X-Factor #6 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-FACTOR vol 5 #6
“Traitors”
Writer: Mark Russell
Artist: Bob Quinn
Colour artist: Jesus Aburtov
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Editor: Darren Shan
The previous issue ended with Polaris showing up to rescue the team from Darkstar’s getaway helicopter; apparently, Polaris was willing to hand Darkstar and her X-Term men over to the authorities, or at least didn’t put up any resistance to X-Factor arresting them. So the story picks up with X-Factor back at the Nevermor military base, and X-Term as prisoners.
X-FACTOR.
Havok breaks off from the group to try and speak to Polaris and Bruin before they leave, and thank them for helping. He also wants to know how they “survive[d]” after the end of issue #2, when the X-Factor rescued him from the Mutant Underground and Polaris chose to stay – granted that she was being restrained by armed gunmen at the time, it’s not obvious that she was in any immediate danger of being killed, and Havok’s brooding in issue #3 seemed to assume that she was alive. His conversation with Polaris in this issue seems to have him wanting to break X-Factor away from the government, although matters seem to be left with X-Factor refusing an order to go hunting for McCloud and returning home.
Daredevil Villains #43: The Crusher
DAREDEVIL #119 (March 1975)
“They’re Tearing Down Fogwell’s Gym!”
Writer: Tony Isabella
Artist: Bob Brown
Inker: Don Heck
Letterer: Dave Hunt
Colourist: Stan Goldberg
Editor: Len Wein
We’ve skipped issues #116-117, an Owl story which ends Steve Gerber’s run with a final trip back to San Francisco, in order that the west coast supporting cast can be formally written out. The Black Widow decides to stay there, but the book finds it remarkably difficult to give her the boot, and we’ll see her one more time before she officially departs. We’ve also skipped issue #118, which is a Gerry Conway fill-in issue featuring the Circus of Crime. It also introduces Blackwing as a new member of the Circus, but he gets a solo story shortly, so we’ll come back to him for that.
With that, we’ve arrived at the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it Tony Isabella run, which lasted a whole five issues before he was removed from the book. Most of it is a HYDRA story, but Isabella kicks off by taking Daredevil back to his roots.
The X-Axis – w/c 23 December 2024
You’d think Christmas Day might be a quiet one for new releases, but here we are…
ASTONISHING X-MEN INFINITY COMIC #4. By Alex Paknadel, Phillip Sevy, Maichael Bartolo & Clayton Cowles. And yes, this came out on Monday, I know. Anyway, the link between the two plot threads is someone who’s been giving shonky cyborg upgrades to low-rent Purifer types, which makes sense. Still, the main interest in this arc lies more in the material about radicalisation than the actual plot, and this issue (unavoidably, for plot reasons) tacks away from that to some interrogation cliches with Sean and some more sentimental stuff with Paige’s brother. All fine as far as it goes, but it’s more on the mechanical side of this story.
X-MEN #9. (Annotations here.) Part 3 of “Raid on Graymalkin”, and I’m kind of fascinatined that both books have wound up doing partial fill-in art on what you’d think would be a priority storyline. Then again, I still see this arc as something of a distraction from the more interesting things going on in both books because – repeat after me – I’m still not sold on the Graymalkin prison as bringing anything new to the table. I guess I’m mildly interested in why Scurvy is on their side, and I’m cerainly interested in Scott’s rejection of Professor X – though I really don’t buy him being willing to leave Xavier in this particular jail. There are a few moments with the two casts meeting, but there are also a lot of characters running around and, aside from the Outliers, seeing them interact with one another isn’t really that much of a novelty.
Exceptional X-Men #4 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
EXCEPTIONAL X-MEN #4
Writer: Eve L Ewing
Artist: Carmen Caranero
Colour artist: Nolan Woodard
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Tom Brevoort
THE MAIN CAST:
Bronze goes to Westinghouse College Prep, which is a real school. It’s not the same school as Senn College, where Melée was playing on the soccer team in issue #1. She wavers about whether to audition for the school musical (The Loveliest Sunday, which isn’t a real show), because on the one hand, she has a crush on a boy who’s going to be in it, but on the other hand, she’s afraid of turning into her metal form during the audition. Since it’s clear in this story that her powers are not generally known in the school, she evidently doesn’t have a general problem with controlling her powers; she must be worried about a stress reaction. Emma and Bobby both advise her to go ahead, and Emma encourages her to use the situation as a way of keeping her focus.
She’s distracted during training at the start of the issue, and panics. But in her first actual fight, she defeats a monster on her own, and she’s justifiably proud of this success. Still, she decide that she’s not cut out for a lead role, or maybe just that she ought to be devoting her spare time to training.
X-Men #9 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN vol 7 #9
“Raid on Graymalkin, part 3”
Writer: Jed MacKay
Pencillers: Federico Vicentini & Ryan Stegman
Inkers: Federico Vicentini & JP Mayer
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Colourists: Marte Gracia & Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Editor: Tom Brevoort
This is part 3 of the “Raid on Graymalkin” crossover, which takes place between Uncanny X-Men #7-8.
THE X-MEN (ALASKA)
Cyclops flatly refuses to co-operate in releasing Professor X, even after seeing the state of the prison. First he claims that Professor X manipulated all of mutantkind for the sake of his dream, which is a broadly standard depiction of him since X-Men: Deadly Genesis in 2006. A fair case can be made that his acceptance as a national leader in the Krakoan era was something of an anomaly given the state of his overall relations with the X-Men over that period – and even then, he had a secret plan with Magneto and Moira X. When pressed further, Cyclops points to Xavier’s murder of the crew of the Agnew in Fall of the House of X #4. That was retconned into a trick to deceive Orchis in X-Men: From the Ashes Infinity Comic #4-6, but Cyclops apparently doesn’t know that. For Cyclops, Professor X is a danger to mutantkind. It’s possible that he’s playing along with Professor X’s stated wish in X-Men vol 6 #35 to be a lightning rod for anti-mutant backlash, and figures that breaking such a controversial figure out of jail is not going to be for the good of mutantkind in the round – but that’s not how it’s played.
Psylocke postures to Nightcrawler as a killer, a pose that she doesn’t maintain quite so rigidly among the members of her own team. She tells him that he only plays with swords, which is somewhat true. She’s slower than him to pick up on Scurvy’s influence and falls victim to Professor X’s control, all broadly consistent with the idea that she’s a relatively low-power and somewhat inexperienced telepath who uses her powers to bolster the physical combat skills that she really depends on.
Daredevil Villains #42: Death-Stalker
DAREDEVIL vol 1 #113-115 (September to November 1974)
“When Strikes the Gladiator!” / “A Quiet Night in the Swamp!” / Death Stalks the City!”
Writer: Steve Gerber
Penciller: Bob Brown
Inker: Vince Colletta
Letterers: Artie Simek (#113), Charlotte Jetter (#114-115)
Coloursts: Linda Lessmann (#113), Stan Goldberg (#114), Petra Goldberg (#115)
Editor: Roy Thomas
For our purposes, this is the end of Steve Gerber’s run. It doesn’t actually end until issue #117, but the last two issues are an Owl story. Gerber’s contributions to the rogues’ gallery end here, with the Death-Stalker.
Technically I’ve covered the Death-Stalker already. In issue #158, he will be revealed to be the Exterminator, a villain who had appeared in a single storyline in 1968. I haven’t read that issue yet, but since it’s removed from Death-Stalker’s debut by four years and three writers, it seems like a safe bet that Gerber intended the Death-Stalker to be a new character. So that’s how we’ll treat him.
The story emerges from a subplot which has been building for a while now, involving Foggy Nelson’s younger sister Candace, the token liberal in her family. Candace is a journalism student and she’s stumbled upon some documents about an abandoned research project involving Ted Sallis. None of the Daredevil characters know what Sallis is up to now, but we know that he’s the Man-Thing, and that Steve Gerber is writing that book too. This storyline isn’t a crossover, but it is an excuse for the Man-Thing to guest star.
The X-Axis – 19 December 2024
ASTONISHING X-MEN INFINITY COMIC #3. By Alex Paknadel, Phillip Sevy, Michael Bartolo & Clayton Cowles. Ah, the Infinity Comics, where you can get away with doing a spotlight issue on Lewis Guthrie. Which one is Lewis Guthrie? Well, that’s kind of the point. It’s basically a flashback issue explaining how Lewis has become a radicalised anti-mutant type during the Krakoan era, in which he sees his side of the family being ignored and left behind, while taking the flak from everyone else for the mutants doing unhelpful things like making telepathic announcements to the whole world. There is actually a story back in the 2000s where Lewis tries to get his hoped-for mutant powers to activate, which is about the only thing he’s ever done to stand out; it winds up with him almost getting killed by Dark Beast, so I can see why we’re downplaying that in favour of a more mundane (in the best sense) back story. It’s a straightforward story but quite convincingly handled. I suspect it might be read in some quarters as another sign of the current editorial office having an aversion to Krakoa. But for me, Hickman was always setting up the idea that there was a degree of hubris that wouldn’t turn out well, so I have no issue with this sort of thing.
PSYLOCKE #2. (Annotations here.) So after I spent last week’s X-Axis going through variations on “this isn’t really working”, here’s one that’s growing on me. When issue #1 came out, I wasn’t convinced that they had a hook for Kwannon as a solo lead, beyond recycling ideas about being raised as a living weapon that had already been done with Wolverine, X-23 and Elektra. And yes, that’s kind of what this book is doing too, but maybe with a lighter touch and a bit less brooding. Sure, Psylocke’s got strong feelings about rescuing kids from abuse, but Shinobi Shaw works nicely as a foil for her, and she’s given a deadpan sense of humour at the same time as not quite understanding the more normal characters (which is still a relative concept in this book, but the idea’s on the table). There’s some decent action sequences too, and while I’ve never been sold on the “underground gladiatoral arena for the rich” trope, I’m kind of coming round to the idea that maybe there’s enough unexplored territory in Kwannon that this can work?
Hellverine #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
HELLVERINE vol 2 #1
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Raffaele Ienco
Colour artist: Bryan Valenza
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Mark Basso
This ongoing series follows the miniseries of the same name from earlier this year, which brought Akihiro back as a Ghost Rider mash-up. This, by the way, is the problem with Marvel’s current convention of distinguishing between volumes by the year in which the first issue came out: there are two Hellverine (2024) #1s.
Fun fact! If you try to search for this issue on Amazon, it thinks it’s a typo and gives you results for Wolverine instead.
Although it’s coming from the X-office, this series seems to be basically Ghost Rider, so I probably won’t continue doing annotations for it, but hey, it’s the first issue. Chances are I’ll be dropping some other lower-tier books in the new year – otherwise we’re going to have weeks coming up with seven books requiring annotations and that’s just not realistic.
Psylocke #2 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
PSYLOCKE vol 2 #2
“Ladykiller”
Writer: Alyssa Wong
Artist: Vincenzo Carratù
Colour artist: Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Editor: Darren Shan
PSYLOCKE.
The previous issue ended with her bloodily defeating the villains and feeling disturbed by her lack of emotion about it. This issue picks up from that by going into a flashback to her childhood training – possibly a direct continuation of the training flashback on page 15 of issue #1, or at least another training session in the same location. In that flashback, she’s killed some low-level Hand ninja and seems quite relaxed about the whole thing until her friend Mitsuki snaps her out of it. (“Sometimes you go so far away.”) More of Mitsuki below.
As usual, Psylocke feels very strongly about anything involving the brutalisation of children and thinks that everyone involved “deserves to die”. Naturally, she refuses to hurt the kids who have been forced to fight her. She also shrugs off the shock collar that the Cleaver Club try to use to control her.
The X-Axis – w/c 9 December 2024
Since we were running late last week, I already covered Astonishing X-Men Infinity Comic #2. This doesn’t leave us short of books. It’s an absurdly heavy week.
UNCANNY X-MEN #7. (Annotations here.) This is part 2 of the “Raid on Graymalkin” crossover with X-Men, although much of it covers the same material from the perspective of the Uncanny cast. That’s not as redundant as it might seem, since the good parts of this story are largely the character material, particularly with Calico. The actual plot still leaves me unconvinced – the prison villains feel both one-dimensional and too close to Orchis, and the fight between the two X-Men teams feels forced. Generally, the prison stuff feels like a distraction from what this book really wants to be doing – and the fact that this is the issue that gets partial fill-in art kind of reinforces that. It’s still not a bad issue on the whole, but the book does other things better than this.
X-FACTOR #5. (Annotations here.) This isn’t working. It ought to work – there’s nothing wrong with the idea of the US government sponsoring its own mutant team who sign up in good faith and find themselves answerable to shallow self-publicists and military incompetents. And Mark Russell seems like he should be a good person to write that book. But what we’ve wound up with is a book that’s too wacky to take seriously without actually being funny, and that’s the worst of all worlds. There are moments where it comes together – the Polaris subplot is maybe the one thread in the book that really works, perhaps because it’s been insulated from everything else. But five issues in, this is floundering.
