As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

X-MEN vol 6 #31
“The Passenger”
Writer: Gerry Duggan
Artist: Phil Noto
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White

COVER / PAGE 1. The X-Men fight Nimrod.

PAGE 2. Synch and Talon talk.

Talon was killed last issue while fighting the High Evolutionary, and Synch is acting as a host for her mind. As the issue goes on to spell out, Synch can only do this by using her powers to copy the absent Jean Grey – and, apparently, he has to keep doing it. As we’ve established in earlier issues, Synch ages when he uses his powers to copy absent mutants. We’re told later on that he was getting round this problem by copying Talon’s healing factor, but now that she’s dead, he can’t do that any more – so the effort of keeping her alive in his mind is going to kill him unless she can be decanted to somewhere else rather quickly. All of this was actually set up quite well in earlier issues of the series, making it all the stranger that Talon’s death was covered in such a rushed way.

“We’re about to launch an invasion of Earth…” In Fall of the House of X.

PAGE 3. Nightcrawler and Shadowkat tend to Synch.

When we left him last issue, Synch was in reasonably good shape, aside from having Talon in his head. Presumably it’s the stress of continually mimicking Jean’s powers that are the main issue here. Shadowkat seems to suggest that he copied Talon’s powers in his sleep, and got infected when he popped her claws, though if that’s the idea the art doesn’t really sell it – not only is there no blood, but his gloves are completely undamaged.

(more…)

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

DEAD X-MEN #1
“Earth Intruders”
Writer: Steve Foxe
Artists: Jonas Scharf, Bernard Chang & Vincenzo Carratù
Colour artist: Frank Martin
Letterer: Cory Petit
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White

COVER / PAGE 1. Prodigy, Dazzler, Cannonball and Jubilee emerge from their graves. Not what actually happens in the story, but the whole billing of this series as Dead X-Men turns out to be a bit of a red herring so far as the actual plot is concerned. Poor old Frenzy doesn’t make the cover.

Dead X-Men is a four-issue miniseries, but it seems to be actually relevant to the line-wide storylines, which is why it’s getting annotations here.

PAGES 2-4. The X-Men make an abortive visit to a demonic timeline.

Okay, so.

The Treehouse is the X-Men’s former New York base. It’s not looking very healthy, but then nor is the rest of the city in this timeline.

The X-Men for the purposes of this series are Prodigy, Frenzy, Jubilee, Dazzler and Cannonball – in other words, the five who were voted onto the team in X-Men: Hellfire Gala 2023 and lasted a grand total of one panel before being killed by Nimrod. The other members of the Gala line-up are Synch, Talon and Juggernaut, all of whom survived and are currently appearing over in X-Men. But this is the majority of the rightful X-Men team.

(more…)

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

WOLVERINE vol 7 #42
“Sabretooth War, part 2”
Writers: Benjamin Percy & Victor LaValle
Penciller: Cory Smith
Inker: Oren Junior
Colourist: Alex Sinclair
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso

COVER / PAGE 1. Sabretooth, with Wolverine’s head on a platter. Don’t worry, kids, it’s symbolic.

This one won’t take long.

PAGES 2-5. The Sabretooths capture Wolverine, and Sabretooth Prime has him strung up.

This continues directly from the end of the previous issue.

“I made a promise. Before you all tossed me in that Pit.” In House of X #6, Sabretooth’s last line before being dragged into the Pit was: “You think I’m just going to take this? I’m making a list and now you’re on it, along with your kids. And then their kids. I will make your line extinct.” He makes fairly generic threats to the Council throughout the scene, but nothing in this scene relates specifically to what he said in House of X #6.

Omega Red‘s tentacles are normally carbonadium, not adamantium. For most practical purposes, nothing turns on this.

(more…)

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

RESURRECTION OF MAGNETO #1
“The Lightning Path”
Writer: Al Ewing
Artist: Luciano Vecchio
Colour artist: David Curiel
Letterer: Joe Sabino
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White

RESURRECTION OF MAGNETO is a four-issue miniseries, which effectively replaces X-Men Red. It’s not exactly a renamed X-Men Red arc – as we’ll see, it’s a rather different book – but it does feature Storm and it continues the plot thread of Magneto’s death.

COVER / PAGE 1. Storm, with Magneto in the background.

PAGE 2. Storm’s dream about Magneto.

Storm confirms on page 19 that this is what she sees in her dream, and tells us fairly directly what she singles out as important: “He was standing on a strange shore, readying himself to enter a ruined  city – his face turned away but in torment. It was more than a dream. It was a distress call.” She also notes the five helmets at his feet. We see a version of this same page with Storm on page 29.

The city, river and bridge are the same in both images, as are the positions of the helmets (which are replaced in Storm’s version by five versions of her headdress). Magneto has three identical versions of his traditional helmet, together with the less common black and white versions. As in Storm’s picture, the three helmets on the left appear to have pools of blood next to them, although in Magneto’s case, one of the pools is green. All of Storm’s are red.

(more…)

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

X-FORCE vol 6 #48
“Game Recognizes Game”
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Robert Gill
Colour artist: GURU-eFX
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Mark Basso

COVER / PAGE 1: Beast in a forest, leaping towards someone who’s looking at him through the scope of a sniper rifle. Quite a loose interpretation of the actual story.

The first half of this issue is pretty much self explanatory, by the way.

PAGES 2-4. The Beast breaks into the Greenhouse.

X-Force set up their new Greenhouse base last issue, and Beast showed up at the end of the issue with his gun. From the look of it, whatever it is that he fires at Omega Red is meant to incapacitate.

That’s Aurora and Northstar on page 4, who also arrived here last issue.

PAGE 5. Recap and credits. We’re expressly told that this comes before the current Wolverine storyline, and also before Fall of the House of X and Rise of the Powers of X – all of which was clear from the last issue of Wolverine anyway, but there’s no harm in making it clear in this book too.

(more…)

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

X-MEN vol 6 #30
“Who Says Romance is Dead?”
Writer: Gerry Duggan
Artist: Phil Noto
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White

COVER / PAGE 1. Synch and Talon fight the High Evolutionary and his creations.

PAGES 2-4. Scott dreams about Jean.

This somewhat mirrors the dream scene that opens Fall of the House of X #1, in which Scott dreams about being hanged in the American west, and is apparently saved by Jean. Jean, of course, is still off in the White Hot Room, where we left her in Immortal X-Men. But the clear implication is that she’s regained contact with him in some way.

The fire imagery suggests Jean’s renewed connection with the Phoenix Force.

(more…)

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

WOLVERINE vol 7 #41
“Sabretooth War, part 1”
Writers: Victor LaValle & Benjamin Percy
Pencillers: Geoff Shaw & Cory Smith
Inkers: Geoff Shaw & Oren Junior
Colour artist: Alex Sinclair
Letterer: Cory Petit
Design: Stacie Zucker with Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Mark Basso

COVER / PAGE 1. An amalgam of Wolverine’s face on the left, and Sabretooth’s on the right. It’s the most violent Wolverine story ever told, apparently. Not sure that’s really the selling point of Victor LaValle’s Sabretooth stories, but okay.

PAGES 2-5. Sabretooth kills a group of “X-Men”.

Okay, so. We last saw Sabretooth in the Sabretooth & The Exiles miniseries, in which he defeated Graydon Creed and seized control of Orchis Station Five. Graydon had been travelling the multiverse killing Sabretooths and mounting their heads; he also had the bodies outfitted with collars which let him control them as weapons. That’s where all the headless Sabretooths in the crowd came from.

(more…)

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

NOTE: This post has been revised now that the digital edition has been corrected to include the data pages at the right places.

RISE OF THE POWERS OF X #1
“Data Pages”
Writer: Kieron Gillen
Artist: R. B. Silva
Colour artist: David Curiel
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Associate editor: Lauren Amaro
Editor: Jordan D White
Editor-in-chief: C B Cebulski

THE RISE OF THE POWERS OF X is the companion series to The Fall of the House of X, mirroring the House of X / Power of X twin minis that launched the Krakoan era. And yes, according to the credits pages, the titles have a THE in them.

With the original books, the titles were supposed to be pronounced as “House of X” and “Powers of Ten”. Presumably the same goes for this, but you never know.

COVER / PAGE 1. The near-future X-Men team, of whom more later. They’re surrounded by foliage but in front of a mechanical portal showing what looks to be the sun.

PAGE 2. Recap and credits. The recap basically covers the plot of Immortal X-Men, and then explains that we’re ten years in the future, following the fall of Krakoa. The story title refers to the Krakoan era’s signature device of including text pages in the middle of the story rather than as back matter. It used to be a Jonathan Hickman signature device but it’s ours now.

(more…)

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

FALL OF THE HOUSE OF X #1
“The Trial of Cyclops”
Writer: Gerry Duggan
Artist: Lucas Werneck
Colourist: Bryan Valenza
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White

FALL OF THE HOUSE OF X. This is one of two linked miniseries to complete the Krakoan era, the other being Rise of the Powers of X. The format echoes the twin minis House of X and Powers of X that launched the Krakoan era.

The title also alludes to the Edgar Allan Poe story “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839), though there’s no terribly obvious significance to that fact.

COVER / PAGE 1. Wolverine, Colossus, Nightcrawler and Shadowkat in action. We can see a couple of Orchis footsoldiers reflected in Colossus’s first.

PAGES 2-4. Cyclops dreams about being hung after an Old West show trial.

Timely was the name of Marvel’s Golden Age predecessor. It’s not immediately obvious what that has to do with anything either. Marvel does have an established Old West town called Timely – it was the setting of the 2015 miniseries 1872, which was part of the “Secret Wars” event, and was basically “the Marvel Universe, but a Western”.

(more…)

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

X-FORCE vol 6 #47
“The Greenhouse”
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Daniel Picciotto
Colour artist: GURU-eFX
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Mark Basso

COVER / PAGE 1: X-Force – including Wolverine again – under attack from Stark Sentinels.

PAGE 2. Flashback: X-Force pick up Wolverine.

This takes place after Wolverine #40, which concludes Wolverine’s run of team-ups with non-mutant heroes, and before X-Men #28, where he shows up for the X-Men’s visit to Latveria.

PAGES 3-7. X-Force set up base at the North Pole.

Presumably the narrator means “somewhere deep in the Arctic” rather than “literally the North Pole”, since they’re obviously looking for an appropriately secluded location.

X-Force still have the mobile base that they were hanging around in during the Hellfire Gala (because the remote-controlled Colossus wanted to keep them at a distance where they couldn’t help). Now that the team have escaped Mikhail Rasputin, this means they can actually function as a team again.

(more…)