Hearing Warren Ellis take this title over was just a good sign for me. After finishing Whedon’s entire run on this series, for the forth time, we go from one great writer to another. Hell it helps more that after reading Ellis’s last two Thunderbolts issue, I’m like: ‘This title is going to kick some major ass!’…..Then I read the issue, and I was like: ‘……eh…..’

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think this is terrible, hell it’s his first issue. You can just go up in arms (like some people have already on this site) and state that this series is over. But man, Ellis cant write a good Emma and Beast can he? Trying to read their lines are a little cringing, just it just seems like Ellis is going for the Whedon jokes…and they just weren’t working. That being said, he writes a good Armor and Storm, so maybe they will be bright spots on his run.

Now I must admit, I have never heard of Bianchi before. But after looking at the cover and a few teaser pages online…I thought: ‘Looks almost better then Cassaday!’. But then after reading a whole issue, again it just seems ‘eh’…I dont think it’s terrible, it not as bad as the ‘art’ (or so it’s called) on Ultimates 3. But damn some of the characters look really off model, first time seeing Wolvie was just hard to sallow. Some people look too thin, and other times they look too bulgy. What Cassaday did with his run was making the art look simple, but showing how much detail there was in the enviroments. Here Bianchi is just trying to hard to act like Alex Ross and it doesnt look good at all. Everything has a darker, evening brownish, tone and it just wasn’t good to look at.

Overall, it’s a pretty bad way to start a run. Considering people are claiming that the Whedon’s Astonishing is a modern classic….Ellis was going to have problems from the start to match the quality. But hell he has had a shit load of time to make this work, and hopefully things just up like a firecracker for issue 26. If not, then I would have never guessed to drop this Astonishing title if you caught me ten issues ago.