Astonishing X-Men Volume 3: Torn
Astonishing X-Men Volume 3: Torn, by Joss Whedon & John Cassaday, Marvel
MARVEL HAVE put a page recapping past events in this series to bring the book buying public up to steam so that’s an unexpected major editorial brownie point. As to the tale?
Well, there’s a new Hellfire Club in town, or rather Xavier Mansion. Only not everyone can see them. Not all the time anyway. And the outcome of that is mainly what this whole collection’s about without giving away the ending.
Whedon has fun playing through Chris Claremont’s (the man who helped make Marvel’s X-Men the franchise it is today) back catalogue and subverting themes and characters, but respectfully even while maintaining his own narrative voice and artist Cassady gives us more full figure views instead of a preponderance of well crafted head shots as was a lapse earlier in the series.
Wolverine and the Beast get their comedy one-liner comparisons to each other out the way early on in to raise a smile, and the whole book has story momentum while being pleasing on the eye.
The only fault, for me, is the time-worn cliché of the denouement for the reason for the Hellfire Club’s presence. Maybe this wouldn’t be so telling read in monthly instalments, but it lets it down a bit for me in this collection. That stated, the creative team don’t let the book end there and within the last few pages send those Astonishing X-Men flying out into space and danger with the threat that at least one of them might not return.
On the whole: superior, solid stuff.
Sponsored by Target Media.
