STORM: EARTH’S MIGHTIEST MUTANTS #4
“Mama”
Writer: Murewa Ayodele
Artist: Federica Mancin
Colour artist: Java Tartaglia
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Tom Brevoort

STORM:

We’re still “two days before Akujin’s invasion of Earth”, as in the previous issue. Storm is still outside the Marvel Universe proper at “the Wall” (the edge of the DC Universe), though in this issue it seems more like an area of metafictional swirl, complete with fan mail floating  around. Storm seems to disregard all of the explicitly meta elements.

The alt-N’Daré’s basic pitch to Storm is that she should let Death destroy the Multiverse and then they can go back and restart it. Not surprisingly, Storm isn’t on board with this idea, not least because she’s working from an in-universe perspective and isn’t remotely convinced superhero universes work this way. However, we also get a flashback to the Krakoan era to remind us that, when she was infected by a techno-organic virus, she chose to fight it rather than just take the easy option of resurrection. This was Giant-Size X-Men: Fantomex and Giant-Size X-Men: Storm. The latter issue does indeed have a speech from Storm implying that she thought Krakoan resurrection undermined the value of life.

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X-MEN vol 7 #29
“Danger Room, part 4”
Writer: Jed MacKay
Penciller: Netho Diaz
Inker: Sean Parsons
Colourist: Arthur Hesli
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort

COVER: A collective gravestone for the X-Men, with a gloating Frank Bohannan and Maxine Danger reflected in a puddle. Neither of them actually appears in the issue. Shouldn’t it be “Here Lie The X-Men”?

THE X-MEN: 

Psylocke. The opening flashback explains how she and Xorn survived the attack from Beyond’s men at the start of last issue: Xorn used his gravity powers to bend Beyond’s laser away from the Marauder, and then Psylocke blasted the Beyond vehicle with the Marauder’s missiles. This fits well enough with the previous issue, though issue #27 had the Marauder dodging hails of attacks as opposed to the single major assault shown here.

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GENERATION X-23 #3
“A Numbers Game, part 3”
Writer: Jody Houser
Artists: Jacopo Camagni & Marco Renna
Colour artist: Erick Arciniega
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Editor: Mark Basso

COVER: Laura lies seemingly dead on the floor, and Gabby is held back by two of the Generated. The one on the right is X-66; the one on the left is closest to X-92 but far too tall. This scene doesn’t happen in the issue.

The issue opens with an obituary for artist Jacopo Camagni, who died in March; he drew the first seven pages of this story.

WOLVERINE:

Laura is still bedridden at the start of the issue, so she must have taken a remarkable amount of damage when X-73 blew up last issue. That said, she doesn’t seem to have any significant injuries by the start of the issue – perhaps once she gets back to a certain level of recovery, her healing returns to normal speed.

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UNCANNY X-MEN vol 6 #27
“Who’s Been Sleeping in My Bed?, part 2”
Writer: Gail Simone
Artist: Luciano Vecchio
Colour artist: Matthew Wilson
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort

COVER: White silhouettes of the Outliers, with a montage in the background of the X-Men hunting for them.

THE X-MEN: 

Gambit. Following on from last issue, when he attempted to persuade Rogue that they should adopt the Outliers, Gambit is desperate to find the missing group. He offers to restore his deal with the Vig if the Vig can find them – this might seem a bit random, but then Gambit has no real leads to go on and it’s not unreasonable for him to assume that they at least might have been taken by someone that the Vig knows. Gambit doesn’t seem to suspect that the Vig is actually responsible – he talks as if the Vig simply might be well connected enough to find out.

Rogue, Nightcrawler, Jubilee and Wolverine hunt for the missing Outliers, and instead find a version of the early New Mutants at Haven House.

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WOLVERINE vol 7 #19
“Wisdom and War”
Writer: Saladin Ahmed
Artist: Martín Cóccolo
Colour artist: Jesus Aburtov
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso

Once again, Martín Cóccolo’s name appears in the credits as “MART N C CCOLO”. This also happened in (at least) issues #14 and #17. Has anyone thought of putting in a call to IT? It feels like the sort of thing that shouldn’t be giving a professional publishing company this much trouble.

COVER: Wolverine fights Hercules. This happened, uh, last issue.

WOLVERINE: 

The previous issue ended with Athena intervening in the fight between Wolverine and Hercules. This one opens with her magically calming them both down. Although it was only Hercules who was directly under the Adamantine’s influence in the previous issue, Athena talks as if it had been influencing Wolverine too. (“My magic has banished the Adamantine’s cruel influence long enough for you to remember yourselves… You have let yourselves be used by ancient evil.”) It’s possible that she simply assumes the Adamantine was influencing them both, but more likely she means that the Adamantine manipulating Wolverine by goading him into a fight. He was uncharacteristically berserker for 2026 last issue, so it might be a bit of both.

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STORM: EARTH’S MIGHTIEST MUTANT #3
“War of the Realms”
Writer: Murewa Ayodele
Artist: Federica Mancin
Colour artist: Java Tartaglia
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Tom Brevoort

COVER: Storm steps out of a comic book panel. Nothing quite so explicitly meta actually happens in the book itself but… well, you’ll see.

STORM:

A flashback reveals that during the break between Storm vol 5 #12 and issue #1 of this series, Storm visited assorted afterlife realms in search of the missing Dr Voodoo. (He was captured by Death at the end of Storm #12, and turned into her servant, for reasons we’ll come back to below.) Her alliance with Sugaar seems to have started around this time, with him providing her with access to these realms.

Storm lists the following realms that she’s visited as part of this exercise:

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INGLORIOUS X-FORCE #4
“Death War, part 1”
Writer: Tim Seeley
Artist: Philip Tan
Colour artist: Romulo Fajardo Jr
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Editor: Mark Basso

COVER: The caption reads “Cable – felled by the Angel of Death, or his mysterious pursuer?” The “mysterious pursuer” is the person obscured behind Archangel’s left wing. Their costume doesn’t really resemble anything in the issue, but the monochrome clothing and the gun suggest it’s probably meant to be Domino. The fight is taking place in a scrapyard and doesn’t have much to do with anything that happens in the issue.

X-FORCE:

Cable. Last issue, X-Force fought the Beyond Corporation and Cable eliminated Boom-Boom as a suspect for murdering Kamala Khan in a future timeline. At the end of the issue, Boom-Boom found Cable slumped unconscious in his chair with some sort of mark on his chest, and Domino standing over him; the story ended with Boom-Boom attacking while Domino attempted to explain herself. (Akihiro helpfully explains that the art was supposed to show Cable “bleeding from a wound in his chest”, which it didn’t really convey.)

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X-MEN UNITED #2
“Open Wounds”
Writer: Eve L Ewing
Artist: Tiago Palma
Colour artist: Brian Reber
Letterer: Joe Sabino
Editor: Tom Brevoort

COVER: Captain America, Melée, Wolverine (Laura), Beast and Kitty Pryde in a World War II setting. Not a scene from the issue.

THE X-MEN:

This issue is no clearer about the nature of Graymatter Lane than the previous one was. Once again, it’s reiterated that Graymatter Lane is on the psychic plane and that if you die there then you die “in real life”, which makes it sound like it’s a projection; and once again, people seem to be able to travel from there directly to places in the real world. There’s a dining pavilion – does it serve real food or just illusions? On balance Graymatter Lane seems to be a pocket of the psychic plane that people physically travel to, even though most of the environment being a psychic projection… but I’m honestly unsure what the intention is.

Cyclops. His plan was apparently to get Kid Omega to fake an attack on the school in the expectation that it wouldn’t be able to cope, thus proving his point that it was a bad idea. This plan fails spectacularly, but Scott refuses to concede that this has gone badly, or that he ought to have warned Ben, and simply acts as if things had gone to plan. Iceman seems to regard this refusal to apologise as entirely in character.

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WOLVERINE vol 7 #18
“Clash of the Champions”
Writer: Saladin Ahmed
Artist: Martín Cóccolo
Colour artist: Jesus Aburtov
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso

COVER: That’ll be a picture of Wolverine.

WOLVERINE. 

He’s been protecting the New Morlocks’ encampment for “the past few weeks” by this point (though if you’re that bothered about fitting this into continuity, he doesn’t actually say he’s been there the whole time).

He still describes his relationship with Silver Sable as casual, but when she gets hurt in battle he flies into a rage which is uncharacteristic for him these days.

He spends most of the issue simply fighting a possessed Hercules.

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UNCANNY X-MEN vol 6 #26
“Who’s Been Sleeping in My Bed, part 1: Careful What You Wish For”
Writer: Gail Simone
Artist: Luciano Vecchio
Colour artist: Matthew Wilson
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort

COVER: The X-Men and Outliers react to someone in a classic X-Men uniform. From the interior, it’s specifically a New Mutants uniform and the character wearing it is Mutina.

THE X-MEN:

Rogue. She’s reluctant to see herself as a mother to the Outliers, claiming that “bad parents are worse than no parents at all”. She could be referring there either to her birth parents or to Mystique and Destiny, but either way it’s a surprising lack of confidence in her own parenting abilities. She’s obviously more comfortable seeing herself as a teacher or mentor.

Gambit. He seems to want to adopt the Outliers as a family, and has started referring to them as “our kids”.

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