Astonishing X-Men, Vol. 1: Gifted by Joss Whedon
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Pretty amazing read. The style is clean and in true x-men form, we have a mix of action with dialogue about the nature of humans and mutants co-living. The pacing for much of this was a bit too much like a movie though. You can tell the influence of old comic costumes with the influx of the recent glut of x-men movies. I did find Emma Frost’s incredibly revealing dress to be pretty stupid. But that’s traditional comic book taste too, although I would have liked something more realistic. In this her role seems more to provoke the others into questioning their unity than to being an effective leader. Which is a waste.
Having read only this volume thus far, it ends on the typical note of how everyone is against the x-men including their mysterious leader. The fight with the danger room seemed pretty pointless though. So all in all, I would have appreciated in a volume 1 a more coherent story with a singular conflict than a smattering of loose ends that were untied to be tied (we didn’t know Colossus was missing, or what brought Frost into the team), leaving us with more loose ends (what was Professor X doing all this time, what is happening with Ord). So in this sense, there is no real sense of beginning or end. Rather we have two story arcs that seem highly unrelated. In a 2 volume set, there should be more cohesion of story.
Additionally, the lack of character development is annoying. Of course, one assumes we know who these characters are, after all this time, but it wouldn’t hurt to have a brief introduction to each character, as is the typical beginning of a comic book (for anyone picking it up half way). Instead, we get the assumption that the characters are stables, that we know who they are, and in that sense, we can predict that they won’t change at all, since if they need no real introduction than they most likely have identities that can deviate. And in that sense, this comic book is more about action as entertainment than it is for drama, tragedy or any deeper human feelings.
Overall, this comic was entertaining for a time, however. I read it in two sittings. The lack of flashbacks for Beast, or anyone else was mostly surprising since it made the drama and self questioning seem pretty irrelevant. In this way, this comic writes itself more like a movie than anything else — all action and expository for plot than for any other purpose. And unlike a movie, as awesome as the images can be, we shouldn’t rely on one medium trying to imitate another since comics can be more in-depth than movies and movies can present us with some glorious shots of sound and sight than comics cannot.
That’s really the only criticisms I have.
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