Home :: Books :: Comics & Graphic Novels  

Arts & Photography
Audio CDs
Audiocassettes
Biographies & Memoirs
Business & Investing
Children's Books
Christianity
Comics & Graphic Novels

Computers & Internet
Cooking, Food & Wine
Entertainment
Gay & Lesbian
Health, Mind & Body
History
Home & Garden
Horror
Literature & Fiction
Mystery & Thrillers
Nonfiction
Outdoors & Nature
Parenting & Families
Professional & Technical
Reference
Religion & Spirituality
Romance
Science
Science Fiction & Fantasy
Sports
Teens
Travel
Women's Fiction
New X-Men: Assault on Weapon Plus (New X-Men, Book 5)

New X-Men: Assault on Weapon Plus (New X-Men, Book 5)

List Price: $14.99
Your Price: $14.99
Product Info Reviews

<< 1 2 3 4 >>

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Best X-Men Story Since Dark Phoenix!!!
Review: Grant Morrison, the writer of New X-men, has turned this series around. Not only that, but he's creating new characters, new emotions, and new situations the like of which the X-titles haven't seen in years.

This graphic novel focuses on Cassandra Nova and her desire to destroy her brother, Professor Charles Xavier. Now, throughout X-Men history, there have been many times where someone has tried to kill someone. But the way Morrison handles the utter hatred that Cassandra feels for her brother, along with the casual way she eliminates obstacles in her way, will have you fearing that Xavier may have finally met his match. Then when Cassandra manipulates the Shi'ar empire into attacking Earth -- bending the will of those who try to resist her, or simply killing them -- you realize that Morrison has the guts to do whatever it takes to makes this series exciting.

Morrison succeeds in other ways to. A relationship is starting to form between Cyclops and the White Queen, and since Jean Grey (Cyclop's girlfriend) is a telepath, she knows that something is up. While this story just hints at trouble, you can tell that Morrison is setting you up for more problems down the road. The return of Dark Phoenix, perhaps?

The artwork is fabulous. Frank Quietely and Ethan Van Sciver have styles that seem to enhance the cosmic feel of the storyline. Their artwork is literally larger (and more detailed) than life. But they can also do scenes on a less grand scale, like when they show other students at Xavier's school. These lesser-known characters have been in the background until now, but because of the detailed artwork, you feel like they are an important part of the story.

Is this comic worth buying? Most definitely. In my opinion, this book, (along with Morrison's first run on the series, "E is for Extinction"), is one that every comic fan should have in their personal library. You can reread it over and over again for the art, for the plot, or just to simply enjoy the X-Men's renaissance back into one of the best comics on the market today!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: wicked read :P
Review: great illustrations and enthralling plot lines, i love the X-men and this comic is awesome!

My fav character is of course, wolverine!!!!

he rocks :P

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Great story.
Review: I didn't love this story the first time I read it; but it's much better when you read it as a whole, rather than one issue a month. Grant Morrison writes incredibly well, as always.

Wolverine and Fantomex play off of eachother very well, as do Cyclops and Wolverine. More importantly, Morrison fleshes out earlier ideas regarding the Weapon Plus program. This is a very original take on the Weapon X (or Ten) project that's been done to death throughout the eighties and nineties. There are some important character moments for Scott and Logan here, as well.

Whether or not you like the artwork depends on yor personal taste. Bachalo's style is sloppy and somewhat cartonish, but that works for him. I' not a huge fan, but I don't hate it either. Wolverine does look a little like a fat, old man in a few scenes, though.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Great Story, Great and not-so-great art...
Review: I had stopped reading the X titles for some time, but a friend recommended I gave this one a shot. I 'm glad I did. Morrison has breathed new life into the X-Men. He's made them more human...imperfect, having to deal with everyday problems in addition to "making the world safe from whatever it is this week." Emma Frost has been a great addition to the team, nearly stealing the show, I hope they plan on keeping her around. Quitely's art is an awesome and refreshing change from the 90s stereotypical X-Men. But Kordey's art bogs down the book and after being treated to Quitely's, it just looks sloppy (sorry Igor, just my opinion). Overall this is a great read and a great jumping on point if your willing to give the X-men anoyher try...I recommend that you do.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great companion piece for this great graphic novel
Review: I know of a great companion piece in the form of a book entitled "The Adventures of Darkeye: Cyber Hunter" whose odd manner of having log-entries over chapters reads exactly like the script for a graphic novel, even though it is in the science fiction/high-tech and cyberpunk genre along with books like "Cryptonomicon", "Snow Crash", "Prey", and "Altered Carbon". Very fast-paced, incredibly visual, and very exciting due to its action-packed pages.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: New X-Men, Volume 1
Review: I'm not your typical comics reader. I collected and read them religiously from ages 10-17, but pretty much quit cold turkey, other than the occasional, brief period of renewed interest. When I saw the first X-Men movie, I was impressed that the producers were able to make these previously-byzantine characters accessible and cool. I picked up one of the countless monthly X-Men titles, to see if their creators were keeping up with this standard. Of course, they weren't; but a few months after the movie, Grant Morrison took over the New X-Men series, and in many ways the comic became more cool than the movie itself.

Morrison is a good writer, and his Invisibles series is one of the few that I've read all of the way through. One thing that always gets me is that Morrison is one of those guys who thinks he's too cool for his own good; while this came off as grating in his previous books, it mostly works with the X-Men. Maybe it's due to the way he reimagined a previously-boring character: Cyclops, refashioned by Morrison and incredible artist Frank Quitely, is now a leather-wearing bad-ass who, in my book, looks cooler than Wolverine will ever be. Morrison saves most of his best lines for Emma Frost however, a new addition to the X-Men roster whom most fans will love. Another character Morrison introduces to the X-roster is Xorn, a mutant healer who looks like the mascot for a heavy metal band.

This hardback book collects Morrison's first year on the title, along with the 2001 annual. The stories are generally arranged in arcs, with the last one, Imperial, mostly the best. One thing the book suffers from is the lack of Quitely; the man takes so long to draw a page that Marvel must always have back-up pencilers in the wings. And the unfortunate thing is that one of these back-ups, Igor Kordey, is perhaps one of the sloppiest artists I've seen. The occasional page is okay, but in general Kordey can make the average character look like a monstrous ghoul. The other back-up, Ethan Van Sciver, is mostly very good, but incomparable to Frank Quitely. Quitely draws half of the stories in this collection, though, and his work here is among his best, just as good as his art in Morrison's Flex Mentallo mini-series.

Morrison's stories are great for readers new to the X-Men. In fact, his goal seems to have been grabbing the attention of fans of the film, people who had just been introduced to the characters and might like to see something more of them. You don't need to know very much about the X-Men's history at all; a nice change from the old days, in which you had to keep up with countless back issues just to understand one page of the current issue. Morrison's stories do in fact feature subplots that carry from one story arc to the next, but the main storyline always predominates.

In short, the issues featured in this hardback are cinematic and feel like the two X-Men movies on paper. In fact, Morrison's stories are more edgy than future films could possibly ever hope to be. So even if this isn't on the same level as near-literary masterworks like Alan Moore's Watchmen or Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns, Morrison's 2001-2002 run on the New X-Men is great reading for X-film fans who wouldn't be caught dead in a comic store.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: I hate it when Amazon.com does this
Review: It's hard to figure out which review point to what... Why doesn't Amazon.com simply leave reviews for this volume instead of linking to other books in the series. It makes it confusing to figure out if this hardcover edition is worth buying over the paperbacks....

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: "THE X-MEN ARE BACK! BETTER THAN...uh, almost ever..."
Review: Like many people, I stopped reading the X-Men a long, long time ago - around the time Chris Claremont brought back Jean Grey for the umpteenth million time. Lost my faith and interest, but I still occassionally thumbed through an issue just to see what the latest farce was (the most ridiculous being Wolverine regaining his adamantium skeleton - just as the character started to become interesting again).

Then - coinciding with the release of the (generally well-done) movie - I heard Grant Morrison was taking over the writing on the book. I picked up his first issue, and right from the start you knew he'd put in his time rethinking and recreating the X-Men. New costumes; new, more adult problems facing the characters (such as the strain between Scott and Jean's marriage, the Beast's quest for identity); and, oh yes, the little matter of the genocide of all the mutants on the island of Genosha - including Magneto (Morrison has stated he has no doubt Marvel will revive the character someday - but not while he's doing the scripting).

The plot twists from this point are fantastic, and there's no turning back from some: the public revelation of Xavier and what is really going on behind the doors of his school, Logan and Jean Grey resolving their sexual tension once and for all (long over-due), Emma Frost suddenly becoming the absolute most interesting character in the series.

The drawbacks? As every other reviewer here has mentioned, it's the art. Frank Quitely's work is indeed fantastic - a welcome change from the bursting muscles and heroic facades of the past - but the others who fill in A) disrupt the continuity, even if they had been Quitely's equal (or at least in his style), but B) they're not: Kordey's pencils are, as virtually every reviewer has stated, poor, sloppy, amateurish. I don't know if he was given like 14.8 hours to get the job done, but it sure looks that way. On every page. In every panel.

Still, it's a good read despite these flaws; and I'd recommend it higher than anything else going on in mainstream comics right now. A very brave, interesting, and necessary change of pace for Marvel's most popular title.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: the mutating mind of morrison
Review: morrison is crazy.he should be locked up in the mind of his evil twin sister.
anyway that's what he did here to one of the main characters.and then he has the two telepathic chiks enter the mind on a rescue-mission...that part of the comic is one of the most memorable pieces of comic story&artwork that i have ever seen.as psychedelic and creative as the weirdest from manara or moebius.
when morrison and quitely get working on the same wavelenght,they really are something special.to bad quitely is so slow that other artists have to fill in for him.or that the marvel bosses are in such a rush to publish that they wont wait for him.
quitely has a difficulty with faces,everybody looks similar.be they male,female,old or infant.but his designs and layouts are so cool and matches morrisons ideas so well that it doesnt matter.he truly makes the reading of his works seem like watching a movie.the problem is the other artists.
and the other problem is morrisons self-fascination.he's very good,very hip and clever,but becomes a bit hard to digest in large doses.too many big ideas and grand moments,and too skimpy on the action.
still,a great book,part of a series worth colecting.viva the british comiqueros,they are still spicing up the whole american superhero-scene.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Weakest of a fabulous series
Review: NOTE: THIS IS A REVIEW OF NEW X-MEN: NEW WORLDS, NOT THE NEW X-MEN VOL. 1 HARDCOVER, WHICH IS TRULY EXCELLENT.

Morrison's New X-Men is as good or better than the book has been since the days of Chris Claremont. He has an unshakable hold on what makes each character tick, has done marvelous things with characters that no one had been interested in for years (Cyclops, Emma Frost), and gives everyone a distinct and interesting personality. That said, the art in this volume really suffers the absence of Frank Quitely, arguably the most talented penciller in mainstream comics. No, there is not a line nor shadow in this book drawn by Quitely, save two of the covers, so don't believe the author listing. The book largely consists of a three-parter drawn by Igor Kordey, whose art, while less atrocious than in the previous volume, is still decidedly sub-par and not nearly the kind of work we've come to expect on a book that has made so many superstar artists overnight (John Byrne, Jim Lee, Barry Windsor-Smith). Kordey may yet achieve greatness, or at least legibility, but for crying out loud, this is the X-Men. Morrison's storytelling is a little more oblique in the "Assault of Weapon Plus" story, and that doesn't help matters. What really makes this collection shine are the short stories following.
The good news is two- no, actually three-fold. This is the last time we have to put up with Kordey (the fill-ins are now being done by Chris Bachalo and Phil Jimenez), "Riot at Xavier's" is entirely by Frank Quitely, and there's a fabulous fill-in issue here called "Ambient Magnetic Fields" with art by Jimenez (last seen with Morrison on the slightly wonkier Invisibles). All in all, the collection is very much worth the money - it's a good read, and certainly integral to the ongoing story, and Morrison appears to have a plan, like always, for characters that he introduces here. It's also the prelude to "Riot," which is just fantastic.


<< 1 2 3 4 >>

© 2004, ReviewFocus or its affiliates