Holy Sh*tballs!
Spoiler heavy. Do not read ahead if you have not read the comic. This is a pretty comprehensive break down of the comic.
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Am I seriously the only person with a manic smile on my face for all of this?
This is my bag, baby! The long time X-Men fan girl who lives somewhere in the pit of my stomach must have been tearing her clothes off all Hulk Stylee! After months up on months of SECRET reveals, SECRET history's and SECRET effing Invasions just seeing the X-Men doing a good old fashioned rescue was great. The fact it was Brand made it a little bit more Super-Joy enducing for me because she appeals to the half-alien feminist in me. That and biatch has green hair; nice one.
The first few pages served to point out how military the X-Men are becomming. It was a theme that started in the eternally wonderful New X-Men run that I have yet to get over. It's precise, it's fast, it smacks of the team work that would be there after spending their entire adult lives arse-kicking together. I liked that.
Cyclops. You and I have a love-hate relationship, don't we? I'm enoying his flashy play-boy streak. It's like he takes a little bit of persoanl pleasure in the pull his name has these days, he's suddenly very ironic, very blase. I like it. It's a fair way of communicating the whole 'Been there, done that, got the T-Shirt' idealogy that should come with these long time characters. He's a catalyst for witty banter these days, too. I didn't enoy it too much to begin with, I personally think there can be too much irony especially when you give a comic to one of those America writers that want to be oh, so clever. But this is Warren 'Future Babydaddy' Ellis we're talking about. I trust this guy. I'd let him give me open heart surgery and then write a terribly funny pop culture commentary about it. There'd pobably be a theme tune to it, too because that's what you get with Ellis..the whole tongue-in-cheek package.
The whole rescue was a fabulous hop-on point, something that's entirely necessary these days because with all these HOLLYWOOD storylines and 'event's we're being put through, now is not the right time for new readers. Everything has to have had a backstory EXTENDING BACK THROUGH THE WHOLE HISTORY OF MARVEL. It's nice to know that when this story began it wasn't because someone had left a sticky note on effing Kirby's drawing board saying 'Don't forget to draw Wolverine this way because it'll all make sense in 2009.' Good old fashioned fun, a super hot warm up to be followed by the carefully introduced back story that's all ready and done in time for the reveal. This is classy work, people. And as for the reveal.
Holy Moly! It's Wallflower? Remember her? Yeah, I do actually. I brought the graphics up until they blew her away and I was left staring down at the page with a bit of a WTF gurgling away in my large intestine. I never thought that amount of carnage was necessary in a tween title....and let's not forget people, Academy X and all it's bollocksy re-titles onwards was a title aimed at young readers and to begin with, it managed it wonderfully. About the time brains get splattered up faces and children are impaled on smoking bus fenders, the tweeniness is sucked right out of it. I understand that this was the end of childhood, that this was the point they all needed to grow up but that's because that current demographic had grown up. That's not to say the demographic no longer existed! A whole new bunch of fresh faced nerds were waiting in the wings to lap this stuff up. The Tween demographic is the fastest growing consumer group on the world! COME ON, MARVEL! Let's just think about this for a second...Don't you want a slice of a multi-BILLION dollar industry? If they'd have managed this better then we wouldn't all be drowning in the vampire flood!
Rant over. We now return to the review of Astonishing X-Men and not of Marvel's mechandising team.
Wallflower. It was nice to know that that story wasn't just lost under the rug, swept under with all the other excuses to murder a cast that was growing way, way too large. It was also a bit bizarre to see her...not if it wasn't nice to see teepathy being implemented properly beyond 'Oooh! Sexy illusion in your head' or a trans-physical text messaging service. It was confirmed as her, we got a little back story and then BAM!
HOLY SH*TBALLS, ITS A MEATY SENTINAL! Now this is how a real WTF is handled, people. Take notes: A Sentinal made out of Meat. What's more, that meat took the fair time to make itself look like classic old schooly Sentinal to boot! A little shocked, a little amazed, still not sureif I loved it for the right reasons beyond the fact I turned the page and thought 'Oh, eff! She turned in to a Sentinal made out of guts!' It's original in a day awash with old school flash backs and excessive irony. I liked it. Not many people will. But the again I think it's because I was flash-backed to a distant RP past and Little Boys made of Organs. (I know I just made you smile, sh*tty friend.)
I've wrote so much I'm not even going in to the art because we'll be here all day. Suffice to say, I like that too. it's not surreal enough for me, but I still liked it. It's alittle bit epic if you ask me. Second cover was great, too.
