Though the Astonishing X-Men series ran from 2004 to 2013, Marvel has only given Joss Whedon and John Cassaday’s run on the series the Ultimate Collection treatment. I found Book 1 to be great overall, with the Gifted storyline being one of the best X-Men tales ever. Book 2 may not hit the highs of its predecessor, but it still delivers one of the better X-Men reads out there.
During the beginning of my X-Men vision quest, a vendor at Comicon strongly recommend checking out Astonishing X-Men. In particular, he told me to check out Joss Whedon’s run from issue #1-24. According to him, these were some of the best X-Men tales ever. I’ve kept that thought in the back of my mind until I stumbled upon both books in the Astonishing X-Men Ultimate Collection for half price.
For the purposes of this post, I’m just going to write about Book 1, which covers our heroic mutants through two story arcs: Gifted and Dangerous. I haven’t read enough X-Men to say where this fits in the pantheon of X-books, but this is at the very least some of the best material I’ve read yet.
In Third Person 