Astonishing X-men #15 - Mobile Edition

Marvel Comics
Astonishing X-men #15
By Hervé St.Louis
June 24, 2006 - 16:06

Marvel Comics
Writer(s): Josh Whedon
Penciller(s): John Cassaday

The Hellfire is back in town and their targets are the X-men. New members take out the Beast, Cyclops, Colossus and Wolverine quickly, leaving weaker members and students to feed for themselves. Can the X-Men recover their losses and fend off the Hellfire’s attack?

Right off the bat I have to ask, how many telepaths are they in the Marvel universe and how come they are still mutants left to fight the X-Men when all their powers were wiped out? Although the story was interesting and a novel way to disable the X-Men, it was a classically padded story that will read better and fill more complete, only when Marvel releases the trade paperback. In hindsight, there are a few speech bubbles here and there and a lot of nothing happens. The introduction of Sebastian Shaw and his fight with Colossus didn’t flow well. It seems like

Really, the highlight of this series is Cassaday’s work. He draws Wolverine like Hugh Jackman. Of course I like that. His villains look stylish and cool. He can capture some emotions. However, although he uses slow panel to panel storytelling to pad the book, his storytelling skills are bad. The switch from one scene to another looked juxtaposed and didn’t work.

Even within scenes, there were trouble keeping tabs on what was happening. For example, I though that the hunched back guy in the lab was the Beast transformed into a human and for some reasons needing glasses. Of course, that had me scratch my head in wonder.

Trouble is as nice and cool Marvel wants to make this comic book, it fails when a first time reader picks it up. If a second reading is needed to understand all that happens, from someone who has read weird comics all his life, imagine a new reader picking this up after seeing the X-Men film. Can the creators get back to comic book basics instead of the stylish and padded hype?

Past Review:

Astonishing X-Men #2

Rating: 4/10