The X-Axis – w/c 25 December 2023
X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #119. By Steve Foxe, Steve Orlando, Phillip Sevy, Ceci de la Cruz & Travis Lanham. Is this the first time that an X-book has been published on Christmas Day? Truly, it warms the heart to think of the diligent assistant editor, trudging through the snow to the offices of Marvel Comics to press the big red PUBLISH button on the thirty-second floor. That’s dedication. Especially for the middle chapter of an Arakko storyline. This is turning into the sort of Arakko story that doesn’t work for me – the sort where we’re somehow making the logical leap from “expressing your pain is a good thing” to “battering one another with sticks is a good thing”. To be fair, I suppose this sort of ritual combat event is a fairly standard fantasy trope, and the genre has never much appealed to me anyway. But when you start trying to rationalise it in this kind of therapy-speak way, and have a bunch of characters from Earth nodding along and going “yes, this all sounds entirely reasonable”, you end up lampshading how much it doesn’t make sense.
IMMORTAL X-MEN #18. (Annotations here.) This is the final issue – or, if you prefer, the book morphs into Rise of the Powers of X for its final arc. Either way, we really are entering the home stretch of the Krakoan era now. This is the pay off for Mother Righteous’ attempts to become a Dominion, and it rather cleverly hits the accelerator by revealing that Orbis Stellaris and Dr Stasis already tried and failed to become Dominions off panel. Actually, maybe it really is rushing to the end for scheduling reasons, but if so, it’s a very neat way of making it into a positive.
X-Force #47 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-FORCE vol 6 #47
“The Greenhouse”
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Daniel Picciotto
Colour artist: GURU-eFX
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Mark Basso
COVER / PAGE 1: X-Force – including Wolverine again – under attack from Stark Sentinels.
PAGE 2. Flashback: X-Force pick up Wolverine.
This takes place after Wolverine #40, which concludes Wolverine’s run of team-ups with non-mutant heroes, and before X-Men #28, where he shows up for the X-Men’s visit to Latveria.
PAGES 3-7. X-Force set up base at the North Pole.
Presumably the narrator means “somewhere deep in the Arctic” rather than “literally the North Pole”, since they’re obviously looking for an appropriately secluded location.
X-Force still have the mobile base that they were hanging around in during the Hellfire Gala (because the remote-controlled Colossus wanted to keep them at a distance where they couldn’t help). Now that the team have escaped Mikhail Rasputin, this means they can actually function as a team again.
Immortal X-Men #18 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
IMMORTAL X-MEN #18
“Happily Ever After”
Writer: Kieron Gillen
Artist: Juan José Ryp
Colour artist: David Curiel
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. A giant Mother Righteous toying with Professor X, Jean Grey, Emma Frost and (oddly, because he’s not even a cast regular) Cyclops.
PAGE 2. Mother Righteous lets Jean lead her through the White Hot Room.
Mother Righteous is our narrator for the issue, breaking the pattern of each narrator being a member of the Quiet Council. That said, she has (effectively) been among the leading figures in the makeshift version of Krakoa within the White Hot Room, which probably qualifies her.
Mother Righteous started following the addled Jean Grey into the desert at the end of the previous issue. As she explains later on, she assumes (correctly) that Jean will be drawn to the location where she can try to ascend to Dominion status.
The X-Axis – w/c 18 December 2023
X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #118. By Steve Foxe, Steve Orlando, Phillip Sevy, Ceci de la Cruz & Travis Lanham. On to a new arc, then. It’s Christmas during “Fall of X”, and after a brief opening montage, we’re off to post-war Arakko, where they go in for an evening of semi-ritual mutual cudgeling which apparently unburdens people, or whatever. Out of nowhere, we’ve also got Bei showing up, to remind us that her husband has been missing for months and every one seems to have forgotten about it. This is certainly in the spirit of Al Ewing’s attempts to portray Arakko as a more rounded culture than it first appears, or at least one where we need to appreciate the symbolism to the Arakkii themselves. I can buy the idea that these guys go in for ritualised combat as part of a celebration, particularly since the story does seem fairly clear that joining in just to hurt people is disreputable. I’m rather less sure that I’m interested in reading an actual story about it, but we’ll see.
WOLVERINE #40. (Annotations here.) The last part of “Last Mutant Standing”, though it isn’t a storyline so much as a series of team-up stories. Benjamin Percy has a shot at tying it together into some kind of theme, by pushing the idea that Wolverine has been teaming up with non-mutant heroes to try to recapture the feeling of belonging that he had on Krakoa, and walked away from shortly before the Fall. There’s something in that idea – the book did indeed bring Wolverine to the point of rejecting Krakoa, and it makes some sense for the Fall to be something that makes him appreciate the positive side of the place, without needing to compromise Wolverine’s status as a sceptic. But it feels a bit of a stretch to make that into the moral of four issues of Wolverine Team-Up. Still, these four issues have at least been quite good fun, in a rather grim period, and maybe just taking a step back and doing something lightweight was a better call than putting Wolverine at the centre of the storyline.
Uncanny Spider-Man #5 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
UNCANNY SPIDER-MAN #5
“Fade to Blue”
Writer: Si Spurrier
Artists: Lee Garbett & Simone Buonfantino
Colour artist: Matt Milla
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Sarah Brunstad
COVER / PAGE 1. Nightcrawler with techno-organic stuff rounding on him.
PAGES 2-7. Nightcrawler and Silver Sable reveal their ruse.
Okay, now on one level, this is quite clever. Issue #4 went out of its way to verify that they’d checked Nightcrawler’s DNA and it definitely wasn’t Mystique. But since then, X-Men Blue: Origins has established that Mystique does change her DNA when she copies someone, in order to rationalise the Azazel/Nightcrawler connection (as shown in flashback on page 6). So when this issue does the reveal that the scan was just wrong, it’s not just a cheap retraction of the cliffhanger.
Astonishing Iceman #5 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
ASTONISHING ICEMAN #5
“Out Cold, part 5”
Writer: Steve Orlando
Artist: Vincenzo Carratù
Colour artist: Java Tartaglia
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Mark Basso
COVER / PAGE 1. A shattered Iceman.
PAGE 2. Flashback: Mr Clean defeats Romeo.
This takes place before page 23 of the previous issue, and shows Mr Clean defeating Romeo while Iceman was off in New York. Clyde, the guard drone was seen in issue #1, and mentioned again by Iceman as one of his security measures last iissue.
Romeo actually puts up more of a fight against Mr Clean than you might expect from him, because it turns out that his empathic powers also extend to imposing painful emotions on people when he hits them. I’m pretty sure that’s new. I’m not entirely sure it makes sense – his powers don’t normally depend on touch – but it’s a nice idea, so what the heck.
Wolverine #40 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
WOLVERINE vol 7 #40
“Last Mutant Standing, part 4”
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Ibrahim Moustafa
Colour artist: Frank D’Armata
Letterer: Cory Petit
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Mark Basso
COVER / PAGE 1: Wolverine and Spider-Man in action against Stark Sentinels.
PAGE 2. Tribute to Alison Gill.
PAGES 3-7. Wolverine enlists Spider-Man to help him enter the Orchis space station.
Oscorp. Peter is leaving the Oscorp building, where he currently works in Amazing Spider-Man. (Norman Osborn is good right now, if you haven’t been following it.) Spider-Man is wearing the Oscorp hi-tech version of his costume here, hence the little glowing bits.
“You’ve alive?” Peter knows perfectly well that some mutants are still on Earth – aside from anything else, he’s appeared over in Uncanny Spider-Man – but presumably this is the first time anyone’s mentioned to him that Logan wasn’t among the mutants who went through the gates in X-Men: Hellfire Gala 2023.
The Orchis jet was stolen by Logan in Wakanda last issue, as the footnote says. If its rightful owner Jun Wei is “expected back at her post in less than an hour”, Wolverine apparently came straight to New York in the hope of getting Spider-Man to help. Seems a bit ambitious, but who knows, maybe he wasn’t specifically looking for Spider-Man. Maybe he just figured that the best way to round up some allies at short notice was to head to Marvel Manhattan, swing a cat, and see who he hit.
The X-Axis – w/c 11 December 2023
Gosh, are we winding down for Christmas? Well, maybe not – there are five books out next week, plus Unlimited. But this is another light week.
X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #117. By Steve Foxe, Steve Orlando, Guillermo Sanna, Java Tartaglia & Travis Lanham. This is the end of the Firestar arc, and it goes pretty much how you’d expect. Firestar has successfully screwed up Judas Traveller’s PR event to the point where he’s outlived his usefulness to Orchis, which is a problem when he’s a mutant. He’s lost control of the story he was telling, and nobody else in Orchis realises that it’s because Firestar was messing it up for him. That’s a nice angle for Firestar, and I rather like Sanna’s low-key art on it, which gives Firestar a nicely impassive look. Do I buy Orchis putting her in Traveller’s place? It doesn’t really fit with Gerry Duggan writing scenes in X-Men about the Orchis higher-ups viewing her as expendable. I suppose she’s meant to win the doubters round by throwing Judas under the bus, but it still seems a stretch. I’ll put that one down as a case of dubious inter-title continuity, though, rather than being a problem with this arc in itself.
X-MEN RED #18. (Annotations here.) The final issue, although part of the plot feeds into Resurrection of Magneto. Still, this is the wrap-up of the main series, and … well, it runs up against the fact that it’s an Arakko story. Al Ewing sold me on Martian Arakko as an interesting location, but only by reinventing it as something subtler and more nuanced than the one-dimensional original concept. The war storyline is presumably meant to contrast Arakko as it developed under Storm and co with the original version of Arakko, and that runs up hard against the problem that the original concept of Arakko was very dull, and the nature of the plot makes it difficult for this story to try and convince me otherwise – the comparative flaws of Arakko Classic are a large part of the point, after all.
Dark X-Men #5 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
DARK X-MEN vol 2 #5
“The Mercy Seat”
Writer: Steve Foxe
Artist: Jonas Scharf
Colour artist: Frank Martin
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1: The two Madelyne Pryors fight.
PAGES 2-5. The Goblin Queen tries to persuade Madelyne Pryor to join forces.
“Carmen Cruz wanted nothing more than to be part of the X-Men.” Referring back to her origins in the cast of Children of the Atom, basically about a group of human fans cosplaying as mutants. Carmen, the one actual mutant in the group, made it to Krakoa with her heroes but has only come to the foreground in the context of this very questionable iteration of the X-Men.
“You let them neuter your mutant abilities?” We were told in issue #2 that Orchis had used Blightswill to remove the Goblin Queen’s mutant powers, and that she didn’t care, claiming to have long since outgrown them. She claims here that she was also lulling Orchis into a false sense of security.
X-Men Red #18 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN RED vol 2 #18
“The Mended Land”
Writer: Al Ewing
Artist: Yildiray Çinar
Colour artist: Federico Blee
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. A group shot of the cast, for the final issue.
PAGES 2-3. Genesis raises Arakko Prime from the sea to fight Kaorak.
“Autumn Island.” In other words, what’s left of the Autumn Lands now that most of it has got up and walked across the planet. The rebels shown in page 2 panel 2 include Kobak, Khora, Zsen and Sunspot, as well as a bunch of background characters.
“Nine left, eight, seven.” When we left Jon Ironfire last issue, he was singlehandedly fighting his way through the White Sword’s champions – already reduced from 100 to 99 by his own departure. Evidently he’s been doing well.
Genesis is carrying both the Annihilation Staff and Purity (the sword); she still has Sobunar by her side, even though we’ve repeatedly been told that he wasn’t entirely thrilled with some of her choices. Storm challenged Genesis to “raise your island and fight” at the end of the last issue, and she takes up the challenge.
Arakko Prime is the part of Arakko that was the original counterpart of Krakoa on Earth – in other words, Arakko the island, rather than Arakko the planet. The narrator calls it “the living island”, mirroring how Krakoa was billed back in Giant-Size X-Men #1.
