The X-Axis – w/c 27 January 2025
ASTONISHING X-MEN INFINITY COMIC #8. By Tim Seeley, Edoardo Audino, KJ Díaz & Clayton Cowles. Hmm… I have no trouble buying the idea that Captain America thinks Black Tom Cassidy is still a villain. After all, he was a behind the scenes member of X-Force. I have a bit more trouble with the idea that Cap thinks the Juggernaut is still a villain, when he’s a full fledged public member of the X-Men. That said, I do quite like the way Seeley writes Cap with calmly reasonable conviction even when he’s totally wrong – it’s quite fun seeing his voice of reason routine deployed at the wrong target – and there’s some really nice art on this, particularly with Cap’s bike stunts.
X-MEN #10. (Annotations here.) Basically an issue of Cyclops staring down the awful Agent Lundqvist, who’s getting more plausible with every passing day as American politics catches up with him. MacKay does this scene very well, I think – the point of having Cyclops cite things like the Hague Invasion Act is not to align him with the right, but to have him frame his point in terms of Lundqvist’s worldview. Not just to make sure the dimwit actually understands it, but because his whole message is “the US government behaves exactly like me all the time, so stop your whining”. It’s also a post-Krakoan Cyclops who’s given up on trying to be friends with the authorities and is openly just trying to keep them off his back by threatening mutual destruction – rather than going back to the outright revolutionary angle that never quite worked under Bendis. I think it’s a good approach, and Netho Diaz gets Lundqvist’s increasing loss of composure rather well.
Psylocke #3 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
PSYLOCKE vol 2 #3
“Lady-Killer”
Writer: Alyssa Wong
Artist: Vincenzo Carratù
Colour artist: Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Editor: Darren Shan
PSYLOCKE:
Her first instinct is to call Devon to get an analysis of the weird cyborg robots, even though she’s actually in the Factory. Presumably most of the X-Men are off on a mission, but we know that the Beast’s in the building. Either she’s turning to Devon as a first port of call generally, or she wants to keep this separate from the X-Men because it involves Greycrow – but she has no apparent qualms about bringing him to the Factory for medical treatment, so it’s probably the former.
She recognises the butterflies left in the Factory from the display in Shinobi’s apartment, and naturally sees him as the next lead. In the circumstances, she’s surprisingly restrained in challenging him on it, although she doesn’t seem to attempt to read his mind once she’s in range – instead she confronts him and demands “to know what your game is”. (Maybe she figures that Shinobi has decent psychic defences and that she’s not the greatest stealth telepath in the world.)
She takes a bit of prompting to give Greycrow a hug after she finds him alive, but not much. He’s clearly much more in touch with his emotions than she is – which makes it a little odd that she takes the opportunity to lecture him and Shinobi later in the issue when they squabble over her. (This may just be a misjudged scene. Although they’re clearly rivals in some sense, the main reason they fight is that Greycrow grabbed Shinobi from behind and held a knife to his throat, which by all appearances is what Greycrow and Psylocke had planned. Did she not expect Shinobi to defend himself? For that matter, how was this ever a remotely sensible way to ambush a guy with phasing powers?)
X-Men #10 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN vol 7 #10
“Brinkmanship”
Writer: Jed MacKay
Penciller: Netho Diaz
Inker: Sean Parsons
Colourist: Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
THE X-MEN:
Cyclops. Naturally enough, he was expecting retaliation for the X-Men’s attack on Graymalkin over the last two issues. His solution to this problem is, as he says, brinksmanship: he hires the Hellions to wreck O*N*E’s resources, and openly threatens mutually assured destruction unless O*N*E back off. He literally says that if he’s killed then the X-Men will slaughter the US government, and that Phoenix will probably raze the Earth in revenge.
How far Cyclops is bluffing is open to debate – the message he wants Lundqvist to take from this is that he’s demonstrating the amount of damage that a fight between the two sides would cause, and that he’s giving Lundqvist the arguments he needs to back off. He’s certainly exaggerating the risk of his death driving Phoenix mad – when Quentin asks him about it, he simply says that “I can’t rule it out”, which is a lot less definitive than his threat to Lundqvist, and feels like a “well, I wasn’t completely making it up” justification. But does he have plans for a retaliatory strike on Washington? Possibly – he’s certainly selected a team of X-Men relatively likely to be on board with such a plan. Then again, when Quentin asks him “Is it true?”, Scott has to ask him to specify which bit, which implies that the whole speech was news to Quentin. (In contrast, Quentin clearly does know about the Hellions.)
The X-Axis – w/c 20 January 2025
ASTONISHING X-MEN INFINITY COMIC #7. By Tim Seeley, Edoardo Audino, KJ Diaz & Clayton Cowles. Looks like we’re alternating creative teams on this book now, but Seeley and Audino are perfectly good, so I’ve no read complaints there. This is the first part of a Black Tom Cassidy arc, as he not only tries to return to the regular world, but also has to adjust to being separated from Krakoa. Given his role in X-Force, and his link with Juggernaut, he’s a sensible character to check in with, and this is a solid first chapter. It’s a little jarring at first to see Captain America show up, shrug his shoulders and think “yup, C-list supervillain”, but that’s probably how the non-mutant heroes should see the likes of Black Tom. It’s not like his Krakoan face turn was high profile – he was in the Krakoan secret service. So it makes a certain sense to play him as a character who’s even more directionless than most of the others – except for the obvious question of “So why isn’t he with the Juggernaut, then?” But the story is obviously gearing up to answer that question directly, and so far so good.
UNCANNY X-MEN #9. (Annotations here.) And I guess we’re doing alternating artists on this book, since David Marquez hasn’t drawn a whole issue since #5, and isn’t solicited to do so again until #13 as far as I can see. Mind you, at 18 issues a year, he was never going to draw them all. This issue was solicited with art by Javier Garrón, but winds up drawn by Andrei Bressan, which might explain why it looks a bit rough. Still, it tells the story well enough, and the conversation sequences are pretty good. As for the story, Uncanny X-Men is very much “The Outliers featuring the X-Men” at this point, but I like the Outliers, so I have no complaints about that. I’m not so sure about tying Ransom to Sunspot, though – yes, he’s a character in the mould of early Sunspot, but does it actually help him to draw attention to that fact? The Wolfpack Sentinels work as villains for the newbies, but it does make it a weird decision to use them in an ineffective background role in the “Raid on Graymalkin” crossover. But as another spotlight issue for the Outliers, this does its job quite well.
Hellverine #2 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
HELLVERINE vol 2 #2
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Raffaele Ienco
Colour artist: Bryan Valenza
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Mark Basso
HELLVERINE:
Akihiro talks about Hellverine as if he was a different character, in much the way that Johnny Blaze talks about the Ghost Rider. He generally uses “Hellverine” to refer to himself in Ghost Rider form, and “Bagra-Ghul” to refer to the demon inside him which enables the transformation, but he’s not entirely consistent about it.
Akihiro considers “Hellverine” to be an “uninvited guest” whom he can usually keep under control, but the demon can force his way to the surface if he really wants. The demon allows him to sense evil. When attacked by Evan, who’s simply scared and trying to defend himself, Akihiro recognises him as non-evil and remains in human form to subdue him. Despite the signs of demonic possession in the area and his own inability to control Bagra-Ghul 100% of the time, Akihiro assures Evan that “You can trust me” – it’s a white lie to try and calm the kid down, but it’s certainly not entirely true. (Akihiro repeats several times that Evan can trust him, and it’s clearly not just a throwaway line.) It’s possible that Akihiro is using his regular old mutant pheromone powers to Evan too, since Evan belatedly realises that he’s being rather trusting for no sufficient reason towards the end of the story.
Phoenix #7 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
PHOENIX #7
Writer: Stephanie Phillips
Artist: Marco Renna
Colour artist: David Curiel
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Annalise Bissa
PHOENIX:
She tries to earn Adani’s trust by showing her the edited highlights of her origin story (see Footnotes for the specifics). This was foreshadowed back in issue #1, where the older Adani’s narration talked about Jean sharing her story.
Even though Jean is the Phoenix, she can also separate herself from its power and transfer it to someone with whom she has a psychic link. She’s also able to take that power back again, though it’s not like Adani has any relevant psychic training with which to resist. Whether the Phoenix has a mind of its own in this regard isn’t clear. For some reason, this leads to a flash of energy and Jean being transported to the Blue Area of the Moon.
She sees parallels between herself and Adani as a child suffering “corruptive pain”, which makes her want to trust Adani. As a psychic she should arguably know better, but apparently she convinces herself that Adani will make the right choices.
Uncanny X-Men #9 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
UNCANNY X-MEN vol 6 #9
“Off the Leash”
Writer: Gail Simone
Artist: Andrei Bressan
Colour artist: Matthew Wilson
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
THE X-MEN:
Rogue. She’s willing to lead the team but wants “everybody” to have a say in decisions – which in practice seems to mean just the established team and not the Outliers. She assigns each of the veterans to mentor one of the kids. Wolverine endorses this decision and calls her a “pretty fine leader”, though she seems genuinely unsure whether he’s being backhanded by comparing her to Professor X and Cyclops. (This seems like paranoia on her part, since there’s no obvious reason for him to be sarcastic.)
Gambit. He’s annoyed that Nightcrawler didn’t buy the beer he asked for in issue #6. Other than that, he doesn’t have much to do in this issue.
Wolverine. He’s sure that each of the Outliers is hiding something – that’s fairly obvious in the case of Ransom and Calico but less so with Jitter and Deathdream. As in issue #2, he doesn’t trust them, but he now thinks the bigger problem is that they don’t “trust themselves”. He approves of Rogue’s mentoring scheme and volunteers to take responsiblity for Ransom. Logan seems to identify to some extent with Ransom as a triggerhappy loner. He apologises for being less than welcoming to the newcomers, and gives Ransom some praise as a lyncphpin of his group. His instinct is to keep an eye on the Outliers when they’re sent to the mall, but Jubilee talks him out of it, with the predictable disastrous consequences.
Daredevil Villains #44: El Jaguar
DAREDEVIL #120 (April 1975)
“…And a HYDRA New Year!”
Writer: Tony Isabella
Artist: Bob Brown
Inker: Vince Colletta
Colourist: Petra Goldberg
Leterer: Ray Holloway
Editor: Len Wein
Aside from the Crusher issue that we covered last time, Tony Isabella’s short run on Daredevil consists of a HYDRA storyline. These few issues are certainly not enough to make HYDRA into Daredevil villains. But if Isabella had stuck around longer, they might well have wound up as a true import to his rogue’s gallery. Isabella’s big project here is to retool HYDRA for the seventies, and Daredevil happens to be the book he’s writing so here they are.
HYDRA had debuted a decade earlier in “Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD” (at that point, a feature in Strange Tales). They were a terrorist organisation led by Fury’s arch enemy Baron Wolfgang von Strucker, who had started life as a Nazi villain in Sgt Fury #5. In other words, as originally conceived, they were continuity Nazis. If not outright neo-Nazis, they were at least an example of the “escaped Nazi leader resurfaces in South America with a private army” trope.
But Strucker had been killed in Strange Tales #158, back in 1967. HYDRA had continued to appear, but my impression is that without their frontman, they’d drifted into mere generic super-terrorists.
The X-Axis – w/c 13 January 2025
EXCEPTIONAL X-MEN #5. (Annotations here.) No Infinity Comic this week, with no explanation that I’m aware of. But apparently it hasn’t been cancelled, so I guess it’s just running late. That still leaves three ongoings and a new miniseries, though.
Exceptional X-Men has been a consistently good book for the most part, but it’s also an almost entirely character driven one – five issues in, the closest thing it’s had to any bad guys is a random monster on loan from X-Force for two pages, and a few low-level bigots. Obviously the Verate plotline is setting up to be the first real villains of the series, but it’s still taking its time getting there. That’s all for the best in terms of the quality of the series, and hopefully the audience is fine with it getting that time. It’s not an X-Men book – it has more in common with very early New Mutants – but the new characters are all strong creations and Eve Ewing’s efforts to extricate Kate Pryde from the ill-advised Shadowkat storyline is largely successful. There’s two rather baffling pages with specific Orchis characters she never interacted with, I grant you, and I don’t know what they were thinking there. But the character material works. Carmen Carnero is doing a great job with the personality of the new mutants, and the closing panel with Ellie trying the Verate app is beautifully done.
Laura Kinney: Wolverine #2 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
LAURA KINNEY: WOLVERINE #2
“The Devil in Me, part 1”
Writer: Erica Schultz
Artist: Giada Belviso
Colour artist: Rachelle Rosenberg
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso
WOLVERINE.
It’s a “they clash then they team up” story. Laura isn’t surprised that Elektra doesn’t want her help, and tries to talk to her at first. But she loses her temper when Elektra says something about not wanting to work with mutants – see below. (The art seems to have Elektra throwing the first punch, but if so, it’s not clear why – and besides, the whole story revolves around Laura being the impulsive one.) Laura clearly finds Elektra condescending, and not without reason.
As usual, she feels strongly about any sign of children being used as weapons, and all the more so when anti-mutant forces are involved. Charitably, this might explain why her self-control and planning skills seem to be at rock bottom in this story, giving Elektra plenty of opportunity to play the older and wiser role. Laura also yells at Luke Cage for not banning an anti-superhero march (see below). Elektra regards Laura as impulsive.
