X-MEN: AGE OF REVELATION INFINITY COMIC #8. By Alex Paknadel, Edoardo Audino, KJ Díaz & Clayton Cowles. Well, it’s an issue of the Punisher taking Glob Herman under his wing, ultimately leading to him going off on his own to seek revenge. The idea here is that the Punisher isn’t even trying to groom a successor, and thinks he’s just helping the poor kid to defend himself. That kind of  works for Glob. It’s kind of weird for the Punisher, who’s apparently given up on vigilante homicide after the X-virus affected his hands, and has retired into a life of general niceness. I don’t really buy the Punisher reacting like that, as opposed to immediately setting about finding another way of pursuing his obsessional agenda – his one dimensionality is the point of him. But viewed as a Glob story, there’s a certain charm to it, and the story kind of requires the Punisher to present himself as a sympathetic figure to Glob. Perhaps it needs to be a bit more of an act for Glob’s sake.

EXPATRIATE X-MEN #3. (Annotations here.) So here we are, at the tail end of the “Age of Revelation” crossover, with just next week’s Finale one-shot to go. And this issue is… a bit of a mess, to be honest. There’s a lot of double-crossing going on and it doesn’t really come together. As near as I can tell, the plot is that the X-Men on the Flotilla thought that they were being hired by Mystique to take this Lyrebird guy to the Darkchild for reasons unknown, in exchange for unspecified intelligence. In fact, Lyrebird was tricking the X-Men into going to Darkchild’s territory as part of a deal with her. But Darkchild never explains why she wanted them, and ultimately just lets them go… and Lyrebird actually did want to go there all along, because and Illyana have a daughter from before she became Darkchild. Conceived at what point on the timeline? Oh god, don’t ask. Oh, and Melée had a side deal with 3K to get their technology into Limbo, for… reasons. And 3K didn’t want Lyrebird to wind up with Darkchild for… reasons? I mean, I think the idea is that Lyrebird was also working with 3K, but in that case, what was up with Melée and Lyrebird last issue? And then the payoff seems to be that everyone learns the lesson that they shouldn’t have got involved in these convoluted machinations, which would be a weird message for an X-Men story to begin with… except the next thing they do is announce that they’re spontaneously going to Philadelphia to appear in Finale, for no apparent reason.

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Annotations will be up tomorrow.

I’m tied up with work at the moment, so no annotations posts this week. I’ll do an X-Axis and a chart post at the weekend, and hopefully another Daredevil instalment.

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

There are a ridiculous number of new titles out this week – eight ongoing titles in total, plus one miniseries – so I won’t be doing annotations for all of them.

UNCANNY X-MEN vol 6 #10
“Off the Leash, part 2”
Writer: Gail Simone
Artist: Andrei Bressan
Colour artist: Matthew Wilson
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort

THE X-MEN:

Nightcrawler. He regards Haven as a “home” rather than a “school”, “base” or “country”. If we leave aside for a moment the confusing explanations we’ve had about the nature of Rogue and Cyclops’ disagreement, the actual distinction between X-Men and Uncanny X-Men is that X-Men features a mission-focussed strike team operating out of a utilitarian base, while Uncanny X-Men features a quasi-family cast with none of those trappings. Rogue presumably considers that this is the real core of the X-Men. Kurt’s standpoint seems to be that this isn’t really the X-Men, and he rather likes it that way. He isn’t sure he wants to go back to something more formal and seems rather wistful about MacKenzie Deneer and her family.

Chelsea thinks Kurt is worried about the Outliers even before there’s any word of a problem at the mall, although he insists otherwise. He certainly seems to be putting on a cheerful face for her, and perhaps for himself.

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ASTONISHING X-MEN INFINITY COMIC #1-2. By Alex Paknadel, Phillip Sevy, Michael Bartolo & Clayton Cowles. Well, I’m late enough with this one that I might as well cover today’s issue #2. We’ve got a new title and a fresh number #1, but this is the same book as From the Ashes with the same creative team. But you can’t keep calling it From the Ashes forever, I guess.

This arc has two seemingly unrelated threads, though it’s fairly obvious how they’re likely to come together. On the one hand, we have Husk returning home to the Guthrie family for Thanksgiving. But the wheels are coming off the family group: Paige is the only mutant in the family to show up, since Sam’s apparently not been in touch since his resurrection, while the other mutant siblings decided to stay in the White Hot Room. There’s a plot about how they’re in danger of losing the farm, but it’s basically a story about the non-mutant relatives being treated as afterthoughts, with one of the background kids drifting into radicalism.

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Annotations will be at the weekend this week, for anyone checking in.

Just a quick note to say that posts are likely to be running behind schedule for the next couple of weeks, so don’t expect annotations on day of release right now.

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

X-MEN vol 7 #3
“Scott Summers vs. The United States of America”
Writer: Jed MacKay
Penciller: Ryan Stegman
Inkers: JP Mayer & Livesay
Colourist: Marte Gracia
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort

THE X-MEN:

Cyclops tries unsuccessfully to persuade Rogue not to attack Graymalkin; we’ll see Rogue’s side of that conversation in Uncanny X-Men vol 6 #2, which won’t be out for two weeks. Cyclops is clearly aware of the fact that Graymalkin has been turned into a prison over in Uncanny X-Men and thinks that Rogue’s group are hopelessly outpowered by whoever’s in charge of it. Scott evidently had plans of his own to deal with this, and he’s going to have to accelerate them now.

At some point between the end of Krakoa and issue #1, Scott sued the US government over his treatment by Orchis. For some reason, he accepted the Factory as a settlement. So yes, the X-Men are there legally. Scott acknowledges that there was an “implication” that the US government expected the X-Men to stay in Alaska, but seems clear that he never agreed to anything. His ultimate position is that the US government would much rather his group were acting as the X-Men than acting as the Brotherhood, and those are the only two choices he’s offering them. He argues that he’s doing the government a favour by keeping his roster under control, and flags how dodgy they are: most of them are former villains, and Magik’s half demon.

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This shouldn’t take long.

X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #140. By Steve Foxe, Steve Orlando, Nick Roche, Yen Nitro & Travis Lanham. Well, if nothing else, we’ve reached the final boss phase. And a giant Selene made of blood is at least a strong image. But it’s pretty much just random fighting at this stage. Hey, speaking of which…

FALL OF THE HOUSE OF X #5. (Annotations here.) So there you go. We’re not quite at the end of the Krakoan era. There’s still Rise of the Powers of X #5 and one final issue of X-Men to go (oh, and a couple of stray issues of Wolverine and Ms Marvel). But this is the end of Orchis, 2019-2024.

In many ways people are right to say that this is the strongest issue of Fall of the House of X. The art feels more polished and epic than in earlier issues; the pieces that needed to be yanked into place were already there. Now, the book can go out with the X-Men defeating Orchis by restoring Omega Sentinel’s real personality, and defeating Nimrod. We can just get on with the fight scene. And Nimrod does look good here.

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No annotations this week and next, because I’m on holiday. I’ll do a weekly review round up at some point over the next couple of days, though, and the next Incomplete Wolverine will be up on Sunday, covering 2014. There should also be a new House to Astonish episode coming up shortly.

Normal service will be resumed in two weeks time.