GENERATION X-23 #7
“Homecoming”
Writer: Jody Houser
Artist: Marco Renna
Colour artist: Erick Arciniega
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Editors: Mark Basso & Alanna Smith

COVER: Wolverine (Logan) with the regular cast. Surprise! is turning herself into a second Logan. The avian X-66 also appears on the cover, despite the fact that she was separated from the group at the end of issue #5, and doesn’t appear in this issue. This also happened in the previous issue, presumably to avoid spoilers for issue #5 when the covers appeared in the solicitations.

WOLVERINE (Laura):

She says the whole series has only taken a week, and she hasn’t had time yet to figure out a plan for what to do with the Generated. It seems odd that she found time to get costumes made for them, but I guess that’s genre convention for you. Logan sensibly advises her that she needs to start taking the initiative.

Her initial reaction is to refuse to let the Generated return to Facility-23, but she backs down partly because Logan argues that they’ll just go without her, and partly because she decides on reflection that knowing more about where she came from helped her come to terms with her past.

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WOLVERINE vol 8 #25
“Eruption”
Writer: Saladin Ahmed
Artist: Martín Cóccolo
Colour artist: Jesus Aburtov
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso

COVER: Um, well, that’s a symbolic image of Wolverine floating in a pool with skulls in the background and giant syringes in the foreground.

WOLVERINE: 

He regains his healing factor immediately on shutting down Mor’s nanotech device. It seems to return him to normal within a matter of minutes, complete with regrowing the bone claws on his right hand. This means that Mor’s nanotech must have kicked in just after the fight with the Adamantine, apparently by sheer coincidence. We’re not directly told what happens to the nanotech in Wolverine’s body, either, even if it’s currently not active – let’s assume that, now that it’s completely inert as opposed to biding its time, his healing factor can eliminate it.

Department H still want to speak to him about the New Morlocks storyline, and he has no interest in co-operating with that.

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X-MEN UNITED #6
“Shadow Play, part 2”
Writers: Eve L Ewing & Evan Narcisse
Pencillers: Tiago Palma & Eduardo Pansica
Inkers: Tiago Palma & Oren Junior
Colourist: Brian Reber
Letterer: Joe Sabino
Editor: Annalise Bissa

COVER: A generic image of Beast, Nightcrawler and Axo in action, with Axo’s colour-changing matching the other two. Nothing along these lines happens in the issue.

Curiously, this story is billed as “Shadow Play, part 2”. The previous issue was indeed entitled “Shadow Play”, but it was the second part of a storyline that had begun in the previous issue. Still, if Marvel say it’s part 2, then part 2 it is.

By way of recap, then: In issue #4, Iceman ropes Cyclops, Emma Frost, Rogue, Deathdream and Ben Liu into a team-building exercise that involves an RPG in a fantasy landscape created using Ben’s powers. An outside entity hijacks the scenario and Deathdream gets dragged away into a portal. In issue #5, Deathdream emerges back in Graymatter Lane, and alerts the other students. It turns out that “all of the adults” are also missing. One of the students, Mal Chance, is privately approached by the Shadow King, who is apparently responsible for all this. A psychic attack on the students as a whole is fended off by Sophie Cuckoo.

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X-MEN vol 7 #35
“A Gift”
Writer: Jed MacKay
Penciller: Tony S Daniel
Inker: Mark Morales
Colourist: Arthur Hesli
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort

COVER: Mirrored images of the Beast with the X-Men, and the Chairman with 3K. Aside from Magneto/Joseph, the other individual members don’t match up one for one in the two group shots.

THE X-MEN:

Beast. At the end of issue #25, the Beast figured out that 3K’s Chairman was the original Beast, and made contact with him (with Animalia present). For anyone really coming to this new, the original Beast became a villain during the Krakoan era. The Beast currently with the X-Men is a clone who was restored from a back-up made long before that happened.

We didn’t get to see the conversation at the time. It turns out that Beast has only shared the  information about the Chairman’s identity with Animalia and Cyclops. Scott permitted him to keep it to himself for the moment given the emotional sensitivity, but made clear that this could only be a breathing space. Animalia has evidently honoured this as well.

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UNCANNY X-MEN vol 6 #33
“Wild Ride, part 1: A Different Kind of Prison”
Writer: Gail Simone
Artist: Luciano Vecchio
Colour artist: Matthew Wilson
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort

COVER: Rogue and Gambit alongside guest star Gabriel the Devil-Hunter. Yes, he’s a pre-existing character. We’ll get to him.

THE X-MEN: 

Rogue and Gambit seek Gabriel’s help in dealing with Gambit’s possession. Gambit is co-operative, but still feels an urge to eat human flesh, and bites Gabriel without apology when he comes near. Gabriel is able to get a lesser demon out of him – Thenassil – but this seems to be only part of Gambit’s problem, with the real issue being to do with his Eye of Agamotto itself. He turns into Wyvern again, to fight off Thenassil.

The Eye’s unnamed true owner is apparently Thenassil’s master, and Thenassil suggests that he is so awful as to explain why the Vishanti “refus[e] to touch this particular Agamotto’s Eye”. As we’ve mentioned before, there are multiple Eyes of Agamotto; the other main one is normally associated with the Sorcerer Supreme and is currently in the possession of the Scarlet Witch. The Vishanti view it as belonging to their chosen sorcerer, although how far they can dictate that is a storyline over in Sorcerer Supreme.

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GENERATION X-23 #6
“Mutant Generation”
Writer: Jody Houser
Artist: Emilio Laiso
Colour artist: Erick Arciniega
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Editors: Mark Basso & Alanna Smith

COVER: Wolverine and Scout leading the Generated into action. Presumably to avoid spoilers, the cover shows not only X-74, X-92 and X-99, who are in this issue, but also X-66, who isn’t. (She’s the bird-like one.) Following the end of the previous issue, she’s with X-Infinite.

WOLVERINE (Laura):

After defeating the Facility last issue, Laura and Gabby have brought the three remaining Generated back to the Turtle Bay safehouse that Laura was living in during the previous run, Laura Kinney: Wolverine. Somehow, she’s rustled up costumes for the Generated – or at least for X-99 and X-74. X-99’s is a modified X-Men uniform mostly in black and yellow, though with elements in red; X-74 wears a version in black and green. She tries to encourage a sense of mutant identity in the Generated by taking them to see the burned-out Treehouse in Central Park, still serving as a memorial and a target of anti-mutant graffiti. She’s also still checking it for messages left by mutants in need of aid, as she was doing in the previous run

When X-99 and X-74 turn out to be completely useless in a real world fight (and they were indeed sidelined in the climax of the previous arc), Laura gives them a pep talk recapping her origin and explaining how she escaped her creation at the hands of the Facility. She accepts that she’s also a Generated, but argues that she only felt safe for the first time once she was among mutants. X-99 seems to come round to this way of looking at it, but there are obvious differences between Laura and the other Generated: they clearly haven’t undergone anything like the level of psychological abuse that she did, and they form a mutually supportive group united by their Generated identities and experiences.

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X-MEN vol 7 #34
“Mark of Cain”
Writer: Jed MacKay
Penciller: Greg Land
Inker: Jay Leisten
Colourist: Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort

COVER: The Juggernaut looks contemplatively at his helmet.

THE X-MEN: 

The Juggernaut. This is a Juggernaut spotlight issue, in which he shows up in the “sleepy” town of Juniper, Pennsylvania to destroy a controversial statue of hometown boy Bolivar Trask which has mysteriously appeared. The statue turns out to be protected by a force field, and the issue consists of Juggernaut persistently attempting to bludgeon his way through, while having conversations with assorted people.

He believes that he’s not a fundamentally good person, and that he needs the X-Men to provide him with a moral compass – without which, he believes that he always degenerates into being a B-list supervillain. He has no faith in his own judgment and absolute confidence in Scott Summers.

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X-MEN: THE HELLFIRE MURDER #1
Writers: Saladin Ahmed, Gail Simone, Erica Schultz, Jed MacKay & Eve Ewing
Artists: Joëlle Jones, Luciano Vecchio, Aaron Kuder, Tony S Daniel, Mark Morales, Federica Mancin, Cory Smith & Oren Junior
Colour artist: Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Editor: Tom Brevoort

COVER: The X-Men in their masquerade gear, with Wolverine examining a chalk outline of a body (with a Hellfire Club logo inside). This is the annual jam issue, and the story is 50 pages long.

THE X-MEN:

Actually, before we get to the X-Men, let’s explain the basic set-up here. Fresh out of Graymalkin, Sebastian Shaw has invited assorted mutants to the Hellfire Club in Manhattan for a Hellfire Gala in the form of a masquerade ball, with nanites creating AI-generated masked costumes for everyone. The story can’t quite make up its mind whether the identities of participants are supposed to be a mystery to one another – some scenes suggest it is, but most characters are obviously and immediately recognisable, such as Wolverine. Then there’s a murder, and the rest of the issue is mostly about Wolverine and Jubilee solving it. There’s a mention early on that the building has telepathic dampers, since it wouldn’t be much of a mystery otherwise.

Wolverine. His broken claws in his own title aren’t directly mentioned in this story, but he never extends the claws on that hand. Ultimately, he covers for the real murderers (see below) and allows everyone to think that 3K did it.

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WOLVERINE vol 8 #24
“Master and Monster”
Writer: Saladin Ahmed
Artist: Martín Cóccolo
Colour artist: Jesus Aburtov
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Tom Brevoort

COVER: Wolverine (with broken claws) posing in front of headshots of Alpha Flight. Apparently no one gave artist Dan Panosian anything beyond a list of names, because he’s drawn current members Puck, Snowbird and Marrina and the previous Vindicator, Heather Hudson. The current Vindicator, Agent Arsenault, wears a black and white costume, and per X-Men #12, she has short blonde hair.

There’s a back-up strip, which is the fourth part of the serial for Disability Pride Month – as before, there’s no attempt to recap the plot and no indication of where you can read previous chapters. They’re in Amazing Spider-Man #32, Uncanny X-Men #31 and Fantastic Four #14, if you care. But it’s got nothing to do with the X-books so I won’t be saying any more about it – except to wonder why Finesse seems to be the highest-profile explicitly autistic character in a universe that includes Reed Richards. (Or, hell, Scott Summers, but that’s another matter…)

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UNCANNY X-MEN vol 6 #31
“Mars Needs Mutants, part 3”
Writer: Gail Simone
Artists: Rogê Antônio, Jim Towe & Federica Mancin
Colour artist: Matthew Wilson
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort

COVER: A B-movie style poster of the X-Men versus aliens, with a hypnotised-looking Rogue.

THE X-MEN:

Rogue. She didn’t appear in the last two issues, the only explanation being Gambit’s comment last issue that she was “off on a consultation”. In issue #28, she told M that she was going on a “journey” to see “someone who might be able to help” with Gambit’s curse. Last issue, Gambit said that he had sent her a message about the alien invasion, but hadn’t heard back. This issue opens with her on her way back from “an unnamed island in the South China Sea”, presumably something to do with that.

She’s powerful enough to punch one of the Nur’s flying saucers out of the sky. She’s not sure what to make of them – she seems to regard slaughtering the Brood as at least arguably genocide.

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