Written by Warren Ellis

Pencils by Simone Bianchi

Part two of Ellis’ first story for Astonishing, “Ghost Boxes”, started to get horrible reviews about four days before it came out.  I get the feeling that, because x-men fans are usually comic book drones who like nothing but that same old shit fed back to them so they can shit it out instantly and greedily anticipate the taste of recycled fecal matter in their mouths once again, the typical reader would really hate anything Warren Ellis does on this book.  Thus far I think I’m right.  I don’t know how Joss Whedon managed to calm the flock down, because outside of a resurrection and some really fun space travel business, he didn’t use his time on Astonishing to seemingly attempt to please the boring x-men fans.  He did a good job, Astonishing was the title that got me to pick up a comic book again and four years later I’m spending money on comic books like a junkie with a smack habit.  Thanks a lot, douche.

Psychosocial/monetary issues aside, Warren Ellis is one of my favorite writers working today.  He has a deep interest in how technology impacts our society and our perceptions of self and he’s filthy mouthed English bastard with a true understanding of what bastards people really are.  I expect his run on Astonishing X-Men to fully delve into science fiction and explore the human condition, which is what Claremont and Byrne were certainly attempting to do on their run of Uncanny.  Or X-men, Which became Uncanny, unlike New Mutants, which became X-Force, which became X-Statix, which became X-Force again, which became X-men, which became Generation X which was canceled and turned into New Mutants again, which became New X-Men, which became X-Men again, then turning into New X-Men, then becoming X-Men once more but is now X-Men Legacy.  I couldn’t make that shit up.  There’s a reason I only read Astonishing X-Men and X-Factor and I wouldn’t be reading either of those books if they weren’t being written by fantastic writers.  I don’t care about the characters, I care about the writers.

Speaking of which, the writing is good.  Ellis is good at tackling language and the dialog in Astonishing is very representative of a group of people who obviously have known each other for a very long time and don’t feel it incredibly necessary to blab on about incessant shit in a transparent attempt to build rapport among the characters to give the illusion of characterization to the reader.  A strength of the books is Ellis knowing that, when writing a 40 year old character, you don’t have to grind the key concepts of this character into the pages until blood pours from the eye sockets of innocent(if mildly socially challenged) readers across the globe.  Overall, it’s what I expected.  A science fiction story is being set up, loosely revolving around some kind of new forced mutation and there are broken space shuttles too.  I’m rather happy to see that Armor, a more interesting version of Jubilee, hasn’t be thrown away sans issue #25, I think the relationship between her and all of these people three times her age could build a great story and engage the characters in some interesting trans-generational situations.

When I showed this issue to a co-worker, who obviously had no interest in it and didn’t want to read it, he replied, “it’s not very colorful”, and after about five minutes of me bitching about how great the art really is, he conceded that yes, it was good art and yes, the idea of bright yellows and reds and oranges is an annoying, childish art style that deserves to stay dead.  Bianchi’s art on this book is fantastic.  Following John Cassaday’s pencils is tough and would be compared to him, but Bianchi’s pencils are actually better with greater detail and an elevated sense of realism.  This is probably the closest to seeming to be real people I’ve ever seen comic book characters drawn.  And yes, it isn’t very colorful, but neither are your father’s genitals.