Daredevil Villains #11: The Ox
DAREDEVIL #15 (April 1966)
“–And Men Shall Call Him… Ox!”
Writer, editor: Stan Lee
Penciller: John Romita
Inker: “Frankie Ray” (Frank Giacoia)
Letterer: Art Simek
We’ve seen the Ox before. He was one of Mr Fear’s henchmen back in issue #6. But this time it’s different. It’s his spotlight story, and now there are two… um, two Oxen?
With Ka-Zar’s origin story out of the way, Stan Lee reverts to the established Daredevil formula. Matt’s back in New York, he’s back in the office, and he’s back in the romantic triangle with Karen and Foggy. Poor Foggy is still feeling the after-effects of being hospitalised by the Fellowship of Fear back in issue #6. Not that he’s mentioned it in issues #7-14, of course, but apparently it’s still giving him dizzy spells. And so Matt is given the opportunity to reflect on how the Ox was, in fact, the most dangerous member of the Fellowship of Fear.
The Ox’s gimmick is very simple: he’s big, strong and not very smart. This issue strongly implies that he’s not just mentally below average, but has some sort of disability. He debuted as one of the Enforcers in Amazing Spider-Man #10 (1964), and has superhuman strength for no apparent reason. Presumably he’s a mutant. Since we last saw him, he’s been in jail, sharing a cell with mad scientist Karl Stragg. We quickly establish the dynamic: Stragg has a plan to use Ox’s strength to escape by slowly working on the bars, and Ox is half-heartedly playing along. But Ox isn’t entirely sure he even wants to break out, and Stragg is already getting frustrated with him. Crucially, the Ox is sensitive about his low intelligence, but Stragg is promising to raise his intelligence to normal levels if he helps them break out. That’s the Ox’s motivation.
The X-Axis – w/c 1 January 2024
Just two books this week and, yeah, well.
X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #120. By Steve Foxe, Steve Orlando, Phillip Sevy, Ceci de la Cruz & Travis Lanham. The third and final part of the “Blood Dawn” arc and, yes, it’s the story I feared it was going to be. Expressing your emotions is a good thing, these people are seriously injuring one another in order to express their emotions, therefore that’s a good thing. And… no it isn’t? Obviously? This is the sort of thing that Arakko had to be rehabbed from in order to work at all. Let’s just file this one under “Well, that’s a premise I fundamentally reject” and forget about it, shall we?
FALL OF THE HOUSE OF X #1. (Annotations here.) Mmm. Yeah, it’s not the best start to the year, is it?
Look… House of X and Powers of X game-changing, rule-rewriting stories and if you’re going to invoke them you’ve got to do better than being just okay. And this is just okay at best. It’s not catastrophically awful or anything, but it’s not working.
Fall of the House of X #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
FALL OF THE HOUSE OF X #1
“The Trial of Cyclops”
Writer: Gerry Duggan
Artist: Lucas Werneck
Colourist: Bryan Valenza
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
FALL OF THE HOUSE OF X. This is one of two linked miniseries to complete the Krakoan era, the other being Rise of the Powers of X. The format echoes the twin minis House of X and Powers of X that launched the Krakoan era.
The title also alludes to the Edgar Allan Poe story “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839), though there’s no terribly obvious significance to that fact.
COVER / PAGE 1. Wolverine, Colossus, Nightcrawler and Shadowkat in action. We can see a couple of Orchis footsoldiers reflected in Colossus’s first.
PAGES 2-4. Cyclops dreams about being hung after an Old West show trial.
Timely was the name of Marvel’s Golden Age predecessor. It’s not immediately obvious what that has to do with anything either. Marvel does have an established Old West town called Timely – it was the setting of the 2015 miniseries 1872, which was part of the “Secret Wars” event, and was basically “the Marvel Universe, but a Western”.
Daredevil Villains #10: The Plunderer
DAREDEVIL #12-13 (January & February 1966)
“Sightless, in a Savage Land” / “The Secret of Ka-Zar’s Origin!”
Writer, editor: Stan Lee
Layout penciller: Jack Kirby
Finishing penciller, inker: John Romita
Letterer: Sam Rosen
Colourist: not credited
DAREDEVIL #14 (March 1966)
“If This Be Justice…!”
Writer, editor: Stan Lee
Penciller: John Romita
Inker: “Frankie Ray” (Frank Giacoia)
Letterer: Artie Simek
Colourist: not credited
However questionably, Stan Lee apparently felt that Wally Wood’s run on Daredevil had gone awry. Wood’s replacement was John Romita Sr, doing his first work for Marvel. This time, Lee took no chances, with Jack Kirby doing the layouts for Romita’s first two issues before Romita (who says that he only wanted the inking work at first) took over as penciller. He didn’t stick around on Daredevil for long, but that’s because he was swiftly promoted to Amazing Spider-Man.
As for the story direction, Lee seems to have been toying with drastic action. The previous arc ends with a tacked-on epilogue in which Matt and Foggy suddenly realise that they’ve been so preoccupied with the plot that they haven’t been doing any legal work and they’ve run out of money. They need to downsize. So Matt announces that he’s leaving, and the whole thing plays like it’s setting up a new status quo.
It isn’t. Instead, Daredevil spends three issues exploring the back story of Ka-Zar, before Matt simply returns to the office, with no mention of why he left in the first place. It’s been three months, the kids will have forgotten.
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.
