Astonishing X-Men/ Amulet (book 2)

Whether you love Joss Whedon (Firefly/Serenity) or hate him (Dollhouse), you have to agree he writes a good story. He doesn't forget humor in even the darkest tales and he moves things right along. So it is with his version of X-Men. I've only read Volume 1, Gifted, because I checked it out of the library on a whim and by the time (later that day) that I realized how fun it was, someone else had taken out the other three volumes. In this town, we seem to all read the same things at the same time.

Anyway, I don't really dare say much about the X-Men universe. All I know I've gotten from the movies and from being a member of a houseful of superhero geeks who are currently really into (age-appropriate) versions of wolverine and the X-Men. Still, I really liked this volume. Cyclops seems to be trying to pull the team back together in Professor Xavier's absence. They've got Kitty Pryde back, Emma Frost (currently playing a good ? guy), Dr. McCoy (the Beast) and Logan (Wolverine) who only grudgingly joins in. Also a cool little alien dragon who tends to save the day. There's an evil and gross alien, there's a rumored cure for mutants, there are rumors of Jean Grey still kicking around somewhere and other characters coming back from the dead. There's some fighting and a bit of blood. Some funny parts. You know, the usual. Some of the humor comes from the errors in programming of the Danger Room. Dr. McCoy tries for Hawaii, but fails to specify size so they're all sitting around on rocks, dipping their feet into the simulated Pacific Ocean. Another time, Logan and Scott are about to get chewed out for swaggering and fighting (over Jean, still) and Emma Frost accidently, though appropriately, drags them into a giant pink dollhouse to do the yelling.

The art work is really good and leaves enough to the imagination that I wasn't grossed out or too confused. The stand alone pages are nice and fit in well enough without giving too much away. The only thing I didn't like was sometimes the flow of the story was confusing. Words appeared in one scene that really belonged to the next. I guess that's like the voice-over on a tv show, sometimes, but I didn't like it. I have enough trouble following graphic novels. I like the version of these characters and the clean art work, so I'll finish the series as soon as I can.

In the meantime, I picked up my son's book, Amulet, Book 2 of The Stonekeeper's Curse by Kazu Kibuishi which he and I have been waiting and waiting for since reading the sort of freaky Book 1. He didn't like the beginning of book 1 because the father of the family dies in a horrible car accident (car slides off cliff) and it made me think I was a bad parent for letting him read this, but the rest of the book and this one too is a great quest book. Young siblings Emily and Navin slip into another dimension or world and they become supposed saviours of the way life used to be. In book 2, they must fight the evil Elves who've taken over an already cursed town under which the inhabitants are turning into animals. There's a funny scene in which we see the close up of a furry rabbitty-mouse doctor's face, saying: Hmmm, I'm afraid you're right. Next scene we see his patient and the doctor continues: You're turning into a slug. And the patient is a boy with eye stalks growing out of a perfectly normal face. But this isn't a scary/bad thing since the whole town is mostly made up of creatures at this point.

The walking house is one of the coolest things from the first book and it's back here, though slightly less cool because it's not new and it gets kind of wrecked. It's straight out of a Miyazaki movie. The coolest thing here is the fox bounty hunter who leads Emily further along on her quest to be the next stonekeeper. He's like the baron in The Cat Returns movie (Studio Ghibli) with a touch of the Disney Robin Hood fox. Though my favorite character is still Miskit, the animated stuffed pink rabbit, complete with a patch on his ear. Love him. In this volume, Emily must learn to control the stone before it controls her, she's trying to save her mother who was poisoned by an octopus in the last book, and the elves grow (literally) more evil. It still ends on a cliffhanger which is annoying since it'll be another year before the next book comes out, but I highly recommend this series for any budding (9 and up) fantasy readers (and their parents).