Giant-Size Astonishing X-Men #1 Review

GIANT-SIZE ASTONISHING X-MEN #1
Written by Joss Whedon
Art by John Cassaday

Is it okay to love so many individual moments from a book, but still consider it to be a subpar offering? Because that's how I feel after having read this final issue by Whedon and Cassaday.

First up, the art is not up to snuff. Cassady uses a lot of repetition with minor changes from scene to scene, far more than he usually does, and it comes off as a cheating to me and I feel I deserve more for my buck. And with a $4.99 price tag, it definitely wasn't a $4.99 performance from Cassaday. He was good for some of the big scenes, but his heart definitely wasn't in it for the rest of the issue.

On the story side of things, if you didn't see the big conclusion coming for this issue a mile away, you need to get your eyes check. To no one's surprise, Kitty ended up just phasing the giant bullet through the Earth. I suppose most didn't think she'd become grafted to the thing and unable to phase out of it, but little details like floating off through space on a runaway planet destroying bullet is very survivable in the grand scheme of things, comic book resurrection-wise.

Another thing that bothered me was the inclusion of all the other heroes. Spider-Man had some witty banter and Whedon had me wishing he'd do an arc for Brand New Day in the future, but, to be fair, none of these heroes really had any place in the book. All Whedon did was waste pages and let Cassaday draw a big two page Spidey splash page so he could sell the original pages and make a nice profit off them. It added nothing to the story and wasn't even particularly great of a splash page.

As for the other heroes, they just space out and have dreams of stopping the giant bullet as drool dribbled down their faces. It's been too long since the last issue comes out and I don't even know what the hell happened to the heroes to make them space out like that and I don't even care at this point. Half an issue to have some random Spidey banter isn't good storytelling.

The other half of the issue wasn't much better. We had Agent Brand putting the moves on Beast and getting him to join her and SWORD to help keep her in check and so "she can break him like a pony" after hours. Colossus gets overpowered and nearly forced to destroy Breakworld before Ord sacrifices his own, unshielded, body entering the core to help Colossus. This lead to a great scene where Colossus put down the ultimatum about ruling Breakworld if they did not help them stop the bullet. And you already know how it ends with Kitty, so that's about it for the story.

It literally felt like Whedon thought up some great dialogue or action scenes and then strung them all together in some incoherent finale that "killed" off a beloved character, sent another into space for the unforseeable future and, otherwise, left the team the exact same as when the run started. Even Cyclops, who had been incredible in the last half, had his newfound sight taken from him and is relegated to wearing the visor again. Yay, lack of progress in 40 year old characters!

Verdict - Check It

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