Magik #6 annotations
MAGIK vol 3 #6
“The Road Back Home”
Writer: Ashley Allen
Artist: Jesús Hervás
Colour artist: Arthur Hesli
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Editor: Darren Shan
And let’s welcome new cover artist Pablo Villalobos, who actually thinks Illyana’s most noteworthy features are from the neck up.
MAGIK.
She still feels guilty about letting down Cal last issue, and is upset that Dani hasn’t contacted her since they last met. X-Men work has been keeping her mind off it.
We get a brief recap of her giving up the rulership of Limbo to Madelyne, in order to give them both a chance at a fresh start, in New Mutants #25-28. Magik also reminds us of the parallels between Belasco using her as a weapon, and Mr Sinister using Madelyne – she claims to see Madelyne as a kindred spirit.
Despite having surrendered the throne, Magik remains linked to Limbo, and the bombing of the Limbo Embassy by demon rebels causes her pain. Even the demons who are loyal to Madelyne still regard Magik as having an equal claim to the throne. Faced with both Magik and Madelyne together, the demons try to look to Magik for instructions.
Phoenix #12 annotations
PHOENIX #12
Writer: Stephanie Phillips
Artist: Roi Mercado
Colour artist: Java Tartaglia
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Editor: Annalise Bissa
PHOENIX
Jean doesn’t appear much in this issue, which mostly consists of Sara giving her account of how she came to be in Greyhaven. She appears briefly at the end, to look overwhelmed by her sister’s return, and to react to Cable’s entrance.
Jean also appears briefly as a child in Sara’s flashback, when she challenges Sara on deliberately throwing a baseball match. From Jean’s point of view, the significance of the scene probably lies mainly in the fact that she can verify it as a real incident. Well, if she does – it’s minor enough that she might think it’s something she doesn’t remember, and she doesn’t actually tell us that she remembers it.
Exceptional X-Men #10 annotations
EXCEPTIONAL X-MEN #10
Writer: Eve L Ewing
Artists: Carmen Carnero & Federica Mancin
Colour artist: Nolan Woodard
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Tom Brevoort
Quite a short one for annotations, to be honest.
THE CORE CAST
Emma Frost. The end of the previous issue apparently involved Emma sacrificing herself to free Axo from Sinister’s machine (not something that was terribly clear from the previous issue), and then Emma’s mind being sucked into Sinister’s mindscape. She believes that she made a heroic sacrifice for Axo, and is rather put out by him coming after her – she claims he’s overshadowing her, but obviously her sacrifice would be in vain if he got killed too. She does make a point of getting him to safety first, before following back to the real world.
She claims that a major event in her personal development was meeting Kitty Pryde as a teenager and being shaken by the level of confidence she had. (Emma’s own back story has her only becoming that assertive later on.) The flashback shows Emma with Kitty in a Hellions costume. This is not actually the first time that Emma met Kitty – which would be X-Men #129 – but rather a scene from New Mutants #16, when Kitty was briefly at the Massachusetts Academy. That’s the first story where they spend an extended amount of time together.
The X-Axis – w/c 2 June 2025
ASTONISHING X-MEN INFINITY COMIC #24. By Tim Seeley, Edoardo Audino, KJ Díaz, Clayton Cowles & Darren Shan. End of the current storyline, and I’m not convinced that this one really drew all its threads together. It looks great, and there are some elements of the Mutant Salvation Front that I really like. The idea of some of the MLF types being so dispirited by the post-Krakoa world that they’d rather try to travel forward in time to a better future than get there the long way is a nice one. Sure, the Krakoan era ended in a way that rather implied that all the mutants left on Earth were either new or had made a conscious decision to stay, but at this stage we’ve probably just got to assume that a lot more people didn’t fancy life in a conceptual realm than that story let on. And there’s an undercurrent to Wildside’s attitude to the post-Krakoa X-Men that makes a degree of sense: what do you mean we reverted to villainy? You’re the ones who turned your backs on mutant supremacism. We’re holding true to the Krakoan dream, mate.
However… quite what any of this has to do with the influencer storyline, I don’t really get. Something about Wildside trying to use them to spread his ideas and coming up against self-interest and cynicism and…? No, it just feels like two storylines that don’t connect up. So there are good ideas in here but it’s less than the sum of its parts.
X-MEN #17. (Annotations here.) This is by far the longest storyline we’ve had from Jed MacKay, despite it being basically a day’s fighting in the vicinity of the Factory. The X-Men themselves – and their 3K counterparts – don’t actually get that much to do in this issue, the real point being to expand a bit on the shadowy members of 3K. For that to work, of course, the art winds up having to gather them around one little bit of their enormous table, which always seemed a hostage to visual fortune. I’m not sure how effectively the new information about 3K is landing as a reveal – there surely can’t be many people out there who are excited to see Astra back, and Wyre is so obscure a character that he might as well be a new creation so far as X-Men readers are concerned. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with using either character here, but building them up as a mystery is an odd choice.
Storm #9 annotations
STORM vol 5 #9
“Sinister Schemes of the Stars and Stripes, part 2”
Writer: Murewa Ayodele
Artist: Lucas Werneck
Colour artist: Alex Guimarães
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Tom Brevoort
STORM
Her relationship with Eternity is sharply deteriorating. She tells Manifold that “something has taken possession of my body” – which was Eternity, in issue #5 – and that she feels she’s been made to watch helplessly as it commits atrocities in her body. More recently, she’s been experiencing blackouts, though she’s not clear whether this is Eternity taking even more control, or just a sign of mental collapse. She doesn’t seem to have done anything about it so far, and while she claims to be unable to resist Eternity when it takes control, she seems able to speak freely about it to Manifold the rest of the time.
She then goes on compare the experience to the time in her childhood when she killed a man who was trying to rape her (in a flashback in Uncanny X-Men #267), and declares that she wants to kill Eternity. The original scene carries a rather stronger implication that she kills the attacker in self-defence before he’s able to rape her; this one is played more as if she killed him in retaliation, given the analogy that she draws between him and Eternity.
Laura Kinney, Wolverine #7 annotations
LAURA KINNEY, WOLVERINE #7
“My So-Called Perfect Life, part 2”
Writer: Erica Schultz
Artist: Giada Belviso
Colour artist: Rachelle Rosenberg
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso
WOLVERINE
Last issue consisted entirely of Laura hallucinating about a world in which she lived a happy family life with Logan as her father and Gabby as her younger sister, with Julian Keller (Hellion) showing up at the end of the issue. As it turns out, all of this is the result of Beautiful Dreamer (see below) being used to sedate Laura while the Badoon try to experiment on her.
Laura’s dream life includes Julian as her boyfriend, which fits with the way their relationship was written in NYX #8. For some reason, Julian’s arrival also seems to destabilise what was previously a fairly ingrained illusion: not only does he lead her to step outside the house (which she didn’t do at all in the previous issue), but he proposes marriage to her.
X-Men #17 annotations
X-MEN vol 7 #17
“Visitor”
Writer: Jed MacKay
Penciller: Ryan Stegman
Inkers: JP Mayer, Ryan Stegman & Livesay
Colourist: Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
THE X-MEN
Cyclops, Psylocke, Temper, Magik and Juggernaut are all still fighting the 3K X-Men throughout this issue, and their plot doesn’t advance that much.
Kid Omega. He survived the explosion in issue #14 thanks to a psychic “macro” that created a telekinetic shield around him while he was unconscious, only to be opened on the arrival of an “authorised ally”. We’ve seen him do something broadly similar when he used pre-prepared mental traps to beat the more experienced Professor X in issue #13, though that was reusing a trick he’d picked up from Cassandra Nova.
The X-Axis – w/c 26 May 2025
ASTONISHING X-MEN INFINITY COMIC #23. By Tim Seeley, Edoardo Audino, KJ Diaz & Clayton Cowles. Well, it’s a fight issue, but it’s a fight issue that also has the task of selling us on the revamped “Mutant Salvation Front”. The original Mutant Liberation Front always had some memorable character designs going for them – something that was genuinely one of Rob Liefeld’s strengths. But conceptually they’ve been more generic. This pared-down version of the group aren’t so much anti-human as pathologically pro-mutant, throwing themselves into a utopian vision of a restored mutant society. Using Wildside in the leader role seemed a weird choice at first, but Seeley actually makes a good case for it here: Wildside’s power is to create hallucinations, but there’s a thin line between a hallucination and a spiritual experience, which is how he can resposition himself as a preacher. That actually makes sense, complete with the suggestion that Wildside may not literally believe his visions but does believe in the importance of inspiring hope in his followers. And for the core group, sure, why not these three? Forearm is highly recognisable. Reaper is also highly recognisable, but now claims to have a higher perspective on the world because he’s also been to other universes. Which is true! He was in the Ultraverse Exiles for a while, and nobody remembers that. But as a guy who’s had weird experiences that he thinks make him open-minded… that works. And… well, okay, Strobe’s an odd choice because she was one of the more generic designs. And that design has been reworked here anyway, quite well. But sure, Strobe. Why not. Anyway, I like what Seeley is doing with these characters – they’re underused and this legitimately gives them something to do.
UNCANNY X-MEN #15. (Annotations here.) “Dark Artery” has been the strongest arc of the series so far, though this is something of a middle chapter issue. I assume the flashbacks are heading towards how Henrietta wound up as guardian of the Artery, and since the suggestion is that she’s looking for one of the Outliers to release her from that role, it’s an interesting reversal from her ultra-sympathetic role in the flashbacks. I’m looking forward to seeing how we pull that off next time. As for this issue, I like the way Deathdream is handled, and obviously David Marquez can sell the atmosphere of the Penumbra. I’m not so sure about the goth costumes for everyone, though I guess they help prevent the vibe of the Penumbra being polluted by too many bright colours, so they serve a function there.
Deadpool / Wolverine #5 annotations
DEADPOOL / WOLVERINE #5
“Soldiers of Misfortune”
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Joshua Cassara
Colour artist: Guru-eFX
Letterer: Joe Sabino
Editor: Mark Basso
So… I skipped the last two issues of this book because there wasn’t much to say about it, and also because it’s a Wolverine team-up book with a character who’s at best on the fringes of the X-books. I’m certainly not doing the Wolverine & Spider-Man team-up book. But this issue looks like the story might have some wider importance to the X-books after all, and it is an ongoing, so…
DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE
Wolverine. By way of recap, then: Stryfe is putting into plan a scheme to cause mass destruction, which involves controlling Wolverine and Deadpool via nanites that they were infected with years ago. Wolverine was initially immune to this, presumably because his Krakoan resurrections gave him a new body without the nanites, but he’s been infected now.
Magik #5 annotations
MAGIK vol 3 #5
“Fate Unbound”
Writer: Ashley Allen
Artist: Germán Peralta
Colourist: Arthur Hesli
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Editor: Darren Shan
MAGIK
She’s upset and passive-aggressive about Mirage going behind her back last issue and asking Cal to keep an eye on her. She privately accepts that Mirage is right to be concerned about the threat from Darkchild, but she’s still hurt by their distrust and by not being told about this “back-up plan”.
The three weeks that Liminal gave her in issue #3 to endure the Darkchild without her mental blocks have elapsed – this must have happened between issues #4-5.
When Liminal escapes into Earth, the wards that Magik placed as holding measures in issues #1, #2 and #4 are broken, causing her pain. (These are the locations at the bottom of page 6.) She claims the pain is normal when a magical spell breaks, particularly a complex one. This allows Darkchild to briefly take control, until Magik uses literal self-harm to focus on the pain and suppress her.
