OK... now I'm a little more astonished. Though I'm a huge fan of Whedon and Cassaday's work on other projects, I was a little let down by their first issue of Astonishing X-Men. However, the second issue hits me right where I hoped the first one would. Whedon is doing a nice job of giving the old school fans some classic superhero action and following up on some of the ideas that Grant Morrison introduced as well, and if the plot is a tad on the familiar side in broad strokes (mutant cure discovered, internal team conflict, mysterious new adversary), well, that was the case with Morrison's run as well. Even Cassaday's work, which I found beautiful but maybe not ideally suited to the tone of the book, seems to fit better this issue, although the costumes are still ugly as sin.
The really big selling point of this issue, surprisingly, is not Whedon's famous flair for dialogue and characterization. Oh, it's there, to be sure, but the big selling point this issue is a good old fashioned action sequence, one that pits the X-Men against a new foe and his soldiers for the lives of some hostages, and it is a thing of beauty to behold. Cassaday lays it out perfectly, and there are some really terrific freeze frame moments, notably Wolverine's entrance and the sense of a well-choreographed battle plan that we get when the X-Men in general start their attack. What really got me, though, was the return of a surprise character we haven't seen a lot of, who gets a really spectacular visual moment and re-introduction to the book, and it doesn't hurt that he's a fan-favorite, and one of those fans happens to be me.
Leaving aside an action sequence sharper than we've seen in the X-Men in quite some time (much as I loved Morrison's run, action wasn't really his specialty), Whedon does lay on some interesting character stuff as well. He's walking an interesting line here, the same line other X-Men "Reload" writers are, trying to continue what Morrison introduced when, really, all that he introduced wasn't entirely clear by the end. Whedon has done some very interesting stuff with Beast's continuing self-doubt over his secondary mutation, the fallout of Jean's latest death and the reaction to Emma Frost joining the team that we never really got when Morrison brought her onboard. The internal tension in the team feels natural, and though my favorite aspect is Kitty Pryde serving as the doubter of Frost's redemption as a hero, I like all of it, including the Cyclops-Wolverine rivalry taking a more overt turn.
The other thing I get from Astonishing X-Men #2, which I didn't really see in #1, is a sense of a larger story. Whedon is onboard for 12 issues, and that means to me he's probably got one or two big stories in mind, and we start to see the shape of them in this issue, with the introduction of an interesting new bad guy (who benefits from a much slicker design from Cassaday than any of the X-Men got) and the continuing build of the mutant cure subplot, along with the specter raised that the two of them might somehow be related. The smaller stories of how the X-Men interact look like the heart of the book, and what Whedon really brings that will set his run apart, but the plots and action are important, and we see a lot more of that in this issue.
I really had little doubt, even as I was lukewarm on Astonishing X-Men #1, that eventually this book would capture my interest at a stronger level. I was surprised that the turnaround happened this fast, but it seems that Whedon, once he had laid the groundwork, started right in with what I felt the book was missing, and that Cassaday's work is much more suited to a more action-oriented style of storytelling as well. Had this been a double-sized opening issue instead of the regular size books, I imagine I would have been much more impressed, but Whedon and Cassaday manage to include everything I think the book should be in the contents of two issues at any rate, and live up to the expectations I had when I first heard about their run.
