Buy Pile Report: X-Men

The two books that I just had to put off work here in the office for were Astonishing X-Men #23 and Uncanny X-Men #492, for obvious reasons.

And Astonishing lived up to its name. While it's seemed at times that the X-Men running around on the Breakworld have been aimless and ineffective, suddenly the X-Men strategy of old came through in spades for this penultimate issue of Joss Whedon's story.

I won't go and ruin the surprise for you yet, since the comic has still only been on the shelves for a few minutes, but Wow Wow WOW. Whedon not only takes the X-Men and suddenly puts them into a position to win this impossible fight, but he does in in such a way that there is still mystery left to uncover in the final issue. And while I won't tell you yet whether Scott Summers survives or not, all I will say is that I am one happy Cyclops fan.

Uncanny X-Men, however, kind of sputtered. Don't get me wrong, I'll forgive the issue since it is only the second installment in a grand story, but nothing really happens here other than more chess pieces finding their starting point on the board. Cyclops asserts control in the issue (in a rather harsh way as far as Xavier is concerned), and calls in the help of Jamie Maddrox's team (something we knew would happen, but it did have to be shown in the pages, after all).

Other than a short skirmish between a few X-Men and the ex-Acolytes, this issue was also bereft of action. As I said, in the grand scheme of things I will excuse this issue... but reading this after reading Astonishing was a bit of a drag.