Wolverine and the X-Men by Jason Aaron and Nick Bradshaw is my favorite book right now and a pure joyride with action, humor and outrageous storylines.
Here’s a quick recap:
Wolverine built the Jean Grey School for young mutants after his schism with Cyclops. Kitty is pregnant – sort of. Beast and some kids are inside Kitty’s body trying to save her. Logan and Kid Omega – that brat – are in an outer space casino cheating at gambling to get money to keep the school open. There’s a nice Brood student who talks and won’t eat you. The school is being invaded by an army of Brood – the nasty kind you know and hate.
Oh yeah – there are these baby nightcrawler looking things that steal Logan’s whiskey and are kind of like the Gremlins of the school.
Nick Bradshaw is the artist making this joyride such a pleasure to read. He followed Chris Bachalo’s initial arc. When you see Bradshaw’s work you can’t help but think Art Adams. Which makes Bradshaw perfect for all the aliens in outer and inner space (in Kitty) on this book.
I wanted to share part of Comics Newsarama’s interview with this rising star. I was surprised to learn what some of his favorite books were prior to his success.
“Huge Marvel fan! I was into Rom: Spaceknight, Hulk, Defenders. My mom one Christmas bought me this orange box with like 50 different Marvel titles in it, got me interested in Fantastic Four, X-Men, New Mutants. Man-Thing and The ‘Nam were two big favorites of mine where I discovered Mike Golden.”
“X-Men was a book I sorta segued into from reading Wolverine. I read X-Men primarily in the 90’s but backtracked to a lot of Claremont’s older stuff with Byrne based off of that.”
Bradshaw revealed his reaction to working with Jason Aaron:
“I used to get a comp box from DC delivered to the folks’ house as my girlfriend and I were always working all day and couldn’t be home to sign for it. Scalped was one of the first books I used to have to fight with the old man over every month if he got to the box first. We both enjoyed it that much. So when I was told I was going to be working with Jason on Wolverine and the X-Men, I was a little apprehensive (as if the prospect of following up on issues after Bachalo wasn’t intimidating enough).
I felt kinda misplaced working on a project with him cause the first impression I had of his work was pretty mature and intense, and my style was the opposite of whatever you would find in that type of book like Scalped. When I read the first few scripts I got it, I knew what they were looking for from me. It was fun, big adventure, that I could do; was pleasantly surprised to see this stuff coming from Jason. He hits every single geek gene I have in my brain. It’s all there, I’m having a blast, drawing every page has been a joy.”
Wolverine and the X-Men current arc ends with #7 – with a healthy and happy Kitty Pryde! Hopefully Bradshaw will be back after the next Chris Bachalo AvX arc.
Bradshaw created variant covers for all the X-Men Regenesis relaunch books – I highly recommend picking them up at conventions in the variant box if you missed out last Fall. For the entire interview here’s the Comics Newsarama link.