Third and final installment!
JOSS WHEDON AND JOHN CASSADAY'S ASTONISHING X-MEN RUN
*ASTONISHING X-MEN #1-24 and GIANT-SIZE ASTONISHING X-MEN #1
*Can be found in ASTONISHING X-MEN trade paperback volumes 1-4 and ASTONISHING X-MEN deluxe hardcover volumes 1 and 2.
As you can tell from the last article, Grant Morrison's run with the X-Men characters was pretty epic. It featured possibly the most status quo changes to not just the X-Men, but to any Marvel book. The run was critically acclaimed, sold like hot cakes, everybody was happy. Right?
Well, the X-book editors (over-controlling and nefarious proponents of stagnation for the X-Men, but that's another story) were feeling anxious about how many changes were made. Or perhaps they were just trying to reassert some control. Regardless, Chris Claremont was put back on the book for the 17th time, all the characters were superheroes again and put in flamboyantly fabulous costumes, and most, if not all of Grant Morrison's changes were undone or forgotten about.
Sales dropped, fans were confused, and the quality of the writing plummeted.
For all practical purposes, Grant Morrison's run never even happened. The book regressed to what it was before, and the NEW X-MEN run felt like nothing but a dream of what the X-Men could be.
Times were bad. Something needed a change. There needed to be a fresh look for the book. Somebody who could write the characters really solidly but without muddling the book with tons of new character introductions. Something with familiar ideas and characters but without being too indebted to past continuity. Somebody to bring a fresh look to the book that isn't too derivative of the NEW X-MEN run.
Enter Joss Whedon and John Cassaday, who helmed the revamped ASTONISHING X-MEN, a run magnificent enough to qualify as the third volume in the X-Men canon.
Whedon and Cassaday managed to hit the Goldilocks spot of the X-Men (the G-spot, if you will) of being "just right" about everything. The run was both character-driven and plot-focused, felt classic and yet pushed in new directions, was respecting of both the superhero origins as well as the mutant focus, was in continuity but not burdened with references and back history.
Within the first issue, Cyclops gathered the team and introduced the whole premise of the book. The team would be superheroes again, they would don their costumes again, but as a PR gimmick. When the X-Men were all wearing black uniforms, they looked like a rogue biker gang. By appearing like the Fantastic Four or the Avengers and by stopping typical supervillain crimes, ordinary people will see the X-Men and perhaps mutantkind itself as agents of good.
In essence, it was a superb wedding of the first two eras of the X-Men.
On one hand, you have Claremont who writes the X-Men as superheroes without any explanation. On the other, you have Morrison who dispensed with the superheroism altogether and said that the primary focus of the X-Men is mutant rights and protection. Whedon came along and saw the common ground: that by being superheroes, the X-Men advance and protect the image of mutantkind.
The characterization that Whedon hit on the book was the best ever seen on any X-Men book. While Claremont and Byrne grew many of the characters from square one to the positions we see them in today, and Morrison wrote the characters as very complex and threw them into adult situations, Whedon hit the dynamic of a great television drama. The conflicts were passionate and heated, the romances were loaded with sexual tension, and the banter was always witty and top-notch. It really doesn't get much better than this.
The book also had a sense of classic adventure that I forgot a Marvel book could even achieve. Big splash pages of the X-Men fighting giant monsters, strategic clashes with alien overlords, to my favorite conflict of all - the X-Men fighting themselves. The book consisted of 4 story arcs, with the first three being discretely divided by their own villains and themes, with the fourth packaging all of the ideas of the third up along with the X-Men as they're sent into space.
Yeah. Space. So what?
At this point, I should probably point out the irony that in my initial manifesto on the team, I mentioned that the X-Men should not go to space, and yet all three eras of the team that I considered the finest all had some elements of space travel or aliens.
However, like the Phoenix saga of the Claremont/Byrne era, the X-Men were completely out of their element on this one. The book almost confesses to the rule by showing how ill prepared the X-Men are while dealing with an alien war on a planet they'd never even heard of before.
The final story arc that I'm referring to was called UNSTOPPABLE, which serves as a reflexive reference to the book's own momentum and pacing at this point. Many other possible titles, like BADASS, RUTHLESS, or FUCKING AWESOME, could all suffice and ably refer to the story's content, themes, as well as your reaction after reading.
I know this feels like an enormous copout, but I really wish I could describe the events in the story that elicit these reactions. Unfortunately, the events themselves are so cool and unique that it would really, really spoil the story. So instead here are a few brief teaser snippits: Colossus is finally written like a three dimensional character instead of a dull gentle giant, the X-Men avert a world-scale disaster that is both appropriate for the team and unpredictable in execution, and Cyclops is given complete and total redemption from being the boring leader that wears tighty whities to finally being recognized as some kind of badass military genius.
And to top this whole sundae off with whip cream and a cherry is John Cassaday's incredible, incredible art. If you've ever wondered what it was like to grow up in the 60's and discover comic books through the imagionation of Jack Kirby, to look at big images of monsters, time travel, anti-matter rays, and intergalactic space ships - all of these images previously unrealized visually at the time and yet are staples of comic books today, John Cassaday's clean and sharply drawn artwork somehow has a way of renewing the awe of these images, making you experience them for the first time, giving you a real sense of awe. Read his work on PLANETARY and you'll see what I mean.
He also combines this sense of inspiring, larger than life visuals with very keenly drawn physical expressions. Characters' facial expressions just look genuine. He's so good at expressing subtext and nonverbal communication that it makes you wonder why his writers use any text at all.
If it were possible to physically interact with intangible concepts and ideas, I would fuck John Cassaday's art. I wouldn't fuck one of his characters, I wouldn't fuck him, I would fuck his art itself. It's that gorgeous.
As much as I'd like to close with some kind of witty, journalistic one-liner, I think it's more relevant to close with a recommendation. Read THE ASTONISHING X-MEN. It's stellar.
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2 comments:
I think you really hit on something that any solid television writer knows but that seems much less prevelant in comics- episodic, long format stories tend to rely on chracter dynamics and relationships to keep them fresh, interesting, and emotional.
So many comics seem to rely on over-the-top theatrics to bring you in and keep you in- who's gonna die, who's gonna come back to life, etc. These themes aren't bad, but they're so big they often don't feel like they connect to the characters or, based on the fact that comic characters are always coming back to life, have much impact on the growth of the characters. Everytime something huge happens, it's always topped a little later (and like you mention with Clairmont's return), nullified by some new plot point that retcon's the whole thing (Civil War and Skrull Invasion I'm looking at you!).
Obviously a man who made Buffy such a success most people don't remember it was a movie and choose not to remember that it's been canceled for years knows a thing or two about how the end of the world can be exciting, but characters dealing with repressed emotions, sexual tension, and arrested development can be even more ingrossing.
I definitely loved Whedon's run, and given its affect on the other X-books, yes - it was the "third age" of the X-Men.
BUT.
No other arcs quite matched the first arc (the new team, the cure, and the return of Colossus). Don't get me wrong - I loved reading every issue. But Danger didn't quite capture the same magic, and Torn took a little too long to materialize (and left some semi-unanswered plot threads as to the fate of Cassandra Nova).
Unstoppable and the Giant Size Annual were pretty outstanding, though, and recaptured some of that original fire.
I guess what I missed in all those subsequent runs was a significant and intriguing revelation every issue (or close to it). Beyond just the concept of the Astonishing X-Men, that's what really gave Whedon's initial arc the attention and affection it deserves.
I'm extremely disappointed that the book is now taking place contemporaneously with the rest of the 616 universe...I actually really enjoyed the universe the X-Men had to play in, pre-HoM, and as Whedon showed, there were definitely amazing stories to tell that co-existed with the new canon being established.
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