The New Astonishing X-Team

Astonishing X-Men #25

Warren Ellis and Simone Bianchi take over this series from the departing Joss Whedon and John Cassaday. We lose Shadowcat and Colossus, but get Storm (and a few others to be named later) in return. Everyone has moved into their new HQ in San Francisco and is investigating the mysterious death of a guy who’s a kinda-sorta-not-really-a-mutant. And to discover the truth, the whole team is going to have to travel to Indonesia to visit an unregulated spaceship junkyard.

Verdict: Well, listen, first of all, there are a lot of cool moments in this one. I love Storm’s conversation with Emma Frost about wanting someone around she can argue with. I love the concept of a spaceship graveyard. I’m not as thrilled about the new “We’re kinda wearing street clothes so the cops don’t freak out about superheroes” uniforms. And the idea of Hank McCoy singing blues songs is just a bit weirder than I can handle. And this entire issue is oddly action-free. The dialogue is still darn nice, so I’m gonna give it a thumbs up. But I don’t know if I’ll be picking up any future issues.

Number of the Beast #6

The Paladins and their supervillain foes finally escape from their virtual reality prison after the High “kills” them all within the artificial world. They emerge angry into the Nevada desert and end up taking on the Authority, which should be a pretty short and bloody battle but probably won’t be, so they can keep the Paladins alive…

Verdict: Thumbs up. I’m still enjoying it, but the last two issues will be the deciding factors in whether this entire series is ultimately good or bad…