Exceptional X-Men #9 annotations
EXCEPTIONAL X-MEN #9
Writer: Eve L Ewing
Artist: Carmen Carnero
Colour artist: Nolan Woodard
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Tom Brevoort
THE CORE CAST
Axo. His “affective core”, as visited by Emma, consists of him sharing a meal with his family and friends – despite the fact that we’ve repeatedly seen him blowing off his father’s attempts to have these sorts of moments with him. Emma seems surprisingly touched by it, and describes it as “lovely”.
He’s a powerful enough telepath for it to be worth Emma’s while borrowing his power in order to defeat Sinister.
Bronze and Melée. They bluff their way out of Axo’s clone collapsing with a ludicrous tale about a school science project, which people are apparently willing to accept. Well, it is the Marvel Universe.
They accept the instruction to remain at the dojo while the grown-ups deal with Mr Sinister, but they’re understandably bored and frustrated. Whether because of that or because they’re taken by surprise and railroaded, they fall for Sinister’s fake Iceman. Rather than making a positive contribution to defeating Sinister, their main role is to stay calm and get themselves out of trouble without having to divert the attention of the established X-Men.
Charts – 16 May 2025
Huh, I nearly forgot about this one.
Nine weeks, and still no sign of anything getting close to him. What’s more, streams ticked up slightly this week, so he’s out of danger from the downweighting rule for another few weeks. Nine weeks matches Sabrina Carpenter’s “Taste” from last year. His next target is Dave and Central Cee’s “Sprinter”, which had a ten week run in 2023. Barring a miracle, he will make that. The top 4 are all non-movers.
8. Calvin Harris & Clementine Douglas – “Blessings”
This is the second single from Calvin Harris’s next album (presumably), and his highest position since 2023 when “Desire” reached number 6 with Sam Smith on vocals. It’s a fairly run-of-the-mill dance record, to be honest. But then the first single from the album went for country-pop and had Harris himself singing, and it missed the top 40 entirely. It’s quite a good vocal, too. Maybe airplay still matters more for artists like Calvin Harris than you might think, and releasing a single called “Smoke the Pain Away” was ill-advised in terms of daytime radio.
The X-Axis – w/c 12 May 2025
ASTONISHING X-MEN INFINITY COMIC #21. By Tim Seeley, Edoardo Audino, KJ Díaz & Clayton Cowles. The Generation X reunion continues with Mondo, who feels like getting him into this storyline involved some awkward shoehorning. Of course, the Mondo who was in Generation X was later revealed to be an impostor; this is the real Mondo, who doesn’t really know the characters he’s being reunited with, and in fact has only a scattering of previous appearances. In itself, that’s quite a fun inversion of the reunion angle. Getting him into a story about influencers by making him a pacifist podcaster feels forced, though – even if the story then acknowledges that he’s not a particularly successful pacifist podcaster, he still has to be doing well enough to show up at this event at all. Mind you, I do like Banshee’s dad-like bafflement at the online world, which seems like a solid use of his weary father-figure role in this group – if he’s not the headmaster then his role in the cast ought to be a bit awkward.
UNCANNY X-MEN #14. (Annotations here.) So we’ve got three threads here: Henrietta’s flashbacks in the 1920s (or so?), the Outliers in the Dark Artery in the present day, and Gambit’s encounter with Sadurang. Thus far, the third of those threads doesn’t seem to have much to do with the other two, beyond perhaps keeping the regular X-Men occupied while the Outliers do their thing. It’s neat enough in its own right, but I’m not quite sure what it’s doing in this arc yet. The other two threads are coming together nicely, though – we’re getting some advancement about who the Outliers are and how they actually wound up coming together in the first place, and at the same time Gail Simone continues to try and flesh out a historical mutant underground community. David Marquez’s art is naturally beautiful, especially on the historical flashbacks.
Wolverine #9 annotations
WOLVERINE vol 8 #9
“The Long Road Home”
Writer: Saladin Ahmed
Artist: Javier Pina
Colour artist: Bryan Valenza
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso
WOLVERINE
The previous issue ended with Logan in a motel room receiving a mysterious letter supposedly from his mother, apologising for rejecting him (in Origin) and asking for his help. According to Logan, that was “[a] couple of days ago”. He also claims that he’s rejoined the X-Men and that “I left the wilderness weeks ago”.
Unfortunately, if we take everything in the series so far at face value, there is no time for that to have happened. The series began with him hiding out in the wilderness and Nightcrawler trying to persuade him to come back. Also, footnotes explicitly had it taking place before X-Men #1. The only gaps in the action since then have involved Logan hiding out in remote cabins trying to train Leonard the Wendigo, and also take place at a time when Nightcrawler still somehow has access to the Blackbird, which isn’t around in Uncanny X-Men.
Phoenix #11 annotations
PHOENIX #11
Writer: Stephanie Phillips
Artist: Roi Mercado
Colour artist: Java Tartaglia
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Annalise Bissa
PHOENIX
The previous issue ended with Jean receiving a psychic message from someone claiming to be her sister Sara. Since then, Jean hasn’t had any further psychic contact with Sara, but she has had recurring nightmares about Sara being taken away by villains. The one we see features demons.
Jean is certain that the woman she sensed was the real Sara, and somewhat irritated by Scott’s scepticism. She places particular importance on this not simply because it’s her sister, but because the rest of her family are all dead (having been slaughtered by the Shi’ar in Uncanny X-Men #467).
When Jean meets Sara, she’s equally certain that it’s her real sister. But she acknowledges in narration towards the end that she very much wanted to believe this, and didn’t ask awkward questions.
X-Factor #10 annotations
X-FACTOR vol 5 #10
“Survivors Guild”
Writer: Mark Russell
Artist: Bob Quinn
Colour artist: Jesus Aburtov
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Editor: Darren Shan
This is the final issue of X-Factor, which has been cancelled. So as you’d expect, it’s a cut-to-the-chase wrap-up issue.
Although the solicitations always had the cover art showing Havok laying flowers on X-Factor’s grave, the solicitation text bears little resemblance to the story as published: “General Mills gives X-Factor one final test of loyalty! How will Angel, Pyro and the others complete their mission without selling out their people? Can Havok still make a difference? And what final secret is X-Factor hiding?”
X-FACTOR
Angel. The subplot about his out-of-character behaviour is completely dropped, assuming that it actually was a subplot (after all, Darkstar’s been wildly out of character for the whole series). But since Angel’s behaviour is basically back to normal in this issue, it looks like someone just made a call that there wasn’t time to resolve the plot and it was best to brush it under the carpet.
Uncanny X-Men #14 annotations
UNCANNY X-MEN vol 6 #14
“The Dark Artery, part 2: An Infectious Mind”
Writer: Gail Simone
Artist: David Marquez
Colour artist: Matthew Wilson
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
THE X-MEN
Gambit. He repeats his story from the previous issue about people panicking at the sight of his eyes when he was a child. He rejects Sadurang’s offer to return the Left Eye of Agamotto, a decision which Sadurang accepts without protest – but he makes sure to draw the prophecy of madness to the attention of the rest of the team.
Rogue. She vigorously defends her husband against Sadurang, to little avail. Gambit claims that you have to tread carefully with her when she’s in a bad mood (and makes a time-of-the-month reference).
Jubilee. Sadurang reminds her of Shogo, her adoptive son who turned into a dragon and remained in Otherworld after Knights of X. Sadurang claims that Shogo misses her, and advises her to visit.
Charts – 9 May 2025
Another very quiet week with no real threat of a change at the top. I know, I’m really building this up.
Eight weeks. He still needs one more week to match Sabrina Carpenter’s “Taste” from last year. It’s down a bit, but still has a massive 74% lead over the number 2 single, which is now Ravyn Lenae.
17. Ed Sheeran – “Old Phone”
This is the second single from his upcoming album, making a rather muted debut. It’s been overshadowed by the first single “Azizam”, which is spending its fifth week in the top 5 – albeit without getting above number 3. Obviously, the strategy here is to lead with a pop song and follow up with an acoustic track to cover the bases.
The X-Axis – w/c 6 May 2025
ASTONISHING X-MEN INFINITY COMIC #20. By Tim Seeley, Adoardo Audino, KJ Diaz & Clayton Cowles. This feels like it backs off a bit from the cliffhanger of the previous issue (which I liked a lot). But the basic setting of a bunch of influencers who don’t really care about anything other than engagement – including the ones who are supposedly the good guys – seems like a good angle. Building up Wildside as the leader of a new MLF is, um, a choice, but I guess that of the established MLF guys he’s the one with the most charisma. Audino makes good use of the format, bringing a lot of personality to his bit part characters. It’s pretty decent, all told.
FREE COMIC BOOK DAY 2025: FANTASTIC FOUR / GIANT-SIZE X-MEN #1. This came out last weekend, but it was added to Marvel Unlimited on Wednesday. There are three 8-page stories here, and the main attraction is the FF strip by Ryan North, Humberto Ramos and Edgar Delgado. It gets across the strengths of North’s FF run – a simple strong idea, and genuinely self-contained – which also makes it ideal for FCBD. The X-Men story, by Jackson Lanzing, Collin Kelly, Iban Coello and Brian Reber, is basically just an advert for the upcoming Giant-Size X-Men one-shots and does nothing to increase my interest in what currently looks like a rather tiresome gimmick. It’s certainly hard to see why it would hold any interest to the new readers that FCBD is ostensibly targetting. Finally, there’s a Chip Zdarsky story about a fan and his non-fan wife ending up the Marvel Universe as “Wolverpool and Deadverine” which… feels too close to what Gwenpool did already, I guess?
Laura Kinney: Wolverine #6 annotations
LAURA KINNEY: WOLVERINE #6
“My So-Called Perfect Life”
Writer: Erica Schultz
Artist: Giada Belviso
Colour artist: Rachelle Rosenberg
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso
WOLVERINE
This won’t take us long, by the nature of the story.
The previous issue ended with Laura returning home and getting shot by a mysterious hooded figure with a hi-tech gun. We don’t find out who that was, though, because… well, you know the story where the lead character is in a version of the real world, or a psychiatric hospital or something, and everyone tells them that the events of the regular story are a hallucination that they’re being treated for? It’s that one, though with the slightly different approach that Laura is living a happy suburban life with her father and sister and doesn’t even remember her “hallucinations” until she’s reminded about them. The “real” world setting continues for the whole issue, so I’m just going to assume for present purposes that nobody appearing here is real other than Laura herself. It’s possible that some of them might be other characters also trapped in this world, but we have no way of knowing at this stage.
Her “father” is Logan, her biological father, though acting like a normal middle class father. Her “sister” is Gabby, her clone. We haven’t seen the real Gabby since Blood Hunt, when she was still hanging around with Laura – she vanished off panel somewhere before NYX. Although everyone in this world is entirely depowered, Gabby still has the two vertical scars on her face.
