Africa Isn't a Country?
I was really looking forward to this book. I just finished the current Astonishing X-Men run that started with Joss Whedon’s stories, so I had high hopes for this. It did not live up to those expectations.
First of all, I did not care for the art. In some panels, the characters just look terrible. Emma in particular is drawn almost as a caricature, accentuating her breasts in literally every panel that she is in. In fact, sometimes her breasts are the only part of her in the panel. Her face looks awful as well. Some would argue that this is meant to be a bit of a criticism of her character, but that’s not what I expect from an “Astonishing” title. The non-character art is fine, and the colors are fabulous, but it’s hard for me to see past the characters being so poorly drawn.
My major problem with the book is the way the characters discuss Africa. Nothing good could possibly come out of Africa, right? The discussion was so one sided and negative. I honestly wanted to strangle the characters at times for discussing Africa in such a stereotypical way. “Africa isn’t a country.” Really, Beast? Thanks for informing us. I’m sure we wouldn’t have known that without your guidance. “My father used that condom for 20 years without a problem.” Really, African villager? You are at what looks like a state of an art hospital, but you didn’t know you can’t reuse a condom? It was an annoying, juvenile way to approach Africa as a subject, which seemed to jive pretty well with the over-the-top sexualized art. Once again, someone could argue that it is being written this way to kind of criticize the way the world approaches Africa, but I would have preferred the writers to take a more mature approach.
I was really disappointed with this book. I didn’t have extremely high hopes for it, but there were points were I was simply appalled by what I was reading.
