W00t. Over in comic-book land we've known this was coming for a while, but we're all still very excited -- it's bound to sell a gazillion more copies than normal (Of course, the best-selling comic in the U.S. rarely exceeds 150,000 copies in any given month... it'll be interesting to see what kind of spike Joss brings in), and likely not suck in the bargain...

doyoufeelloved | February 18, 07:02 CET

creamed.my.pants.

narky | February 18, 07:12 CET

we broke their site...again.

jack knight | February 18, 07:22 CET

I can't stand most comic books, especially superhero stuff like X-Men. I only read Strangers in Paradise, Liberty Meadows, and The Goon. But I guess I'll have to add Astonishing X-Men to my list.

Is he only writing a six-part mini-series? Has a release date been set? I NEED INFO!

(I'm almost not depressed now.)

Invisible Green | February 18, 07:43 CET

Most people are saying that he'll be on the book for a year, Invisible Green, but I don't know where, exactly, that info is from.

doyoufeelloved | February 18, 07:46 CET

Cool. I checked out John Cassaday's artwork at his official website, and I have to say, I don't especially like it. But if the plot and dialogue are good (which, with Joss writing, is almost guaranteed), then I'll still read it.

Invisible Green | February 18, 08:08 CET

joss said in a short statement somewhere that he was going to do 12 issues, Invisible Green.

narky | February 18, 08:28 CET

Does anyone know where to buy comics online? I suddenly have this need to have comic books shipped to Japan.

I'm pretty excited, but I wonder if Joss won't be frustrated at the end, for reasons that I detailed earlier...in a franchise where characters can't really change or die, I wonder if Joss will not get frustrated about that...

mchan | February 18, 09:03 CET

You can order comics online at Things From Another World.

lalaa | February 18, 09:26 CET

While I prefer TPBs as the medium for comics, I think I might have to get the single issues for this... hopefully they come out more regularly than Fray did [grr]

biki | February 18, 09:35 CET

Wow so it was true. So much for Quesada denying it all recently. Cool beans! Joss is good with the comic medium as a writer. And Cassaday is good. He's the penciler of Warren Ellis' 'Planetary' that Joss is a big fan of. He wrote a forward in a Planetary trade once, singing it's praises.

Really happy with this. Curious to see which characters he'll get to tackle and what he'll do with them. Grant Morrisson's swan song left me greatly underwhelmed.

EdDantes | February 18, 10:15 CET

Another online comic book store is G-mart. Their FAQ is here.

nemo | February 18, 10:23 CET

Well, Quesada wasn't reeeally denying it. All he said was that Whedon and Cassaday wouldn't be on New X-Men. Which is technically true, since Astonishing is something unto itself, and New is reverting back to plain ol' X-Men.

And Grant Morrison's swan song isn't over yet. 2 more issues, even if they are massively far in the future and a little...odd.

friarfunk | February 18, 10:30 CET

Oh yeah you're right, that future stuff. I was referring to the Magneto storyline which dissappointed me to say the least. And really as you say, this future stuff is a little odd. And seems kind of pointless. Nothing to distinguish it from a zillion other 'alternate/future' storylines X-Men and marvel in general have seen. I'm kinda just waiting for it to be over.

No as far as I'm concerned, it's time for a fresh wind to blow through all this. Very curious what Joss is going to do. I do hope he gets Rogue as a character. Given his track record for strong female characters I'd like to see what he does with her.

Say, anyone here ever read Joss' original X-Men movie script?

EdDantes | February 18, 10:42 CET

mchan- if characters can never change in comics why are the formerly-married Cyclops and the foremerly-evil White Queen heading the school together? i think Marvel is working hard, and succeeding, at breaking the status quo.

edDantes- i'm not sure about Rogue, she's gotten so messed up i wouldn't mind seeing her sent off forever. she's like cordelia that way. i don't think she even has powers anymore or something, whatever. on the other hand, i think Beast is a character that would excel under joss's pen.

narky | February 18, 11:11 CET

I don't really read comics (actually, the only thing I've really read is the Sandman books)... Is there going to be loads of backstory involved in this? Would it be tough for a new reader to start reading at this point? I know it's issue #1, so I'm hoping not.

zixyer | February 18, 11:43 CET

I suppose this is great news if you're into comics. But I'd rather have his stuff on TV where I (and everybody else that doesn't read comics :) can enjoy it.

Caroline | February 18, 12:08 CET

Invisible Green: I'm Not sure about the the release date but it will be sometime in May. SOmeone did state somewhere that Joss signed for 12 issues, which will be around 2 or 3 arcs(the first one as estated in the solicitation list will have 6 parts). He might or might not extend his run latter on.

Joss in non-buffyverse mainstream comic may work well. JMS is doing what? Like 2 or 3 books in a monthly basis, another few he still had wrap over at Top Cow and still kinda run a TV SHow along the way. He might get late a issue or two, but I just hope it doesn't happen a Fray crisis, where we'll have to wait like a year two get the follow up issue.

I'm really curious about which characters he'll be handling. I was wishing he would get to write either Emma or Jean. But the first one is already in one of the other books, and the latter, well it's dead... again....
(Time for another OMWF quote: "And I've died twice....")

Numfar PTB | February 18, 15:01 CET

"Say, anyone here ever read Joss' original X-Men movie script?"

Did he write an original script? I thought he'd just been brought in to add jokes and stuff...

forcorreo | February 18, 15:41 CET

Ok, looked it up myself. He was brought in to "'Come in and punch up the big climax, the third act...'"

Don't know what all exactly he did write though

[ edited by forcorreo on 2004-02-18 13:56 ]

forcorreo | February 18, 15:53 CET

Supposedly he was asked to "punch up" the script, but he didn't like any of what he read, so he re-wrote the whole thing. The studio didn't like his take and used only one line, the one where Cyclops asks how he knows it's Wolverine, and he responds "You're a dick."
Supposedly the entire script can be found online, but I can't locate it. Haven't tried Kazaa yet, but I don't like Kazaa anyway.

RootBoy42 | February 18, 18:46 CET

he also wrote the worst line of the film "do you know what happens to a toad when its struck by lightning? The same thing that happens to everything else."

except he meant for it to delivered off-handedly while Storm was walking away, instead of all scary and weird like it ended up.

P.S.- Shadowcat would also be great under Joss. jewish, computer genius..willow anyone?

narky | February 18, 20:39 CET

Yeah, those two lines are the only ones left in there of Joss'. Which is ironic because they had indeed hired him to just puinch it up. But yeah he wrote a full script. I know some people say they read it online but I can never find it.

And when Joss explained it, how that lightning line was supposed to've been delivered (second part after the lightning struck too) I could suddenly see it, the way one of the Buffy/Angel actors could have delivered it. Just an off-hand casual funny in between. And instead they make it this grandiose moment with Berry's awful delivery.

And yeah, narky, Rogue has been messed up. More reason for me why I'd like Joss on her. (No pun intended) And Beast has been kind of messed up too at least physically. Morrisson's reasoning that his name was 'beast' and should therefore look more bestial like Vincent from 'Beauty & the Beast' always felt a tad childish to me. I suppose he could've been written worse, but a lot of it felt a bit obvious and forced to me.

EdDantes | February 18, 21:08 CET

!!! Dude, Morrison's Beast has been my favorite handling of Hank for ages and ages. (Err, getting off-topic now... I'm sure Joss would be great with him too...?)

And re: backstory for the people who mentioned it as a concern -- I imagine Marvel will urge Joss to write for as broad an audience as possible. The current writer, Grant Morrison, has steered clear of "this happened 200 issues ago" pitfalls and has written all the characters in such a way that you could understand them completely after just a few pages; hopefully, that style of plotting will become the norm on the X-Books. If not, well, I'm sure there are plenty of X-Men fans who would LOVE to answer every single question that ever occurs to you, in great detail. ;-D

doyoufeelloved | February 18, 21:16 CET

sigh

OK, minority opinion, but: I'm sorry to see it.

Why?

Because Planetary, after major delays, is just starting to come out regularly; and I'm highly doubtful that Cassidy can draw two books on a regular basis.

Oh, well -- it's a changeable world.

bookrats | February 18, 21:32 CET

Numfar, if you go to url=http://www.newsarama.com/pages/Marvel/Ast_Unc_Covers.htm you can see the cover for Astonishing #1, and you'll notice a few familiar faces in the group shot, including Emma.

Haunt | February 19, 00:31 CET

whoa, beast AND shadowcat- how right was I?? but seriously, those two plus cyclops, emma, and wolverine. thats the perfect jossian team. and i also like thats its basically the New X-Men team, just carried over to a new title. too often during these "reloads" al the teams get such drastic nonsensical changes, but here its just the addition of shadowcat(at least i think thats shadowcat..brown hair and all), so yay.

narky | February 19, 01:22 CET