Astonishing X-men Xenogenesis #3 - More Questions Than Awesome

I admit I didn't give Warren Ellis's cooky and visually nauseating mini, Astonishing X-men Xenogenesis, much of a chance after the first issue. Between the shitty art, the baseball uniforms, and a questionable connection to the continuity I was completely turned off. For a book written by Warren Ellis, that's saying something. Ellis is one of those rare comic writers who can turn shit into diamonds with his writing. It's not that he didn't do his job with Astonishing. The man can write dialogue. But in terms of plot and presentation, Astonishing X-men Xenogenesis is about as palpable as battery acid laced with bleach.

So why am I giving Astonishing X-men Xenogenesis #3 another chance? Well it's Warren Ellis! He's a guy who deserves more than his share of chances giving his track record. Plus, I would be a grade-A douche bag if I rejected a comic solely on the basis it looked bad while not giving the story a chance. I lampoon others for doing it. The last thing I want to be is a hypocrite. It helps that the cover of the third issue is pretty freakin' hilarious. If ever there was an image that summed up Cyclops and Emma Frost in recent comics, this is it. So why not? I'll take the ride again if Ellis is going to keep going.

So far the story has been fairly straightforward. The plot revolves around an African village having what appears to be a high rate of mutant births. Now it's not clear if these children are mutants, but they're enough like mutants for the Astonishing team to journey over and investigate. What they found with Scooby and the gang is that the births weren't the result of the X-gene. They were the result of a strange brand of radiation, which has always been the excuse in comics. It's the superhero equivalent of "my dog ate my homework." They try to help the children, but are then attacked by the local African dictator (which are about as common as crab grass over there). His name is Joshua N'Dingi, which sounds like a pretty cool African name. But he also goes by Dr. Crocodile, which more or less destroys any semblance of cool because that has to be the shittiest name for a doctor in history.

Dr. Crocodile proves to be as lame as his name when he takes a bunch of hostages and threatens to kill the mutated babies. It's enough to make the pro-life crowd's head explode. Killing babies ranks right up there with child molestation as one of the douchiest crimes an asshole can commit. Given this is a dictator, infanticide is practically an Olympic sport. However, the X-men don't take kindly to that kind of shit so they enter a standoff with the guy. Emma gets all his men to point the guns at himself while Cyclops confronts the poorly named dictator who looks like the bastard offspring of the terminator and a zombie.

It makes for a tense situation, but that tension quickly turns into boredom as the next few pages are spent talking. No fighting, no witty exchanges, and no flaunting of powers. They just talk. It's about as exciting as it sounds. Doc Crock plays the role of a Bond villain, foolishly explaining his plan and his whole life story as if he was sitting down and doing an interview for A&E. He tries to come off as a less than douchy guy for wanting to kill the mutant babies. He doesn't call them mutants though. He calls them warpies, which sounds way too lame for something to have come from the mind of Warren Ellis. The reason he calls them this is because they were the result of a radiation burst known as "The Jaspers Warp." Now that actually sounds pretty cool. Definitely worthy of the Warren Ellis label, but Crock still hasn't said much to make him less a douche-bag.

He does provide a bit of a flashback though. Apparently his previous job was to actually take care of these kids. However, one of them ended up exploding. And I'm not talking about the kind of exploding babies usually do when you feed them meatballs laced with hot sauce that earns parents handwritten thank-you letters from diaper companies. I'm talking about actual boom boom explosions. One of them left Doc Crock the half-man, half-robot, full douche-bag he is now. So in that sense he has a reason not to like these kids.

He keeps going on and on for pages at a time, basically ranting about how he has to protect his people from these babies and that requires him to make very difficult decisions. It shows he's not a Josef Stalin-esque monster. He's like any African dictator and that he justifies any cruel actions as doing what's best for his people. Several African nations have probably sent death threats to Ellis already, but they'll do the same to anyone who sneezes on them. Basically Doc Croc throws his hands up and says the X-men can take the babies, which would make him the shittiest Bond villain of all time. But the X-men surprisingly say no. They don't just want to save the babies. They want to find the source of this shit. Moreover, they want Croc and his band of douche-bags to help them.

It's a questionable request, but the kind Ellis loves to use in his stories. He gets two opposing sides to work around each other rather than just beat each other senseless. Michael Bay fans may not approve, but it makes for a more refined story that requires more than just three brain cells to appreciate. So with Doc Croc begrudgingly helping the X-men, they venture off into the jungle where a disturbance has been detected. Granted, the timing seems a little too convenient. Ellis is usually good at not making things sound contrived, but after pages upon pages of talking it's somewhat a relief to get things going again.

As expected, the X-men take the early lead. They prove to have a much better training regiment than any African army. That and being able to fly probably helps. They search the jungle and don't have to search for very long. Here things get a little hazy because it's not clear what the hell they're searching for. In this case they find a guy who looks like Bruce Banner after he was given a makeover by Charles Manson. It's really not clear who the fuck this guy is and what he's up to. It's not a monster or killer robot so it doesn't come off as threatening, but it's still the most action this book has seen so far. How sad is that?

It does get a little messy though because keep in mind, the X-men have to work with Doc Crocs trigger-happy thugs. That means when they see this guy, they don't ask questions. They frantically shoot. It's standard operating protocol for soldiers in comics. The PR staff for the US military hates it and many brave men and women are probably insulted. But it's a comic. It wouldn't be as exciting if someone didn't get shot.

This isn't some random guy who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time after a 3 day bender. His name is Jim Jaspers, which if you stayed awake during the long conversation with Doc Croc should ring a few bells. Remember that whole "Jaspers Warp?" Well this guy has the same name and is running through the jungle. Seems logical that he would have at least some knowledge. Too bad he got shot though. He doesn't sound anywhere near as douchy as Doctor Crocodile.

It seems like a sad moment for the guy. He's been shot and he's stuck in the jungle. That seems like a pretty bad day if ever there was one. Jaspers looks like he truly wants help and the X-men, having not been the ones to shoot the guy, try to offer it. But there's one little problem with that. Remember how I said earlier that it wasn't too clear why they were after this guy and how he could be the source of the disturbance? Well that's answered right here. It turns out this guy is packing some major heat that Astonishing fans will probably recognize. Nuclear bombs are so messy. The Ghost Box kicks way more ass!

That's right. Somehow this guy is the Ghost Box's new bitch. Being shot sort of agitated him and that sort of made the Ghost Box mad. Unlike Bruce Banner, whose anger only turns him into a raging beast. Hell, meth does the same thing. This Jasper guy has to one-up the Hulk. Rather than turning into a steroid-loving beast, he turns into a big shiny box. It sounds lame, but it shows how ominously awesome it is when it opens to reveal an army of killer robots. NOW the Michael Bay fans can cheer! It took a whole issue but there's finally some less subtle forms of action. Granted, it's still robots and it took way too long to get to this point, but you can't completely hate Ellis for taking his time. It's just a matter of taking too much and overestimating the average person's nanosecond attention span.

So what can be said about Astonishing X-men Xenogenesis #3? Is it the kind of book that will make win over the critics of this exceedingly bizarre series? Probably not. And that's not just because most readers are stubborn. This book offers some substance, but not nearly enough to make it up to par with Warren Ellis's usual caliber of awesome. It's slow and tedious for half the book. There are more conversations than fights and while the dialogue is great as it always is with Ellis, it seems more drawn out than it should be. There were some confusing parts at times as well, but they did get explained so it's not like there isn't a coherent and novel concept here.

The biggest issue with this book is that it's still too much an anomaly. It really is hard to tell just where this book fits into the greater Marvel Universe if at all. It's nice that it took the story from the Ghost Box and all, but even that version of Astonishing was hard to fit into the grand scheme of things as well. Xenogenesis comes off too much like an X-men Forever title and not something that adds to the sum of awesome that the other X-books are giving. It's like Marvel is just putting it out for the sake of putting it out. In that sense it's like the high school slut. It's out there and people can partake, but their mileage may vary.

This book doesn't suck. That's probably the best you can say about it. Warren Ellis's books rarely suck, but they do have a high bar and this one didn't even come close to measuring up. That's why I can only give Astonishing X-men Xenogenesis #3 a 2.5 out of 5. It's not terrible to make diarrhea jokes at, but it's not good enough to compare to Tera Patrick's rack. It's the middle of the road. It's the Switzerland of comics. It won't thrill you or bore you too much. I'll just kill about twenty minutes of your time and that's it. Nuff said.

Astonishing X-men #35 - Done With (Some) Style

Last time I reviewed Astonishing X-men, I spent most of the review pissing and moaning about how much the delays hurt this book and how obsolete this title had become since Joss Whedon left. Well I can't promise anybody I won't do more pissing and moaning here. When it comes to comics called Astonishing X-men, there are some very high standards. The bar is so high that most writers would be lucky to get over with only moderate trauma to the balls. Warren Ellis isn't most writers though and for what's it's worth, he's managed to carry this title through the agonizing delays and the utter lack of continuity between this book and the rest of the X-books. As far as I know the events of this book actually take place before the Utopia arc if not sooner. A lot of shit has happened since then and you almost have to have a touch of amnesia to get the same impact from this title. However, the pissing and moaning may finally be able to stop because this issue marks the end of the eXogenic arc. It's taken way longer than any decent comic should, but it's finally ending.

Now before I get into the action review here's a recap for those whose memory have trouble keeping up with delays or you just happen to smoke too much pot (or both, just saying). The X-men have been chasing a new brand of sentinels that were made from the dead bodies of their old enemies. The last issue revealed that this data was actually hacked from Beast's computer. After a string of awkward moments, the team followed the trail to a ship and from that ship it led them into a mountain (I know it probably would have been easier to just go to the mountain, which leads me to assume they were just trying to hoard airline miles or something). Inside that mountain was a shit ton of giant creatures that could have been Godzilla's prison bitch. These creatures are what's standing between them and confronting the asshole behind it all, Kaga. Yeah, it's not the darkest sounding name, but for the creatures he made his name could be Felicity Toriscockoff and he would still command respect.

The issue picks up where the X-men left off, which was basically somewhere between the armpits and ass crack of these over-sized creepy crawlers. Since there wasn't a four month delay this time, it feels a little smoother. There's not much the X-men have to fight against this shit. They got their powers and a kick-ass plane. Now they could use both and make for an exceptionally awesome and creative moment, but I guess that sort of thing was reserved for Joss Whedon. Instead, they go with the old using-the-flames-of-the-jet routine. It may not sound like a really heroic stand, but with the way it's drawn it still looks fucking awesome.

It can't be too lame if it works. The next few pages are spectacles that combine the awe-inspiring display of fireworks with the guilty pleasure of watching something explode like a beer keg stuffed with C4 (not a good idea to do in back yard while drunk mind you). Now usually in a comic the explosion is enough. Most readers would be content just seeing something blow up in the same way a guy will see a chick flick so long as it means seeing a certain number of breasts. But there is one small detail to this plan the X-men put together. They set the damn place on fire, but that means they'll get burned too. It's one of those little things that good writers like Warren Ellis take into account. In this Cyclops gambles that Kaga isn't completely retarded and has an emergency exhaust vent (which looks suspiciously like the thermal exhaust port on the Death Star) that's just small enough for them to fly through.

This daring escape is followed by a fairly rough ride that leaves the X-jet in the kind of ruin that Lehman Brothers would be proud of. I'm guessing they have that thing insured because they aren't too broken up about it being as air-worthy as a brick. That or maybe it has more to do with some nameless armed guards coming in to watch the fireworks. Seeing as how the team just emerged from setting ablaze a shit ton of giant Godzilla-esque monsters the prospect of facing nameless guards must seem pretty bland to them. Seriously, how many of these guys have they taken down over the years? Even Barry Bonds couldn't ballpark that figure.

The fight doesn't last nearly as long as the escape from the monster den and rightfully so. Why should a bunch of stiff who don't even say anything give them more trouble than a pack of D&D ripoffs? They're not completely without their use though. As they kick their asses, Emma Frost finally does more than play the part of Cyclops's arm candy and extracts some valuable information from one of the guards. She doesn't give specifics. She only saves those for the bedroom as indicated by a brief S&M quip. She just tells Cyclops to look up and shoot and this time it's in a completely non-sexual way (or so it seems).

From here the X-men venture up. At this point Storm finally does something other than stand around and fill in Marvel's obligatory racial quota. She uses her powers to guide the X-men up through the complex and past more guards. Again, nobody says much. A lot of the witty remarks are left for Cyclops, Emma, and Wolverine. The past few issues have left Storm a glorified background character, which is actually a shift if your memory is still working because she had a lot more to say early on in this arc. You get the sense Ellis is going out of his way to make others shine or simply can't come up with anything worth-while for Storm to say. I refuse to believe a guy as talented as him would simply render Storm that useless. Her marriage to Black Panther already accomplished that.

Once up through the various levels, the X-men finally come face-to-face with the asshole behind this whole excessively delayed arc. With a name like Kaga it's hard to expect something big and Earth-shattering. If his name was something like Dicksmash McIroncock or Max Killmonger then maybe the expectations would be a little higher. That's probably a good thing because when the readers finally get a glimpse of the guy, they don't find the kind of evil super-genius that usually is associated with giant monsters. They see a withered old man who looks like he was on the wrong end of a gypsy curse from a Stephen King novel.

Enter Kaga, a mutant like the X-men. No really, he is a mutant. He's just not the pretty, Hollywood style mutant that graces the cover of Time Magazine and saves the world. His story isn't your typical evil super-villain. His mother survived the Hiroshima atomic bomb and as a result, he was born with the kind of deformities that would make the Elephant Man cringe. Yet he is still a mutant. He still calls himself a child of the atom. He stands in stark contrast to the glamorous image the X-men portray.

It's not the most unexpected twist for the book, but it does have some profound implications. The next few pages have Kaga basically whining about how the X-men have it so easy. Their mutations didn't cause their parents to retch every time they reached for them. He actually was given hope when he heard about the X-men. He thought he would find a place to belong. Unfortunately, he has perfect eyesight. When he saw the X-men and how pretty they all looked, that was like being told he won the anti-lottery where instead of a huge sum of money he would have the pain of being kicked in the balls inflicted on him to the value of several million. If every asshole needs a reason to be upset, this would be a pretty damn good one.

From here on out there's no more action. There's just talking. That's not a terribly bad thing because one of Warren Ellis's greatest strengths is that he can write awesome dialogue. However, it still lacks the punch because there's no final showdown. There's no last desperate attack from Kaga. Cyclops and the others are certainly inclined to slug him one for the bullshit he put them through. Instead, they opt for Magneto level cruelty. Kaga wants them to kill him because his life is shit and he doesn't fit in anywhere. Instead, they just plan to arrest him and give him the top notch medical care he neither wants nor deserves so that he lives a long life as a monster. I don't know if that's heroic or mean, but it's pretty damn cold.

Kaga's response is perfectly understandable. I would be pissed too if I found out someone was going to keep me alive when I was suffering and wanted to end it all. It's why I always have Jack Kavorkian on speed dial just in case. He tries to tempt them further by doing yet another cliched super-villain tactic. He pushes 'the button.' And no I don't mean the button that opens the secret passage way leading to the guys porno stash (that would be much better hidden). I mean the button that is supposed to cause a huge explosion that essentially gives the finger to the X-men.

This would have been a perfect moment for another epic escape montage. For a series like Astonishing X-men, it would be fitting because it's always been defined by the best kind of action. Sadly, that doesn't happen here. The most intense action that happens form this point on is Wolverine punches Kaga and knocks him out. That's pretty unfair. Wolverine is a self-healing killing machine. Kaga is a crippled old guy with the frailty of James Dobson's and Pat Robertson's sensibilities. It's an inglorious way to end the conflict even if it does work.

After this, there's not much else. Just a few more witty remarks about Cyclops wanting to set Wolverine on top of a bomb and that's it. There's no escape. There's no hint of what that button Kaga pushed does. The story just ends. It's like ending a movie before Angelina Jolie gets naked or before Bruce Willis kills the last bad guy. It feels...incomplete.

So what can be said about Astonishing X-men that hasn't already been said to this point? The arc is finally over after yet another round of painful delays. It's a good thing that Ellis seems to put in the same effort Joss Whedon did when he was writing the title. Whenever an issue finally does come out it's never half-assed. However, the weak ending makes all those delays seem all the more unnecessary. It feels like "We waited all that time for this? And it doesn't even fit into the recent events of Utopia and Second Coming? What the fuck?" I get that Astonishing is supposed to be it's own thing that doesn't directly play into what's going on in the other comics. But when it's not put into a context it feels like that non-adorable and slightly autistic step-child of the Brady Bunch. It's hard to really feel the impact when it doesn't even affect anything. Part of the appeal of these comics is watching these characters grow. In a book like this they can't do much growing.

Even so, this book has plenty to praise. Nothing should be taken away from the theme set up by Kaga. In a ways he's a real mutant because most mutants in real life and even parts of comics are deformed and downright ugly at times. The X-men with all their beauty and sexuality are the real freaks. They seem to forget how lucky they are when it comes to the genetic lottery and there's a good message there. It gives a nice raw feel that makes the reader remember that this is a Warren Ellis book and Warren Ellis books always kick a certain amount of ass.

Since the other X-men books have gone through so much in the time this arc has been delayed, I can't really condemn it nor can I praise it. Astonishing X-men is still a good read for those who don't want to deal with having to catch up on all the bullshit that's been going on in the other comics. The story won't blow you away like a million bucks at a strip club in the Czech Republic would. It'll at least tell a decent story. So for that I give Astonishing X-men #35 a respectable 3 out of 5. It's not ground breaking, but it's the kind of quality you want and expect from Warren Ellis. Nuff said.

Astonishing X-men #34 - Delayed Yet Only Half-Awesome

It seemed like only yesterday that Astonishing X-men was the alpha and omega of X-men comics. Under Joss Whedon, sure the books were delayed more frequently than Whitney Huston's divorce hearings, but whenever it did come out it was pure unadulterated awesome. Delays have always been the quickest way to make fans drill holes in their heads out of burning frustration, but so long as the wait is worth while we'll forgive you quicker than Kobe Bryant's wife. So when Astonishing X-men #34 finally came out (you know, the story that takes place before both Second Coming AND Utopia? Still not ringing any bells?) expectations were high. While Warren Ellis is a kick-ass writer, this comic wasn't so much a disappointment as it was a head-scratcher.

Now had this book come out on time when it was supposed to (which was actually close to a freakin' year ago), it would have had a much greater impact. But considering that it's coming out in the midst of a huge crossover like Second Coming, it might as well be pissing into the oncoming winds of a hurricane. Not only that, an entirely different Astonishing line called Xenogenesis came out before this book as well. Now you know a delay has gotten excessive when a spin-off has already been created and you haven't fucking finished the damn comic. Even though the tone of this story is very serious, because of it's lateness and it's inability to have even the slightest impact on the X-men continuity at large the grandeur is a joke even if the story itself is pretty awesome.

It starts out with a nasty confrontation between Beast and Scott. But wait, haven't we heard that before? Wasn't it a huge part of the Utopia arc which this story is supposed to take place before? Now if this actually did come out before then it would be a nice precursor, but sadly there's no impact here because readers have already seen where that story goes and seeing it here does nothing more than to evoke an exasperated groan. It does help that Ellis's dialogue is very witty and strong, but even that can't save it from the piss poor timing of this whole event.


Basically, Beast puts himself in hot water by revealing that all the research he did in regards to undoing M-Day (see Endangered Species) was hacked and the information was used to create these advanced bio-sentinels by Kaga, a wacked out geneticist who probably only has Mr. Sinister as a friend on facebook. Needless to say, Scott is pretty pissed. But unlike what happened in Utopia, he and Beast don't go Mortal Kombat on one another. In fact, the two start laughing and Beast even throws in a pee joke. Beast does something so few characters do in X-men anymore. He owns up to his mistakes while not apologizing for dong what he did under the circumstances. It would be so reassuring if readers didn't already know that these two would hate each other after the events of Utopia. But if you can remove that part of your brain that remembers this, it's still a pretty awesome scene.


While this dialogue is witty and fun to read, it does start to drag and it's on the verge of becoming boring. Then some action finds it's way in and a giant flying dinosaur attacks. No really, that's what happens. This is an X-men comic. Shit like that happens at least once a week and if you're not prepared for it you need to seriously consult your doctor about doing some additional brain scans (AMA and big insurance companies please send the check to Jack Fisher to that PO box in Baltimore I told you about when you get a chance).


But this dinosaur isn't just any dinosaur. It's the vampire life draining jerk off most X-fans will know as Sauron. It's been a while since he showed up in the books, but it's a nice moment that should at least give X-fans a semi-boner. The fight that follows is pretty intense and the art really shines here. It's definitely a step up from the fucking baseball uniforms used in Xenogenesis. Plus, Emma doesn't look like she's the slut version of the Elephant Man and manages to kick some ass by beating Sauron with her mind. It's not only awesome, but pretty damn hot.


While Sauron may have been defeated by a hot blond, he ended up doing plenty of damage because the flying ship the X-men were on was severely compromised and started going on a crash course. Oh yeah, did I mention that? This is all taking place on some flying hover craft. It's not the best place to have a fight even if it is pretty awesome. But at least this gives Cyclops a chance to make up for being a douche bag to Beast earlier. He formulates a plan on the spot, gives Emma a smooch, and heads off to carry it out. He's already looking cooler by any reasonable measure.


Cyclops then makes a visit to the hovering deformed head that had given them the answers that showed Beast's fuck-up earlier. To show he's not a complete jerk off he apologizes to the head before blowing it up. It may seem hallow, but at least the man is showing some sensibility. Even though it does seem contrived. While he's doing his thing Storm, Armor, and the others are heading back to the X-jet and bracing themselves for a rough impact that's sure to leave their bowls lodged somewhere between their liver and their thyroid.


The ship continues it's descent and that's where it gets ominous again. The ship doesn't just crash down towards some empty parking lot between a strip club and a McDonalds. It crashes into an opening in a mountain with an interior that looks like something Vincent Van Goah would dream up if he someone replaced his meds with LSD. It doesn't so much crash as it does land and makes for a fresh new scene, going from the darkness of a hover craft to the darkness of a mountain. It's about as novel as it sounds.


Along the way, the X-men get a glimpse of some nightmares pulled right from the head of Sarah Conner in terminator. A huge army of bio-machines are just hanging from the walls, not only carrying the ominous gaze of sentinels. But they're just as big as the sentinels as well. Never would there be a more appropriate time to shit one's own pants. It seems the battle with Sauron was just a prelude as is so often the case. There are still dozens of other sentinels to take down and at the rate of delays that this book endures, it looks like they'll be close to being done around America's tricentenial in 2076.


Of course, this is just a prelude. It sets the stage for a fight that looks epic, yet only to a point because we know they're going to survive and there will be absolutely no impact on the continuity. That alone is enough to take much of the punch from this otherwise awesome scene. At the same time, there's still a shot of an ominous onlooker who appears to be behind all this bullshit. He looks like the Professor, but again since this takes place before the events of Utopia and Second Coming there's about as much suspense as there is in a WNBA game between the two worst teams.


It is that lack of suspense and utter irrelevance that really brings this book down. By the end reading it seems more a chore than a dive into the pool of comic book awesome. Warren Ellis is a great writer who usually fills that pool well, but because of how late this book came out and how little it affects the X-men comics at large he might as well be trying to pump the awesome in with a teaspoon. It's a solid read, but it suffers from having too much dark ambiance and a weak context. The dialogue is as good as always and the art is several light-years better than Xenogenesis, but considering how long it took to get this to the stands it simply isn't enough to make up for it's shortcomings.

Now if this book came out before Utopia I would have no problem giving it a 4.5 or a perfect 5. But because Astonishing X-men has been so ridiculously delayed and so completely disregarded in the grand scheme of X-men, it's hard to really give it that kind of praise. This book could get away with it if it weren't parading around as something that happens in continuity. Yet this is supposed to take place in the greater 616 environment and because so much of that has been spoiled, it seems almost useless because there's no impact coming from it. Because of this, I can only give Astonishing X-men #34 a 3.5 out of 5. It's well-crafted and the art is great, but it's essentially a light fart in the middle of an erupting volcano. It would be best if this arc just ended as soon as possible so Astonishing can be allowed to assert itself in the new status quo after Second Coming. At least maybe then the awesome of these stories can be fully appreciated.

Astonishing X-men Xenogenesis - Good Idea and Bad Execution

I just had to give this a go before Second Coming. With so many other X-books in the middle of these dire, earth shattering arcs there really aren't a whole lot of comics that have the X-men in their more classic element. To fill that void Marvel seems to want to evoke the awesome of yesteryear in a title with the Astonishing label. It seems a little foolish that just calling it astonishing will make readers tap the awesome from the landmark Joss Whedon run, but can you blame them? This is a book by Warren Ellis, who is pound for pound one of the most consistently kick-ass writers for Marvel. He's been on a wide range of comics and he's been able to leave his mark on all of them, marking it with the vigor of a territorial wolf. He was the one given the Astonishing title after Joss Whedon left and while it seemed to be in good hands, the title just did not measure up and it's basically been relegated to the bargain bin between old DVDs of Biodome and Batman Forever. So when the concept for Xenogenesis was announced Ellis had a chance to start fresh, but the end result reeks of a tuna sandwich left in the glove box of a car in Las Vegas.

Right off the bat it's hard to wrap your head around this book. For one, it's not even clear if this book is in continuity. It takes place while the team is in San Fransisco, so it's after Messiah Complex. The main plot centers around an African town with an abnormal level of mutant births, so it seems to imply it happens after Second Coming. However, Beast is still with the team and it's already well-known that he's left the X-men for the Avengers. The whole premise seems to blare the old computer error "Does Not Computer." Even in interviews the editors won't say whether or not this book is in continuity. If it is it's in a very fucked up part of it between the Clone Saga and One More Day. This would be completely forgivable if the story was decent. However, right off the bat it's pretty weak.


As previously mentioned, the story revolves around this small African town that has an unusual number of mutant births. Storm has come to visit the X-men, taking a break from being the Queen of Wakanda and part time fluffier for the Black Panther. At some point along the way she changed her style to give herself the classic mohawk look from the 80s. For those who remember this look of Storm, they'll recall the nerdgasm inducing days when she was more badass and right up there with Wolverine in terms of kicking ass. Now as a glorified house wife, it looks fucking goofy on her. Like she lost a bet with Emma and let Wolverine style her hair when he was plastered.


Hair jokes aside, she meets up with the others at the breakfast table to discuss the mission. This is where one of Ellis's strengths show. He's always wielded dialogue the same way sushi chefs wield knives. The wordage and tone is perfect for the characters. He really captures Emma Frost's snarky attitude, which seems to have been watered down by writers like Matt Fraction to make her more of a good girl for Cyclops, is maintained and demonstrated in all sorts of wonderful ways. But the real fun comes with the dialogue between Storm and Cyclops.

Historically, Cyclops and Storm are the most powerful voices in the X-men besides Charles Xavier. When one of them is unable to lead, the other is always there to pick up the slack. In addition they are really in tuned with one another in terms of intent and understanding. They are unable to hide each others' subtleties and that makes for some nice witty remarks that give an overall sense of fun to the comics. And really, isn't that with comics should be all about?


It's cute. If only the comic would end there because it just goes downhill from that point. This is where the X-men go from a serious superhero team to a total fucking joke. It leads one to understand why this book doesn't appear to be (and probably shouldn't be) in continuity with the rest of the books. On the very next page the X-men prepare to fly to Africa to investigate. Now one would expect for them to go in full force, carrying themselves with the same heroic aura that has made them such a present in Marvel. But anyone expecting that is in for a couple of painful nut shots because for this mission, they're going at it in baseball uniforms. That's not a joke and that's not a cute euphemism. They are literally going out on a mission looking like a minor league softball team.


Now Ellis tries to justify this as having the X-men not cause too much of a stir. But someone as creative as him should be able to think of something better than fucking baseball uniforms. It's a bad omen because everything just goes downhill from there. The rest of the comic is basically the team chatting away on the X-jet, talking about the mission and Africa and even throwing in some politics for good measure. Because that's what your typical fanboy wants to read about when they pick up an X-men comic...an expose on African politics. It's about as interesting as it sounds. You would probably be better off giving yourself a concussion, checking into a hospital, and letting them drug you.

This is made even more painful by the nauseating art. Now I get that some books like to have a specific style associated with them. Astonishing wouldn't be able to distinguish itself if it didn't look unique. Well here it's about as unique as a deformed raccoon. The coloring, style, and overall outline of the characters is a joke. Storm and Emma look like barbie dolls that were shoved into the microwave and dipped in pancake batter. The men are about as proportional as Oprah's diet plan. The coloring so uninspiring it should be patented as a treatment for insomnia. I get that this comic is meant to be different, but art like this can only be balanced out with a quality story and since that story is sub-par it only emphasizes the sheer ugly-ass breadth of this art. There's no other way to say it. This art is possibly the only art that makes a character as hot as Emma Frost look like as appealing as a dead horses anus. They try to make up for it by blatantly showing off her boobs, but even the power of cleavage has it's limits.


The comic ends with a yawn and not a bang. Basically, they keep yaking away and do a quick pass over the Serengeti for Storm. It was a nice gesture and all, but totally unnecessary. Then they land and they encounter a bunch of guys with guns. That's when the comic ends. There's no action, no fighting, no X-men kicking ass as we're so used to seeing. It just ends and you die a little inside knowing you spend this money on a comic book with Warren Ellis as the writer and got chewed up chunk of dog shit wrapped in some fancy paper.


Now it would be wrong to say that Astonishing X-men Xenogenesis is the worst X-comic ever written. It still has a long way to go to reach the sheer shit storm that was Ultimate X. This comic does actually have some redeeming qualities. The dialogue between the characters and the overall characterization is spot on and even with lousy art, that's a big plus. There are comics with far greater eye candy that have such piss poor characterization it seems like a crime to put that kind of art with it. Still, Warren Ellis is better than this. He's capable of so much more and this really feels like an unnecessary comic. It's like Marvel is just trying to put an Astonishing title out there and hope that the name is good enough to sell. The sad part is it may work to a point, but if this is the quality they manage then even the most dogged half-brained consumer will opt for something a little better in the long run.

So what's the final verdict? I'm not going to give this issue the worst possible score. For it's small benefits and major drawbacks, it deserves a 2 out of 5. There is room for improvement, but until the art improves Astonishing is going to be the eye gougingly ugly step-child of X-men comics. Nuff said.