ASTONISHING X-MEN INFINITY COMIC #27. By Alex Paknadel, Phillip Sevy, Michael Bartolo & Clayton Cowles. This is a Hellfire Vigil tie-in, awkwardly interrupting an unrelated storyline featuring two of the same characters. It basically exists to explain Banshee grudgingly agreeing to attend the Vigil at the last minute, having started off with no desire whatsoever to commemorate the place where his beloved Moira turned out to be going through the motions, and then killed him. Cassidy Keep’s last remaining leprechaun reminding him of the story of Tir Na Nog, and the upshot is for Sean to accept that Krakoa was a time of lost innocence for the generation below him. I’m not sure you can really pull that line with characters like Husk and Skin who have been around since the 1990s, but the basic idea works well enough.

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ASTONISHING X-MEN INFINITY COMIC #26. By Alex Pakandel, Phillip Sevy, Michael Bartolo and Clayton Cowles. The island of Mursay, which has proclaimed itself a mutant home despite a suspiciously small number of actual mutants, is indeed trying to lure people into a trap. But not, it seems, because they’re an anti-mutant front – instead, they’re a pro-mutant cult who look to be worshipping a symbiote or something, and won’t let anyone leave. So it looks like it’s The Wicker Man. Fair enough, it’s a solid concept, and more interesting than the straightforward honey trap plot. Two chapters in, it’s not obvious whether there’s anything much else going on. But it’s perfectly fine, so we’ll see where it goes.

UNCANNY X-MEN #16. (Annotations here.) This is the final part of the “Dark Artery” arc, which looks like it was intended more to set up the Artery and the Penumbra for future stories – everyone now knows that Henrietta is at the bottom of the garden, after all – than to resolve very much about them. What it does resolve is the question of what drew the four Outliers to Haven, which is Shuvahrak trying to force one of them to relieve her of the burden of looking after the Penumbra – evidently as much of a prison for her as it is for the people she imprisoned there by way of punishment. It seems like we’re meant to take the place as a vicious cycle that needs to be broken at some point, though nobody in the cast actually seems terribly bothered about that issue, whether in terms of freeing the prisoners or relieving Shuvahrak of her burden.

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ASTONISHING X-MEN INFINITY COMIC #25. By Alex Paknadel, Phillip Sevy, Michael Bartolo & Clayton Cowles. Start of a new arc, and this is still a Generation X reunion book. This time, Paige and Angelo investigate Mursay, an island in the Orkneys supposedly offering itself to mutants as a new home. Naturally the place is hugely suspicious. And hey, Mursay is actually a fairly reasonable name for a fictitious island in the Orkneys! Obviously it’s a lost opportunity to set a story on Muckle Skerry or Papa Westray, but sure, the smaller Orkney islands are a reasonable enough place to do this sort of story. The first chapter doesn’t really set up much beyond “obvious trap”, but it does that well enough, so no complaints.

X-MEN #18. (Annotations here.) End of the arc, and five issues feels like it was too long. Particularly as we still don’t get to find out that much about the individual 3K X-Men, despite them having such a big role. We have fill-in art from Emilio Laiso on the last chapter too, which is perfectly fine but lacking a little in distinctiveness. There are plenty of good ideas in here – the Beast being approached by 3K because everyone knows he’ll turn into a villain in the end, Ben Liu’s slightly-too-aggressive approach to doing the right thing, and the twin being talked down. The bit where she softens on being given a name is very effective, and the parallels with Cassandra’s own back story are left nicely understated. But… it’s still basically a five-issue action sequence which is more of a step in a larger story than a complete story of itself.

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