Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá's blog

The talk of the week

I see all around that people are talking about the just arrived first issue of Astonishing X-Men. It is, after all, the only X-book that could matter after Grant Morrison's run on the title. I haven't seen it, of course, being in Brazil and all, but I will talk about it a bit anyway.

To start, let's talk about Morrison. I read most of that already and I can say this: it was fun! You didn't need to know all about the X-Men, and yet you were not displeased with the way they were portrayed. They went to their core, almost iconic selves, and they kicked ass. Simple as that. Fun.

As an artist, I shall also talk about the pictures, and most of it was nice. I really like Frank Quitely's work, I enjoyed Igor Kordey's run, bizarre as it was, and I always like what Bachallo is capable of. The rest of the lot didn't quite cause any impression in me. Maybe that was the biggest turn off on the book for me: the constantly changing art team.

Now, Morrison went on to bigger and better things, and we're left with the left-overs of the X-Men line: the same creators who just switched books and characters, and a brand new book for the Buffy writer. He's the only one we don't know what to expect, really, and that's probably the only interesting thing about his X-Men book. Cassaday's art is great, I love the guy, but it's just another X-Men book where we know people will talk a lot and make jokes and sarcastic remarks about everything.

One last word, about the coloring. Here we have Laura Martin again coloring Cassaday's work. When they worked together on Planetary, I thought comics were fun again, and great to look at. I'm just a little afraid now that, after her "vacation-time" in Florida working for CrossGen, her coloring style went too cute and overdone and might get in the way of the artwork.

I'll get back to it once I see it. But you already saw it, feel free to give your opinion.

( and don't forget to check out our interview at newsarama! )