Astonishing X-Men under Ellis is … actually not as bad as I thought

I’ve written a couple posts about some issues I have with Warren Ellis, specifically his taking over of Astonishing X-Men. When the news came out last year, I posted about it, saying:

But here’s the thing. His writing is dense. Not just “dense” dense. Unreadable dense, the kind where fourth or fifth time is a charm trying to read something like “Global Frequency.” On an accessibility scale, Ellis is somewhere around Alan Moore writing in ancient languages.

So I was leary. Very leary. I even expressed this at the end of Whedon’s run, saying:

Warren Ellis and Simon Bianchi’s run has a “regular” schedule on the Marvel website. But I’ve got some issues with it going in. We’ll see how it goes. Hopefully, the storytelling and execution step up to the plate, and actually bother to respect fans enough to not get sidetracked by other projects. If this is going to be Marvel’s quintessential X-book, then they should treat it as such – not some long-form vanity project, but a book able to sustain a deadline and keep fans caring about the storyline within.

So yeah. As the only X-book I still read (that pains me to say on some “I have three long boxes of X-Men” level), I had fears and hopes. After picking up the first two issues while waiting for an Amtrak train, I have to say that I’m actually really excited for this run.

This may be vaguely spoilerish, so if you don’t want to read this part, don’t.

We start out with the X-Men in San Francisco, getting acclimated with their world. There’s some of that braggadocios “oh yeah, we have cool technology and the people of San Francisco love us” type of stuff. But it actually serves to bring us into their world and remind us that the X-Men are superheroes.

But then we’re presented with some of Ellis’ sci-fi ideas. Before, I said:

He writes science fiction based comics. Most of the genre of science fiction isn’t all that accessible … A lot of people like a good science fiction. But what Ellis offers may be a bit too much for “Astonishing X-Men.”

Let’s ignore that I got distracted while writing and put “a good science fiction.” We start out with a murder mystery – a trisomal mutate has been murdered, who was apparently on the trail of another of his kind. Somebody’s been experimenting, trying to create mutants. They get a clue, and have to go to the Far East to a place where all spaceship scraps go.

I couldn’t help but be reminded of Guiyu, China, where a lot of scrap computer parts go to a big, dangerous landfill, and this helped me get a real world context to the story. As much as you can for spandex clad people with superpowers who ride around in a big airship solving mysteries.

There, they find their mutate, and Armor and Wolverine do a fastball special to get him up to the levitating ship. There, they find the culprit, who’s working on some glowing cube. In the Marvel Universe, glowing cubes seem to be a universal sign of nogoodnicking. He informs them they’re “too late” and turns his head into a ball of energy.

Alright, so that’s a little cheesy. But I’m actually quite excited for this run, and in the first two issues, have more anticipation than I did for Joss Whedon’s work. Maybe Mr. Whedon just translates better to the television format. But Warren Ellis has taken the supposed “flagship” X-Men book and, thus far, made it what it should be.

But two issues may be too soon to tell.