We're now into the second month of Reload, and the newer books are beginning to hit their stride.

Astonishing X-Men has got off to a decent start.  If the editorial direction for the books is to go back to basics, then Whedon and Cassaday are handling it the right way.  The book picks up from the starting point Morrison left behind, shifts style to a more traditional approach, but has enough style of its own to stop it seeming like a mere retread.  It's clearly heavily inspired by the Claremont stories of the eighties, but it isn't attempting to clone them.

Whedon has spent his first couple of issues setting up his core cast and establishing where the tensions lie.  For the most part, he's got the right balance between playing off the history and stopping that history from overpowering the story.  It makes perfect sense, for example, for Kitty to be unusually wary of Emma Frost, given that Emma was the first villain she encountered.  But to follow the idea Whedon's setting up, you don't require to know anything more about the story; and what you do need to know is suitably explained.

It looks like Whedon is particularly keen on Kitty and Emma.  That shouldn't really come as much surprise.  The heroic teenage girl and the reformed villain are two of his favourite character types, and here he's got two of them just waiting to be used.  His Emma possibly veers a bit too far in the direction of villainous ambivolence rather than mere arrogance - after all, Emma hasn't actually done anything all that bad in over a decade.  Still, there's mileage in the idea that she's conscious of not being cut out for the role.

Granted, there's nothing desperately new or innovative being added to the mythos here.  We have a new villain, but thus far he's not doing anything particularly novel.  The idea of wiping out mutant powers as a medical cure has been flirted with before.  Plus, there seems to be a glaring plot hole - Ord was apparently trying to draw out the X-Men, but why would he expect them to turn up in response to a kidnapping which has nothing to do with them?  The story makes some play of the fact that Cyclops is taking the team on this mission precisely because it's not the sort of thing they normally do, and he's trying to reposition them as heroes in the public eye.  So either Ord knows something we don't, which is possible, or Ord has just fluked his way into success with a wildly optimistic plan.

But for the most part, I can let these problems slide.  It may not be the most ambitious comic in the world, but it has a clear idea of what it's trying to do, and it pretty much succeeds.  Whedon has nailed the characters, and John Cassaday's art is typically beautiful, adding a degree of delicacy to the story. 

If this is the direction Marvel want to go in, then this is certainly the way to do it.

Rating: A-

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