Astonishing X-Men Vol. 1: Gifted

Sorry to post two X-Men comic reviews so close, but I breezed through this storyline in like a day. As I mentioned below, there have only been a couple of X-Men storylines I've loved, and Joss Whedon and John Cassaday's Astonishing X-Men run is one of them. Whedon is terrific at small character moments and dialogue (and also big action scenes and twists), and Cassaday can draw some real purty pictures. Now that they are done and all four storylines are collected in trade I recommend picking it up, because it won't be six goddamn months between issues, thank you John Cassaday. This first collection involves the team dealing with the aftermath of Grant Morrison's run (which is something else I love - this comic actually treats Morrison's run as though it happened, while the rest of Marvel just retconned it out), and also touches on the idea of a "cure" for mutants which is discovered by some scientist. There's a lot of political discussion regarding whether mutants would be forced to take the cure etc, but also there's a lot of punching and explosions and one fastball special.

RATING: 87%