3Jul/08Off
Astonishing X-Men #25 — a reaction/sum-up
So yesterday I went and bought Astonishing X-Men #25 at my local comic shop. I bought it on my lunch break and didn’t have any time to read it yesterday, but this morning on the bus ride to work I managed to squeeze it in. Let me just say (before the jump) that Warren Ellis is amazing and he beats Joss Whedon any fucking day on Astonishing X-Men.
On the right here is a clip from the first page… we see Armor using Twitter. Hell yes Warren Ellis.
**spoilers after the break**
Well, as expected, Astonishing X-Men #25 was amazing.
Warren Ellis has brought his genius to some of the Astonishing X-Men team–namely Cyclops, Wolverine, Emma Frost, Armor and Beast–and a new arrival: Storm (it isn’t talked about as to why Colossus isn’t on the team, but Storm is there for a reason).
The story begins with the team in the morning in San Francisco. Beast is awake and Armor shows up to talk about her X-name, which she doesn’t like because of Wolverine’s constant taunting. The oh so clever Ellis brings in such well thought out needless but well placed arguments such as these into this story giving it a real human feel to it rather than a ‘these are super heroes not real people’ feeling. Continuing on, we see Cyclops and Emma Frost waking, half naked after what can be assumed to be a night of utmost fun for the couple. These four assemble in a lab-of-sorts area that is announced to be the new X-Men Headquarters.
Enter Storm. She explains that Black Panther is now more or less sponsoring the X-Men and therefore she is there, but not as an overseer. Instead, Storm is there because she is sick of having sex all the time and going on unlimited shopping sprees–meaning she wants to see some other types of action. Nevertheless, the real story begins with the X-Men are called by the SFPD to investigate a dead body… that is on fire and floating.
Upon seeing the body and using Storm’s powers they find that the guy who died knew who is killer was and had been tracking him for a while and knew where he was going after killing him (that makes sense, right?). Beast, the know-all of mutants post-M-Day, finds that the DNA of the recently deceased to have been modified to give the person mutant-type powers and he assumes that the killer of this man must have had to had similar alterations to his genome.
In the end of the issue, the X-Men are shown to be leaving hot on the trail of this ‘new mutant’ killer… Meaning we can expect a great story coming up.
Now in terms of the art in this story, I have to say that it’s pretty good at times and at others it feels kind of awkward… nevertheless, it tells the story. Simone Bianchi does a great job telling the story and the atypical frame style is very attractive, especially for this series. I’m looking forward to the coming art for this arc in Astonishing X-Men, and I’m hoping it’s as good as this issue was for the rest of the run for Bianchi and Ellis.
Overall, I’d say in general that this first issue is pure gold: the same(ish) team and a new location can only leave near unlimited possibilities for Warren Ellis and his never-ending creative mind. I hope he has big plans for the Astonishing X-Men in the future.
