Joss Whedon

Astonishing X-Men (trade paperback) - "Gifted" - Published By: Marvel Comics - Written by: Joss Whedon - Art by: John Cassaday - Colored by: Laura Martin - Lettered by: Chris Elliopoulos

What you should know:

Nothing comes to the X-Men without a price. They defeated Magneto and rescued New York but they lost one of their oldest and dearest members, Jean Grey, during the battle that also cost them their school as Magneto tore it to the ground. Since the battle with Magneto, they rebuilt the school with Emma Frost and Scott Summers as joint headmasters. Kitty Pryde has also returned. But when a supposed cure for whatever causes mutations becomes public, the X-Men find out that the cost to the cure was another former member they thought long dead— Colossus.

What happened: It seems like nowadays to get a decent shot in comics, you need to have a background in TVs or movies. Look at a lot of the newer writers to comics in the last few years. Their resumes contain BABYLON 5, JACK AND BOBBY, THE OC, KING OF THE HILL and even SEX IN THE CITY. Peronally, I blame Kevin Smith for all of this. He showed comic companies that you could come in, have a bit of street cred due to a movie like CHASING AMY or MALLRATS and carry a book to the top of the sales charts.

So, when Grant Morrison announced he was leaving NEW X-MEN almost 2 years ago now, there must have been a mad scramble at Marvel to find someone of the "star" quality of Morrison to take over their flagship mutant title. The other X-Men writers at the time, Chuck Austen and Chris Claremont, just didn’t have a strong enough reputation to take over the title. And instead of looking at the writer of Y: THE LAST MAN, DAREDEVIL or even CATWOMAN to take over the book, they looked at the writer of a Christy Swanson movie to take over the star of the franchise. They gave the new X-Men book to a writer who had Pee Wee Herman cast as a vampire.

Of course, Joss Whedon is better known for the BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER tv show more than the movie and the thought was that he’d hopefully bring the millions of BTVS tv fans over to the comic. And if that wasn’t enough, they decided to bring a superstar over to handle the artwork. John Cassaday had been wowing us with his work on PLANETARY and had a too-brief stint handling the Marvel Knights relaunched CAPTAIN AMERICA. His artwork alone made it worth buying a CAPTAIN AMERICA comic again. Giving them a brand new title, ASTONISHING X-MEN and a new #1, it seemed like Marvel had a prefabricated hit already on their hand.

Joss Whedon knows how to make a fun X-MEN comic book. Almost a disciple of the Claremont age (the original, GOOD Claremont age,) he’s created a book that takes the best Claremont, combines it with the best Morrison and adds his own mix of storytelling to the mix. The book opens up with the X-Men doing what they do best, fighting amongst themselves. Wolverine and Cyclops fight still over Jean Grey and how best to honor her memory even as her husband sleeps with the former White Queen. Emma and Kitty never got along so the two snipe at eachother, seeing the other as an outside intruder to the X-world that they know. "’The non-threatening Shadowcat’ or ’Sprite’ or ’Ariel’ or whatever incredibly unimpressive name you’re using nowadays," Emma snipes at Kitty. Later Kitty responds, "I don’t have to ’watch you,’ Emma Frost. I can smell you." Clearly, these two don’t get along. The only member of the team who seems to get along with everyone is the Beast but even he’ll run into his own problems later.

Sometimes its hard to remember that this is a team of allies and that they actually have threats to face outside the school. The threat comes in to forms, Ord of Breakworld and his cure for mutations. Ord isn’t your everyday, run-of-the-mill villain. The only thing we really find out about Ord is that he’s supposedly from an alien world that’s seen a future where they get wiped out by one mutant. At least, that’s what we’re told about Ord. In the span of a few pages, Ord can go from being an incredibly intimidating villain, easily gutting Wolverine in their first fight to one who’s easily intimidated by Lookheed the Dragon.

More threatening than Ord is what he’s brought with him, a cure to mutations. Just imagine that you were this big, hairy blue mutant and someone handed you a cure that could make you look like everyone else and easily fit into a society that long ago abandoned you. Would you take it? Whedon throws an interesting curve at Hank McCoy as he’s presented with this very dilemma. While he seriously thinks it over, his teammates, particularly Wolverine, are less than ecstatic over being called a "disease" waiting to be cured.

Whedon does an excellent job weaving these various plot threads together and we haven’t even gotten to the biggie in this run, the return of Colossus. Kitty’s reaction to seeing the man she loved and thought dead are gripping and ring true. "You have to know that if you’re a clone or a robot, yeah, a ghost or an alternate universe thingie I can deal... but if you’re some shapeshifter or illusionist who’s just watching me twist, I will kill you." She said goodbye to Peter long ago and struggled to put that part of her past behind her. She even left the X-Men after his death and after she returned his "ashes" to Russia. Of course she’s going to be shaken after that.

Drawing from the past continuity, Whedon has the skills to build a plot on old stories without making you feel that you’re reading the same thing again. He manages to re-introduce some of the age old continuity in ASTONISHING X-MEN without making this feel like a book lost in the past or integrally tied to a 40+ year history. He’s respectful of the past contributions of Chris Claremont, Scott Lobdell and Grant Morrison while telling his own story. Whedon isn’t looking to chuck out the past to create his own story. He wants to build on the stories he’s enjoyed but bring his own spin and skills to the title. This story is as much and X-Men story as it is a Joss Whedon book. You can see his skills in dialogue coming out, particularly in the insults Kitty and Emma exchange but also in Ord, a villain who could easily fit in with the best Big Bads that Buffy ever had to face.

Perfectly teamed with Whedon on this book is John Cassaday, one of the best mainstream artists around right now. Cassaday brings his polished artwork to a series that’s famous for having great artists. He joins Byrne, Lee and Quitely as one of the best and cleanest artist to work on the X-MEN. His Wolverine is a brawler. Kitty is still young but not quite as innocent as she was when she first joined the X-Men. She’s an outsider, having again to adjust to life at Xavier’s. Emma is a cold beauty, ready to fight with anything that would get in her way but manages to look at Cyclops and you know she’s madly and deeply in love just from her eyes. No other artist could pull off the subtly and facial nuances that Cassaday is capable of.

ASTONISHING X-MEN: GIFTED is filled with everything any fan loves about the X-Men. Internal squabbling, a threat to all mutant kind and the inevitable return of a dead character are all cliches in X-Men books but Whedon plays these cliches in new and exciting ways. He’s made these story elements that felt overused just a year or two ago feel new and vibrant.

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