Recently encouraged by a coworker to read Grant Morrison's run on X-Men and I'm glad I did! Holy cow! It's kind of mind-blowing how much ground he covers in 8-ish issues. He writes from a really distant perspective, almost like he's The Watcher, seeing all of X-Men history and timelines, pulling together the most crucial, interesting stuff. I didn't feel like the inter-character/motionvational/emotional stuff was necessarily his strong suit? focus? but the breadth of his storytelling and all the sweeping changes he made to the universe were just awesome (like the original definition of the world).He writes SO MUCH, it's almost as though you can see the artists struggling to keep up with him, and I've enjoyed some of these artists' work elsewhere but never felt like the art here particularly clicked & hummed for me. The writing is always on top, and my most favorite comics are really 50/50 partnerships.
There's a lot to swallow at times, this volume in particular is pretty dark. Cassandra Nova is an interesting idea even though it's almost too silly for comic books (twins battling in the womb?). And I didn't ever care much for Beak and Angel, there was nothing I found emotionally engaging about them and . But Xorn I really liked. And the Scott/Jean/Emma stuff I loved.
Very fun though, so much life in what is more often than not a stale franchise, I was excited to keep reading.