The Chuck Austen era and I am most say I am enjoying it immensely. I have all the graphic novels and they are a great fun read.
What I will say about Austen's writing is that he makes it easy. his writing is very straight forward and easy to keep you interested. One of the few weakness of Claremont's writing is that at time it can get too preaching and unnecessarily get way to complex to follow or keep me interested at the first read..
Austen does keep it simple and gets right to the point. Austen also knows how to do good (no wait) great soap opera. which is something I love.
the whole Alex, Paige, Bobby, Northstar, Lorna dynamic is just great to read.
Only thing, I will point out is that I dislike (although not hate) the characters of Annie Ghazikhanian and had son Cater. they were just incredibly annoying and got way too much of the spotlight.
Perhaps it is because they were Austen's own creation so he always favored them over the other characters like Lorna who got the short end of the stick because of poor sweet Annie.
It is clear that Austen with great bias favored Annie over Polaris/Lorna why else who he let her get humiliated on her own wedding day. I am happy Milligan wrote Alex into making him regret his decision to leave Lorna at the alter. It was one of the few good things about Milligan's run.
Austen had Lorna humiliated and even more mentally damaged over cute and sweet Annie and her annoying Marty Stu son.A Marty Stu is the opposite male version of a Mary Sue.
I am glad I am not a die hard Alex and Lorna shipper, To their shippers it must have been a nightmare to read.
Now on to other characters.
I enjoyed bobby's drake superiority complex over the other people. Bobby once bragged to nightcrawler about how him, warren, jean, beast and scott were the only real xmen and everyone else were just wannabes.
He also uses this superiority complex to try and bully Juggernaut out of the team even telling Juggernaut he had every right to ask him to leave because he, Bobby was a founding member.
Why I disliked Bobby's superiority complex attitude and lame arrogance over fan favorite characters like Juggernaut and Nightcrawler, I still enjoyed reading it. It gave bobby another dimensional as a character which is a contrast to his usual playboy type..
Warren and Paige was great to read as well, I found their romance very fascinating. Why people may have issue with it, they can at least admit it was well developed.
I also enjoyed north star as well and the relationship between sam (the fish kid) and juggernaut.
One big criticism of Austen run as well is that he is way too darm too liberal and progressive. I am guessing he must be an atheist or hold a lot of far left wing views because all he did was have nightcrawler yell at God and question his faith. He also had Northstar talk to a little mutant kid about his homosexuality. A little kid, to me that was very inappropriate.
But what can I say, overall I have greatly enjoy Austen Run. I am on to volume 3 (holy war).
PEACE.