X-Men: Before the Fall – Mutant First Strike #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN: BEFORE THE FALL – MUTANT FIRST STRIKE #1
“Mutant First Strike”
Writer: Steve Orlando
Artist: Valentina Pinti
Colourist: Frank William
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1: The Krakoan rescue squad search underground.
This is the second of four Before the Fall one-shots, all written by regular X-book writers. The first one was effectively the final issue of Legion of X. This one is… not obviously connected to anything much, but maybe it’ll play into something down the line.
PAGES 2-3. Milford, New Hampshire gets hit by something mysterious.
It’s a real town, population circa 16,000. It used to be famous for its granite quarries, although they’re almost all closed now.
PAGE 4. Hostile news coverage of the Milford incident.
Basically, this is a false flag attack by Orchis and the media is blaming the mutants. It’s a story where the Krakoans show up and act heroically, they impress the locals, and it has no impact on the wider media narrative. In fairness, it appears that Judas Traveller has planted faked evidence of mutant DNA being present at the attack, so there is at least some legitimate reason for people to think it’s a mutant attacker (though no particular reason to associate them with Krakoa). The point, presumably, is to illustrate the effectiveness of Orchis’s control of the narrative (which isn’t even presented as being contested within the media) and perhaps to get Judas Traveller established as an Orchis character, since thus far he’s been seen in that role only in somewhat peripheral books.
Immortal X-Men #12 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
IMMORTAL X-MEN #12
“Part 12: The Idiot”
Writer: Kieron Gillen
Artist: Lucas Werneck
Colourist: David Curiel
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1: Colossus fights Kate – not a scene which happens in the issue, though there is conflict between the two.
PAGE 2. Data page: the opening of Scrivener’s latest chapter.
This, of course, is Colossus’s spotlight issue, and so we come to the status quo that this book inherited from X-Force. Colossus is currently under the control of Scrivener, a Russian reality warper who can apparently control people by writing them into his stories. How this works has been somewhat inconsistent between different books, but we’ll come back to that shortly.
The author identifies himself simply as “a scrivener” and gives his name in Russian at the end of the issue (as he often did in X-Force data pages). There is a passing mention later on that Piotr is ultimately under the control of his brother Mikhail Rasputin, which again is the established set-up from X-Force. X-Force also clearly establishes that Scrivener is himself a prisoner of Mikhail, which is why he describes himself as “in a Russian cell”.
X-Men #23 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN vol 6 #23
“When Cometh — The Stark Sentinels”
Writer: Gerry Duggan
Artist: Joshua Cassara
Colour artist: Dee Cunniffe
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. The X-Men fight a Stark Sentinel.
PAGES 2-6. Mother Righteous visits Dr Stasis.
“[T]here’s nothing that Dr Stasis enjoys more than eating with clones of his family.” This is a callback to early issues, in particular issue #2, where Stasis is living in a suburban home and killing off each new family as they prove unsatisfactory. Evidently he’s now relocated full time to the Orchis Forge, but that hasn’t stopped him from recreating his throwback suburban household there.
Rebecca Essex was Nathaniel Essex’s wife before he became Mr Sinister. She appears in his origin miniseries, Further Adventures of Cyclops & Phoenix (1996). Her basic role is to become increasingly disturbed by his behaviour, die in chidlbirth, and refuse to forgive him, prompting him to turn to Apocalypse.
The Incomplete Wolverine – 2013
Part 1: Origin to Origin II | Part 2: 1907 to 1914
Part 3: 1914 to 1939 | Part 4: World War II
Part 5: The postwar era | Part 6: Team X
Part 7: Post Team X | Part 8: Weapon X
Part 9: Department H | Part 10: The Silver Age
1974-1975 | 1976 | 1977 | 1978 | 1979
1980 | 1981 | 1982 | 1983 | 1984 | 1985
1986 | 1987 | 1988 | 1989 | 1990 | 1991
1992 | 1993 | 1994 | 1995 | 1996 | 1997
1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003
2004 |2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009
2010 | 2011 | 2012
We’re still in the phase when Wolverine is running the Jean Grey School. The end is drawing near, but you wouldn’t know it just yet, as Marvel continue to launch new books.
SAVAGE WOLVERINE #1-5
“Savage”
by Frank Cho & Jason Keith
January to May 2013
Savage Wolverine ran for 24 issues with rotating creative teams, but most of the stories are set at various points in the past, so it won’t generally be troubling the timeline. In this first arc, Wolverine and Shanna the She-Devil team up to deal with a mysterious island in the Savage Land which causes technology to fail. Amadeus Cho and the Hulk show up too. The island’s temple turns out to be a containment unit for an evil space god, the Dark Walker (Morrigan); they accidentally wake it, and in the epilogue it flies off into space to encourage its creator Visher-Rakk to attack Earth. Which never happens.
Wolverine and Shanna have met multiple times before but the script seems entirely unaware of that. The story is little more than an excuse for Cho to draw stuff, predominantly Shanna’s arse. Awful.
X-Axis – w/c 29 May 2023
Another unusually quiet week. Well, next week’s busier. In the meantime…
BETSY BRADDOCK: CAPTAIN BRITAIN #4. (Annotations here.) So we’ve reached the penultimate issue, and while there isn’t quite a mad scramble going on, it does feel like yet again we’ve jumped past a bunch of stuff and headed straight to the conclusion. The whole Fury-as-Captain-Britain thing gets brushed aside by having him get beaten up in a few pages by the Avengers, though admittedly he’s got a subplot with Brian to pick up next issue. Rachel’s Askani storyline suddenly leaps forward. Jamie does things to advance the plot… It is what it is, at this stage. And let’s be fair, between Excalibur, Knights of X and BB:CB, this storyline has managed 36 issues, which isn’t bad in the current market. But 35 issues down, I’m still not really very interested in Betsy as Captain Britain, and when the book is trying to be defiantly celebratory about her in the role, it far too often feels brittle and defensive. Let’s just wrap up the storylines and move on.
X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #89. By Steve Orlando, Emilio Laiso & Rachelle Rosenberg. The X-Men fight Nature Girl – sorry, Armageddon Girl – and of course she takes them apart singlehandedly. After all, it would be a pretty underwhelming story if a bunch of characters who hadn’t otherwise been involved just rocked up and sorted it a few panels. This issue comes across more as a swing back to the earlier X-Men Green vibe of “the planet is very angry and Nature Girl has a point”. There’s not a huge amount more to it than that, but it’s got a story beat to hit and it does it well.
DEADPOOL #7. By Alyssa Wong, Luigi Zagaria & Matt Milla. There’s a lot that I like about this run on Deadpool – the art and story have a nice upbeat feel, the Atelier characters feel well designed, Valentine works as a foil for Deadpool. The tone is right. My main issue with it is pacing – it does some really long action sequences which mean that not a huge amount happens in each issue. That’s the main thing holding it back right now, but it’s still quite good fun in its own way.
X-23: DEADLY REGENESIS #3. By Erica Schultz, Edgar Salazar & Carlos Lopez. You expect these flashback minis to play the hits, but up to about two thirds of the way through this issue, Deadly Regenesis feels a lot like it’s re-treading the hits. Eventually we get to the hook, which is Kimura trying to exploit X-23’s new heroic values to get her back under control by means of hostage taking, and deliberately finding the most random and unimportant people she can find (in her eyes, at least) so as to rub it in that Laura is doing this in service of some abstract notion of the importance of human life. I can kind of see that as an angle for a certain point in Laura’s development, and Salazar’s art makes Kimura seem suitably smug, but I’m far from convinced that this is really adding much.
Betsy Braddock: Captain Britain #4 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
BETSY BRADDOCK: CAPTAIN BRITAIN #4
“Earth’s Most Furious”
Writer: Tini Howard
Artist: Vasco Georgiev
Colour artist: Erick Arciniega
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Sarah Brunstad
COVER / PAGE 1: Captain Britain and Askani under attack by Morgan Le Fey’s Furies and Dr Doom’s Doombots.
PAGES 2-4. Betsy Braddock and Tony Stark talk.
This scene picks up from the end of the previous issue, with Betsy visiting Tony to ask for his help as “an expert on Morgan Le Fey”.
“I went to Otherworld once upon a time. With Doctor Doom.” If this is meant to be referring to Iron Man vol 1 #150, then that was a time travel story, not a trip to Otherworld.
“I dueled King Arthur somewhat recently.” In Excalibur #26 (which came out back in December 2021).
“Terrible what happened to the West End.” Tony is referring the Fury attack last issue.
PAGE 5. Recap and credits.
The X-Axis – w/c 22 May 2023
Just one core book this week, so we’re straight on to the capsules.
X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #88. By Steve Orlando, Emilio Laiso & Rachelle Rosenberg. Okay, so this is clearly us building to the big finale. Nature Girl has finally moved beyond eco-terrorism to outright atrocity, and the real X-Men finally show up to deal with her. It’s straightforward, and at this point Nature Girl isn’t what you’d call a subtle character – her back story and her previous established persona is doing a lot of the work here by providing some context for her. Laiso’s art, meanwhile, works hard to invest us in the mega-obscure Spider-Girl. As is often the case with X-Men Unlimited, it’s more of a scene than a story, but on a weekly schedule there’s nothing wrong with that.
NEW MUTANTS: LETHAL LEGION #3. (Annotations here.) I’m counting this as a core title because it’s basically a continuation of New Mutants, but if we’re being honest, we’re on the fringes of Krakoan continuity here too. It remains very much a book centred on Charlie Jane Anders’ new character Escapade, which I don’t really have a problem with, since I quite like Escapade – but the established cast are getting marginalised. The middle section has some awkward cutting back and forth between scenes mid-page, which might have worked better if they were coloured more distinctively from another, but winds up feeling a bit confused at times. Still, this is mostly good fun as things start escalating at Nefaria’s Mansion, with a bit of soap opera for Escapade, Morgan and Cerebella thrown in. There’s a lot of personality in both writing and art, and it’s a very likeable series.
New Mutants: Lethal Legion #3 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
NEW MUTANTS: LETHAL LEGION #3
“Old Wounds, Old Weapons”
Writer: Charlie Jane Anders
Penciller: Enid Balám
Inker: Elisabetta D’Amico
Colourist: Matt Milla
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Sarah Brunstad
COVER / PAGE 1. Count Nefaria stands over the defeated cast.
PAGES 2-3. Karma, Mirage and Galura arrive at Count Nefaria’s mansion.
“Well, this is where Cerebro said we’d find those kids.” Last issue, Dani and Xuân were looking for Cerebella and Scout, and learned that they’d gone off-island with Escapade. Evidently they really don’t trust the trio’s judgment, since for all they know, they might have just gone to visit home.
“Do you ever miss it Karma? Being a billionaire?” Karma inherited the Hatchi Corporation upon the death of Susan Hatchi in Astonishing X-Men vol 3 #56 (2012). She claims here to have given it all away “long ago … before Krakoa”. In fact, although it was only mentioned intermittently in later years, it featured prominently in the miniseries New Mutants: Dead Souls, and she was still rich during the Matthew Rosenberg run (see Uncanny X-Men vol 5 #18), which is immediately before Krakoa. Admittedly, it hasn’t been mentioned during the Krakoan era, which at the very least suggested that she had handed the running of the business off to somebody else.
The X-Axis – w/c 15 May 2023
A nice quiet week, for once.
X-MEN vol 6 #22. (Annotations here.) This is evidently meant to be the Orchis spotlight issue – only half of the X-Men appear, and it’s mostly focussing on the plans of Orchis. Thing is, I’m not sure that Duggan’s take on Orchis really has enough depth to it to sustain this. They feel like they’re all basically the same character doing the same thing. That wasn’t quite the case under Hickman, when a big part of Orchis’s role was to be a mirror of Krakoa. We seem to have abandoned that angle, and I’m not really convinced that anything much has come in to replace it. As a plot angle, “the Krakoan drug supply is contaminated, ruining the mutants’ reputation and their economic leverage” is fine – but the Orchis characters aren’t very interesting at this point.
X-FORCE vol 6 #40. (Annotations here.) It still feels like a weird choice to spend years building up Beast’s scheming in X-Force and then pay it off in Wolverine. This issue sees Sage’s new team dragged off to the future by Kid Omega to deal with assorted Beast variants planted throughout the timeline by… well, apparently by another future variant Beast. I suppose this is kind of sort of their showdown with Beast, but it feels far too much like busy work designed to occupy the characters instead of having their storyline actually pay off in their own series. It feels terribly placeholder to me.
X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #79. By Steve Orlando, Emilio Laiso & Rachelle Rosenberg. So that leaves this as the best X-book of the week, as Eye Boy tries to talk some sense into Nature Girl, and get precisely nowhere with it. We’re clearly going here with the idea that X-Men Green’s eco-terrorism is such an extreme overreaction that it has to be attributed to Curse’s influence – which is the back door that makes Lin Li redeemable – but leaving open the possibility that maybe she has just snapped. She’s certainly an outright villain at this point, but bringing in Eye Boy as a likeable voice of reason to put that point beyond doubt is an effective choice.
X-Force #40 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-FORCE vol 6 #40
“The Ghost Calendars, part 1”
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artists: Robert Gill and Paul Davidson
Colourist: GURU-eFX
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Mark Basso
COVER / PAGE 1. X-Force leap into action in a futuristic city – with Beast in the background rather than Kid Omega, but that’s spoilers being avoided in the solicitations, I expect. If you want, you could claim he’s sort of symbolically looming over them? Deadpool doesn’t go on this mission either, but heck, it’s a cover.
PAGES 2-6. Quentin Quire briefs X-Force and takes them into the future.
This picks up from the end of the previous issue. X-Force have just dealt with a bunch of Beast’s genetic experiments who were dumped on Krakoa by Sevyr Blackmore, hence all the body parts lying around. Then the older Quentin Quire emerged through a portal, sliced off a giant tentacle thingy that was reaching after him, and announced that he needed X-Force’s help.
