Radiant Comics

I was ambivalent about the fist volume “The Astonishing X-Men” and now here comes volume two reprinting issues 12-24 of the series. And guess what. I’m still ambivalent. This book is like the little girl with the little curl right in the middle of her forehead…

I’m a long time comic book reader. I haven’t been reading the X-Men with any regularity since the late Eighties but I have a passing knowledge of things that have happened in the world of the mutants. And I’m a hardcore comic reader. Still I had almost no idea what was going on in the beginning of this book. And I read the previous twelve issues! A casual reader would put this down all confused.

Characters are introduced into the story and not even named. The plot of the first few issues is so incomprehensible that I still don’t know what happened. Either the X-Men were attacked by the Hellfire club or they weren’t. The reason for this confusion is the development of “mind powers” in the Marvel universe.

In the old days super heroes and villains with psychic powers could move things with their minds, force others to bend to their will (which usually made the victim fight much less effectively than if he were fighting for himself), see things, or cause their victims to feel some pain in their heads.

Not anymore. Due to power creep now psychics can pretty much do anything. They can basically change reality for any number of people. They can even make people behave how they want them to by “implanting” some wacky psychic instructions at any time in the past and the person will have no memory of it. Psychics are basically walking plot devices now.

So the first part of the book has two psychics and the X-Men weaving intricate plans. Or maybe none of it happened. I don’t know because they kept explaining plot twists by saying it was all in someone’s head. A psychic did it.

After that part of the story abruptly ends the X-Men go off into space and the book gets better for a while. Not great but there are some good plot and script moments. And the story generally makes sense even though it involves a prophesy. I usually hate stories with prophesies in them.

The art is generally pretty good though I have to say I’ve seen Cassaday do better. Maybe it was my general over all confusion with the story and it wasn’t his fault but the art seemed off in places. Could just be me.

Oh, and I thought the ending was dumb.

So there you go. Some good stuff and some bad stuff. Just like the first volume. No, I think this volume was more incomprehensible.