Astonishing X-men #25 Review

Background: When Grant Morrison ended his run on X-men I was scared as all hell in what would happen with the characters he had literally ushered into the new millennium. When Joss created Astonishing even though it was always late 🙂 I thought him a very worthy successor since I was an avid Buffy/Angel fan and knew he would be very capable of leading this team to the next level. When Joss left…I dropped astonishing X-men so I have no idea what has taken place and only because quite a few fans of Black Heroes asked me to review this run will I endure this book. I have literally no expectations so let’s see how Storm plays into a reformed Astonishing X-men team.

Summary

The x-men have relocated to san Francisco and Hisako  is worried about a new codename, Emma and Scott are happy, Wolverine is a thug and Storm has arrived to check up on the team because the life of a queen is dull. They get called in to investigate a dead superhuman who is on fire and floating. Even after outing the fire it still floats Wolverine helps Beast gather samples and he deduces the organism is an artificial mutant. They also know the killer is heading for chaparanga. They are on their way there to intercept.

The Good

The colors are top notch and the art sometimes looks good. Storm joins the team and for the most part we get a nice friendly vibe from them.

The Bad

Art was passable BUT sometimes the women looked like men and clearly someone hasn’t gotten the memo that Beast now has a feline mutation NOT  a feline face with the rest of him still a furry gorilla (oh brother).  For the most part things were adequate but can’t really be compared to the perfection of what was done before by Cassidy.

The reason behind Storm joining the team is suspect. Life of a queen for someone who has fought her whole life from the slums upward is a bore? Constant sex…a bore? Maybe if Emma was saying this I would be more inclined to believe but from Storm? That seems forced! Another thing why was Storm practically begging Emma to “insult her” because she was tired of people catering to her “beck and call”? Storm and Emma are oil and water not to mention Storm was Jeans best friend and Emma stole her friend’s man!? Play nice? NEVER! While on this subject Emma stole her body at one point and later on they clashed over what was the right thing to do with a mutant killer named ….Jeffery Garrett I believe from the X-treme X-men series? I’m sorry but clearly some one does not know their x-men history or continuity very well if they think Storm would ever have THAT conversation with Emma Frost.

And what is Storm wearing? She’s more naked than Emma frost who is supposed to be the resident Naked girl of the team (oh my god!)

Storm and Scott are also a missed opportunity since these two have very different leadership style’s hopefully this is highlighted at some point.

The conversations were dead! Gone is the witty banter of Joss and Grant which made the past few years a marvel to read about this team it is replaced with Loads of exposition about Chaparanga a ship graveyard meant to evoke fear in the reader in much the same was as the fictional Madripoor. All it really does is make the book exposition heavy in places where some witty banter was called for.

The Ugly

Ok art, ok story a dismal 2/5