normally i wouldn’t count a comic book, unless it was a really impressive graphic novel or a long collection or trade, as a “book” especially for my review/goal purposes, however i am both WAY behind on goal, and the quality of the books i read this weekend was so high, and also quite frankly i think i read almost 60 comic books on sunday and so, well, it took all day and i’m counting it. 

feel free to call bullshit on this if you like in the comments (i’m sure Josh will). 

this all started because i was at the always awesome Jim Hanley’s on Saturday (of course they did not have a copy of James Jeans’ Process Recess 2, so i’m disappointed, but whatever).  anyway, here i am and as usual i somehow find myself in the X-Men section (why does this always happen?  must be my childhood rearing it’s head).  so i bought a copy of Astonishing X-Men #22 (the current issue).  Astonishing X-Men is currently written by Joss Whedon and i am a huge Joss (therefore Buffy) fan and the art, by John Cassady, was impeccable.  so i take it home Saturday night and read it.  it was awesome.  the best comic book (excepting The Walking Dead or the original run incarnation of Supreme Power) that i have read in an age. 

so this began a quest to get and read the previous 21 issues, so i could actually know what the hell was going on.  suffice to say that was done with much assistance from Adam (thank you!).  and i absolutely loved the whole damn thing.  every issue was beautiful and brilliant.  a smaller cast (primarily Scott Summers/Cyclops, Dr. Hank McCoy/Beast, Kitty Pryde/Shadowcat, Emma Frost/White Queen, and Peter/Piotr Rasputin/Colossus, and Logan/James Howlett/Wolverine) made much more time for character work and beautiful art mixed flawlessly with Joss’ spot on dialogue – sparse when necessary – dense only when absolutely necessary.  in a word, beautiful.  and i’m officially back on the train.  i’ll be buying this book until Marvel fucks it up and breaks up the dream team, which happens in comics more times than a fangirl like myself can count.  Astonishing X-Men #1 – 22. Whedon/Cassady. 4.5 stars.

Update: after a little research i find out that the “dream team” of Whedon and Cassaday is pretty much already broken up.  apparently this book has had problems being on time and Whedon had only committed for a certain amount of time.  the book is scheduled to be taken over by Warren Ellis and Simone Bianchi.  Warren Ellis is a huge talent so maybe that won’t be so bad, i’m going to try to stay positive.  i’m not familiar with Bianchi, except for cover art, which is good.  i can’t imagine anything being up to Cassaday’s work, but i’ll give it a try.  the problem for me often with art is that even if the penciling is good, if the layouts are ridiculous it is pretty hard for me to enjoy it.  that is one of the beautiful things about Cassaday’s work – those panel layouts are just gorgeous.  i can’t tell exactly when this new arc starts, but i’ll be holding my breath until then i guess.

so maybe you’re wondering where i came up with 60 books, when i clearly only read 22 books…well after reading astonishing i had to go back and dig up the Grant Morrison run on The New X-Men as i felt astonishing borrowed heavily from that history (i.e. in Whedon’s Astonishing Jean Grey is dead…but i didn’t know how…and that felt wrong).  i had picked up single issues here and there of Morrison’s amazing run on New X-Men, but never the whole thing.  between Adam and i however we pretty much had issue #114 – #150, which was exactly the run i was looking for. 

so after Astonishing i dug in to Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s take on The New X-Men.  as i remembered, these issues were amazing.  and the art?  foget about it.  Quitely is the master.  his layouts are gorgeous and his pencils are sublime.  i never can get into his women’s faces as much as i’d like (they always look a bit pinched and “older”) however he has a way of drawing that is so not the traditional plastic look of superheroes…you can almost feel the flesh, it’s beautiful.  the only downside to the art is that with such a long run (114 – 150) there were times when guest pencillers had to step in and while there were a few stars in there, sometimes the quality really dropped considerably. 

Morrison is a genius and it’s evidenced in where he took these characters that so many of us have seen everything already written about…i guess that’s the point really isn’t it? it’s not just what you’re doing to the characters, it’s how you’re constructing it and how everything bounces off of that construction.  i felt the arc (ending with 150 and Jean Grey’s death) really lost me in the end.  i somehow suspect Marvel and not Morrison as i remember there was a lot of controversy over this book – i believe it was getting critical but not commerical success, which can often drive a book into the ground and perhaps Morrison was getting pressure to make it more accessible.  i’ll add an update if i find anything about that.  regardless, overall it was a great run, one of the best (and most important) in the X-Men “history”.  The New X-Men #114 – #150.  Morrison/Quitely 3.5 stars.

since i’m making these two books share one spot (#32) on my books reviewed list i’m going to split the difference between them and give #32 an official 4 stars.  fair enough?