The Astonishing Ellis

Yeah, ok, you get it, I like Warren Ellis. I don't have to beat you over the head with it anymore. I'm sure most people are thinking that I am really psyched about Ellis taking over Astonishing next year, but to honest, not so much so.

Ellis has always been one of those people that, at least on commercial comics, you bring in when something is broken. Marvel did it back in the 90's with most of the X-line, just not the big titles. The smaller offshoots like X-Man and the then soon to be defunct X-Force. And his commercial comics can come off pretty similar when you get right down to it. Which is not to say that they're carbon copies of each other, it just that he has common themes that he likes to talk about, and that influences the style of the stories he tells.

So will this be techno-future X-Men, or fight-comic X-Men? Newuniversal or Nextwave? What I found to be really interesting was the different viewpoints of the people involved so far. Alex Alonso, X Group Editor over at Marvel, has one view, bringing in another superstar creative team to one of the hottest properties Marvel has right now. Ellis, on the other hand, seems to be looking at it more from a "what can I learn here" perspective, with a healthy side dish of pre-conception bashing. And as far as Bianchi goes, I get a vibe of "I'm just happy to be here, everyone is just fabulous, please don't break my fingers." His art is just beautiful though. I can't even think of anyone to compare it to, maybe a bit of Greg Land, but that's all that comes to mind right now.

Hope you enjoy the interviews. Hope it sheds a little light on how the different creators are approaching this project. Best of luck to them, while I still wish Whedon and Cassaday were staying, I can't think of a better team to pick up the book.

-Dan