Generation X-23 #6 annotations
GENERATION X-23 #6
“Mutant Generation”
Writer: Jody Houser
Artist: Emilio Laiso
Colour artist: Erick Arciniega
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Editors: Mark Basso & Alanna Smith
COVER: Wolverine and Scout leading the Generated into action. Presumably to avoid spoilers, the cover shows not only X-74, X-92 and X-99, who are in this issue, but also X-66, who isn’t. (She’s the bird-like one.) Following the end of the previous issue, she’s with X-Infinite.
WOLVERINE (Laura):
After defeating the Facility last issue, Laura and Gabby have brought the three remaining Generated back to the Turtle Bay safehouse that Laura was living in during the previous run, Laura Kinney: Wolverine. Somehow, she’s rustled up costumes for the Generated – or at least for X-99 and X-74. X-99’s is a modified X-Men uniform mostly in black and yellow, though with elements in red; X-74 wears a version in black and green. She tries to encourage a sense of mutant identity in the Generated by taking them to see the burned-out Treehouse in Central Park, still serving as a memorial and a target of anti-mutant graffiti. She’s also still checking it for messages left by mutants in need of aid, as she was doing in the previous run
When X-99 and X-74 turn out to be completely useless in a real world fight (and they were indeed sidelined in the climax of the previous arc), Laura gives them a pep talk recapping her origin and explaining how she escaped her creation at the hands of the Facility. She accepts that she’s also a Generated, but argues that she only felt safe for the first time once she was among mutants. X-99 seems to come round to this way of looking at it, but there are obvious differences between Laura and the other Generated: they clearly haven’t undergone anything like the level of psychological abuse that she did, and they form a mutually supportive group united by their Generated identities and experiences.
X-Men #34 annotations
X-MEN vol 7 #34
“Mark of Cain”
Writer: Jed MacKay
Penciller: Greg Land
Inker: Jay Leisten
Colourist: Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
COVER: The Juggernaut looks contemplatively at his helmet.
THE X-MEN:
The Juggernaut. This is a Juggernaut spotlight issue, in which he shows up in the “sleepy” town of Juniper, Pennsylvania to destroy a controversial statue of hometown boy Bolivar Trask which has mysteriously appeared. The statue turns out to be protected by a force field, and the issue consists of Juggernaut persistently attempting to bludgeon his way through, while having conversations with assorted people.
He believes that he’s not a fundamentally good person, and that he needs the X-Men to provide him with a moral compass – without which, he believes that he always degenerates into being a B-list supervillain. He has no faith in his own judgment and absolute confidence in Scott Summers.
Charts – 24 July 2026
Well, here we are.
1. Sam Fender & Olivia Dean – “Rein Me In”
That’s eighteen weeks, and that does match the all-time record set by Frankie Laine’s “I Believe” in 1953. I’ve made the point before that this isn’t entirely comparable, because the 1953 chart was based on sales, so it was measuring the point when people started listening to the record, while the 2026 chart is measuring how long people continue listening. But the fact remains that 18 weeks is still exceptional even by modern standards, not least because it’s virtually impossible to last that long without peaking and getting hit by the downweighting rule. “Rein Me In” has lasted a year without triggering that rule, which is frankly astonishing.
The other thing to bear in mind is that both “Rein Me In” and “I Believe” had interrupted runs at the top. The record for the longest continuous run at number 1 is still 16 weeks, held by Bryan Adams.
If “Rein Me In” manages another week, it breaks the record. Improbably, the midweeks have it in a close fight with “Dai Dai” by Shakira and Burna Boy, despite the fact that the World Cup is over. I suspect it will get its 19th week, but you never know.
It is, shall we say, a quiet week for new entries.
36. BTS – “Normal”
The X-Axis – 22 July 2026
UNCANNY X-MEN #32. (Annotations here.) This is a weird story, or rather, a weird issue. The basic premise of the arc seems to be: B-movie aliens that we can’t communicate with come to Earth to wipe out the Brood, but may be even more of a menace than the Brood are. Nothing wrong with that as a concept, but the wrap-up feels really abrupt. The alien invasion winds up as a backdrop to the Outliers sort of proving themselves, and doesn’t really get an ending beyond the aliens being driven off. The fact that there’s a Brood nest under the school feels like something that people ought to be a bit more agitated about, even if they don’t seem to have been killing anyone lately – at the very least, shouldn’t people be looking into it further? Why did the Brood have the same guns as the aliens?
But it’s the ending with the Outliers being anointed as the new New Mutants that reads oddly to me. Partly, it doesn’t quite work to have people graduating into being the New Mutants, who were the trainee team to start with. But mostly, the Outliers’ reaction to Rogue and Gambit going off on a solo mission to get help with Gambit’s demonic possession problem feels way over the top – they’re reacting as if they’re leaving for good, which doesn’t make sense in the context of what the characters know. It’s an issue that honestly left me wondering if Gail Simone was shifting gear to start wrapping up storylines before the inevitable post-DNX line relaunch, and if the scene is going to wind up being more final than it currently appears. Kind of odd.
X-Men: The Hellfire Murder #1
X-MEN: THE HELLFIRE MURDER #1
Writers: Saladin Ahmed, Gail Simone, Erica Schultz, Jed MacKay & Eve Ewing
Artists: Joëlle Jones, Luciano Vecchio, Aaron Kuder, Tony S Daniel, Mark Morales, Federica Mancin, Cory Smith & Oren Junior
Colour artist: Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Editor: Tom Brevoort
COVER: The X-Men in their masquerade gear, with Wolverine examining a chalk outline of a body (with a Hellfire Club logo inside). This is the annual jam issue, and the story is 50 pages long.
THE X-MEN:
Actually, before we get to the X-Men, let’s explain the basic set-up here. Fresh out of Graymalkin, Sebastian Shaw has invited assorted mutants to the Hellfire Club in Manhattan for a Hellfire Gala in the form of a masquerade ball, with nanites creating AI-generated masked costumes for everyone. The story can’t quite make up its mind whether the identities of participants are supposed to be a mystery to one another – some scenes suggest it is, but most characters are obviously and immediately recognisable, such as Wolverine. Then there’s a murder, and the rest of the issue is mostly about Wolverine and Jubilee solving it. There’s a mention early on that the building has telepathic dampers, since it wouldn’t be much of a mystery otherwise.
Wolverine. His broken claws in his own title aren’t directly mentioned in this story, but he never extends the claws on that hand. Ultimately, he covers for the real murderers (see below) and allows everyone to think that 3K did it.
Wolverine #24 annotations
WOLVERINE vol 8 #24
“Master and Monster”
Writer: Saladin Ahmed
Artist: Martín Cóccolo
Colour artist: Jesus Aburtov
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Tom Brevoort
COVER: Wolverine (with broken claws) posing in front of headshots of Alpha Flight. Apparently no one gave artist Dan Panosian anything beyond a list of names, because he’s drawn current members Puck, Snowbird and Marrina and the previous Vindicator, Heather Hudson. The current Vindicator, Agent Arsenault, wears a black and white costume, and per X-Men #12, she has short blonde hair.
There’s a back-up strip, which is the fourth part of the serial for Disability Pride Month – as before, there’s no attempt to recap the plot and no indication of where you can read previous chapters. They’re in Amazing Spider-Man #32, Uncanny X-Men #31 and Fantastic Four #14, if you care. But it’s got nothing to do with the X-books so I won’t be saying any more about it – except to wonder why Finesse seems to be the highest-profile explicitly autistic character in a universe that includes Reed Richards. (Or, hell, Scott Summers, but that’s another matter…)
Uncanny X-Men #32 annotations
UNCANNY X-MEN vol 6 #31
“Mars Needs Mutants, part 3”
Writer: Gail Simone
Artists: Rogê Antônio, Jim Towe & Federica Mancin
Colour artist: Matthew Wilson
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
COVER: A B-movie style poster of the X-Men versus aliens, with a hypnotised-looking Rogue.
THE X-MEN:
Rogue. She didn’t appear in the last two issues, the only explanation being Gambit’s comment last issue that she was “off on a consultation”. In issue #28, she told M that she was going on a “journey” to see “someone who might be able to help” with Gambit’s curse. Last issue, Gambit said that he had sent her a message about the alien invasion, but hadn’t heard back. This issue opens with her on her way back from “an unnamed island in the South China Sea”, presumably something to do with that.
She’s powerful enough to punch one of the Nur’s flying saucers out of the sky. She’s not sure what to make of them – she seems to regard slaughtering the Brood as at least arguably genocide.
Housekeeping
Annotations should be up tomorrow.
Charts – 17 July 2026
Ah, it’s one of those charts. The chart week covers data from Friday to Thursday, and so most of this week’s chart cover a period when the English were extremely excited about the football, and listening to lots of songs connected with the football, and then with one day left in the chart week, they got knocked out. So then the chart is published on Friday and, uh, yeah.
1. Sam Fender & Olivia Dean – “Rein Me In”
But first! “Rein Me In” spends a 17th week at number one. It only needs one more week to tie the all time record set by Frankie Laine’s “I Believe” in 1953. It nudged its chart points up again this week – partly because it shipped a few thousand 7 inch singles, but it didn’t need those to have a commanding leads over the number 2 single. This means it can’t go to downweighting in the next few weeks and its chances of breaking the record look very good indeed.
Right, football…
The X-Axis – 15 July 2026
X-MEN #34. (Annotations here.) Another quiet week, then. Next week will be busier, with five books coming out. In the meantime, we have the final part of “Anomaly”, a three-parter which in one sense is all about Schwarzchild, but more as a plot point than a character. He’s unconscious for pretty much the entire thing. The real meat of this issue is Ben Liu having the chance to kill Schwarzchild and being kind-of sort-of talked out of it by Quire. As so often in this book, we’re getting appeals to pure pragmatism rather than moral principle, and that seems like it’s going to come back to bite us; it’s set up as a story where Ben gets to make the right choice, and then loops back to tell us that he really hasn’t. But MacKay also makes good use of Quentin Quire, who’s perhaps the last person you’d want to be giving pep talks about moral responsibility to anyone. Still, there’s a low-key appeal to seeing him stepping into that role in the absence of any authority figures to wind up. Visually, it’s not the most exciting issue – that’s kind of a consequence of the decision to make Schwarzchild’s mindscape a blank slate, I guess. The silent page of Ben’s decision intercut with flashbacks to his experiments stands out as an exception. At any rate, it’s good to see this arc limited to three issues – it feels tighter than the five issue arc that seem to be the standard, even if in this case it may be dictated by the scheduling need to get it finished before DNX starts.
INGLORIOUS X-FORCE #7. (Annotations here.) She’s not technically in the team, but once again this is really Domino’s issue, with Tim Seeley and Michael Sta Maria riffing entertainingly on the idea that, against sufficiently dimwitted opponents, her luck powers will take care of her without her even noticing. It’s all very satisfying and creatively done. The rest of the issue sees Cyclops and Kid Omega drop by at X-Force’s headquarters, in order to gently probe what the hell Cable is up to. It’s a nice enough idea, though Kid Omega feels out of character here to me – he’s a brat, but this more malicious take on the character feels a good few years out of date to me. As for the imprisoned Mutant Liberation Front members, most of them don’t get much to do in this story, but as a group they’re growing on me. They’re quite nicely pitched as a bunch of amateurs who are further out of their depth than they realise, but not so inept as to be a joke. It allows Resonant to be quietly established as the one who has a better grasp on what’s happening. Now, admittedly, I’m not sure about the wisdom of bringing in the wackier elements from Seeley’s Shatterstar mini. But then again, this is the least grimdark incarnation of X-Force in many a year, and while I doubt it’s getting past issue #10, I’m having fun.
