X-MEN vol 7 #40
“A Blade”
Writer: Jed MacKay
Artist: Lucas Werneck
Colour artist: Arthur Hesli
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort

COVER: Psylocke in action. Specifically, she’s fighting a monster whose tentacles are on the edges of the frame, and we’ll find out later that this is Myriad.

PAGES 1-3. Psylocke sets off after the 3K X-Men.

Ben Liu. In DNX #3, he used his powers to summon up the UFO thingies that are now keeping 3K’s airship in the air. To provoke him into using his powers, Scott basically trapped him on the airship and left him to get on with it. Understandably, Ben isn’t very happy about this, and Scott’s rather cursory congratulations probably aren’t helping. To be fair, Scott does acknowledge that Ben has a point and shifts tack to saying that it’ll have to wait until the crisis has passed.

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INGLORIOUS X-FORCE #10
“Past, Present … and Future”
Writer: Tim Seeley
Artist: Michael Sta Maria
Colour artist: Romulo Fajardo Jr
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Editors: Mark Basso & Alanna Smith

COVER: X-Force (minus Cable) pose with their guns. This is the final issue of Inglorious X-Force, but the series effectively continues next month as Fugitive X-Force.

PAGES 1-5. X-Force fight Cable/Catharsix to stop him from killing the future Kamala Khan.

This picks up from the end of the previous issue, when Cable (possessed by Catharsix) travelled back to the future to try and kill Kamala Khan, as seen in issue #1, and the rest of X-Force followed him.

“According to the fan profiles I’ve read of Reed Richards, changing time results in a whole new universe.” This is how time travel used to officially work in the Marvel Universe, as established in Fantastic Four. In practice, a lot of Marvel stories don’t work by those rules at all, and the X-books have never taken them very seriously. Nonetheless, the future Kamala Khan evidently has no memory of these events.

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X-MEN UNITED #8
“Blood Debts”
Writers: Eve L Ewing & Evan Narcisse
Artist: Tiago Palma
Colour artist: Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Letterer: Joe Sabino
Editor: Annalise Bissa

COVER: Wither using his powers on Jubilee and Blade, against a wartorn backdrop. Nothing remotely like this happens in the issue. Interestingly, the solicitation also asked “Who’s behind a spate of recent deaths in Atlanta”, which had more to do with the previous issue’s story.

PAGES 1-7. Blade and Dani attack vampires in a nightclub.

St Paul’s Cathedral Catacombs. This is a baffling caption. The art clearly shows a very large nightclub. There aren’t any such establishments under St Paul’s. It does have a crypt, but there’s no way on earth you’d be holding raves there, not least because it contains a graveyard and a war memorial. Simply mystifying. EDIT: As pointed out in the comments, St Paul’s does have a deal with Fabric to use the main cathedral for shows, and it’s possible the writers were thinking of that. But although Fabric are best known for their nightclub, they use St Paul’s as a concert venue (and they’ve specifically said it wouldn’t be a suitable venue for dance music). This is from one of their shows.

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UNCANNY X-MEN vol 6 #37
“Soul Deep”
Writer: Gail Simone
Artist: Juan Frigeri
Colour artist: Matthew Wilson
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort

COVER. Wolverine fights Sarah Gaunt.

The cover lists this as “Soul Deep, part 1”. But the credits page just gives the title as “Soul Deep”, and the solicitation for the next issue lists it as “The Scavenged, part 1”.

PAGE 1. Dazzler meets the officials.

This is Graymalkin, obviously, which was shut down back in issue #29. Apparently all of the prisoners have officially gone by this point (though we find out on the next page that Sarah Gaunt is still there), and Dazzler has come back to help with dismantling the place. The subterranean labs which she mentions were flagged by Captain Ezra in issue #31, when he explained that the prison was a cover for a plan to “make Wolverines”. We’ll come back to what exactly he said that entailed. Apparently this underground lab has been located, but it’s heavily boobytrapped.

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GENERATION X-23 #9
“Have a Nice Trip
Writer: Jody Houser
Artist; Marco Renna
Colour artist: Erick Arciniega
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Editors: Mark Basso & Alanna Smith

COVER: Wolverine (Laura) fights the scorpion robot thing that hasn’t got a name yet.

PAGES 1-7. The Generated beat up some bigots.

“An actual wolverine given to us by a super hero who talks to squirrels.” Jonathan was given to Laura and Gabby by Squirrel Girl in All-New Wolverine #7.

“These past few months…” The next scene confirms that we’ve jumped forward three months from the previous issue. That fits with the Generated’s performance having improved. This is apparently the Generated’s first outing against actual bad guys, and while they’re at the lowest level, they’re still at least plausibly capable of doing Surprise! some harm.

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X-MEN vol 7 #39
“Siege”
Writer: Jed MacKay
Penciller: Netho Diaz
Inker: Sean Parsons
Colourist: Arthur Hesli
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort

COVER. John Greycrow defends Glob Herman from Z*E*R*O.

PAGE 1. Abbie Bennett briefs Z*E*R*O.

Z*E*R*O. This group previously appeared in issue #19, as a splinter group of exceedingly anti-mutant O*N*E agents who consider the main organisation insufficiently radical. They attempted to kill Revelation, with predictable lack of success. Strictly speaking, it was Bei who killed the Z*E*R*O agents, not Revelation himself. Abbie Bennett is a new character, and I don’t think her husband was actually named in the original story.

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DNX #3
Writer: Jed MacKay
Artist: Federico Vicentini
Colour artist: David Curiel
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort

COVER: The X-Men and the FF fight 3K.

PAGE 1. The virus spreads through Juniper.

This picks up directly from the cliffhanger of issue #2, where the Chairman released the X-virus in Juniper after being prevented from doing so in Philadelphia. Since Juniper isn’t a real place, I do wonder whether the idea is going to be that the virus is contained but Juniper is permanently transformed.

The Trask Statute. The mysterious statue of Bolivar Trask, which appeared in Juniper mysteriously, was the subject of the Juggernaut solo story in X-Men #34.

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MIDNIGHT X-MEN #1
“Teeth”
Writer: Jonathan Hickman
Artist: Matteo Della Fonte
Colourist: Arthur Hesli
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Jordan D White

COVER: That’s an image of Nightcrawler with Storm in the background. As with all the Midnight books, the cover only shows a vertical stripe of the art, but the full page art appears on the interior.

I’m not sure I’ll be covering this book regularly, but it’s the only X-book out that week, because Marvel decided to give the three Midnight books a clear run this week – the others being Midnight Spider-Man #1 and Midnight Fantastic Four #1. They are, in fact, rather less grimdark than the promotion for this line might have led you to expect.

PAGES 1-6. Cardinal Stryker visits Kurt Wagner.

The Midnight Universe. For the most part, the Midnight Universe as seen in this week’s three titles looks pretty normal on the surface. It comes across as a world where the fantastic elements of the regular Marvel Universe are mostly hidden from view so far as the general public are concerned. Mostly, but not entirely.

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X-MEN UNITED #7
“Shadow Play, part 3”
Writers: Eve L Ewing & Evan Narcisse
Penciller: Ruairí Coleman
Inkers: Ruairí Coleman & Victor Olazaba
Colour artist: Brian Reber
Letterer: Joe Sabino
Editor: Annalise Bissa

COVER: Wolverine fighting Blade.

It’s been seven weeks since the last issue came out, but that is indeed how it was solicited. For what it’s worth, the original solicitation for this issue had Eve Ewing as the sole writer, and Tiago Palma (who drew issue #6) as the artist, but describe the same plot.

PAGES 1-3. Wolverine and Blade squabble.

Wither. He and Blade showed up at the end of the previous issue, with Wither asking for help and claiming that it was an emergency. This story is his first significant appearance in the X-books since he died in X-Force #25 in 2010, although it was established that he had been resurrected on Krakoa. He was last seen in Love Unlimited Infinity Comic #43-44, a Gwenpool story, where he seemed to have gained control of his powers. The story is a bit hazy about where that stands – he claims at one point that he was unwilling to go to the Storm Sanctuary because his powers were so dangerous, but later on he tells Bloodline that what’s happened to him has “messed with his control”, which implies that he was in control.

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UNCANNY X-MEN vol 6 #36
“Wild Ride, part 4: Rights of Rage”
Writer: Gail Simone
Artist: Luciano Vecchio
Colour artist: Matthew Wilson
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort

COVER: Gambit staring vacantly in the foreground, with his Eye of Agamotto crying blood behind him.

PAGE 1. Flashback: The Iron Cathedral.

So yeah, I feel like sticking with this format again for a while. It’s probably a better fit for this issue anyway.

The Iron Cathedral. This was first mentioned by Rogue in issue #33, and was mentioned again by Repent at the end of the previous issue, which also showed an image of it. That panel was rather clearer than this issue in showing it to be in the open air, with other parts of the landscape visible around it.

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