Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men Comics

December 30, 2011

One of the things I’ve really liked with my new iPad is reading comics. I’ve downloaded both the Marvel Comics and DC Comics iPad apps, both of which have a set of “free” comics you can download.

Maybe I haven’t looked hard enough, but I only see individual issues available through DC, whereas I can buy whole collections through Marvel. I’ve long been a fan of buying bound editions, versus going issue by issue (I prefer a massive binge over a slow, steady drip).

I got into Marvel Zombies a bit, but haven’t gotten past the second collection so far. What I did get into, however, has been Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men.

Joss Whedon is well-known for a lot of things, most notably Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the short-lived Firefly and Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. And if you take a peek at Whedon’s Wikipedia entry, he’s done an impressive amount of work.

I have several friends who were hugely into Whedon’s work before me, and my friends Liz and Steph tried to get me into Firefly many, many years ago. It took me a while, but once I actually got around to watching it, I was hooked.

Though I didn’t read the X-Men growing up, I know their stories and have a general sense of their history. Paired with Whedon’s writing though – I can’t get enough. As one would expect, there’s a lot of humor in the banter between characters.

There’s one pretty slick feature with comics on the iPad: assisted reading. Instead of seeing the whole page on the screen, in assisted-reading mode you zoom in to each frame. As you go from frame to frame, the comic automatically zooms around to different parts of the page. I’ve found it pretty great, and it’s added to my enjoyment.

One wish I had, that I know will never happen – I wish I could somehow port over all the actual, physical comics I purchased onto my iPad. If you buy a CD (although who really does, anymore), you can rip it and store the mp3 files on your computer or mobile phone. It would be great to get all my purchased comics onto my iPad, without having to pay for them a second time (there are several I would love to re-read again, with the assisted-mode turned on).

It’s been a while since I’ve been so sucked in to comics. In college, I went through the whole Sandman series rather slowly – picking up one collected edition a week, and then promptly reading the entire thing cover to cover while sitting on my front steps.

I’ve got the same feeling now with Whedon’s X-Men, although the difference is that I no longer need to save up my money… and it’s all tantalizingly easy to grab, with a quick click of a button.