X-stuff

Comics post! Flee while you can!

I took the opportunity this weekend to re-read most of Brian K. Vaughn's run on Ultimate X-Men, and came to a conclusion I'd been pondering for awhile: Ultimate X-Men is my favorite X-book right now. And yes, I am including Astonishing in that statement. ("Dangerous" was a pretty weak arc, when you look at it all together, with really lousy pacing.)

I'm sure new readers can and do read Ultimate X-Men without reading the mainstream Marvel X-titles, but I think they're missing out on something those of us who are familiar with X-continuity are enjoying: the way Vaughn keeps fucking with us. I don't want to ruin it if you haven't read it and perhaps one day will, but if you go into this run thinking it'll just be a retread of what's happened in the original books, you'll have another thing coming.

Oh, and it's really good. Not high-octane great like the Morrison stuff. Just the straight-up, consistently entertaining superhero soap opera that's been the X-formula for years. These stories aren't modern classics, but they are consistently entertaining. Over in Astonishing, Whedon nails the characters, sure, but "Dangerous" has a lot of pacing problems, an unsatisfying ending, and a lot of plot holes and continuity glitches. Not to mention Xavier acting way out of character.