I just love this stuff - and no, I'm not talking about caramel ice cream topping, although I love that too. I'm talking about the latest issue of Astonishing X-Men, which possibly should be called seX-Men because everybody's gettin' biz-zay.
First of all, the Kitty/Peter story seems to have been given second tier status for a little bit, although I give Joss props for being able to still move that whole storyline forward in only a couple of pages each issue. And the bit about Kitty’s unscheduled phase in the throes of passion? Hilarious.
I really like where the Emma and Scott story is going. She’s doing what she does best: Playing with people’s emotions and thoughts in a close-to-sadistic way, to really get them listening to what she has to say. I’m really glad she isn’t written as a straightforward bitch character—she has motivation behind her crass attitude, even though she might not always make it apparent first.
Emma helps reveal the “bombshell” of this issue: Cyclops doesn’t have any brain damage at all. His lack of control over his optic blast is self-imposed; it’s a lie he’s been telling himself to keep himself down. I don’t know how I feel about that. I always find it a little bit hokey when a book says something like, “You know that whole character-defining thing about this one guy? Yeah, the one that’s been the major source of angst for him for the last thirty years? Well dig this: It’s all made up!“ But Joss gets to it with a bit of emotional trickery from Emma to reduce the sting, and I’m interested to see where he’s going with this. And in a way, it almost makes sense with the sort of masochistic personality Scott has.
Hank and Logan had next to nothing to do this issue, but it looks like that’s going to change, if the last pages are any indication. Hopefully some more intrigue and espionage from the Hellfires in the next issue.
One question, for any X-reading friends: What the hell was the bug room?
If I remember correctly, the “bug room” is a psychic construct created by Cassandra Nova during Grant Morrison’s weird weird weird run on New X-Men. Basically greatest fear realized for Cyclops. I had no idea what it had to do with bugs then and get it even less now.
FYI it was New X-Men #116:
http://x-worldcomics.com/x/review/current/newxmen116.html