Giant Size Astonishing

Most overdue, drawn-out not-bad comic of the year.

If Kitty bites it, I'm swearing off Whedon forever. Just letting you all know in advance.

Also, if Kitty bites it - I'm pitching a DC/Marvel crossover. "Kitty + Death (from Sandman) Team-Up." Hell, I might just write the crossover whether or not I get approval. Just imagine Didi/Death and Kitty going on afterlife adventures. It would be bitchin.

Thank god.

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http://www.jewcy.com/post/buffy_auteur_joss_whedon_didnt_kill_jewish_x_man_kitty_pryde

Is that you? It's pretty good. But it's possible that you're making the mistake of assuming that what you read when you were a teenager is what teenagers now read - I doubt the kids give much of a fuck about the X-Men anymore.

(Also it's my recollection that it was Colossus who 'gave it up')

a strong, funny, female Jewish X-Men

Yeah, but four of these are much more visible than the other one - I didn't know she was of that faith until I read this (though I only really started reading X-Men with Morrison)

But when I have children, I'd like there to be a Member of the Tribe around when they start reading comic books.

Kitty may well not be, but it's a safe bet that Benjamin J Grimm will.

I didn't know Kitty was Jewish. Has this always been so, or was it a retcon? Because I don't remember seeing any references to her being Jewish back when I was reading X-Men in the eighties and early nineties.

(x-post)

I am pretty sure she's wearing a Star of David in one of her very early Claremont/Byrne appearances. And a couple of dialogue references - at some point she gets a big scene shaming a mutant-hating mob and makes a reference to jew-bashing and her relatives.

There were numerous references to Kitty being Jewish all through Claremont's run and beyond, Tuomas.

I accept Harvey Pekar's position that Superman is a half-assimilated Yid.

Yeah, Kitty's Jewishness has always been central to her character.

Here's my impression of Joss Whedon in Giant Size Astonishing X-Men #1:

Waaaaaaaaaah! She’s mine! Mine! You can’t have her! MINE! Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

(breaks toy in half)

Yeah, that's my article. Also - her Jewishness is much more on display in Ultimate Spider-Man than in the canon stuff. Which slightly undermines my argument. After all, does it really matter whether my kids are reading USM or CANON? (Probably not.) Also, I thought about Grimm, but to be honest - until I read that he was Jewish in the Forward, I never was able to piece that together myself.

Yeah, but (I could be setting myself up for embarrassment here) you could also have read Astonishing X-Men (which is I get the impression her main canon exposure in the last five years) and missed the fact as well.

(During which time the Thing has had a second Bar Mitzvah)

I'm not actually saying "this character should be more important to your view of jewishness in comics", just thinking of counterexamples because it's lunchtime

The thing is, I'm not sure if I'm too heartbroken about Kitty being taken out of play, especially in the shambles that is the current X-Franchise, for any reason other than that it makes Colossus a pretty boring character again. Colossus is just this emo dullard without Kitty, and giving him yet another fucking thing to mourn about is NOT good!

Yeah, Andrew. I agree Kitty's Jewishness wasn't as important to Whedon as it's been to other authors (like Bendis, for one). But I think her exposure in USM has been just as large, if not as consistent (since it actually comes out with some regularity).

so what was causing all the heroes to drool and fantasize about saving the world, again?

The bullet's anti-magic force field, I guess? That was pretty lame.

Yeah, it seemed like there was a missing dialogue box or something to explain that.

Wasn't there a scene somewhere around the first JRJr run where Magneto and Kitty go to a Holocaust survivors' get-together? My memory of this is really hazy.

So Kitty has been taken out of play in a way that stops just short of killing her. Given that the run has been premised on a character coming back from what was visibly a straight-up death, it's hard to take this too seriously. Plus, the whole idea of her cruising through the universe as the Planet-Crushing Bullet for the rest of time is ludicrous & goofy. But somehow my eyes still got watery reading this comic..

The bullet passing through the city double-page spread was the most amazing comic book image I've seen so far this year. I just kept staring at it.

All the stuff with the superheroes in New York really reminded me of 80s comics - in a good way - things like the Casket of Ancient Winters sequence in Thor, when suddenly everyone else turns up to help because, dude, they just WOULD DO. It was nice to see a primary-coloured, helpful, unified Marvel U for the first time in ages.

I couldn't tell which Breakworld dude was which though really, or what was going on with Ord, or anything like that. Did Danger end up being important at all?

I liked the Kitty thing - obviously she'll be back but it's forcing whoever brings her back to think a bit about how.

Good series, on the whole: not the be-all and end-all of x-dom but a fun, sometimes goofy story well told, occasional pacing issues aside.

the ship bringing the other dudes to help = danger, possibly

you'd think they'd have had enough time for someone to red-pen the script a bit, really