STORM: EARTH’S MIGHTIEST MUTANT #2
“All Your Favorite Sorcerers are Tricksters”
Writer: Murewa Ayodele
Artist: Federica Mancin
Colour artist: Java Tartaglia
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Tom Brevoort

COVER: The FBI super-agents surround a containment tank with Storm inside. This has pretty much nothing to do with the story.

Interestingly, the story then opens with an actual recap page explaining the plot with actual cross-references to individual issues (and the book doesn’t have its usual symbolic splash page duplicating the credits).

STORM:

The Scarlet Witch believes that although she has some affinity for magic, her level of actual knowledge is so low as to be practically useless – worse, Storm thinks she knows more than she does because she has magical allies. Storm is not dissuaded by the Scarlet Witch’s lecture about her magical limitations, and basically dismisses the idea that Akujin could be relied upon to honour the bargain. She seems to believe that fighting Akujin alone and without allies will somehow save everyone – conceivably, her logic is that if she dies in battle then Akujin will give up on attacking Earth because it will no longer provide leverage.

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X-MEN UNITED #1
“Welcome to Graymatter Lane”
Writer: Eve L Ewing
Artist: Tiago Palma
Colour artist: Brian Reber
Letterer: Joe Sabino
Editor: Tom Brevoort

COVER: Well, that’s assorted X-Men standing around. This book is loosely the successor to the previous series Exceptional X-Men. Despite what British readers might reasonably expect, it is not about a football team.

GRAYMATTER LANE:

The name is obviously a play on “Graymalkin Lane”, the address of the original X-Men Mansion.

The X-Men’s new school is, shall we say, not very clearly explained. Emma describes it as a “mind palace”, which doesn’t really take us very far because a mind palace is a memorisation technique. There seems to be a co-ordinated time when invited mutants are telepathically contacted by Emma and invited in. (However, Juggernaut can get in, so evidently non-mutants can also be invited.)  We’re told that “a doorway attuned to your individual psyche will appear before you”, but it’s unclear whether this is a literal doorway or some sort of mental projection technique. Later in the issue, Mariama seems to get there simply by thinking, without any doors involved. Beast says that an “altered mental state” is required to get in, though everyone seems normal once they’re inside.

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WOLVERINE vol 8 #17
“Cold and Alone”
Writer: Saladin Ahmed
Artist: Martín Cóccolo
Colour artist: Jesus Aburtov
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso

COVER: Wolverine and Silver Sable in the woods.

WOLVERINE:

He’s still dutifully training the New Morlocks when he isn’t sleeping with Silver Sable. His narration calls this a “comfortable” relationship which he believes neither of them sees as a particularly deep one; he sees Sable as a fellow warrior who understands him.

SUPPORTING CAST:

Silver Sable. Still hanging around with the New Morlocks and sleeping with Wolverine.

Other mercenaries are aware on the rumour mill of what she’s up to.

The New Morlocks. The group have moved on from their last camp after the encounter with Department H and have found some abandoned houses. We see an awful lot more of them this time, most of whom look like fairly ordinary people. The vast majority of them look human. At least some are actual humans who just happen to have a mutant in their family. Logan claims that they’re there because “there’s nowhere left for mutants to run to”, which doesn’t really make sense in terms of the rest of the line; Exceptional X-Men and NYX both seemed to have mutants living fairly openly in major cities. Maybe he means specifically in Canada, this being the Marvel Universe and all.

Wolverine clearly still doesn’t much rate their skills. When asked to organise a manhunt for the missing Tushar, he basically assigns everyone else busy work and then goes off to find the kid himself.

Deepfake. She’s a teenager (which is apparently meant to be obvious from her appearance). She claims that her parents died in a car crash a year ago and her powers emerged when she learned the news; she ran away instead of going to “some creepy foster home for mutant teens”, whatever that means.

Her eyes are apparently sockets full of energy, and she has to be able to see her energy duplicates in order to keep them in existence; shoving a bag over her head is enough to disrupt them.

Like Chowdown in issue #15 she’s torn between appreciating Wolverine’s training and finding it all a bit much.

Ape. As in issue #15, he tells Deepfake that something bad happened to the original Morlocks but avoids going into any detail – it’s not entirely clear whether he’s trying to shield her from the details or just doesn’t want to talk about it.

Chowdown. He’s there among the New Morlocks.

Tushar. A very young mutant from Vancouver who apparently has the power to fix things just by touching them. He gets abducted by Coldbug and rescued.

VILLAINS:

Coldbug. First appearance. Wolverine initially calls him a mutant, but he then turns out to be an insect parasite inside a human-looking body – so it’s not clear whether the mutant is the insect, the host, or both. Coldbug himself is an insectoid who apparently possesses hosts and eventually consumes their bodies. He fires a venom that slows his victims down and saps their will. The toxin is apparently linked to him psychically, because its effect immediately wears off when Wolverine kills him.

He speaks in basic broken English. When Wolverine finds him, he claims to be “feeding” and “hungry”, though it’s not entirely clear what the feeding involves – is he going to take him as a new host?

On the face of it, Coldbug is simply a random passing monster – there doesn’t seem to be any wider reason for his attack here.

The Adamantine. Still fighting people who have been suggested as opponents by Romulus. In previous issues, Romulus sent it after retired boxers and UFC fighters. This time, he sends them after some eastern European mercenaries, who don’t do much better. All of this seems like Romulus is wasting the Adamantine’s time for some reason. That doesn’t seem to occur to the Adamantine (probably because it has no context to realise how low-rent Romulus’ targets are), but it does lose patience with him anyway, apparently concluding that he’s just useless at giving recommendations. They “decree Romulus’ time on this Earth at an end”, whatever that means, and claims that something called “the godling” will replace him.

When pressed to identify “the best of your kind”, one of the mercenaries suggests Silver Sable, so these subplots will evidently join up with the main story next time.

CONTINUITY REFERENCES:

• Ape says that the Morlocks left the tunnels because “Bad people came”, referencing the “Mutant Massacre” crossover from 1986.
• Department H “wrecked the last camp” in issues #15-16 (presumably in the sense of making it unsafe to stay around, rather than literally destroying the buildings).

X-MEN vol 7 #26
“Danger Room, part 1”
Writer: Jed MacKay
Penciller: Netho Diaz
Inker: Sean Parsons
Colourist: Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort

COVER: The X-Men (Cyclops, Juggernaut, Beast and Magik) are ambushed on the ship.

THE X-MEN:

Cyclops. As usual, he gives entirely pragmatic rather than principled reasons for helping to find Sheriff Robins – she’s a useful ally and her replacement might not be. This isn’t particularly heroic reasoning but he may simply be tailoring his reasons to his audience (Quentin and Cain).

He says that he was a kid when he lived in Alaska, and “grew up” in Westchester – this glosses over his time in the Nebraska orphanage entirely.

His initial reaction to Psylocke prioritising Greycrow is to tell her that she’s needed on the mission, and then to more or less imply that Greycrow had it coming. He backs off, probably more because he realises that he’s being insensitive. However, he does then offer Xorn’s services.

Psylocke. She seems to have a broadly positive view of the locals (it doesn’t seem to occur to her that Glob might get into any trouble running his vegetable stall), but still has no particular interest in being called in to investigate the attack on the police station. She seems to see it as a pointless exercise in soldiers pretending to be detectives for show and rejects the description of the X-Men as super heroes. She claims to like Robbins, but understandably wants to focus on Greycrow when she learns that he’s in hospital.

Kid Omega. He grumbles about the X-Men paying any attention to “a cop”, even though she’s clearly been abducted.

Juggernaut. He’s a big guy who smashes things.

Magik. She uses “sympathetic magic” to track Paula Robbins using her blood, and quotes the old “as above, so below” line, presumably on the reading that things at different scales are essentially similar. For some reason she refers to George Frazer’s The Golden Bough, which was a work of comparative mythology, not a magical text.

Beast. He joins the field team, possibly replacing Psylocke.

SUPPORTING CAST:

John Greycrow. Psylocke’s boyfriend from her solo book (and Hellions before that) has appeared in this book before, and his bank robbing activities were specifically mentioned in issue #5. Adorably, he’s wearing a mask for the purposes of this robbery, even though he’s also in his extremely recognisable costume where he normally appears unmasked. Mind you, he’s hardly a public figure.

Greycrow tells us that the robbery was a trap (or at least that someone tipped off the authorities). When faced with a ton of police, his immediate reaction is to remove his mask and prepare to fight, anticipating death. Either he’s assuming that the cops will try to kill him, or he can’t accept capture – he doesn’t seem to regard surrender as an option. We don’t actually see who shoots first, but he does wind up in hospital.

Amy. Greycrow repeatedly tries to contact an unseen “Amy” to get him away. Based on issue #5, this would be the teleporter Amelia Voght. Something seems to have happened to her.

Glob Herman. He’s setting up a vegetable stand to sell fruit and vegetables to the locals. He’d rather just give the produce away, but Cyclops has persuaded him that people will trust him more if there’s at least a token price. Most of the locals seem to like him just fine, but he apparently gets shot at the end of the issue.

Paula Robbins. She’s been selected as bait to lure the X-Men into a trap, presumably on the view that she’s the closest thing to an outside supporting character that they have.

Deputy Smith. I don’t think we’ve seen this guy before, but Scott seems familiar with him. He’s entirely out of his depth dealing with the attack on the police station, and responds by calling in the X-Men rather than the authorities (either that, or he’s leading the X-Men into a trap). He regards the X-Men as superheroes who saved the town twice.

Rose Ellen Cobb. She seems to have been more or less deradicalised following the discovery that she had a mutant daughter, and is very apologetic to Glob about having believed “all those podcasts”. Understandably, she’s still quite keen to know what happened to the missing daughter, Robin. Glob gives a slightly evasive answer, confirming that the X-Men know that she’s with 3K (which Rose already knows) but dancing around the other reasons why the X-Men are trying to find 3K. Presumably Glob has in mind the fact that the Chairman has turned out to be the original Beast, and that the X-Men’s Beast shared that information with the team after the previous issue.

Piper Cobb. She likes Glob’s strawberries and seems quite happy.

VILLAINS:

Frank Bohannan. He wears his trenchcoat even in his office, and has a mug with the American flag on it. He’s hired Beyond to deal with the X-Men, but regards them as “psychopaths” and cynics who lack his belief in God and country.

Maxine Danger. She was the head of the Beyond Corporation’s New York branch in Amazing Spider-Man and responsible for turning Ben Reilly into a corporate Spider-Man. Originally an absurdist outfit from NextWave, at this point Beyond have basically become mercenaries with assorted wacky technology. She was last seen in Amazing Spider-Man: Blood Hunt, where she certainly wasn’t in jail – so when Bohannan says that he “approved your release requests”, he presumably means that Beyond asked for some people to be released from jail to help.

REFERENCES:

• Deputy Smith refers to “the Iron Night” (the first Sentinel attack on Merle that we saw in flashback in issue #7) and “the Second Iron Night” (presumably Magneto’s Sentinel fighting the attacking monster in issues #14-17).
• Glob is singing “The Move” by the Beastie Boys.

INGLORIOUS X-FORCE #2
“Hunter of Lost Souls”
Writer: Tim Seeley
Artist: Michael Sta. Maria
Colour artist: Romulo Fajardo Jr
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Editor: Mark Basso

COVER: X-Force (minus Ms Marvel) square off against… well, a thing in shadow with claws and stuff.

X-FORCE:

Cable. As explained last issue, he’s convinced that one of Archangel, Hellverine or Boom-Boom killed Kamala in last issue’s future timeline (though quite why he’s so convinced still isn’t clear). He’s certain that Kamala is the “last best hope for mutantkind” and is hoping to find a solution that doesn’t involve killing any of them. He seems to be hoping to find out not just who kills Kamala but why, and to be trying to influence the team to steer all three of them away from killing her.

He claims that Cyclops and Rogue don’t know about the Blasphemy Cartel’s anti-mutant weapon and that even if they did, they’d dither instead of doing anything about it. That seems a questionable claim for Cyclops in particular, but that’s what Cable claims. However, Cable also seems to know that if he frees Anielle from the Cartel (see below) then she’ll answer a question for him as a favour.

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WOLVERINE vol 8 #16
“Cardiac Arrest”
Writer: Saladin Ahmed
Artist: Mike Henderson
Colour artist: Jesus Aburtov
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso

COVER: Alpha Flight stand over a defeated Wolverine.

WOLVERINE: Department H’s device, designed to give him a heart attack when remotely activated, actually works. Quite why they needed biodata to create it isn’t clear – don’t Department H already have records of him? Maybe it got conveniently wiped somewhere along the line. Wolverine believes that this device can actually kill him, but the control unit gets destroyed before he finds out.

Mehta mentions a “special detention order” for Logan, and implies that she expects him to serve Canada. He still sees her as a basically decent person who’s too willing to follow orders; his instinct that she has reservations about them seems to be correct.

SUPPORTING CAST:

Silver Sable. She escapes when Alpha Flight have to break off to keep Vindicator in line. In the way of these things, she does much better against her more powerful opponent when she has time to prepare.

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UNCANNY X-MEN vol 6 #24
“Where Monsters Dwell, part two”
Writer: Gail Simone
Artist: David Marquez
Colour artist: Matthew Wilson
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort

COVER: Morbius, about to bite Jubilee.

THE X-MEN:

Rogue. We get a flashback to her watching old monster movies on TV as a kid; she says she finds the Legion of Monsters scary as a result, but also recognises that the X-Men are acting weirdly in this issue – Jubilee isn’t fighting back properly, at least at first, and the group allow themselves to fight separately instead of working as a team. So everyone’s behaviour (in the core team) should be taken with a degree of caution. Their opponents in the Legion of Monsters are out of character to carying degrees as well.

Wolverine. Rogue thinks he’s a bit more violent than usual here, though it’s not really outside normal parameters for him – more a slight throwback to earlier days. An attack on his carotid artery can cause him to bleed out enough to remove him from the fight temporarily. Somehow – presumably because of the bite – he apparently gets turned into a werewolf.

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X-MEN vol 7 #25
“Involved Again”
Writer: Jed MacKay
Penciller: Tony Daniel
Inker: Mark Morales
Colourist: Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort

COVER: The new leader of O*N*E in silhouette, with the X-Men viewed through sniper scopes behind him.

This is an anniversary issue (aside from the current numbering, it also has legacy number #325), which means we get a normal length story plus a five-page back-up strip.

THE X-MEN:

As usual, our field team is Cyclops, Kid Omega, Juggernaut, Psylocke, Temper and Magik. Cyclops’ top priority is for them to find Revelation and make sure that the “Age of Revelation” timeline is averted. (Beast points out that driving Revelation away from the X-Men may have made this more difficult, but on the other hand, it also creates a deviation from the history of the “Age of Revelation” timeline.)

In practice, they don’t get very far with their mission this time – on their way to Rio Verde, they run into Fenris and their white supremacist followers and have a fight with them instead. As you might expect, the X-Men take particular pleasure in defeating and humiliating these guys.

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STORM: EARTH’S MIGHTIEST MUTANT #1
“Tea Ceremonies, Masquerades and Funerals”
Writer: Murewa Ayodele
Artist: Federica Mancin
Colour artist: Java Tartaglia
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Tom Brevoort

COVER: Storm carrying two swords of lightning.

This is a five-issue miniseries, but it’s explicitly the final part of the story from the previous Storm ongoing, so I’m going to treat it as the last part of that.

STORM:

I don’t normally do plot synopses in these posts. But, like the previous volume, this issue jumps about in time quite a bit, and it isn’t especially easy to follow as a result. A lot of that, I think, is actually an art or colouring problem. There’s a basically straightforward narrative here, and the later scenes have flashbacks that fill in the earlier scenes. But the art doesn’t adequately signal a distinction between the main scene and the flashbacks – sometimes the flashbacks have different colour panel borders than the rest of the page, but it’s not especially noticeable and it isn’t even consistent from scene to scene.

So, with that in mind, here’s what actually happened. I’ll use the story page numbers for this purpose.

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WOLVERINE vol 8 #15
“Alpha Flight”
Writer: Saladin Ahmed
Artist: Mike Henderson
Colour artist: Jesus Aburtov
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso

COVER: Wolverine, surrounded by headshots of the members of Alpha Flight. Given the signature (“Panosian with respect to Byrne”), I assume it’s a homage, but I can’t place it. (As pointed out in the comments, it’s Alpha Flight vol 1 #12.)

WOLVERINE: 

He’s continuing to train the Morlocks and bond/flirt with Silver Sable. The main difference between the two seems to be that she has a “life’s too short” worldview; his extended lifespan doesn’t fit that approach, but she may not be picking up on that. Sable claims to be impressed by his training techniques, saying that he’s done much better with the Morlocks than she ever did – of course, he has much more experience in training complete rookies who’d rather be noncombatants.

SUPPORTING CAST:

Silver Sable. She’s also stuck around to train the Morlocks (which is what she’s being paid for, after all), and seems keen to liven things by sparring and flirting with Wolverine.

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