The X-Axis – 3 June 2026
UNCANNY X-MEN #29. (Annotations here.) The final part of “Who’s Been Sleeping in My Bed”, and unless we’re coming back to some of this, I’m mostly confused. The Greymalkin prison storyline has never really worked, and it’s been one of the weakest strands of the post-Krakoan X-books, so I’m at least glad to see the back of it. Nor do I have a problem with Inmate X being a new character with a link to Corina Ellis (the foreshadowing was there), or with Ellis attempting a last minute face turn and being rebuffed. No, the problem with this arc is that about half of it is devoted to the Outliers/New Mutants material which doesn’t seem to tie in to the main plot in any way at all. It advances Mutina’s storyline, to be sure, but what was any of it about? I just don’t get it. Though it pales in comparison to…
STORM: EARTH’S MIGHTIEST MUTANT #5. (Annotations here.) Final issue of the run. It’s a blatant guillotine cancellation, despite having been solicited as a five-issue miniseries from the start, something which Ayodele only seems to have discovered when issue #1 was solicited. I don’t know what the lead-in times for this book are, but the series reads very much as if it reached for the emergency brake somewhere during issue #4, when the build-up to Storm’s “daughter” came to nothing and a scene set in her alternate timeline was compressed to a couple of pages. The final issue opts for attempting a thematic resolution and make a grand show of not resolving any of the actual plot on the grounds that we all know Storm wins somehow or other. To be fair, Ayodele does make an effort to tie his thematic resolution back to things that have happened over the course of the story. Still, the fact remains that it just stops, and with the best will in the world, this is the second time inside a year that I’ve read a guillotine cancellation issue from Marvel that played the meta card to get out of even going through the motions of resolving its storylines. (The other one was Astonishing Spider-Man Infinity Comic #36.) Sudden endings have always been a feature of superhero comics, and they’re never satisfying, but come on. More generally, the book’s ambition is laudable and always has been, and it’s a good thing that something so off kilter was able to exist in the current line, but it always felt like there were far too many ideas fighting for space at the best of times, coupled with frequently bemusing and confusing storytelling choices. But it swung for the fences, and you’ve got to at least respect that.
Storm: Earth’s Mightiest Mutant #5 annotations
STORM: EARTH’S MIGHTIEST MUTANT #5
“Reunited”
Writer: Murewa Ayodele
Artist: Federica Mancin
Colour artist: Java Tartaglia
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Tom Brevoort
COVER: That’s Storm in a swamp going to commune with “the ageless one”, in the opening scene.
This is the final issue of Storm: Earth’s Mighiest Mutant, though the complete run is 17 issues, as it’s essentially the same series as Storm vol 5. If you count the “Age of Revelation” tie-in Rogue Storm, it’s a 20-issue run.
I’m not going to do conventional annotations for this, since it shows every signs of being a guillotine cancellation where writer Murewa Ayodele has chosen to focus on resolving one key theme and leaving it at that.
In the previous issue, an alternate version of N’Daré banished Ororo to Earth-61391. That issue ends with a very abbreviated scene of Storm being rescued from local Sentinels by Furana, her daughter from that timeline. By the start of this issue, Storm is off in a swamp somewhere, hoping to commune with “the ageless one” in the hope of finding a way back home. This is presumably the same swamp where Storm landed in the previous issue; perhaps it’s the local version of the Nexus of All Realities (which is in a Florida swamp in the main Marvel Universe).
Uncanny X-Men #29 annotations
UNCANNY X-MEN vol 6 #29
“Who’s Been Sleeping in My Bed, part four: A Prison and a Pyre”
Writer: Gail Simone
Artist: Luciano Vecchio
Colour artist: Mattherw Wilson
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
THE X-MEN:
Rogue. She seems remarkably unfazed to learn that Gambit has grown dragon wings, and even continues to accept his (correct) assurances that the “Cannonball” she’s fighting is a fake and can safely be killed. Nonetheless, once the crisis is over, her top priority is to focus on helping him, and she plans to take a leave of absence from the team to get help for him.
Her plan for dealing with Greymalkin was to send in M undercover as a prisoner to gather evidence, which would be more effective at bringing down the operation in the long run than simply smashing up the building. Quicksilver has been acting as a courier to relay M’s messages. That goes some way to explaining how M was in better health than she ought to have been given the prison food, though it’s not really made clear how Quicksilver was getting in and out.
Housekeeping
Annotations are likely to be at the weekend, for anyone waiting.
Daredevil Villains #80: Bullet
DAREDEVIL #250-251 (January/February 1988)
“Boom!” / “Save the Planet”
Writer: Ann Nocenti
Penciller: John Romita Jr
Inker: Al Williamson
Colourist: Max Scheele
Letterer: Joe Rosen
Editor: Ralph Macchio
It’s taken over a year, but at long last Ann Nocenti is joined on the book by a regular penciller. John Romita Jr will be with us until issue #282, and this is where Nocenti’s run really kicks up a gear.
Romita was an established name by this point – he’d already had runs on Iron Man, Amazing Spider-Man and Uncanny X-Men. However, 1987 had seen him take a career detour to draw the first six issues of Star Brand. In a 2017 interview, Romita essentially says that this was an unhappy experience, that he was thinking of quitting comics, and that he was talked into taking the Daredevil assignment by an offer of more creative input. Some of what Romita says in that interview doesn’t seem quite right – he talks as if Ann Nocenti was also new to the book, and says that Al Williamson was hired at his request, when he’d been inking the book on and off for a while already. But Romita’s central point, that his run on Daredevil was where he really had the opportunity to come into his own as a creator, is hard to argue with.
Charts – 29 May 2026
You know the drill by now.
1. Sam Fender & Olivia Dean – “Rein Me In”
Not only is it seemingly unbeatable, but its streams surged again last week, so it’s still in no danger of going to downweighting – in its 49th week on the top 40 and its 13th week at number 1, it remains 30% ahead of the number 2 single. The most likely explanation for the surge is Olivia Dean headlining Radio 1’s Big Weekend festival.
It’s easier to have long runs at number 1 than it used to be, because nothing is deleted any more, and we’re measuring continuing listening rather than the initial purchase. Even so, 13 weeks is exceptional. Only six tracks have ever spent more than that at number 1. The all time record has stood at 18 weeks since 1953, and is held by Frankie Laine’s “I Believe”. But one more week will place “Rein Me In” in joint fifth alongside Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of You” and Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody”.
2. Olivia Rodrigo – “The Cure”
This is the second single from her next album; the first one, “Drop Dead”, had a single week at number 1 (interrupting “Rein Me In”), but it’s holding up respectably, and it’s still in the top 10 after six weeks. “The Cure” is an interesting choice of single – it’s over five minutes long and sounds more like Boygenius at times. I like it, but it says something about Olivia Rodrigo’s star power that she can get something like this as high as number 2.
The X-Axis – 29 May 2026
X-MEN #30. (Annotations here.) This is the fifth and final part of “Danger Room”. Why five issues? Well, it seems to be Marvel’s current standard length for trade paperback collections, up from four. And those four issue collections did look kind of flimsy. It’s under 100 pages, you know? But Jed MacKay’s X-Men tends to be at its best doing short and focussed stories, and “Danger Room” – which is fundamentally a romp in which some psychos try to take down the X-Men and fail because the X-Men show more heart than them – didn’t need to be five issues. It’s certainly good in parts. It’s nice to see Kid Omega’s radical side get an outing again; Greycrow is worth bringing into the regular cast now that the Psylocke solo title is over; I liked the idea of the two Danger Room members who think they’re Skrulls trapped in human form. (Or maybe they even are?) Still, it feels like less than the sum of its parts. The Beyond Corporation are kind of arbitrary as villains; the Danger Room members got big individual introductions but only one of them even gets any meaningful dialogue in the final chapter; the town-and-factory tension gets the mindwipe reset button. It’s fine, but it’s not a 5-issue premise, I think.
GENERATION X-23 #4. (Annotations here.) I have a few reservations about the pace of this opening arc as well – it’s another five-parter, naturally – but on the whole I think it’s working. The plot isn’t exactly breakneck, but there are a lot of new characters being introduced, and it’s giving them room to breathe. Okay, yes, X-73 and X-66 remain in the background relative to the others (that’s the two older girls), but X-92 is charming and Infinite is a good villain. Aside from the fact that he puts Laura in the position of defending a version of the Facility, Jody Houser has set up the reveal quite nicely – first you practically telegraph the bad guy, then you start trying to convince us that we’re jumping to conclusions and he’s just doing his best. So it’s a twist in plain sight, and it pulls that off. Marco Renna’s art is giving a ton of personality to Scout and X-92 in particular (and X-92 really needs it, since they’re the silent character and depends entirely on the art to sell their persona). That scorpion robot cyborg thing still makes for confusing fight scenes – I guess you could say that at least sells the chaos – but it’s a nice looking book all round. I’m enjoying this.
Generation X-23 #4 annotations
GENERATION X-23 #4
“A Numbers Game, part 4”
Writer: Jody Houser
Artist: Marco Renna
Colour artist: Erick Arciniega
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Editor: Mark Basso
COVER: Laura, with one of the Unit 23 droid heads impaled on her claws.
WOLVERINE (Laura):
She seems blindsided by X-Infinite’s betrayal – she doesn’t even pick up on the obvious red flag that he already knows where the Facility building’s control centre is. Possibly she’s thrown off by the fact that his story is at least partially true, and by her assumption that he just doesn’t like her. She draws the line at gratuitously killing the Facility’s non-combatant staff.
SUPPORTING CAST:
X-92. The silent teleporter one, if you’re (understandably) having trouble keeping the numbers straight. X-92 insists on accompanying Laura and X-Infinite on their raid of the Facility building, by simply teleporting into the back seat of their car and refusing to leave. They seem willing to stand up to X-Infinite with a bit more assertiveness than we’ve seen before. However, after helping to disable the security systems and teleporting Laura and X-Infinite inside, they’re willing to hide out and stay out of the way (as per instructions.)
X-Men #30 annotations
X-MEN vol 7 #30
“Danger Room, part 5”
Writer: Jed MacKay
Penciller: Netho Diaz
Inker: Sean Parsons
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Colourist: Arthur Hesli
Editor: Tom Brevoort
COVER: Simply the X-Men charging into battle.
THE X-MEN:
The Beast. He gives Beyond’s techno-organic creature a pep talk about personhood, empathy, and rejecting the roles that have been imposed on them, all of which wins it round to their side. This fits with the broad theme of the story: the plans of the Danger Room psychopaths fail because the X-Men are more reasonable and empathic than they expect. Not all of them, admittedly, but enough of them.
His justification for codenames is that mutants “take on new names of our own choosing to better reflect our ongoing relationships with the genetic expression of our species”. Something broadly similar was put forward in the Krakoan era, with a suggestion that mutants who kept using their birth names, like Fabian Cortez, were seen as vaguely disreputable. (Ben Liu still hasn’t got a codename, which is all the more noticeable because Animalia has.)
Charts – 22 May 2026
Sorry, you want me to listen to how many Drake tracks?
1. Sam Fender & Olivia Dean – “Rein Me In”
Twelve weeks. It needs one more to match Alex Warren’s “Ordinary”. If it gets past that marker, then the next target is Ed Sheeran’s “Shape Of You” from 2017. As it happens, it’s not on course to be number 1 in the Sunday “first look” chart, but that’s because a new release by Olivia Rodrigo has a marginal lead over it; my guess is that “Rein Me In” will sustain itself better. It is dropping, but it still has a comfortable lead.
2. Drake – “Janice STFU”
3. Drake – “National Treasures”
6. Drake – “Make Them Cry”
These are the maximum three tracks from “Iceman”, which enters the album chart as his seventh number 1. Drake also released two surprise albums at the same time – “Maid of Honour”, which enters at 6, and “Habibti”, which is number 7. This seems rather like Drake’s try-hard way of proving he’s still a big deal, and to some extent he succeeds – he has three tracks in the top 10, and he would have placed another 34 tracks above the official number 75.
