Okay, then – let’s take a quick run through this week’s X-books. As previously mentioned, no annotations this week or next, while I’m on holiday. But the next Incomplete Wolverine post will be up on Saturday.

X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #93. By Jason Loo & Antonio Fabela. This is a sequel to the last “X-Friends” arc, in which a bunch of Madrox dupes went off and became space pirates. This time, they’re back and allied with, um, Blastaar – for no particularly obvious reason beyond the fact that the FF are guesting in this arc. Like the previous Jason Loo arcs, this one falls very much in the category of “Okay, I Guess?” There’s nothing especially wrong with it, the art is decent, there’s a theoretically decent hook (the pirate leader dupe still views Madrox’s daughter as his own child)… yet I can’t honestly say I find it very engaging. Lightweight is fine – the X-books could do with some of that, and this title is a good place for it. But this raises a gentle smile rather than being a fun romp, which doesn’t really feel enough.

X-MEN: BEFORE THE FALL – THE HERALDS OF APOCALYPSE #1. By Al Ewing, Luca Pizzari, Stefano Landini, Raphael Pimento & Ceci De La Cruz. To all intents and purposes this is an extra issue of X-Men Red, though the branding gives it added justification for ignoring the regular cast entirely in favour of filling in some of the back story of Genesis. What it isn’t is a story about the Heralds of Apocalypse, despite the Horsemen’s prominence of the cover – but the actual story content matches the solicitation, so presumably plans didn’t change that much.

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Well, all this week’s regular titles got annotations posts already, so we can take this one fairly quickly. Oh, hold on, there’s also…

X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #92. By Jason Loo and Antonio Fabela. This is the start of a new arc, with the Madrox family and the Fantastic Four. If that seems random… well, it is, but Madrox did make his first appearance in an issue of Giant-Size Fantastic Four, which is something. It’s okay, I guess. It’s mostly inconsequential slice of life stuff, which isn’t especially gripping, though there’s a nice idea of X-Corp scientist-version Madrox looking for the approval of Reed Richards. And then a completely random villain shows up at the end, which is… choppy pacing, at least. But it’s fine.

X-FORCE #41. (Annotations here.) The previous issue seemed to set up one of those “jump after jump through time” stories, but it seems we’re just doing two. Which is cutting to the chase, I guess. I suppose the point of this arc is to give the rest of the X-Force cast their own showdown with Beast, in the form of alternate timeline versions, while Wolverine gets to deal with the real deal in his own book… but it does feel a bit secondary. There doesn’t seem to be much going on here beyond some time travel shenanigans, but there are a couple of likeably absurd ideas, like Beast concealing his clones in major world heritage sites so that nobody will disturb them. Mainly, though, it all feels a bit inconsequential to me.

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As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

NEW MUTANTS: LETHAL LEGION #4
“When I Was A Lad”
Writer: Charlie Jane Anders
Penciler: Enid Balám
Inker: Elisabetta D’Amico
Colourist: Matt Milla
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Sarah Brunstad

COVER / PAGE 1. The New Mutants face off against Nefaria and his Lethal Legion.

PAGES 2-5. The New Mutants fail to escape and make their stand.

The Voluptuous Cherry Orchard is not real, as far as I can tell. But residents of Westchester County who are looking for cherry blossom next spring can find a list of recommended locations here.

Moonstone. Escapade describes her as “the chaotic-neutral version of Captain Marvel”, admittedly with some uncertainty. Traditionally, I wouldn’t really describe her as chaotic – she’s a meticulous planner and manipulator, if anything – though “neutral” may be fair enough when looking at her career in the round. Karla is more interested in her own personal comfort than in power or wealth as ends in themselves. She is, however, comparably powerful to Captain Marvel, and served as the Captain Marvel stand-in in a version of the Dark Avengers. As Carol’s standing has risen over the last few years, Moonstone maybe gets some spillover credibility boost as a result.

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WOLVERINE #34. (Annotations here.) This is the heaviest week we’ve had in a while, which is not usually a good thing. It’s also a week with a lot of middle chapters where there isn’t much new to be said. This, for example, is part 4 of “Weapons of X”, with half an issue of action sequences in a curiously icebound North Sea, followed by a weird scene of Wolverine and Beast in a restaurant. Beast is a cartoon villain at this point, and you’d struggle to say there’s any real character interest to this, but there’s still something surreal about the way this arc is playing out that I do find quite endearing. Juan José Ryp is okay on the routine action scenes, but he excels when he’s asked to do something grotesque. Two pages of Beast repulsively eating a lobster is an unusual request, but Ryp can certainly pull it off.

X-MEN RED #12. (Annotations here.) Jon Ironfire fills in the back story of how he wound up on Mars, which means most of the issue is the White Sword and his 100 champions, plus a bit of Genesis. Al Ewing has done sterling work on this book in reinventing Arakko and making it much more interesting than the one-dimensional concept that had been established beforehand. As a result, he has got me interested in the characters on Arakko itself. But the White Sword and Genesis haven’t had the benefit of that work, and while they’re given a bit more nuance here than they had in the past, I can’t say I’m immediately interested in seeing more of either character. Honestly, we’ve barely seen Genesis when she wasn’t under the influence of Annihilation, and despite her prominence in “X of Swords”, her main function has been as something for Apocalypse to react to. I’m somewhat interested in knowing what Apocalypse has been up to. Genesis, though, still needs serious work to persuade me that there’s anything to her.

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IMMORTAL X-MEN #12. (Annotations here.) The Colossus spotlight issue was always going to be interesting, given his weird status quo as the puppet of a Russian novelist. For the most part, Immortal has been content to leave that as a lurking issue in the background, but the premise suits Kieron Gillen’s style perfectly – in fact, it’s arguably more at home in this book than it was in X-Force. I’m still not sure how far we’re meant to take this narration as literally describing Piotr’s state of mind and how far we should see it as reflecting Scrivener’s, but that’s fine – it’s an interesting tension in itself. A bit more consistency on the ground rules between titles wouldn’t have gone amiss, but this works well. And again, Gillen and Lucas Werneck get plenty of visual interest into a very talky, political story – nearly half of this issue by page count consists of people talking in the Quiet Council chamber, but you wouldn’t know it. What’s surprising me somewhat is how quickly the Council seems to be falling apart after Sins of Sinister, but then maybe that’s in the nature of a system with no checks and balances that concentrated all the power in twelve secretive people. It works up until it doesn’t, at which point it goes really, really wrong, really, really fast.

X-MEN #23. (Annotations here.) One of those stories that exists largely to build up a new threat, in this case the Stark Sentinels. I’m not entirely sold on the concept of these things – the Iron Man iconography feels like it doesn’t have much to do with this book – but I can see the point that if you’re going to do the Sentinels, they need a bit of rehabbing. And borrowing some credibility from Iron Man might not be the worst way to do that. It makes for a decent enough fight scene, at any rate, though I’m not altogether sure it plays to Joshua Cassara’s strengths as an artist. . It’s the opening scene with Mother Righteous and Dr Stasis that works best for me, though, since the relationship between the various Sinister iterations seems like something worth exploring.

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