ASTONISHING X-MEN INFINITY COMIC #18. By Alex Paknadel, Phillip Sevy, Michael Bartolo & Clayton Cowles. And so we reach the end of the second arc by this creative team, with the long term game seeming to be a very slow reunion of the cast of Generation X in order to take on the grass roots allies of 3K. This issue, Emma Frost wanders by as a guest star, and Skin heads off to hang around with Sean and Paige some more. At the same time, the story is trying to illustrate how basically sympathetic characters can be radicalised, which is basically what the first arc did too. All this sounds like it ought to work, but in practice it feels like we’re treading water – it’s basically the same as the first arc with added Skin, and it hasn’t really found a compelling angle on the characters. It’s okay but it needs to kick up a gear in the next arc.

EXCEPTIONAL X-MEN #8. (Annotations here.) Even as someone who appreciates the languid pace of this book, I can’t help raising an eyebrow at devoting the first third of the book to a Mr Sinister monologue that doesn’t really advance the plot much, and then spending the rest of the issue on the rest of the cast figuring out that there’s a crisis they ought to be doing something about. You have to admire the book’s commitment to not letting itself be rushed. And yet it does work – certainly once it gets past Sinister’s monologue. Carmen Carnero’s art does a lovely job with the malfunctioning Axo clone as it ambles awkwardly through his life, while Trista and Thao trying to summon Emma by thinking really hard at her is a neat spot. Still, things have to come to some sort of head next issue… right?

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EXCEPTIONAL X-MEN #8
Writer: Eve L Ewing
Artist: Carmen Carnero
Colour artist: Nolan Woodard
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Tom Brevoort

THE CORE CAST

Axo. He spends the entire issue as a prisoner of Mr Sinister, and so he doesn’t actually do or say anything. According to Trista, it’s out of character for him to enjoy Dazzler songs.

Bronze. She’s the only one observant enough to recognise that Sinister’s Axo clone is an impostor. She uses her powers in public to contain the guy who’s panicking in the shop fire.

Melée. She absolutely isn’t observant enough to recognise that Sinister’s Axo clone is an impostor, although she understands the clues immediately when Trista points them out. She’s open to Trista’s fashion advice (which does indeed seem to be appropriately tailored to her tastes). Her first reaction to a crisis is to try and contact Kate, followed by Emma – nobody seems to think of contacting Bobby – but she does correctly figure out that something has happened at Verate and decide that they’re going to have to do superhero things and get inside.

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ASTONISHING X-MEN INFINITY COMIC #17. By Alex Paknadel, Phillip Sevy, Michael Bartolo & Clayton Cowles. There’s not much more I can say about this arc that I haven’t said already. I completely get why we’re doing stories about radicalisation and how the understandable worries of normal people can be turned to hate while they believe they’re acting in self-defence. it’s a fairly natural theme in the USA right now. But it’s making for rather repetitive stories, and using it as the vehicle for a partial Generation X reunion isn’t adding much spark to it – Skin’s a nice enough character but there’s not really that much interest in seeing him reunited with Husk. It’s a perfectly competent story in plot and artwork but there’s nothing lifting it above that.

UNCANNY X-MEN #13. (Annotations here.) Crossover season is in the rear view mirror and David Marquez is back for the first part of “The Dark Artery”. Obviously, that means the issue is worth your time for the art alone – okay, the dragon looks more stone than ice, but that panel of the Outliers approaching the Dark Artery through the swamp is wonderful, and the flashback pages of Henrietta Benjamin is lovely throughout. There was a time when the X-books worked on the principle that mutants had only started to appear in serious numbers at the start of the Silver Age once the post-nuclear generation hit puberty – that was the point of the “children of the atom” tagline – but that’s been downplayed for many years and doesn’t really make sense anyway given the sliding timeline. So embracing that change and doing stories about the secret history of underground mutant communities is a nice idea. Yes, it begs the question of why we’ve never heard of this pre-X-Men mutant history before, but… well, the current state of continuity does that anyway. I’m not quite so sure how I feel about doing the actual history of racial segregation at the same time – it risks equating the real with the fictional, and has the odd effect of presenting the mutant experience right next to the very thing that it’s a metaphor for – but I think the first chapter gets away with it.

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