The Astonishing X-Men

As a huge fan of the X-Men films (save for Brett Ratner's atrocious addition to the franchise), I was excited to dive into the source material.  For me, the results were mixed.  I was glad to see that the series did not begin as a Wolverine-centric property.  Whereas the films have always earned criticism for their reliance on Hugh Jackman's character, the 60s era X-Men, and even the later issues featuring Wolverine, are much more of a team affair.  I was, however, disappointed by the lack of diversity amongst the first iteration of the team.  I know it's probably anachronistic of me to expect differently.  But, I expected such an 'editorial' comic to feature a slightly less white group of heroes. Further, the first issue does little to establish the outcast status of Professor X and his students.  X himself mentions that society might fear the X-Men, but the students themselves do little to reflect on this.  I know that a single issue could not have packed in multiple origin stories, but it's weird to see the students without any explanation of how they came to the Academy. One of my favorite things about the films is that the characters generally operate as vigilantes. They work in the shadows to protect a world that has effectively abandoned many of them.  I did like that Lee and Kirby depicted the characters as regular teenagers.  The intersection of everyday worries and global catastrophes is an important aspect of the films (particularly the first two and First Class) and I liked seeing it here.

The 70s comics manage to right pretty much all of my gripes with the earlier ones.  Professor X's extended trip around the globe is what the films trained me to expect.  Second Genesis also features a far greater degree of editorialization.  X takes pains to assure each of his recruits that they will be working for people who may "fear them" or "hate them."  The comic also shows the reader the various ways in which mutants have coped, or failed to cope, with life amongst humanity.  Though the splash-pages of the 90s X-Men comics are obviously indebted to the earlier ones, I found them less appealing.  To me, the pages tended to look cluttered.  The character designs also take a turn for the bizarre.  Comic book characters have always looked exaggerated.  But, in issues like Fallout they look less like pin-ups or carnival strong-men and more like the victims of bizarre medical experiments.  Magneto's thighs and Jean Grey's buttocks in particular were a little much.  The shading on the character's faces also tended toward the grotesque.  Fallout in particular reminded me of the Ultimate Spider-Man comics I made the mistake of reading in the early 00s.