Joss Whedon

THE CREATORS: Joss Whedon and John Cassaday.

WHAT HAPPENED IN 2007: The middle four chapters of "Unstoppable." Lots of running around the Breakworld.

A long, long time ago, further back than many people can remember, Joss Whedon and John Cassaday started telling a story. It was going to be twenty-four issues long, and it would take two years to tell. In keeping with the fashion of that dark and mysterious age, it didn’t really need to be quite that long, and a bit of padding was required. But lo, it was said that 24 issues was just right for a hardback collection. And so it was that Astonishing X-Men embarked on its long and tortuous journey.

That was in May 2004. This two year storyline - which, as I say, would have been stretched a bit thin even on the original schedule - has now been grinding away for over three and a half years. It still isn’t finished. If anything, it’s getting slower. There were seven issues in 2006. This year, there were only four.

But lo, the end is allegedly in sight. For some unfathomable reason, Marvel have decided that this storyline desperately requires a twenty-fifth issue. I beg to differ. Nonetheless, issue #24 is due out at the end of January. The final chapter - Giant-Size Astonishing X-Men #1 - is scheduled for the end of February. And if you believe that, I’ve got a bridge I’d like to sell you.

At this stage, really, who cares? On a monthly schedule, this would be a high-class superhero book, albeit not an especially innovative one. The pace would have been on the slow side, but within the bounds of reason. But the story is simply not strong enough to survive being stretched out to such a grotesque length. What Whedon has written is a story about the X-Men running around an alien planet. Nothing of particular interest seems to be at stake. Yes, it’s pretty. Yes, it’s got some very clever moments. But is it capable of holding my interest for four years? No, it is not.

(And yes, by the time this story finishes, it will have been four years. Well, unless the final chapter actually ships on time - and I’ll believe that when I see it.)

Now, true enough, Astonishing X-Men will live on as a collected edition, untainted by the delays that have plagued it in serial form. But even in that form, it’s difficult to imagine it being rediscovered as a classic. It’s quite good, and the art is wonderful, but it’s got some thoroughly generic villains, and an alien world that never quite feels convincing. Even Whedon admits that the second arc, with Danger, wasn’t entirely a success.

It would have been a fun little confection if it had come out on schedule - or, even better, if it had been compressed to a more sensible 18 issues. Instead, it’s just sort of there, and by this stage it’s hard to react with anything more than "Oh, just get on with it." As the purported flagship of the line, Astonishing has failed spectacularly. It’s meandering around in a little world of its own, generating no real buzz for the X-books as a whole, unavoidably ignoring the storylines that are supposed to be driving the line, and from time to time actively getting in the way of the other titles. Finally, in 2007, X-Men and Uncanny gave up and moved on without it. That’s basically a tacit admission of defeat.

After Whedon and Cassaday finish, the series is to be relaunched with a new volume by Warren Ellis and Simone Bianchi. I suspect we’ll see at least the first issue of that in 2008. I’m not holding my breath for the second; Ellis seems to have difficulties with meeting deadlines. He doesn’t strike me as a particularly good match for the series; the superhero genre has never been his primary area of interest. But at least he’s likely to try and make the book his own, which is probably for the best.

But whatever happens, I don’t anticipate Astonishing X-Men appearing on any sort of regular schedule in the foreseeable future. To all intents and purposes, it’s a weird little project off to the side somewhere. It may be the highest selling X-book, but it’s also largely irrelevant in the context of the line as a whole.