetic mutation of humans in the MU is a disease – and she has the cure.
The costumes thing I’m all in favor of (see my post on general superheroness), and I liked the “you’re talking about costumes again, aren’t you?” thing even though it smacked of appealing-to-fan-geek humor. But after that build-up, I was extremely disappointed in the not-very-imaginative or colorful costumes that the team busts out at the end of the issue. I mean, Cyclops looks like a walking condom, fer crissakes. Very underwhelming.
So this doctor with the cure for mutants is going to be the first story. I think that’s a very clever idea, but I have two additional thoughts that are somewhat related. First, it took twenty-something pages to set up that? I’ve already mentioned how little regard I hold this “dramatic decompression” business, but jeez! You would think someone who has worked primarily in television, where the story is constantly chopped short for commercials, would employ a little more economy of storytelling. It’s not so much the number of pages per se (as I said earlier, in a graphic novel or TPB collection, this might work well enough) as it is the lack of dramatic energy. There’s no sense of urgency anywhere to be felt. The issue just kind of ambles along for twenty-odd pages and then simply ends. There’s no structure, no energy, no nothin’.
Which brings me to my second thought, which is that this scientist with her cure for mutants is definitely a story, but, to paraphrase Stan Lee, if this cure doesn’t involve giant robots, hundreds of battle-armored minions, or some superpowered bad guys, is it really a Marvel story? Okay, it probably is a Marvel story, but is it a good mainstream superhero comic book story? Guess we’ll see (well, you might see – I’m going to wait and get the inevitable TPBs if I hear Whedon’s run turns out to be really good).
Spoiler (as if you haven't read the comic yet)!
I suspect that the fellow who crashed the party at the end of the comic is connected in some way to the scientist. Further, I suspect that the X-Men are going to fight said fellow and his leather-clad goons in the next issue. There's your Marvel story!
Otherwise, I couldn't have said it better myself - which is proven by the link you so generously provided in your post.
Sorry I didn't make a point of mentioning the goons. Yeah, it's reasonable to assume they have some connection to the scientist, but they felt like such generic, "toss them in the end just so we have some villains on the page," bad guys that I couldn't take them too seriously.
I had almost exactly the same reaction you did, Chris (not surprising as the comic has nothing to do with Grand Funk Railroad). I picked up Astonishing X-Men for three reasons and three reasons only:
1. Kitty's flashbacks (every one of them from 168 or earlier)
2. Whedon's apparent intent to continue Morrison's direction, costumes notwithstanding
3. Logan's reaction to Scott's relationship with Emma
Except that upon reading the comic it became clear that Whedon doesn't (yet) have anything new to add to Morrison's direction, and that the Scott/Logan fight, however logical, is just another reiteration of an even older story. Nostalgia for Claremont and instant nostalgia for Morrison; that's what drives this issue.
Now, a comic that can reconcile the 70s-Claremont and millenial-Morrison approaches could be successful (and wildly popular, I'd imagine), but making dual allusions doesn't show me how Whedon is going to join those two approaches. I don't know how he's going to join those two approaches, because he hasn't done anything yet other than script a generic terrorist villain and a cure-for-mutants scenario that shows potential, but is a little too transparently part of the old X-Men-as-gay-allegory riff.
Also: why make a big deal about returning the X-Men to costumes if the costumes are going to be just as duochromatic as the Quitely outfits, only more poorly designed? (Scott's body condom didn't bother me nearly as much as Hank's adult diaper.)
Ironically, while it didn't change her appearance, Kitty did end up a ninja clone for a while, in the Kitty & Wolverine miniseries. Brainwashed and everything. Broke the conditioning, kept most of the ninja skills.
Yeah, I remember that, and poor Betsy Braddock ended up a ninja clone or some such as well. So it's possible that possible that something else further down the line, after I left the X-Books, accounts for Kitty's appearance. Or it's just the artist (I don't recall Kitty looking any different after her miniseries with Wolverine, did she?).
Marc, the adult diaper was bad as well. But really, the big strike against the costumes, as you point out, is the lack of color. What's the point?
I hadn't thought about the "we can cure you" angle pointing back to the "mutants as gays" thing, although if the scientist turns out to be an out-and-out bad guy and a transparent analogue of the Scared Straight people, I might not mind -- especially if there's a severe beating in the end. :-)
And who thought yellow and blue were appropriate colors for Wolverine's costume? If I recall correctly, his new costume incorporates those elements. I much prefer the brown on brown uniform or his uniform from the Morrison run.
By the end of the eighties, I had it up to HERE with ninjas. When Kitty pride became a ninja, I knew it was time to go.
Which brings up an interesting continuity problem: doesn't Kitty indicate in this issue that she can't (or won't) fight? Are those ninja skills rusty beyond recall?
Well, Kitty's had a few years (or months, however the timeline works) of trying to be a civilian. She *can* fight, she's just kinda burned out on it. She had a miniseries recently that I didn't read, but which apparently had her trying to live something resembling a normal life (it also outed Xi'an Coy Manh as lesbian with a crush on Dani Moonstar, but that's a topic for another thread).