Uncanny X-Men #17 annotations
UNCANNY X-MEN vol 6 #17
”Murder Me, Mutina”
Writer: Gail Simone
Artist: Luciano Vecchio
Colour artist: Rachelle Rosenberg
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
THE X-MEN.
Rogue. She seems genuinely surprised at the existence and success of a slasher movie where the killer is a mutant (see below). She assumes that it’s likely to lead to attacks on mutants, and worries about the Outliers.
Gambit. He’s entirely unbothered about Calico and Jitter being suspended from school – he seems to be taking it as read that they were defending themselves against a bully (which isn’t quite what happened).
Nightcrawler. Well, he’s there, but there’s not much to say about him this issue.
Jubilee. She argues that mutants need a PR firm. They did in fact hire a woman called Kate Kildare during the San Francisco / Utopia era.
Charts – 4 July 2025
At last, could we be resuming normal turnover?
1. Lewis Capaldi – “Survive”
Another new number 1! We last heard from Lewis Capaldi in January 2024, when “Strangers” reached number 37. But that was a single that he barely promoted, having withdrawn from live shows on mental health grounds after summer 2023, when he had an episode of Tourette’s syndrome during his set at the Glastonbury Festival. He promoted this single with a surprise set at the 2025 Festival. That clearly made a big difference, since he released a covers EP last month that seems to have gone mostly unnoticed.
The X-Axis – w/c 30 June 2025
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.
X-Men: Hellfire Vigil #1 annotations
X-MEN: HELLFIRE VIGIL
Writers: Jackson Lanzing, Collin Kelly, Jed MacKay, Stephanie Phillips, Geoffrey Thorne, Gail Simone, Eve Ewing, Alex Paknadel, Jason Loo & Murewa Ayodele
Artists: Javeir Garrón, Sean Parsons, Roi Mercado, Marcus To, Luciano Vecchio, Federica Mancin, Declan Shalvey and Sara Pichelli
Colour artist: Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Tom Brevoort
Honestly, I wavered about whether to give this an annotations post at all – it’s basically an anthology issue of mostly five-page stories by the creative teams of various X-books, the unifying theme being an anniversary event to commemorate the fall of Krakoa. But it does include 11 pages of material from the X-Men creative teams which are somewhat important to that book. Treating it as a single story doesn’t make sense, so instead we’ll take each segment in turn.
PAGES 1-5: NYX
Ms Marvel attends the New York vigil.
The New York event, held at the Treehouse, appears to be a fairly sombre affair, with characters in mourning dress holding candles. There are anti-mutant protestors visible in the background, but the police are apparently keeping them away. I’ll run through the list of visible attendees at the end of the post, although there are a good number of background generics in there too.
X-Men #19 annotations
X-MEN vol 7 #19
”Revelation”
Writer: Jed MacKay
Penciller: Netho Diaz
Inker: Sean Parsons
Colourist: Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
REVELATION
The X-Men don’t appear in this issue at all. Instead, the de facto star of the book is Doug Ramsey in his new guise as Revelation.
We last saw Doug in X-Men: Heir of Apocalypse, where he won Apocalypse’s tournament, accepted the hazily-defined role of “heir” (with Apocalypse himself retreating to Arakko), and was transformed by Apocalypse. The actual transformation took place off panel in that story; here, the first two pages show it in flashback, with Doug’s body being eaten away and rebuilt. He has nightmares about this every night, but still talks positively about the experience.
Apocalypse also gave Doug pale skin, lightning bolt designs on his face and upper arms, a gold robe, and weird marking on his bald head. Doug has backtracked heavily on this: while he’s kept the name “Revelation”, he’s grown his hair back, which “makes me feel more like me”. He wears a “Krakoa was for lovers” T-shirt. His personality appears basically unchanged from the Krakoan era.
Daredevil Villains #54: Mr Hyle
DAREDEVIL #162 (January 1980)
“Requiem for a Pug”
Writer: Michael Fleisher
Artist: Steve Ditko
Colourist: Petra Goldberg
Letterer: Jim Novak
Editor: Allen Milgrom
So here’s where we are. Frank Miller is already established as Daredevil‘s artist. In just a few issues time, he’ll take over as writer and bring the book back to commercial success and critical acclaim. Daredevil will go into the 1980s as the book of the moment.
But we’ll get back to that. In the meantime, here’s a fill-in issue by Michael Fleisher and Steve Ditko. “Requiem for a Pug” is a melodramatic throwback which re-enacts Daredevil’s origin story and dares to ask: what if the Fixer had been a black guy with a leopard?
The story opens with Daredevil helping to shut down a “meson-reactor” which is about to explode. In the process, he’s exposed to vast amounts of radiation. Radiation, as we all know, is magic stuff that makes the plot happen. So as Matt makes his way home that night, he collapses in an alley. Then he wakes up the next morning as an amnesiac. Because that’s what radiation poisoning does.
Charts – 27 June 2025
Right, for real this time.
1. Sabrina Carpenter – “Manchild”
At long last, the chart rules deem Alex Warren’s “Ordinary” to be far enough past its peak to boot it down the charts. The downweighting rule – “accelerated chart ratio”, if you prefer the official name – is a singularly blunt instrument, and “Ordinary” lands at this week’s number 9. It would otherwise still be number 1 by a healthy margin.
More by default than anything else, “Manchild” returns to number 1 for a second week, but it’s less than 10% ahead of the number 2 single and falling, so it may not be there long. That number 2 single is “Dior” by MK featuring Chrystal, which… nope, still hate it. It’s MK’s biggest hit, though – his previous peak was 7. We used to have to asterisk that with the fact that his real biggest hit was his remix of “Push the Feeling On” by the Nightcrawlers in 1994, but that peaked at 3.
4. Fred Again, Skepta & PlaqueBoyMax – “Victory Lap”
That’s a Fred again.. track? Really? I would not have guessed that. It’s his biggest hit since “Adore U” reached number 4 in 2023. Astonishingly, it’s only Skepta’s second top 10 hit – the other was a guest verse on Wiley’s “Can You Hear Me”, which reached number 3 in 2012.
The X-Axis – w/c 23 June 2025
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.
Uncanny X-Men #16 annotations
UNCANNY X-MEN vol 6 #16
“The Dark Artery, conclusion: The Voice of Darkness”
Writer: Gail Simone
Artists: David Marquez & Luciano Vecchio
Colour artist: Matthew Wilson
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
THE X-MEN
This is mostly an Outliers story, but Rogue, Gambit, Wolverine, Nightcrawler and Jubilee are there to fight alongside them. Gambit’s Eye of Agamotto teleportation doesn’t work in the Penumbra.
Wolverine has met Henrietta before, and she knows him as “James”. He seems to like her. It’s not clear whether they only met before she arrived at Haven (which could be shoehorned into his continuity without too much trouble) or whether the idea is that he’s also been aware of Haven for ages (there’s nothing in this or the previous issue to directly contradict that)
Deathdream. He tries to put a stop to the fight in Penumbra by declaring himself Shuvahrak’s successor and apparently offering to take over the role. He’s much more authoritative than usual in this form; presumably Shuvahrak has some influence on him once he starts to accept the role. He also glows with power – maybe because he’s in a location that powers him up, or maybe just because he’s accepting the role. Jubilee takes him to be trying to save his friends by claiming the throne of Penumbra.
Charts – 20 June 2025
Oh, come on.
Alex Warren returns to number one for a thirteenth week, beating Sabrina Carpenter into second place by a comfortable 10% margin. There’s a big gap between those two and the number 3 single, but… no, more Alex Warren. Fortunately, next week he will finally get hit with the downweighting rule, and that will get rid of him for good. From the number 1 spot, anyway.
We have to go a long way down to find any new entries:
30. J-Hope featuring GloRilla – “Killin’ It Girl”
This is another BTS single, nicely timed to fit with the band returning from military service. J-Hope has been out for a few months already. It’s only his second solo top 40 appearance – the other was a single with J Cole that reached number 37 in 2023. God, the vocal processing on this is annoying.
