The Whedon/Cassaday run on X-Men has been an absolute highlight of the franchise for a good 4 years now. Admittedly, it’s only put out two years of stories in that time, but when it’s this good, is it really worth complaining? In any case, the point is now moot because from now on, the story is complete and memories of lateness and delays will fade away, leaving only the pages to speak for itself. And what will they say?

It will say: Action-comedy and space-opera sci-fi. Whedon and Cassaday ended the run playing up to their strengths. Even if Ord and the Breakworld weren’t especially interesting concepts, Whedon’s skill at storytelling and dialogue made the readers accept them. He brought Colossus back from the dead and managed to justify it – not least by essentially shuffling off Kitty in return. As we know, Whedon can’t put two characters together and let there be a happy ending – although he’s apparently not above an unhappy beginning, as he sets up Agent Brand and Beast. Hopefully, someone (Ellis?) will build on that relationship, since it’s been a long time since any of the X-Men had external romances.

During the course of the finale, every character gets a moment of brilliance, and while Kitty’s self sacrifice overshadows them all there are no losers on this X-Men team. Even Armor gets a nice closing scene at the end of the issue. Whedon’s writing is technically flawless and, in a way, it makes you wonder what Astonishing might’ve been like had he tackled some wider topics in the X-Men universe.

Cassaday’s artwork really hits a high note on this issue, with brilliant versions of a whole bunch of Marvel heroes (Whedon goes to amusing and unusual lengths to explain why the X-Men are the only ones who can save the world, which is something writers often gloss over.) Kitty’s planet-saving moments are depicted with an amazing sense of scale, and it’s just a shame the images in question weren’t splash-pages. Since they padded out the back of the book with a selection of covers, it’s not like they didn’t have the space for it.

One thing is certain – with Whedon’s X-Men and Runaways commitments now over, someone needs to get him straight to work on a Spider-Man arc. If it’s good enough for Kevin Smith…