Graphic Novel Review - Astonishing X-Men: Gifted
Astonishing X-Men: Gifted, By Joss Whedon & John Cassaday, Marvel/Panini
PANINI HAVE been making available Marvel Comics material from the USA that wouldn’t be available to those not visiting comics speciality shops in the United Kingdom, a case in point being this collection of Astonishing X-Men #1-6.
For those more au fait with the films, and people like me who’ve been away from the franchise for a good few years, there’s a former villainess named Emma Frost now running Professor Xavier’s School for Gifted Children alongside Cyclops, and they’re an item. And although Phoenix/Marvel Girl is dead she’s never completely out of the picture (old girlfriends never are as far as new ones are concerned). Wolverine’s as cantankerous as ever when him and the Beast aren’t wisecracking or comparing each other’s mutant abilities, Kitty Pride’s all grown up but still hasn’t got a superhero codename she can stick with and the new kids at the school think it’s cool that their supposed teachers are more dysfunctional than they are.
Meanwhile, in the big bad outside world someone’s claiming to have found a cure to destroy the mutant gene, where as with the film it’s compared to something worse than leprosy. The Beast is more than intrigued, not least because he wasn’t born blue and furry.
There’s an alien who keeps coming and threatening the X-Men and there’s Nicky Fury playing his cards too close to his chest. In between all this the X-Men decide that they only way they can get mankind to trust them is if they start acting like superheroes and going out saving the day where the public can see them. It works for the most part, and there are some surprises along the way.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Whedon knows his X-Men history and uses a modern
setting to get them back to the kind of characters they were when they first appeared in print. Different sure: but heroes and friends who can take it out on each other. There’s a lot of humour in this collection, good and bad natured, and a storyline with a mission that’s attained, plus some unexpected happenings along the way. Cassady opts for headshots far too often for my liking but there’s no doubting the fact that the man can draw.
If this series was put out to reboot The X-Men during a sales lull I’m sure it worked. Nice work. And thanks to Panini it’s easily enough to get hold of over on these shores.
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