I don’t know if there was a book this week that I was looking forward to more or was more disappointed by.  In most ways this is a book almost designed for me.  I love everything I read by Kieron Gillen, I really dig Abigail Brand and the whole idea of S.W.O.R.D., and Beast has always been by far my favorite character in all of comics.  I mean, this book is meant for me. Yet, even though the bonus story with McKelvie was actually pretty good and if that was all I had read I might actually consider picking this book up again, the Sanders art on the main story was just too awful to deal with.

The Cassaday cover to this issue shows the characters I was looking for and had grown attached to from his run on Astonishing. The McKelvie bonus story showed characters I could accept and live with.  But, Sanders’ take on Beast, Brand, and Sydren is just wrong.  Beast has been transformed into a giant blue Airedale Terrier, Sydren looks to me like some kind of skeletal Bassett Hound, and Agent Brand’s face is rendered differently on almost every page.

I almost never criticize the art in a book, even the worst art tends to be better than I can muster, and rarely is it ever bad enough to really ruin a book for me.  In this instance though I had too much invested in these characters to see them reinterpreted like this, and now I’m gonna drop the title I was born to love.  Sorry, Kieron.