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A review by carroq
Astonishing X-Men, Volume 5: Ghost Box by Warren Ellis
2.0
Expectations may have been a bit high coming off the fantastic Joss Whedon run on Astonishing X-Men. There is definitely a shift in gears after the M-day event, which removed a huge number of mutants from the Marvel universe. I feel like there were too many changes made at once though, and this book suffered for it.
The core group is basically the same from the previous volumes, expect Colossus and Kittie Pryde have been replaced by Storm. She is a strong addition to the team, so there are no problems with that.
They have moved from New York to San Francisco and are working as a task force for the police. During this work, they come across someone who appears to be a mutant, but not one that is known to be alive. This leads into an investigation that involves parallel worlds.
Part of what I didn't like here is the attitude of the characters themselves. Scott in particular is much more pessimistic. They are a lot more mercenary than the X-Men I am used to reading. This matches the darker tone of the book, but it seems out of place.
And that darkness is reflected in the art, which can be cool at times. Something that bothered me about the art, and it may be nitpicking, is that the artist seems to struggle drawing eyes. Unless there is an up-close shot of one of the characters faces, their eyes look like they are closed or just not filled in. This made it hard to keep focused on the story.
The two issues at the end explore what would have happened if the X-Men had acted differently. I liked these quite a bit because they are set in alternate dimensions that have their own little quirks. There is some rehashing of the plot from the rest of the book, which felt unnecessary.
The core group is basically the same from the previous volumes, expect Colossus and Kittie Pryde have been replaced by Storm. She is a strong addition to the team, so there are no problems with that.
They have moved from New York to San Francisco and are working as a task force for the police. During this work, they come across someone who appears to be a mutant, but not one that is known to be alive. This leads into an investigation that involves parallel worlds.
Part of what I didn't like here is the attitude of the characters themselves. Scott in particular is much more pessimistic. They are a lot more mercenary than the X-Men I am used to reading. This matches the darker tone of the book, but it seems out of place.
And that darkness is reflected in the art, which can be cool at times. Something that bothered me about the art, and it may be nitpicking, is that the artist seems to struggle drawing eyes. Unless there is an up-close shot of one of the characters faces, their eyes look like they are closed or just not filled in. This made it hard to keep focused on the story.
The two issues at the end explore what would have happened if the X-Men had acted differently. I liked these quite a bit because they are set in alternate dimensions that have their own little quirks. There is some rehashing of the plot from the rest of the book, which felt unnecessary.