The X-Axis – w/c 11 March 2024
X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #130. By Steve Foxe, Steve Orlando, Phillip Sevy, Yen Nitro & Travis Lanham. In which Gambit and Feint go to New Orleans to see if Candra knows what Selene is up to with the Externals. On the one hand, this does actually do something useful: it follows up on Feint becoming a proper X-Man, of sorts, in Dark X-Men, and on Gambit taking her with him at the end of the issue. Basically Candra explains that Selene is planning to sacrifice a bunch of mutants so that she and her allies can become invulnerable as well as immortal. Well, at least we’re advancing the plot, but bringing in yet more characters to do so only compounds this arc’s lack of focus, and the book still has the basic problem that – with the exception of a couple of characters created independently and retconned into the group – the Externals simply aren’t interesting. If you’re going to bring back a concept that’s been largely ignored or used simply as a plot device for a quarter century, you need a compelling case about what it is that everyone else has missed, and this arc doesn’t have one.
FALL OF THE HOUSE OF X #3. (Annotations here.) Well. I mean, I’ve read worse. But it’s not good, and as an anchor series paying off a whole era of the X-Men it’s really not good. I’m inclined to give the creators the benefit of the doubt that some sort of backstage chaos has been going on, given oddities like entire trailed storylines going missing, cliffhangers not connecting with the next issue and such like. Or Alia Gregor turning out to be important to the plot of this series when basically nobody has done anything with her in a year or more, even though X-Men‘s “Fall of X” issues seem to have been marking time with Latverian filler. Or… you get the idea.
Wolverine #45 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
WOLVERINE vol 7 #45
“Sabretooth War, part 5: X Marks the Spot”
Writers: Victor LaValle & Benjamin Percy
Artist: Geoff Shaw
Colour artist: Alex Sinclair
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso
COVER / PAGE 1. Well, that’s a big X with Wolverine and Sabretooth at the sides, a Stark Sentinel at the top, and the three main alt-Sabretooths at the bottom – although “Cap” Sabretooth died last issue.
PAGES 2-4. Sabretooth returns to Krakoa.
The Stark Sentinels have been guarding Krakoa (to little effect) ever since the Hellfire Gala.
As Sabretooth points out, he was banished to the Pit right at the start of the Krakoan era (in House of X #6), so he never really knew the place.
Sabretooth has an Orchis ship because his Station Five base was stolen from Orchis in the Sabretooth & The Exiles miniseries.
Dead X-Men #3 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
DEAD X-MEN #3
“An Echo, a Stain”
Writer: Steve Foxe
Artists: Lynne Yoshii, Bernard Chang, Javier Pina & David Baldéon
Colour artist: Frank Martin
Letterer: Cory Petit
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. The X-Men confront an alternate Psylocke.
PAGES 2-3. The X-Men arrive in Moira’s 9th life.
The previous issue ended with the X-Men in Moira’s seventh life, where they learned that the cyborg Moira from issue #1 was visiting Moira’s earlier lives, and decided that they had to pursue her through those timelines in order to stop her from causing damage to the timeline. They’ve apparently come directly from that timeline, but although they tell us that Rachel sent them here, it’s not altogether clear why, since they spend much of the rest of the issue trying to persuade Rachel to keep sending them back through Moira’s past lives. Presumably Rachel just assumes that they’re still just randomly visiting past timelines to see if anything interesting turns up, which is pretty much how Prodigy pitched matters to her last issue.
Fall of the House of X #3 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
FALL OF THE HOUSE OF X #3
“The X Deaths of Dr Stasis”
Writer: Gerry Duggan
Artists: Lucas Werneck & Jethro Morales
Colourist: Bryan Valenza
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. Wolverine pins down a terrified Dr Stasis. Wolverine doesn’t actually appear in this issue.
PAGES 2-4. Orchis attack the Juggernaut.
Last issue, the Juggernaut rescued Krakoa from Orchis. God knows how he ended up in the middle of a desert.
“It’s said that ‘nothing’ can stop the Juggernaut, but that’s not true.” Even at full power, the Juggernaut was in practice stopped on a fairly regular basis, but following his most recent re-powering (in Juggernaut vol 3 #4) he seems to be just very big and strong, as opposed to literally unstoppable. In X-Men: Hellfire Gala 2023, he did survive what seemed to be a devastatingly lethal attack.
Daredevil Villains #17: The Exterminator
We’ve jumped forward quite a few issues again, thanks to a string of issues featuring guest villains from the wider Marvel Universe. Issues #30-32 feature the Cobra and Mr Hyde, explicitly on loan from Thor. Issues #33-34 are a Beetle story – he does come back for two more stories in the #100s, but I don’t think anyone regards him as a Daredevil villain. Issue #35-36 are the Trapster. Issues #37-38 are Dr Doom, and lead into a crossover with Fantastic Four.
DAREDEVIL #39-41 (April to June 1968)
“The Exterminator and the Super-Powered Unholy Three” / “The Fallen Hero” / “The Death of Mike Murdock!”
Writer, editor: Stan Lee
Penciller: Gene Colan
Inkers: George Tuska (#39), John Tartaglione (#40-41)
Letterers: Artie Simek (#39), Sam Rosen (#40-41)
Colourist: not credited
It’s been the best part of a year since Daredevil last debuted a new villain. But while the Exterminator is notionally the main villain of this arc, a lot of the emphasis is on his henchmen. Ape-Man, Bird-Man and Cat-Man debuted as the Organizer’s thugs back in issue #10, as part of the Wally Wood arc that Stan Lee hated so much. Now, they’re featured prominently as the returning villains. They’re billed as the Unholy Three, with their fourth member Frog-Man having fallen by the wayside for some reason – perhaps because of his similarity to Leap-Frog. Daredevil notes Frog-Man’s absence, assumes that he must still be in jail, and never mentions him again.
During the issues we skipped, Stan also brought back the other member of the Organization, Foggy’s ex-girlfriend Debbie Harris. Why? Because even Stan was bored with the book’s romantic triangle, and the simplest solution was to partner Foggy up with someone else. Not only does that get Matt and Karen out of their holding pattern, it frees up Foggy from being a blocking character and a comedy figure, and lets him start shifting back into his original role as Matt’s best friend. By the time we reach this issue Debbie is a full fledged member of the supporting cast, and Foggy is worried that their relationship will damage his chances of being elected as District Attorney. She’s a convicted criminal, after all. Nonsense, says Matt – New Yorkers are very understanding about such things. They love reformed criminals and the open-minded politicians who date them!
Once Debbie Harris was back in circulation, it made sense to bring back her former stablemates. In Wally Wood’s story, the Unholy Three were press ganged into working for the Organizer. They were halfway between actual super villains, and hired thugs who were pretending to be supervillains as part of the Organizer’s plan. All that has fallen by the wayside – they’re now just an animal-themed henchman squad. But Stan does keep the idea that a mastermind keeps track of them via their clunky headsets and chest-mounted video cameras. This time round, that villain is the Exterminator.
The X-Axis – w/c 4 March 2024
So before you ask, no, I’m not doing Ultimate X-Men. It’s an Ultimate book, not an X-book, and I stopped covering the first Ultimate X-Men after a while too. More to the point, though, Peach Momoko’s art is beautiful, but I found Demon Days a complete slog, and Ultimate Invasion didn’t do much to interest me in the new line either. So it’s really a book that I have no interest in. It’ll show up on Marvel Unlimited in three months time and I’m more than happy to wait and read it then.
X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #129. By Steve Foxe, Steve Orlando, Phillip Sevy, Yen Nitro & Travis Lanham. Now, having just said all that, I’m very conscious that this is a less than stellar week for the books I am reading. X-Men Unlimited takes a bit of a diversion from its main plot to explain what Sunspot was up to immediately before the Hellfire Gala. X-Men Red seemed to be setting this up as some kind of subplot, but never got back to it. So, sure, if that book’s not going to get round to it, this is as good a place as any to tie up the loose end. But “he was planning to launch a PR campaign with X-Corp” is a bit of an underwhelming answer, and it ultimately just adds to the sense of this arc being a random collection of elements loosely arranged around a rather slight Externals story.
X-Men #32 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN vol 6 #32
“From Emma, With Love”
Writer: Gerry Duggan
Artist: Phil Noto
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. Magik and Shadowkat fight Orchis.
PAGES 2-3. Orchis go after the Mykines Island Lighthouse Keeper.
“The site of the so-called ‘Mutant Massacre’.” X-Men: Hellfire Gala 2023, where Orchis forced most of the mutants off Earth, slaughtered the human guests in attendance, and blamed the mutants for it.
The Lighthouse Keeper, who’s never been named, was shown as either flirting with Jumbo Carnation or perhaps being in a relationship with him in that issue, and also in Marauders vol 1 #17. We’re told here that he “used to travel the world” with Jumbo, which really makes no sense if he’s meant to be a lighthouse keeper, but perhaps this is supposed to be shared history from before he came here.
Why have Orchis only just remembered this inconvenient witness sitting here with (as far as they know) no defence? Look, they just haven’t, alright.
The X-Axis – w/c 26 February 2024
A busy week, then! It’s been a while!
X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #128. By Steve Foxe, Steve Orlando, Nick Roche, Yen Nitro & Travis Lanham. You’d have thought that by day 6 of release someone would have gone in and removed the opening clapperboard graphic that reads “for internal use only – to be deleted”, but apparently either nobody’s noticed yet or nobody’s had the time. Huh. Anyway, this is part 8, and there’s only so much I can say about this story every week. It’s finally getting around to some sort of point – Selene has promised the other Externals some sort of ascension if they kidnap mutants for her, they don’t trust her – but despite Foxe and Orlando trying to draw out their individual personalities, the Externals just aren’t all that interesting.
DEAD X-MEN #2. (Annotations here.) Apparently Dead X-Men has already fulfilled its mission for Rise of the Powers of X, but we’re getting the X-Men pursuing Moira back through her past lives anyway. It’s hard to say whether this actually plays into anything bigger or whether the book is now just off doing its own thing – in theory, anything that messes about with Moira’s memories ought to have massive ripple effects, but who knows how any of this is meant to work. At any rate, going back through Moira’s past seems like a good idea for the closing months of the Krakoan era – it’s a story that the X-books never really got around to, it offers some possibility to flesh out the current version of the character beyond psycho robot, and it contributes to an overall sense of closure. All that said, I’m not sure the conceit of having different artists for every timeline adds anything. (If indeed it is a conceit rather than a scheduling problem, but it’s probably the former, since this is how the series was always solicited.) Nor is it making a terribly strong case for the lost potential in this team of X-Men, since pretty much everyone other than Prodigy in this series is replaceable. Hopefully the others get more to do later on. Still, it’s an enjoyable romp, and the art on the Ultron Sentinel world is lovely.
Dead X-Men #2 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
DEAD X-MEN #2
“Army of Me”
Writer: Steve Foxe
Artists: Peter Nguyen, Bernard Chang & Guillermo Sanna
Colour artist: Frank Martiin
Letterer: Cory Petit
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. The X-Men surrounded by Ultron Sentinels.
Not only are three very different artists credited for this issue, but issue #1 also credited three artists, and only one (Bernard Chang) worked on both issues. Nonetheless, these are the originally solicited artists.
PAGES 2-4. The cyborg Moira arrives in her eighth life.
Last issue, the X-Men visited one of the abortive timelines created by Mr Sinister’s Moira Engine and met that world’s version of Moira MacTaggert, a cyborg who was building a weapon to “cut a path” back to her first life with a view to altering her entire history. The issue ended with her getting the last component that she needed (a shard of mysterium).
Resurrection of Magneto #2 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
RESURRECTION OF MAGNETO #2
“The Weight of the World”
Writer: Al Ewing
Artist: Luciano Vecchio
Colour artists: David Curiel & Jesus Aburtov
Letterer: Joe Sabino
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. Storm confronts Magneto at his memorial – a straightforward scene from the comic.
PAGES 2-4. Flashback: Magneto acquires a magic key.
This is a flashback to Giant-Size X-Men: Magneto #1, a one-shot from 2020. It’s the issue where Magneto buys an island from Namor the Sub-Mariner, in order that Emma can use it as the location of the first Hellfire Gala. In return, Magneto helps Namor to open a large metal doorway in the Molloy Deep, bearing the seal of the Old Kings of Atlantis (“Uhari, I think”). Inside, after fighting a kraken for a few pages, they encounter three apparent witches – the green one seen in this flashback, and two others who are just out of shot. The green witch challenges them to choose correctly between a “spiral” (a shell) and a stone in order to return to the surface. Namor chooses the shell and is immediately attacked by the thing which is on his face in the flashback. The witch then challenges Magneto to make the same choice; Magneto notices that there is a third plinth, apparently vacant, and chooses it. The witch then gets very angry but hands over the key seen here.
