A(st) O(nishing)! Let’s go!

I knew it. I knew it, I knew it, I knew it! I knew that soon after the Whedon team left Astonishing, no matter who the writer, Astonishing X-Men would revert to just another cryptic X-Book. I was right.

Don’t get me wrong – I think that this is a good comic, and I intend to keep reading. But I miss the brilliant pocket universe that this book used to occupy. I miss the ability to read an entire arc without having to scour my memory or flip through Wikipedia for a half-hour. I like Ellis, and I like this book, but I don’t love it.

What I can’t take is the production values of this issue. I am unsure as to where the art process fails, but it does. This book is washed out to the point that it is not easy to read. I doubt that Bianchi is to blame, as the preceding issues are not this unreadable. However, the inks are just a little inconsistent and sketchy, and the colors are terrible. I get it – gray. Not cartoony. Not vibrant. Gray. Washed out. Muddy. Undersaturated. Illegible. Whatever.