X-Factor #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-FACTOR vol 5 #1
“Red Carpet”
Writer: Mark Russell
Artist: Bob Quinn
Colour artist: Jesus Aburtov
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Editor: Darren Shan
X-FACTOR:
This is the fifth volume of X-Factor, a name which has been attached to all sorts of unrelated concepts. Volume 1 started as a reunion book for the original X-Men and changed direction completely in the early 90s to become a book about a team working for the US government. Volume 2 was a miniseries about the Mutant Civil Rights Taskforce, volume 3 was Jamie Madrox’s X-Factor Investigations, and volume 4 was the Krakoan group who investigated mutant deaths. (EDIT: For those asking in the comments, the book about a corporate X-Factor team isn’t in the volume count because its official title was All-New X-Factor.)
This new version of X-Factor is essentially the 1990s government team, but hybridised with Peter Milligan and Mike Allred’s X-Force/X-Statix – though tonally, a better comparison might be Justice League International. That said, it repeats the trick from the first issue of X-Force of introducing a team and promptly killing most of them off, which feels like it might be a homage. To be fair, what we’re actually told is that the team members are “dead or clinging to life”, which leaves a back door for anyone who wants to bring the characters back.
X-Men #2 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN vol 7 #2
“Invasion”
Writer: Jed MacKay
Penciller: Ryan Stegman
Inker: JP Mayer
Colourists: Marte Gracia & Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
This issue also includes a back-up strip: the eighth and final chapter of “Weapon X-Traction”, which is basically a Deadpool & Wolverine comedy strip. I’m not going to be covering that.
THE X-MEN:
The X-Men have access to a Cerebro, presumably from one of the satellite locations of Krakoa.
Cyclops is very clear that even in the midst of an alien invasion, the X-Men’s primary concern is rescuing the new mutant that they’ve detected. He does insist that they’re still going to do the superhero stuff and help San Francisco, and acknowledges that the city has been good to mutants in the past (i.e., in the Utopia era), but he makes plain that it’s a secondary objective at best. His interest in relations with the humans seems to be largely instrumental: on a purely practical level, it’s good for the X-Men to be liked.
When he realises that the aliens are a projection of his new mutant, Cyclops’ main concern is to cover it up so that the humans don’t find out. He goes to the length of faking the new mutant’s death. Of course, this is the sort of thing that might count as a legitimate worry about uncontrolled mutant powers, but Cyclops feels there’s a bigger picture. (He surely can’t be that surprised to learn that there’s a connection between his new mutant signal and the alien invasion, but maybe he just figured that mutant powers often emerge for the first time under stress.)
The X-Axis – w/c 5 August 2024
X-MEN: FROM THE ASHES INFINITY COMIC #6. By Alex Paknadel, Phillip Sevy, Arthur Hesli & Clayton Cowles. Pretty much what you’d expect from the previous two issues: yes, Madelyne deliberately botched Havok’s magical resurrection in Dark X-Men, but she says it was to keep him safe by making sure he stayed by her side. If you’re going in that direction then this is handled perfectly well, even if the art seems to be struggling a bit to sell Alex’s decay in a PG way – I buy it for the characters, and that’s the key thing. Still, it’s obviously a story that exists primarily to extricate Alex from a fairly recent storyline and free him up for X-Factor, and there’s an unavoidable issue here of being able to see the strings. Needs must, I suppose.
UNCANNY X-MEN #1. (Annotations here.) So there’s a lot to like here, but I’m not entirely sold yet. On the plus side, Gail Simone has always been strong on characterisation and interaction, and I like her takes on the main cast. Rogue as leader has been done before, but it’s still fair enough to play her as someone who doesn’t see herself as suited to the role, and I like the idea that she’s mainly looking to reassure herself that the whole X-Men thing had some sort of point to it. It’s good to see the X-Men doing some normal things in the real world for a change, and put them more in the everyday. David Marquez’s art is absolutely fantastic, and if I’m not quite sure why we’re devoting so much of issue #1 to a fight with Sadurang, the establishing shot of him on the pyramid is just beautiful.
Uncanny X-Men #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
UNCANNY X-MEN vol 6 #1
“Red Wave”
Writer: Gail Simone
Artist: David Marquez
Colourist: Matthew Wilson
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
This is the sixth ongoing book with the Uncanny X-Men title; the last one was the Matthew Rosenberg run that preceded the Krakoan era back in 2019. The Free Comic Book Day one-shot for this year is effectively an issue #0 of this book, though the opening scene is a flashback to Corrina Ellis’s arrival at the X-Men Mansion, so at least that scene takes place before the FCBD one-shot – in fact, the whole issue probably does.
THE X-MEN:
Wolverine. He hasn’t been keeping in touch with the other X-Men, although he does show up for the death of Miguel, an “old army buddy” we haven’t seen before. They apparently had a bet about who would die last, and Logan feels guilty for cheating by Krakoan resurrection. He advises against joining Cyclops’ group – we saw him leave that group in X-Men #1, and he suggests here that it’s a closed community which is too far under Cyclops’ thumb.
Daredevil Villains #34: Mr Kline
DAREDEVIL #84 (February 1972)
“Night of the Assassin!”
Writer: Gerry Conway
Artist: Gene Colan
Inker: Syd Shores
Letterer: Artie Simek
Colourist: not credited
Editor: Stan Lee
We’ve skipped issues #80-81, which feature the Owl, acting at the behest of Mr Kline. That story also introduces the Black Widow to the cast, which will shortly lead to a radical retooling of the whole series. We’ve also skipped issues #82-83, where Daredevil and the Widow fight android duplicates of the Scorpion and Mr Hyde, built by, you guessed it, Mr Kline.
That brings us to this issue, where Daredevil finally meets Mr Kline after some six months of build-up. And defeats him in one issue.
Context, then. At this point, Gerry Conway was writing both Daredevil and Iron Man. Both titles gave Mr Kline an extended build up over the course of several months, with Kline sending an assortment of seemingly random villains to carry out missions with little or no discernible link between them. In Daredevil, he’s also a blackmailer, extorting money from Foggy Nelson for some vague and unspecified mistake. Eventually, after the whole arc is over, we do get an answer to this question: it’s something to do with papers that Crime-Wave prepared when he was working in the DA’s office circa issue #59, and that Foggy signed without reading them.
The X-Axis – w/c 29 July 2024
X-MEN: FROM THE ASHES INFINITY COMIC #8. By Alex Paknadel, Phillip Sevy, Arthur Hesli & Clayton Cowles. Havok’s demon nurse takes him to Limbo to try and get him healed, but it turns out that the plan is just to do a deal with N’astirh. Fair enough, and it’s all done quite efficiently. I raise an eyebrow at Havok actually taking the deal, but then he’s always been a flawed hero at best. What surprises me more is the reveal that the Goblin Queen didn’t botch Havok’s magical resurrection, but did it this way on purpose. I get that From the Ashes seems to serve the function of repositioning some characters for the relaunch and saving the regular books the need to do the job, and I get why they want to extricate Havok from this plot before he shows up in the new X-Factor, but it does feel like we’ve had two stories in a row rather obviously trying to re-write plots from the outgoing regime. And even if the specific things they’re doing are fine, there’s a sense of being able to see the strings here.
X-MEN: HEIR OF APOCALYPSE #4. (Annotations here.) This was a patchy miniseries. The basic idea of Apocalypse deciding to withdraw to Arakko but being egotistical enough to think that he has to anoint somebody to shepherd mutantkind on Earth seems reasonable, and it’s done in a way that avoids just resetting him to villain status. The art is very 90s but quite readable, and it has some strong moments – I really like the page of successive teen teams hanging out. The eventual choice of Cypher as the heir works for me; the story makes a convincing argument that Cypher was much more closely bonded to Krakoa than even the other mutants, and is accordingly much more traumatised by its loss. (It’s also much more recent for him, since he was in suspended animation for the whole of “Fall of X”.) And while his redesign doesn’t look great, there’s something in the idea of Cypher as someone both peaceful and very angry, with Bei and Warlock still hanging around as his followers. On the other hand, the actual contest which has provided the A-plot of these four issues feels mostly like busy work that doesn’t have a great deal to do with the outcome; the attempt to tie the final four to the Horsemen in this last issue is too strained; and twelve characters was probably too many to try and juggle. Still, I think the end result has potential.
X-Force #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-FORCE vol 7 #1
“Where Monsters Dwell”
Writer: Geoffrey Thorne
Artist: Marcus To
Colour artist: Erick Arciniega
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Editor: Mark Basso
X-FORCE:
The new X-Force is a team put together by Forge to deal with a hazily defined problem of “fractures” that are causing the world to break apart. Aside from the fact that Forge and Sage were both regulars in the previous run, it doesn’t have much connection to previous versions of X-Force. (In fact, the book was apparently pitched under a different name and assigned the “X-Force” name after the fact.)
Forge is effectively the lead character. When we first see him, he’s replaying some sort of video or simulation of a 1980s X-Men team fighting the Brood, for some reason or other. The art doesn’t really match up with any specific event. Forge is apparently obsessed with this, enough to spend over a day watching it and losing track of time.
Forge’s main project is “the McCoy Project”, which Forge says is inspired by the Beast’s research into mutantdom – i.e., the work that led to him become blue and furry back in Amazing Adventures #10 (1971). Forge claims that the Beast was “tr[ying] to run away from his mutation and stumbled into a power-up”, which is not what happened in the original story – the Beast was just investigating the “chemical cause of mutation”. Perhaps Forge construes any investigation into that topic as some sort of attempt to create a cure. In the context of an X-Force book, any suggestion that Forge is following in the steps of the Beast should probably be seen as some sort of warning.
X-Men: Heir of Apocalypse #4 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN: HEIR OF APOCALYPSE #4
Writer: Steve Foxe
Penciller: Netho Diaz
Inker: Sean Parsons
Colour artist: Alex Sinclair
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Annalise Bissa
APOCALYPSE:
Well, he selects an heir. Or at any rate, he refers to it as “my decision”. But it’s not clear how much choice he actually has in the matter, beyond selecting the contestants in the first place. The function of the contest seems to be to whittle the field down to four. But before Apocalypse goes off to speak to the final four one at a time, he also says that “my heir must accept their role”. On one view, only one of the contestants actually does accept the role (or perhaps Apocalypse is exercising some judgment about what amounts to acceptance). Note that in their dream scenes, Apocalypse appears to the three “losers” in his pre-Krakoa villain design, while only the winner sees him as Krakoan Apocalypse – which is how he still appears in the real world.
Once again, Apocalypse says that his heir will continue his work, but also that he expects them to oppose him. It’s not clear how this squares in Apocalypse’s mind; perhaps he wants someone who thinks for themselves, but has such confidence in his agenda (or in the effects of the power-up he’s going to give them) that he’s sure they’ll wind up on his track in the long run.
Daredevil Villains #33: The Man-Bull
DAREDEVIL #78-79 (July & August 1971)
“The Horns of the Bull!” / “‘Murder!’ Cries the Man-Bull”
Plot: Gerry Conway
Script: Gerry Conway (#78), Gary Friedrich (#79)
Penciller: Gene Colan
Inker: Tom Palmer
Letterer: Sam Rosen
Colourist: not credited
Editor: Stan Lee
We’ve skipped issue #77, which is the comic that the Teardrop Explodes got their name from. It’s another random crossover – a prologue to Sub-Mariner #40, where Daredevil doesn’t appear. And it doesn’t have a villain anyway.
That brings us to the Man-Bull. It’s been a while since we had a new villain with any staying power whatsoever. He may be a Z-lister, but the Man-Bull does still show up from time to time. Why, he was in Miles Morales, Spider-Man just this year! Admittedly, he was teaming up with the likes of Mr Fish and Lady Stilt-Man. But hey, at least he was still in print in 2024. It’s more than you can say for most Daredevil villains of the early 1970s.
These two issues are part of the Mr Kline storyline, which was running through both Daredevil and Iron Man at the time. Kline is a complicated matter, and I’ll come to him properly next time. Fortunately, the details of Kline’s much-maligned arc don’t really matter for the Man-Bull. For present purposes, all you need to know is that Mr Kline kept showing up as a shadowy manipulator who got people to do seemingly arbitrary things with no apparent connection, all in service of a mysterious masterplan. In fact, for present purposes, you don’t even need to know that. All that really matters is that the future Man-Bull is a hapless henchman who’s been dragged into a larger scheme that he hasn’t got a clue about.
The X-Axis – w/c 22 July 2024
X-MEN: FROM THE ASHES INFINITY COMIC #7. By Alex Paknadel, Phillip Sevy, Arthur Hesli & Clayton Cowles. Since they aren’t keeping the “From the Ashes” branding beyond the first few months, I suppose this is also going to be renamed or relaunched at some point? It certainly seems as if it has a specific remit at the moment, which is to bridge the gap between old and new status quos while saving the regular titles the hassle of taking up time on it. This is the first part of a Havok storyline, seemingly designed to explain why he’s not looking dead any more in the upcoming X-Factor book. There are worse ways to use the Unlimited books, and it’s a better solution than just saying “we’ll come back to that later” when telling that story isn’t really a top priority for the new books. This first part is basically set-up: Madelyne’s attempts to heal Havok still aren’t really working, and eventually the demon who’s charged with looking after him takes pity on the guy and tells him that they could sort him out properly in Limbo. It’s got a job to do and it’s decently entertaining along the way.
DEADPOOL VS. WOLVERINE: SLASH ‘EM UP INFINITY COMIC #6. By Christos Gage, Alan Robinson, Carlos Lopez & Joe Sabino. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but there’s a Deadpool and Wolverine film out. I guess somebody’s sat down and run the numbers and decided that it makes more sense to take advantage of that by commissioning random new Deadpool/Wolverine stories for Unlimited rather than promoting decent ones that already exist, but it seems odd to me. This is the concluding part of a functional mini which elevates itself with a few good moments but doesn’t actually have much going on under the surface. It’s absolutely fine, it has a nice enough ending, but it’s still hard to see why it’d be of much interest beyond completists like me.
