Just a reminder that, as previously mentioned, we’re taking a week off.  We’ll be back next weekend.  Or maybe Monday.  More likely Monday.

It’s a podcast weekend, so check one post down for discussion of Age of Ultron, Aliens vs Parker, and Lost Vegas.  Oh, and the link to our RedBubble store is there too.

Housekeeping announcement: I’m taking next week off, so the X-Axis will return in two weeks (or a bit after).

And now…

Uncanny X-Men #3 – The previous issue ended with the Avengers showing up, but it did seem a bit early for that fight, so it’s no great shock to find that this issue doesn’t actually contain it.  What happens instead is that they talk to each other for a while, and then when the Avengers finally decide to have a go at arresting Scott’s team, Tempus just freezes them all in place.

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Quite a lot to get through – though for once, that’s mostly because I’ve still got three titles to cover from last week.  Also, it’s Titles Beginning With A week!

A + X #5 – Quite the random selection this time, as the book seems to be broadening its already broad agenda to “any two characters as long as one of them’s associated with the Avengers titles and the other is associated with the X-Men titles.”  So in the lead slot we’ve got Iron Fist and Doop by Kathryn Immonen and David Lafuente, while the second story, by Kieron Gillen and Joe Bennett,  has Mr Sinister crossing paths with Loki.

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It’s a podcast weekend, so check out the show one post down, where we’re reviewing Justice League of America, Nova and Five Weapons.

Meanwhile, it’s another of those weeks where I haven’t yet received the books that I’m still buying in physical form, so we’ll be back later in the week to cover Astonishing X-Men #59, Gambit #9, and X-Treme X-Men #11.  As it happens, that still leaves us with plenty to talk about.  If I have time, I’ll also try to have a look over the first six issues of X-Men: Legacy, which are going to form the first trade paperback.  No promises, mind.

Uncanny Avengers #4 – This is the end of the first arc, but I see that the collected edition will actually run up to issue #5 – which, to judge from the solicitations, will contain a one-shot story rounding out both the cast and the page count.

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After many, many questions from commenters asking where they’re available, we’ve decided to finally make the archive of the old X-Axis reviews available as a permanent link here on the site. You’ll find it on the right hand side for your ease of access. NB: this only goes up to the point where Paul moved his blogging to If Destroyed, so for anything after that point, check the If Destroyed site instead.

Back to another quiet week for the X-books, but since I’ve got a bit of spare time for once, I’ll chuck in some of this week’s other new releases for a change.  (Actually, it’s not such a quiet week for the X-books if you take a broader idea of the line – there’s also Deadpool #5 and Wolverine Max #4, but I don’t count either of them, and besides, I’m buying Wolverine Max in trade.  Digression over.)

Justice League of America #1 – Not to be confused with the other Justice League, who are apparently not of America.  In fact, that turns out not to be a technicality so much as the starting point for this book’s premise: the US government can’t control the Justice League, so it wants one of its own.  Hence, Justice League of America, the operative words being “of America”.

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And so, in the week when people across Britain weighed up the unexpectedly related questions, “How do I feel about horses?” and “Can I be bothered cooking my own food?”, we find ourselves with another weird example of Marvel scheduling.  Despite the large number of X-books released each month – the checklist lists 19, though that’s counting two Deadpool books – Marvel have only two of them coming out this week.  Not that this is a complaint, as such; more a resigned bemusement at what could possibly be going through their minds.

I’d understand if they were moving stuff aside in order to give a major release like Uncanny X-Men #1 a clear run for our attention – that would make some degree of sense.  Instead, we’ve got two middle chapters coming out, and presumably a vast deluge of X-related material in some later week to make up for it.  I just don’t get the thinking.

(Oh, just a reminder that, as we mentioned on the last podcast, it’ll be another week before the Landmark Issue #100.  Current plan is to record it next Sunday.)

Anyway.  Comics!  Both of them!

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One of those weeks where I’m very, very pushed for time, but there are so few X-books out this week (as in, two) that I might as well just get them done…

X-Men Legacy #5 – The plot threads start to draw together, as tends to happen when you’re coming up for what will be the end of the first trade paperback volume.  But Si Spurrier does manage to give that connection some sense of surprise, perhaps because he’d set up what seemed to be a fairly disparate set of storylines that looked as if they might somehow come together down the road.  Instead, we get a lot of explanations here rather sooner than I would have predicted, so that while the overall pattern makes sense, it doesn’t feel like it’s been patiently lumbering towards us for months.  (Spoilers ahead, by the way.)

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It’s a podcast weekend, and by the time I post this, chances are it’ll be up, so scroll just one post down to find it.  Reviews include Answer, Uncanny X-Force, and Threshold.

I’ve got a couple of books from last week that I didn’t get around to reviewing, plus all of this week’s books to cover, so there’s quite the catch-up to do here.  These are probably going to be on the quick side, though I say that a lot…

A+X #4 – As often turns out to be the case with this book, it’s really a question of how keen you are to get the stories for the art alone, because the actual writing is largely fluff.  Kaare Andrews writes and draws a Spider-Man/Beast story which has a few interesting tricks, like starting literally in mid-scene, and wheels out the 1980s colouring dots to give the story a nicely retro feel.  But it doesn’t really go anywhere in particular; there’s a vague nod in the direction of a theme about Beast’s descendents celebrating his lack of humanity and his refusing to live up to their expectations, but it’s very handwaving stuff, feeling more like a concession to the shape of a plot than anything Andrews is really all that interested in.

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Podcast weekend!  The podcast is just below this post, and has plenty of reviews.  Go listen to it.

I’m still waiting for some of the books that I’m buying in physical form, so this is going to end up split over the course of the week.  But let’s do the two recent relaunches now.  (Actually, I’ve been toying with posting individual capsule reviews as separate posts anyway, rather than doing them all in a bunch on Sunday night.  We’ll see about that.)  Meantime…

Cable & X-Force #3 – This series got off to a rather slow start, but with this issue, it feels like it’s getting to the point.  Thank heavens it had the accelerated shipping schedule for those first few issues.

Cable’s premonitions become rather more precise here.  He’s expecting some sort of biological attack through a chain of fast food restaurants which kills humans but not mutants.  This, apparently, is going to be an important tipping point in history which leads to, etc, etc, you know the drill.

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