Astonishing X-Men Volume 3: Torn

Astonishing X-Men Volume 3: Torn

Marvel

So after rating the first volume of this series well recently, let's skip the next collection and see how the series was progressing with the regular series and its characters now established in the eyes of its monthly purchasing public.

Well, Marvel chose to put a page recapping past events to bring the book buying public up to steam so that's an unexpected editorial brownie point. As to the tale?

Well, there's a new Hellfire Club in town, or rather Xavier Mansion. Only not everyone can see them. Not all the time anyway. And the outcome of that is mainly what this whole collection's about without giving away the ending.

Whedon has fun playing through Chris Claremont's (the man who mainly made Marvel's X-Men the franchise it is today) back catalogue and subverting themes and characters, but respectively even while maintaining his own narrative voice and Cassady gives us more full figure views instead of a preponderance of well crafted head shots.

Wolverine and the Beast get their comedy one-liner comparisons to each other early on in the book and raise a smile, and the whole book has story momentum and is pleasing on the eye.

The only fault, for me, is the time-worn cliché of the denouement for the reason for the Hellfire Club's presence. Maybe this wouldn't be so telling read in monthly instalments, but it lets it down a bit for me. That stated, the creative team don't let the book end there and within the last few pages send those Astonishing X-Men flying out into space and danger with the threat that at least one of them might not return.

On the whole: superior, solid stuff.