Spoiler queens take note! I’m about to rant a bit about the latest issue of Astonishing X-Men. Proceed at your own risk, if you’re the type to get all uppity about that stuff.
When we last left the X-Men, we were told that “the Danger Room is angry.” After we stopped rolling our eyes, we closed the book and remembered the awesome musical episode of Buffy and tried to have faith in Joss Whedon’s ability to take a hopelessly ill-conceived idea and actually make it work.
A couple pages into this issue, and he‘d won me over again. A goofy premise like “the Danger Room is angry” developed into a cool head-trip of an idea that Warren Ellis could be proud of, and managed to lighten it up with witty banter, such as Logan saying (as the mansion is destroyed again), “Next time, guys, we should just rebuild this place outta Lego.” I bought into it, right up until the last panel:
A chick? The Danger Room discovers its sentience and breaks free from its programming safeguards, and it becomes a robot chick? That’s so disappointing. The best thing that ever happened to the Sentinels was when Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely realized they’d be likely to take on any form they possibly could, since they really had no reason to look humanoid at all. Same thing with Danger Girl here — after giving us this whole set-up about being a sentient environment able to create a whole deadly world (not to mention one that can control other machines), it seems like kind of a cop-out to end of as yet another variety of two-legged, two-armed punching bag.
I hope Joss has a way to salvage this, because I want to keep loving the hell out of this book.
I’m confused. Doesn’t this not come out until two days from now?
Possibly. I subscribe, so I guess this was my month to get it early instead of late.