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So one of my favorite recent comic book runs was Joss Whedon and John Cassaday's turn on Astonishing X-Men. It was quite the trip. You're not going to find many artists with the level of detail and depth Cassaday brings to the table, and Whedon's got a compelling passion for and awareness of the series and its legacy. They each have a downside or two -- some find Whedon's characters sound too similar, have disdain for a few particular plot twists he seems compelled to bring to every series he works on, and some of us could put our kids through college between Cassaday completing issues. But now that it's over and we're not clawing down the door to our LCS for the next issue, I think we can appreciate it all more.
Before Joss's 25 Astonishing issues, Grant Morrison (the delightful Scottish madman who gave us We3 and The Invisibles) took over New X-Men for a lengthy run, and while he saved most of his typical wide-eyed ideas for the last arc (set 150 years in the future), the duration of his run breathed new life into characters we'd given up on (Scott, Jean, even Emma Frost gets a new level of complexity and empathy) and added quite a few new wrinkles to the series mythology (Cassandra Nova, the Stepford Cuckoos, and the then-unthinkable Scott/Emma pairing) while subtly foreshadowing one hell of a revelation we all should've seen coming. Whedon doesn't quite serve so many screwballs with the established characters (except maybe Lockheed), and his few good fake-outs just aren't quite on the same level as Morrison's -- but they're not bad (except for maybe the identity of the second arc's antagonist, which is a conceit I still have trouble with), and he gives us Abigail Brand, for which I'll always be thankful.
The only reason I'm blathering about Whedon's Astonishing instead of Morrison's New X-Men is because the former has received the motion comic treatment. It's been tried before with other series (most notably Watchmen) and is not without virtue -- from what I could tell of watching the adaptation of Whedon's first arc, "Gifted," it seems verbatim (and panel-for-panel) from the comics, which is only occasionally jarring when referencing outside the history of this particular series (the state of Manhattan, Jean, the particular X-Man who appears suddenly in the fourth chapter). Otherwise understand that it's Joss Whedon dialogue, and if you're into that sort of thing, you should be quite happy. The first chapter's...uhm, not quite "animation," really, but its "movement," I guess, is pretty choppy (with no mouth movement whatsoever) -- later chapters have lip-synch and some interesting breathing-like effects on torsos that make it a bit more kinetic. The voice acting is...serviceable -- Emma's accent (or lack thereof) grates, but otherwise it's still better than Australian Wolverine or, for that matter, Halle Berry. And while "Gifted" is the first and only arc up at the moment, word is the three subsequent Whedon/Cassaday arcs, "Dangerous," "Torn," and "Unstoppable" are also getting the motion comic treatment, and I'm...curious as to how they'll turn out.
If you're just coming over from the movie timeline, well...things are a bit convoluted. Forget X-Men: The Last Stand (please). Scott and Jean married, but Scott drifted into having a psychic affair with Emma Frost (who is their contemporary and not a '60s-era character and trying to reform) -- before he could choose between Jean and Emma, Magneto turned Manhattan upside-down and killed Jean, only to be beheaded (yes, really) by Logan. Colossus (Kitty's boyfriend) died to stop a mutant-only virus from killing them all off. The Professor battled his genocidal long-lost twin sister (!) who he thought he strangled in the womb (!!) and has apparently absconded for parts unknown, leaving the school in the hands of Scott and Emma, who're now in a relationship. That's about all you need to know to delve into the motion comics, and really, as far as X-Men continuity goes, that's probably the best jumping-in point there will ever be. Yeesh.
Before Joss's 25 Astonishing issues, Grant Morrison (the delightful Scottish madman who gave us We3 and The Invisibles) took over New X-Men for a lengthy run, and while he saved most of his typical wide-eyed ideas for the last arc (set 150 years in the future), the duration of his run breathed new life into characters we'd given up on (Scott, Jean, even Emma Frost gets a new level of complexity and empathy) and added quite a few new wrinkles to the series mythology (Cassandra Nova, the Stepford Cuckoos, and the then-unthinkable Scott/Emma pairing) while subtly foreshadowing one hell of a revelation we all should've seen coming. Whedon doesn't quite serve so many screwballs with the established characters (except maybe Lockheed), and his few good fake-outs just aren't quite on the same level as Morrison's -- but they're not bad (except for maybe the identity of the second arc's antagonist, which is a conceit I still have trouble with), and he gives us Abigail Brand, for which I'll always be thankful.
The only reason I'm blathering about Whedon's Astonishing instead of Morrison's New X-Men is because the former has received the motion comic treatment. It's been tried before with other series (most notably Watchmen) and is not without virtue -- from what I could tell of watching the adaptation of Whedon's first arc, "Gifted," it seems verbatim (and panel-for-panel) from the comics, which is only occasionally jarring when referencing outside the history of this particular series (the state of Manhattan, Jean, the particular X-Man who appears suddenly in the fourth chapter). Otherwise understand that it's Joss Whedon dialogue, and if you're into that sort of thing, you should be quite happy. The first chapter's...uhm, not quite "animation," really, but its "movement," I guess, is pretty choppy (with no mouth movement whatsoever) -- later chapters have lip-synch and some interesting breathing-like effects on torsos that make it a bit more kinetic. The voice acting is...serviceable -- Emma's accent (or lack thereof) grates, but otherwise it's still better than Australian Wolverine or, for that matter, Halle Berry. And while "Gifted" is the first and only arc up at the moment, word is the three subsequent Whedon/Cassaday arcs, "Dangerous," "Torn," and "Unstoppable" are also getting the motion comic treatment, and I'm...curious as to how they'll turn out.
If you're just coming over from the movie timeline, well...things are a bit convoluted. Forget X-Men: The Last Stand (please). Scott and Jean married, but Scott drifted into having a psychic affair with Emma Frost (who is their contemporary and not a '60s-era character and trying to reform) -- before he could choose between Jean and Emma, Magneto turned Manhattan upside-down and killed Jean, only to be beheaded (yes, really) by Logan. Colossus (Kitty's boyfriend) died to stop a mutant-only virus from killing them all off. The Professor battled his genocidal long-lost twin sister (!) who he thought he strangled in the womb (!!) and has apparently absconded for parts unknown, leaving the school in the hands of Scott and Emma, who're now in a relationship. That's about all you need to know to delve into the motion comics, and really, as far as X-Men continuity goes, that's probably the best jumping-in point there will ever be. Yeesh.
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Whedon's dialogue is almost anti-Claremontian, so yeah, I can see how jarring that is. And I definitely agree on filler -- "Unstoppable" was roughly three issues longer than it needed to be. But hearing that dialogue is still oddly satisfying in a way I wasn't expecting. It's not a perfect translation by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm glad it exists.