X-Men #27 annotations
X-MEN vol 7 #27
“Danger Room, part 2”
Writer: Jed MacKay
Penciller: Netho Diaz
Inker: Sean Parsons
Colourist: Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
COVER: Ben Liu, Animalia, Kid Omega and Temper react with shock as something with bloody hands approaches the Factory – it’s possibly meant to be Glob Herman staggering home, since nobody actually attacks the Factory in this issue.
THE X-MEN:
This is mostly an introducing-the-villains issue, so the X-Men themselves don’t actually do or say that much.
Cyclops, Juggernaut, Magik and the Beast are shown defiantly fighting Beyond’s techno-organic monsters.
Psylocke. We only see her in the Marauder as it comes under missile fire while she’s on her way to Greycrow. (Come to think of it, why didn’t she just get Magik to teleport her there before the mission?) According to Charlene Jackson (see below), the Danger Room’s “stated objective” in going after Psylocke was to separate her from the X-Men in order to weaken the team, by depriving them of her psychic abilities and her second-in-command role. Jackson and Maxine Danger both seem strongly inclined to see her dead anyway, which begs the question of why the stated objective was anything else – is it simply for plausible deniability, or does Frank Bohannon not actually want the X-Men dead? He didn’t spell out last issue what the Danger Room were meant to achieve, after all. See also the position with Glob Herman.
Daredevil Villains #75: The Trixter
DAREDEVIL #241 (April 1987)
“Black Christmas”
Writer: Ann Nocenti
Penciler: Todd McFarlane
Inker: Al Milgrom
Letterer: Joe Rosen
Colourist: Christie Scheele
Editor: Ralph Macchio
With Daredevil still lacking a regular artist, this issue features guest art from a pre-stardom Todd McFarlane. Not all that pre-stardom, mind you – he’d been working for Marvel and DC for a couple of years by this point, and his run on Incredible Hulk started the same month. He’s still not an obvious fit for an Ann Nocenti story. But this is fill-in work, so it’s quite conservative and largely in line with Marvel house style. (The generic cover art, which is by Mike Zeck and Klaus Janson, looks nothing like the interior.)
It’s Christmas Day in New York, and the Trixter is spending it alone in a 42nd Street hotel room. According to his monologue, he’s a world famous magician and master of disguise, whose real name is a secret. He implies that he doesn’t even remember his own real name, having spent so much of his life subsumed in his Trixter persona or his various disguises. He finds his life empty. He’s fascinated by Daredevil, who he regards as “a bit of a trickster, a stuntman” – but who chose to be a hero instead of an entertainer. So, apparently hoping to learn something, he decides to meet Daredevil and let him “decide my fate.” He seems to be contemplating suicide depending on how his meeting with Daredevil goes.
Charts – 13 March 2026
Harry Styles has an album out, and nobody else is going to take that on.
1. Harry Styles – “American Girls”
5. Harry Styles – “Ready, Steady, Go!”
Together with former number 1 “Aperture” (which rebounds to number 4), these are the maximum three tracks from the album “Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally”, which enters as his third number one album. (His second album, “Fine Line”, only got to number 2, but still spent over a year in the top 10.) If it wasn’t for the three-song rule, the entire album would have charted.
The X-Axis – 11 March 2026
X-MEN UNITED #1. (Annotations here.) Well. I liked Exceptional X-Men, even if it did have a languid approach to pacing, and even if it did have a rather handwavy approach to the plot making sense. This is obviously the successor to that book, and continues to give prominence to the Exceptional cast, but it’s an odd series. The premise is to set up a school and (perhaps more significantly in the grand scheme of things) a meeting place where the disparate parts of the X-books can interact. But it’s not exactly a school because it’s training grown adults too. And because it has to be the successor to Exceptional, those characters can’t just fade into the background and instead have to be given a senior role… which might make sense if everyone else was a rookie, but seems downright weird when you’re using long running background characters like Dryad and Wolf Cub. Exceptional ran for thirteen issues! Wolf Cub’s a nonentity, but he’s still been around for over twenty years!
The concept of Graymatter Lane doesn’t come across either. It shouldn’t be that hard just to explain directly whether people are physically travelling to this space or whether it’s some sort of psychic conference call. It shouldn’t take me multiple readings to figure out something that basic about the core premise. It seems to be a physical space, but other dialogue doesn’t really fit with that answer, so… how hard would it have been to spend a few panels just explaining the premise directly? It’s needlessly confusing. And the art doesn’t really take advantage of the visual showcase opportunities either. It’s fine but it’s nothing exceptional. If this is some sort of psychic dreamscape then it ought to be possible to go nuts, and this doesn’t.
Storm: Earth’s Mightiest Mutant #2 annotations
STORM: EARTH’S MIGHTIEST MUTANT #2
“All Your Favorite Sorcerers are Tricksters”
Writer: Murewa Ayodele
Artist: Federica Mancin
Colour artist: Java Tartaglia
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Tom Brevoort
COVER: The FBI super-agents surround a containment tank with Storm inside. This has pretty much nothing to do with the story.
Interestingly, the story then opens with an actual recap page explaining the plot with actual cross-references to individual issues (and the book doesn’t have its usual symbolic splash page duplicating the credits).
STORM:
The Scarlet Witch believes that although she has some affinity for magic, her level of actual knowledge is so low as to be practically useless – worse, Storm thinks she knows more than she does because she has magical allies. Storm is not dissuaded by the Scarlet Witch’s lecture about her magical limitations, and basically dismisses the idea that Akujin could be relied upon to honour the bargain. She seems to believe that fighting Akujin alone and without allies will somehow save everyone – conceivably, her logic is that if she dies in battle then Akujin will give up on attacking Earth because it will no longer provide leverage.
X-Men United #1 annotations
X-MEN UNITED #1
“Welcome to Graymatter Lane”
Writer: Eve L Ewing
Artist: Tiago Palma
Colour artist: Brian Reber
Letterer: Joe Sabino
Editor: Tom Brevoort
COVER: Well, that’s assorted X-Men standing around. This book is loosely the successor to the previous series Exceptional X-Men. Despite what British readers might reasonably expect, it is not about a football team.
GRAYMATTER LANE:
The name is obviously a play on “Graymalkin Lane”, the address of the original X-Men Mansion.
The X-Men’s new school is, shall we say, not very clearly explained. Emma describes it as a “mind palace”, which doesn’t really take us very far because a mind palace is a memorisation technique. There seems to be a co-ordinated time when invited mutants are telepathically contacted by Emma and invited in. (However, Juggernaut can get in, so evidently non-mutants can also be invited.) We’re told that “a doorway attuned to your individual psyche will appear before you”, but it’s unclear whether this is a literal doorway or some sort of mental projection technique. Later in the issue, Mariama seems to get there simply by thinking, without any doors involved. Beast says that an “altered mental state” is required to get in, though everyone seems normal once they’re inside.
Daredevil Villains #74: Rotgut
DAREDEVIL #239-240 (February/March 1987)
Writer: Ann Nocenti
Artist:Louis Williams
Inkers: Al Williamson & (#239 only) Geoff Isherwood
Colourists: Christie Scheele (#239), Bob Sharen & Petra Scotese (#240)
Letterer: Joe Rosen
Editor: Ralph Macchio
We’ve skipped another couple of issues. Issue #237, as I mentioned last time, is the one issue that Steve Englehart wrote before quitting, and appears under his “John Harkness” pseudonym. It features Klaw as the guest villain, so it doesn’t concern us. Issue #238 is the official start of Ann Nocenti’s run (since issue #236 was meant to be a fill-in), but it’s a Mutant Massacre tie-in, and the guest villain is Sabretooth.
So that brings us to this two-parter, where Nocenti starts to get into her stride. She’ll be working with rotating artists for the first year or so, until John Romita Jr finally comes aboard with issue #250. The most frequent contributor is Louis Williams, who also drew the Englehart issue, and returns for another two-parter in issues #243-244. Daredevil was his first work at Marvel, and his other credits seem to be fairly limited. I’m not sure why – he was certainly up to the job. He’s a good fit for this story, with plenty of atmospheric detail and suitably seedy and horrific qualities to his work.
Charts – 6 March 2026
Okay, we’re into March and the singles chart is finally starting to pick up a bit.
1. Sam Fender & Olivia Dean – “Rein Me In”
Three weeks. “Rein Me In” has been on the top 40 for 37 consecutive weeks, and it’s not that unusual for big tracks to hang around that long. But it’s actually growing – this is as big a weekly score as it’s ever had. It’s still only number one because “Man I Need” is on ACR, but even that is now marginal.
3. Alex Warren – “Fever Dream”
The previous Alex Warren single, “Eternity”, also entered at number 3. This is certainly a change of tack from his previous singles, since at least it’s an upbeat track. The video is very much Trying Too Hard, but the single itself is acceptable in a Maroon 5 kind of way. “Ordinary” is still hanging around at number 16, which is insane.
The X-Axis – 4 March 2026
X-MEN #26. (Annotations here.) Part 1 of “Danger Room”, which seems to be basically O*N*E sending Beyond after the X-Men. Which isn’t all that interesting as a high concept, but Jed MacKay adds more to it by picking up the thread of Psylocke and Greycrow’s relationship now that Psylocke has been cancelled, and gives us a lovely little subplot of Glob Herman and his fruit stall. The splash page of the sun setting over Merle is beautiful, and much more effective than actually showing the gunman firing on Glob. (It also leaves open the question of whether he missed, though it’d feel a bit anticlimactic if he did.) But Netho Diaz really does do some nice stallholding scenes. For whatever reason, Kid Omega doesn’t go on any of these missions – is this going to be the “Quentin, Ben and Jennifer save the day” arc? I’m still not especially interested in putting the X-Men against the Beyond Corporation, certainly the Amazing Spider-Man version where they’re basically just an evil conglomerate with some weirder than usual technology, but there are a lot of other things here adding to that.
WOLVERINE #17. (Annotations here.) More of the New Morlocks, and this feels a little bit as if we’re marking time until the Adamantine get here. The New Morlocks finally show up in enough numbers to feel like some sort of community, which really should have happened a couple of issues back, but the actual plot here is some sort of insect parasite attacking one of the kids because… well, because he was passing, I guess? I suppose it might play into something later, but it’s not presented that way, and just feels like an arbitrary event to spin things out. I don’t really get the point.
Wolverine #17 annotations
WOLVERINE vol 8 #17
“Cold and Alone”
Writer: Saladin Ahmed
Artist: Martín Cóccolo
Colour artist: Jesus Aburtov
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso
COVER: Wolverine and Silver Sable in the woods.
WOLVERINE:
He’s still dutifully training the New Morlocks when he isn’t sleeping with Silver Sable. His narration calls this a “comfortable” relationship which he believes neither of them sees as a particularly deep one; he sees Sable as a fellow warrior who understands him.
SUPPORTING CAST:
Silver Sable. Still hanging around with the New Morlocks and sleeping with Wolverine.
Other mercenaries are aware on the rumour mill of what she’s up to.
The New Morlocks. The group have moved on from their last camp after the encounter with Department H and have found some abandoned houses. We see an awful lot more of them this time, most of whom look like fairly ordinary people. The vast majority of them look human. At least some are actual humans who just happen to have a mutant in their family. Logan claims that they’re there because “there’s nowhere left for mutants to run to”, which doesn’t really make sense in terms of the rest of the line; Exceptional X-Men and NYX both seemed to have mutants living fairly openly in major cities. Maybe he means specifically in Canada, this being the Marvel Universe and all.
Wolverine clearly still doesn’t much rate their skills. When asked to organise a manhunt for the missing Tushar, he basically assigns everyone else busy work and then goes off to find the kid himself.
Deepfake. She’s a teenager (which is apparently meant to be obvious from her appearance). She claims that her parents died in a car crash a year ago and her powers emerged when she learned the news; she ran away instead of going to “some creepy foster home for mutant teens”, whatever that means.
Her eyes are apparently sockets full of energy, and she has to be able to see her energy duplicates in order to keep them in existence; shoving a bag over her head is enough to disrupt them.
Like Chowdown in issue #15 she’s torn between appreciating Wolverine’s training and finding it all a bit much.
Ape. As in issue #15, he tells Deepfake that something bad happened to the original Morlocks but avoids going into any detail – it’s not entirely clear whether he’s trying to shield her from the details or just doesn’t want to talk about it.
Chowdown. He’s there among the New Morlocks.
Tushar. A very young mutant from Vancouver who apparently has the power to fix things just by touching them. He gets abducted by Coldbug and rescued.
VILLAINS:
Coldbug. First appearance. Wolverine initially calls him a mutant, but he then turns out to be an insect parasite inside a human-looking body – so it’s not clear whether the mutant is the insect, the host, or both. Coldbug himself is an insectoid who apparently possesses hosts and eventually consumes their bodies. He fires a venom that slows his victims down and saps their will. The toxin is apparently linked to him psychically, because its effect immediately wears off when Wolverine kills him.
He speaks in basic broken English. When Wolverine finds him, he claims to be “feeding” and “hungry”, though it’s not entirely clear what the feeding involves – is he going to take him as a new host?
On the face of it, Coldbug is simply a random passing monster – there doesn’t seem to be any wider reason for his attack here.
The Adamantine. Still fighting people who have been suggested as opponents by Romulus. In previous issues, Romulus sent it after retired boxers and UFC fighters. This time, he sends them after some eastern European mercenaries, who don’t do much better. All of this seems like Romulus is wasting the Adamantine’s time for some reason. That doesn’t seem to occur to the Adamantine (probably because it has no context to realise how low-rent Romulus’ targets are), but it does lose patience with him anyway, apparently concluding that he’s just useless at giving recommendations. They “decree Romulus’ time on this Earth at an end”, whatever that means, and claims that something called “the godling” will replace him.
When pressed to identify “the best of your kind”, one of the mercenaries suggests Silver Sable, so these subplots will evidently join up with the main story next time.
CONTINUITY REFERENCES:
- Ape says that the Morlocks left the tunnels because “Bad people came”, referencing the “Mutant Massacre” crossover from 1986.
- Department H “wrecked the last camp” in issues #15-16 (presumably in the sense of making it unsafe to stay around, rather than literally destroying the buildings).
