For the first two issues of his run, it seemed that Warren Ellis’s approach to Astonishing was working against him. His firmly sci-fi take on the X-Men moved with consistency and imagination, but its need to ground the revitalised team as the writer’s plots rooted themselves meant that the book was in danger of being overshadowed by Matt Fraction’s Uncanny. While Grant Morrison resolved a similar problem by presenting a visually radical take on the team, Ellis and Simone Bianchi were hamstrung by the need to maintain a superficial consistency with the title’s Joss Whedon incarnation. With the required slow start out of the way, however, the book is now free to fly.

Compared to the previous two issues, there’s a far greater density of story here, with the team taking stock and greeting a familiar face before arriving at a novel location. This quickening of the pace allows Ellis’s trademark big ideas to keep on coming, giving the writing a feeling of richness that matches Bianchi’s art. What really sets the issue apart is the addition of humour. Not the comedy pratfalls which traditionally turn up every so often in the book’s change-of-pace moments. Not wisecracks and quips. A proper joke that briefly becomes integral to the issue, as Cyclops abandons the main storyline in order to conduct a rigorous investigation into whether he said “fucking” to Agent Brand. There’s an undercurrent of hysterical glee to this sequence, which never quite breaks the fourth wall. Ellis manages to hang a serious point about the entirely reasonable nature of the new unreasonable Cyclops onto the exchange, while having Summers defend the parallel universe plot against allegations that it doesn’t belong in a X-book.

The purpose of the Ghost Boxes comes as no surprise- alternate realities have long been one of the writer’s obsessions. Although Ellis’s attempts to tie the mystery to mutation don’t entirely ring true, it’s a far more appropriate inclusion than Whedron’s injection of space opera into the title. Compared to Uncanny’s CSI gloss, Ellis’s psuedo-realistic take on super heroics comes as a contrast. You wouldn’t call the book gritty, but there’s refreshing realism at work here. A flight to China is a serious undertaking requiring much preparation, not just an excuse for a splash page of the Blackbird. The carefully picked cast allows the selection of the perfect voice for any scene, although Armour still comes across as an unconvincing Kitty Pryde/ Jubilee stock character. In the light of the book’s sudden weightiness, hopefully this minor blemish will soon be corrected.

Tags: Simone Bianchi, Warren Ellis, X-Men
Publisher: Marvel