Readers sympathize with Kitty’s shock at the return of Colossus and are interested about where Emma and Scott’s relationship is going. He makes it about the characters, especially about Shadowcat, who recently just return to teach at the school. It’s a lot of story and drama crammed into just these six issues but Whedon is able to keep it engaging by playing it close to the heart. In addition, behind the cure is Ord, an alien from the Breakworld who is trying to make sure the prophecy of a mutant destroying his home world does not come true. Investigating the legitimacy of the claim, Beast finds that Benetech’s cure came with a price-the experimentation on their formerly dead teammate, Colossus. In Gifted, a company called Benetech unveils to the public that they have found a “cure” for mutants, sparking hysteria within the mutant community. His series is broken up into four chapters: Gifted, Dangerous, Torn, and ending with Unstoppable. The team line-up for Whedon’s run consists of Emma Frost, Cyclops (Scott Summers), Wolverine (Logan/ James Howlett), Beast (Hank McCoy), Shadowcat (Kitty Pryde), and Colossus (Peter Rasputin).

It also effectively communicates the characters’ complex human emotions, which plays to Whedon’s melodramatic style of writing. It is colorful and vibrant in a way that works for action scenes, from Wolverine being thrown through the air at an escaping spaceship to Colossus punching a bulky alien. Whedon worked on this project with illustrator John Cassaday whose artwork is realistic but not to a fault. But it speaks to Joss Whedon’s scripting talent that he was still able to write a wildly entertaining and sometimes touching story despite his writing quirks and flaws (he just cannot let three pages go without cracking a joke, regardless of the its quality or effect on the mood).

One consequence of over 40 years’ worth of storylines in a comic is that writing up a brand spanking new plot is hard if not impossible. And the truth of the matter is none of this is new. In Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men, the team must stop an alien race from destroying Earth while simultaneously dealing with the announcement of a mutant cure, fighting off a murderous A.I., and confronting the ghost of a villain from the recent past.

Astonishing x men by joss whedon