Astonishing!

spoilers follow...

I had all but given up on the X-Men franchise after multiple tries. For a long time the X-Men was my favorite super-hero group and there were some great stories with great characters written and drawn by great creators. The Brood War! The Phoenix Saga! Wolverine! Nightcrawler! John Byrne! Chris Claremont! Great stuff, to say the least.

However, after a while it began to drag, anchored by the weight of it's own continuity. It came to be that it wasn't a super-hero group as much as it was a soap opera (will Kitty Pryde and Peter Rasputin get married? Is this the real Phoenix or her evil clone? Who's on death's door this week?) and you couldn't read the various books without a crapload of back story. On top of that, the series got bogged down by its own popularity. It was the flavor of the week and to make the most of this cash crop, Marvel began publishing a million and one X-comics (with various X-spin offs) and the X-Men made appearances in everyone else's book ("Gosh, sales of The Defenders are plummeting, we should have the X-Men guest star!").

Garbage!

I gave the X-Men a try more recently when Grant Morrison began writing one of the books. He had some cool artists drawing his stories and they seemed pretty good, for the most part. Interesting ideas which were fairly well executed. Then I had a revelation that his stories weren't that great at all and the new characters he introduced (mainly to kill off it seemed) weren't that interesting. What he did in his last arc really put me off and I decided "no more X-Men!"

I almost came back when I saw Claremont and (Alan) Davis were doing a book together and realised it was just for the art. The story was soon revealed to be more garbage and not worth my dime (or $2.95 as the case may be).

Screw that!

Well, my LCBSO turned me on to Joss Whedon and John Cassaday's Astonishing X-Men. Joss Whedon is the genius behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. The art looks great (look here for a sample) and there are a few issues out so I can try it for a bit.

WOW!

We have some of my favorite X-Men (Cyclops, Wolverine, Kitty Pryde and Beast) plus one that I can't stand (Emma Frost) drawn and written well. We have the return of another favorite of mine (Colossus came back in #4). The art is clean and nice. The story thus far is pretty good. The X-Men are super heros again.

And they have a new (returning) reader. Bravo!