Whedon lavishes considerable attention on Kitty Pryde, improving her established character immeasurably, and supplies a fantastic scene for her late on in which she reunites with someone long believed dead. His layouts emphasise the wonder of superheroes, consistently finding a way to depict them as dynamic and empowered. John Cassaday’s development from the already accomplished debutant who’d drawn Desperadoes into an illustrator able to supply widescreen superhero action rests on his imaginative visualisation. Whedon then throws in one blue whale of an ethical dilemma by having geneticist Dr Kavita Rao announce she’s discovered a cure for the mutant gene.įor all of Whedon’s work, it’s the art that first draws the attention. The opening pages re-iterate the concept of a school for gifted youngsters, the tension between humans and mutants, the tension between Wolverine and Cyclops, and the X-Men as a team. Whedon retains Morrison’s core team of Beast, Cyclops, Emma Frost and Wolverine, replacing the absent Professor X with Kitty Pryde, once the youngest X-Man, slotting her into the teaching role she’s filled ever since. He began his work on Gifted just after Grant Morrison had completed dragging the X-Men from the continuity-hindered quagmire of the 1990s, and while his approach was very different, Whedon’s imaginative material is equally memorable. Iconic characters without having to concern himself with a budget had an obvious appeal to a TV writer.
This was during a lull in his TV career, with Firefly failing to capture the imagination in the manner of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In the wake of the Avengers films he directed, it’s somehow decidedly strange that Joss Whedon once wrote a run of X-Men comics.
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