Astonishing X-men Review: Issues 1-24, plus the annual.

[prozacpark]

Surprisingly, my reaction is not as completely hate-filled as I was expecting it to be now that I've read it all together. There's still an insane amount of crap here, and it suffers from all the issues Joss' works usually suffer from. But, there are bits that I don't hate, and even parts that I actually like. And then there are the parts that fill

Comments

[viciouswishes]

Your review is broken!

[prozacpark]

Bah, it is! Stupid Semagic.

It should be better now; I think I fixed the bit that was causing the whole thing to be odd.

[fangirljen]

I kind of learned just how tragic Kitty is last year when she totally fell apart in a rp I was doing because all of her issues finally got to her. And I was only playing to canon as of MekaniX. *snorts*

I didn't read how the bullet plot started and I don't really want to know. Would be nice if Ellis brought her back in some 'this never really happened' sort of way. Rewriting Whedon. That would be made of win. Why is it quite a few writers have a leaning toward beating up the objects of their affection (particularly thinking Joss with Kitty and, over in British TV, RTD with the Doctor), sometimes really mucking up the characterization, leaving the character non recognizable and then just very, very sad? :( There's no chance of healing. And if you have a lot of emotional baggage, you need to fess up eventually. But while Joss was known for bringing on the awesome, he was never really good at bringing on the therapeutic.

[prozacpark]

Kitty is incredibly tragic; it's just easy to miss because she's relatively well-adjusted compared to the rest of the X-men. She herself hasn't personally gone through a lot, but she has lost an insane amount of people close to her because of the whole X-men thing. Of course, this being X-men, more than half of them are back and kicking, but still...there's trauma. And one of these days, it will catch up to her and then maybe she'll be as crazy as the rest of the X-men. I, oddly enough, like her relatively sane despite the fact that I prefer crazy fictional characters. I did enjoy seeing the creepier and crazier versions of her that we did in "Excalibur

[lux_apollo]

Hey, there's always some Magik teleportation action that could be had now. I'm so happy that she's back.

[prozacpark]

She's back? I totally missed this. Which title did it happen in? They should kill Piotr off now. They can't both be back from their tragic deaths.

[lyssie]

Well. Given Ellis killed Pete off the last time he had hold of him, Kitty staying 'dead' is... kinda impossible.

And in my canon? Kitty is still in Chicago, going to school for her doctorate, bar-tending, and doing the occasional op for Nate or MI6 or Alistaire Stuart when he needs her.

[prozacpark]

Kitty will definitely be back eventually, but I'm impatient and don't want her out of continuity for years on end. Rachel was gone for ten years, and Jean has already been gone for about four (and was gone for six the last time she died). Given Marvel's new "Dead means dead...at least for a while" thing, it could be a long while before she is back.

I'm just bitter that it had to happen now when a Pryde/Wisdom reunion was finally beginning to look like a very distant possibility. And, you know, I didn't even want a total reunion; interaction between them alone would've made me a happy shipper for a good while, and now there's going to be nothing because Joss had to screw this up, too.

[prozacpark]

Joss made me hate Kitty, and I've always loved her, so yeah. I have no idea how people can praise Joss' Kitty. She's completely hateful, childish, and immature.

When I read things like X-Men: The End by Chris Claremont, I see why people like her so much, but here Whedon devours every character trait about the girls that he can.For Kitty love, the original "Excalibur" is awesome. Warren Ellis' Kitty is the best Kitty ever, and even Kitty haters usually like his take on her. I think that Kitty often works the best when she's being played off of Rachel (or someone like Rachel, such as Pete Wisdom), and the same goes for Rachel. I love them together, but they've both been sort of dull since their return and separation. But they were awesome (and so married!) in "X-men: The End

[lux_apollo]

Great review.

No way in fucking hell was this run top of the pile in 616 X-canon.