Astonishing X-Men 25. Ellis is not my favorite writer, but two things are going to make me stay with this book, at least in the short term. First, I think Bianchi is a really interesting artist (especially on a book like this); I am not sure I love him, and I have no idea how Wolverine dislocated his hip on the cover, and I do not know why everyone is doing "Big Arms" when they appear in street clothes, and the muddy colors might drive me up the wall, but it sort of has my attention. Though the process of writing that sentence sort of made me change my mind about him. Second, I am a sucker for the X-Men. I am reading Claremont's entire run now thanks to Jason Powell, I invested heavily in Morrison and Whedon's runs, and Ellis is clearly set up as the new heir to the prestige stand-alone core-character X-Men run: he immediately makes fun of Whedon for the name Armor, and makes the costume choices central as Morrison and Whedon did on their first issues. The story does not have my attention at all now -- a serial killer, a genetic mutant, and spaceships (god, I do not share Ellis's fascination with spaceships, science, and random violence), especially as it lacks Morrison and Whedon's big theme openings, but I will stick with it.
Does anyone remember when Warren Ellis was all about how people who wrote superhero comics were total sellouts? And how, when someone on his forum asked him about how Morrison writing New X-Men made him feel, said "What can I say? Sometimes your friends fuck ugly girls." The more I think about it the more I think I did NOT like Astonishing X-Men 25. Still: sticking with it at least through the first arc.
Batman 678. After the conference at the Met I feel like I am seeing costumes issues everywhere -- but in both the comics I got this week, it really does seem important. My interest in this very messy, ugly and uneven run continues upwards -- the last page of this issue is the best page I have seen so far in the run, and I kind of wish Morrison had somehow started his run with it. It is everything I want to see in a Morrison Batman comic book. The magical black homeless guy ghost is kind of lame, as is much of the book, but Morrison tosses in enough interesting images and ideas -- I particularly like Hurt in the Batman outfit -- that I don't regret buying this series exactly.
In Comics News -- well actually, for no reason I can understand, I quit reading Newsarama after the format change. Something about it gets on my nerves. Let me know if I am missing anything this week.
Review, Discuss, and Recommend this week's comics. Buffy and Angel people -- feel free to spoil stuff even though I quit getting those books in issue format (and possibly in any format).
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