It has been stated before, but I hate the fucking X-Men.
There have been exceptions in the past decade. X-Statix was a personal favorite (until Editorial fucked with it and it went off the rails). And as I am a fan of Whedon and Cassaday, I have been picking up the occasional Astonishing trade.
So, since I've been picking up trades, and have only gotten as far as vol 3: Torn, I don't know what the fuck's happened since, and I'm also not going to use spoiler tags. Read the remainder of the post with that in mind.
The first two volumes, Gifted and Dangerous, were solid. Very pretty art, and Whedon's managed to make me actually like the cast. Even the utterly tiresome Cyclops/Wolverine dynamic works here. In short, it's Whedon doing what Whedon does: writing a dysfunctional family. The dialogue is witty and the characters are interesting; their flaws are charming instead of obnoxious.
Last week, I picked up Volume 3: Torn. And it reminded me of why I fucking hate the X-Men.
And really, it boils down to the fact that I hate Claremont.
Oh, to list the problems with this story.
For starters, I don't know who Cassandra Nova is, and I don't care. Oh look, another generic evil telepath who manages to singlehandedly shatter the X-Men.
And how the mind games work out? Bleah. The Scott-and-Jean angst is suitably creepy but has nothing else going for it. Wolverine regressing to his childhood as a Canadian aristocrat is pretty damn funny for the first two pages, but then somehow gets stretched out long past that and is resolved through a fucking Simpsons gag.
As for Wolverine? I find him, consistently, the most overrated character in comics; part of what Whedon's managed to do that so amazed me in the first two volumes is make me like him. Mainly by toning down the constant angst and turning him into Jayne.
But he's done that at the expense of Beast. Beast is the new Wolverine. Beast is the one who spends all his time whining about how he can't control his inner rage and he's turning into an animal and blah-de-fucking-boo-hoo.
At least the thing that snaps HIM out of it makes some kind of sense, even if it's a bunch of sci-fi jargon.
And then Kitty, the climax of the story, the big reveal at the end, and the non-ending.
Okay. Giving Kitty three full years' worth of false memories is over-the-top in and of itself, plus it's ripped straight off from For the Man Who Has Everything (where it made a whole lot more sense). I can't begin to understand the "Cassandra was turned into a disgusting slug thing which has apparently been imprisoned in the X-Men's basement since the 1980's" bit, though at least it jibes with Charlie's history of hiding crazy, booby-trapped shit from the team.
And speaking of Charlie's history and ripped-off stories, the whole "villain plants piece of consciousness in hero's mind after major battle" bit was used in the Onslaught story. Not a good bit of X-Men history to dredge back up.
Anyway. The ending is absurd and nonsensical; it's hard to tell what the fuck actually happens. Where are they going? Was Cassandra defeated? Was that Emma telling Scott to go to hell, Emma telling Cassandra to go to hell, or Cassandra telling Scott to go to hell?
This tends to violate the rule of collecting issues in a trade; what we've got here is something that you need to pick up the next issue to make any sense of.
So, okay, following the tl;dr rant, the moneyshot: has anyone read Astonishing past #18? Does it get better? Should I bother picking up the Unstoppable trade when it hits? (Has it yet?)
(EDIT: CBG says that no, it hasn't, and that yes, it's better than Torn.)