Okay, okay. I'll go buy it already. Sheesh... I was gonna buy it anyway! Really!

I fell off the X-Men wagon 15 years ago... I'm almost AFRAID Joss will make me want to start my comics habit again.

zencat | August 04, 14:31 CET

I'm trying to be patient and wait for the trade, but it's not coming out until February. *sigh*

luka | August 04, 15:32 CET

I read X-Men for 15 years but gave it up about 5 or 6 years ago and really had no interest or intention of diving back in again. Your fears of Joss making X-Men a "must read" title are, sadly, warranted. I know I'm committed to at least the 12-issue arc Joss is in for. If he continues beyond that, I probably will too. Bastard!

Haunt | August 04, 16:24 CET

I'm basically in the same boat. I still have a number of writers that I follow in comics but I jumped off the X-Men at the Age of Apocalypse and I was cringeing nigh constantly since Claremont was dumped off the books. It just wasn't until Apocalypse that I said 'this is ridiculous' and gave up. Sadly, imo, neither Claremont nor the X-Men recovered after he departed. Joss' work on Astonishing has been exceptional, but I'm very much in the 'not going to buy the other X-books, Marvel, nice try' camp on this.

zeitgeist | August 04, 17:19 CET

"Oh, I should mention right now that I might be a little biassed as a HUGE Kitty Pryde fan..."

He's got two asses?

Invisible Green | August 04, 17:34 CET

I'm a huge (but relatively new) comics fan, and having just recently gotten into X-Men, I love the stories Joss is writing. I went back and re-read FRAY and loved that, too. Then, the other day I saw that Gabe and Tycho at Penny Arcade are looking at doing some sort of post-apocalyptic Western-themed comic. They do so many "expanded universe" one-shots for games and movies they like, and they're all pretty darned good except for occasionally soft writing. So it got me thinking: if Joss wrote a script or storyboard for a Firefly one-shot, and got them to draw and ink it, would it not just totally rock?

My thought was, "Why yes! Yes, it would totally rock." I can't figure out how to plant the seed of the idea in their heads, though. Am I crazy, or would a Serenity one-shot by Gabe and Tycho give the movie and the artists involved a lot of great publicity? I feel like it's just the sort of underdog project that could take off.

Jurph | August 04, 21:39 CET

I think that's just arrogance and wrong. 10 years ago was the sloppy overwrought Age of Apocalypse. Yeah Joss is better than that. But he's not come close to the excitement of Grant Morrison's run and the New X-Men debut of 2001. I love Joss to death, but this is just empty fluff.

Grant's first two issues had a man with living star in his brain and a fullblown mutant genocide, while still putting good focus on the characters. Scott's darkside rose, Emma Frost was humanized, Beast was shaken to his core, Logan learned his part. Joss is working in the margins of Morrison, which is fine, but he's not the biggest thing for these characters in the last decade.

Chirp | August 04, 21:41 CET

So it got me thinking: if Joss wrote a script or storyboard for a Firefly one-shot, and got them to draw and ink it, would it not just totally rock?

I think it was noted in a thread in the last week or so that Joss mentioned something about a Firefly comic at the Comic-Con FF panel. Anyone remember reading this besides me?

Wiseblood | August 05, 00:43 CET

I believe they are in talks with Dark Horse about doing a Firefly comic. I don't think there were too many details about it yet. But I expect it to happen.

randygiles | August 05, 01:25 CET

" But he's not come close to the excitement of Grant Morrison's run and the New X-Men debut of 2001. I love Joss to death, but this is just empty fluff."

Couldn't disagree more. To me, Morrission was mostly high concept and wild ideas that could've come straight from Invisibles but for which he just happened to use the X-world as a backdrop.

"Grant's first two issues had a man with living star in his brain and a fullblown mutant genocide, while still putting good focus on the characters. Scott's darkside rose, Emma Frost was humanized, Beast was shaken to his core, Logan learned his part. Joss is working in the margins of Morrison, which is fine, but he's not the biggest thing for these characters in the last decade."

As for the living star in the guy's brain, I always found that a rather ridiculous 'but-cool-sounding' thing. And given how Morrisson even had Magneto laugh at Charles for ever believing such a notion, it looks like GM feels that way himself. (That marvel now suddenly pulls a 'real' Xorn out of their ass doesn't change that. That's not Morrisson)

I did enjoy the Nova arc but a high body count in the first issue does not automatically make a story great for me. Good writing does not necessarily lie in large shocking concepts. Often it's the opposite.

Also, Frost had been humanized well before Grant ever set foot in the X-verse. He brought her on as a regular, which was a good idea, but he really stayed within what other writers had already done with her there. His main contribution there was that Emma can now turn herself into a diamond, which was kind of a hollow addition. So now she has even more superpowers. Yay. Like she needed them. And it was never explored what it meant for her as a character. Because it's not about the characters, it's about the concepts in his work.

Also what does 'Logan learned his part' mean? He hardly used Wolverine at all until the Weapon X storyline and while he wrote him pretty decently he certainly didn't add anything to his character everyone else already hadn't done.

His new characters were all just fluff to me. It was interesting overall but really, thank goodness Joss is taking it back the characters and their feelings. He can write from the personal and from the relationships. Morrisson is more about the wild and crazy concepts and the huge global shocking events.

First time in a while that I could actually care about anyone in these books again.

EdDantes | August 05, 05:30 CET