How good was Astonishing X-Men?

I'm truly curious. I read X men comics in the 80s and 90s and everybody keeps telling me to read it. I'm looking for a reason.

@tbemrmccoy:

It's probably my second favorite X-Men run of all time (right after Grant Morrison's New X-Men) it was just overall very well written with good dialogue and great characterization stemming from it's very character driven direction and lots of different characters getting panel time. The art was also very good as well and the book was an all around very fun and pleasurable read.

Under Whedon it was arguably the best and most consistent X-Men series, and the strongest X-book of the 2000's. Definitely top 3 at least of all time, and a 9/10 read imo.

Its pretty good, I don't think its as great as others might claim, but good none the less.

Its most favorable aspect is how its self contained, you don't really have to worry whats been going on in the X-books beforehand when reading. Its story is pretty interesting and the characterization is fun and realistic and has many of the hallmarks of Whedons writing that people enjoy.

I totally agree with this.

There are a few X-men runs I think are better overall, but I don't know if there's ever been a run of 25 consecutive issues of any X-men series that were all as consistently good as Whedon and Cassaday's. There's not a dud among them, and when they were great they were really great.

@jphu8414: @koays: @cattlebattle

Thanks for the input. I'm going to check it out. I read a little bit of New X Men and I enjoyed it a lot . I'm going to get trades of both series soon. Who are a couple of the feature villains in Astonishing Xmen?

@oldnightcrawler: Yea, I think the biggest downside of the series was that it was ONLY 25 issues under Whedon. Which puts things in perspective, since the biggest downside is that I want more.....no disrespect to whoever followed Whedon/Cassaday of course.

@tbemrmccoy: the villains were an interesting mix of old an new.

There was Ord and the Breakworlders, which were new for this series, Danger was also new (sort of), and there's some great use of the Sentinels and the Hellfire Club (sort of), as well as Cassandra Nova from Morrison's New X-Men.

@koays: they sort of evaded some amount of comparison anyway, simply by bringing back Kitty as the main character and then essentially writing her out at the end, nothing that followed it could really have the same dynamic interplay afterwords.

of course, it was also singular in the leeway the creative team had, never having to switch artists to make deadlines or participate in crossovers. It makes me wish more creative teams were given that sort of treatment.

I personally think Whedon is the writer who came closest to capturing the feel of Claremont.

@oldnightcrawler: Yea, but still there was so much less personality on a one to one basis as well that you almost feel it didn't live up to the "Astonishing" portrayals of each characters from the previous run. It really is a completely different animal post Whedon.

Also I think Uncanny Avengers is sort of having that same feel as Astonishing. I mean we see the team in other books, but the arcs are so tightly written that it stays in its own lane and doesn't have time to diverge.

@xwraith: damn. I'm sold.

@tbemrmccoy:

its way better then Avx or BotA or X-men: no more humans :)

absolutely another animal. But, Whedon's great character work aside, Kitty really was the lynch pin of that team's group dynamic; without her at the center it just had a completely different feel. It's kind of too bad, especially since Whedon made it glaringly apparent that he was introducing Armor to replace Kitty's role, but it just never stuck.

I've often thought that if they'd added someone to the post-Whedon cast who was closer to Armor's age (maybe even someone close enough for her to have a crush on, say), that they could have made her a more believable point-of-view character like Kitty was, but as it was she sort of just came off like the team's kid sidekick, and was barely even featured outside of that book.

one of the things that I love about both Whedon's run and Uncanny Avengers is that they're pretty much completely self-contained; the lack of crossovers with other books just makes for a more singular story overall.

That said, while I am totally loving UA, one of the major ways I see the two as in incomparable lies in my one main criticism of UA, which is that Remender's team has yet to develop the strong group dynamic within the team itself, which was really the backbone of Whedon's AXM.

@oldnightcrawler: I also think Armor would've had more success if there was more attention given to her in other books around the same time. But at the time there were only 2 books that focused on the X-Men team, with everything else being satellites and solos. Also i think a big thing with Astonishing is that it eventually became about the mystery the team was facing and the cool things the X-Men blow up to get out of it, while the cast was secondary. It made for interesting situations, but even by having Armor narrate throughout the action, would've added a more human taste to it and given Armor a bigger spot.

Uncanny Avengers is a crossover in itself. I agree that that team has zero interplay and i think its because they all have different reasons for being there and all their individual stories (Wolverine/Daken, Thor/His Axe, Wanda/Wonderman..etc) are only being brought together because of this common threat. I think it works for the story because its pretty obvious that that's why they keep failing to stop their enemies and after this arc i'd like to see if/how they make this group an actual team.

most overrated x-men writer award goes to jos whedon...second place grant morrison

totally agree. The cast became more of a vehicle for the story than the other way around.

I think that's for me part of what makes UA seem like such an Avengers book compared to a lot of others, is that it really feels like a team-up of characters from their own stories, which was originally the whole concept of the Avengers. But it's also kind of the opposite of what I like about the X-men, who are much more of a family within themselves and each play specific roles within that dynamic. For all that people compare the two groups, they really aren't comparable on that level.

It was one of the books that brought me back to comics.

me too. well, it brought me back to the X-men.

possibly just as fair to say it brought the X-men back to me.

Which is FACT. The X-Men aren't like any other team in comics, because their brought together by their differences from ordinary people and united in spite of their differences from one another. It's their unique dynamic Whedon highlighted and it's sort of why i didn't like the idea of UA long term, because eventually the cast will unite and characters I feel are already apart of something will become a part of this. Which is kind of sad when i realize that i'd prefer for one of my top books to end, rather then see Rogue become a permanent fixture of this team of Avengers.

@cyclops_was_right: I get Morrison.... but why Whedon?

I don't place it high on my list of runs I've enjoyed as an X-Man fan. I did like it and appreciated the focus on the dynamics between all the different players, but it felt a little off for me. I think it could be because of the story-telling style which was so different from what I had read up until then. It's part of the reason why I am happy I began reading the X-Men from its beginning, rather than jumping in where they were publishing-wise when I first got interested. I think my impression of the X-Men might have been very different, other-wise.

I kind of know what you mean. I'm really digging all of the members of UA, even the ones I didn't expect to, but the moment the Avengers become one big happy family is the moment it needs to either switch directions or get some new blood. The Avengers need to have those dramatic distinctions between them to be what they are. What do a Norse God, a millionaire, and a mad scientist have in common? if the answer is anything other than that they're all Avengers, then they don't all need to be.