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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INGLORIOUS X-FORCE #7
“As Luck Would Have It”
Writer: Tim Seeley
Artist: Michael Sta. Maria
Colour artist: Romulo Fajardo Jr
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Editors: Mark Basso & Alanna Smith

COVER: Domino and Cable fighting side by side.

X-FORCE: 

Cable. He claims that he can’t interrogate the captured Mutant Liberation Front members telepathically because they’re being held on a level with power dampers that also affect him. Mind you, we know he’s under outside influence at the moment, so we don’t necessarily have to take that literally.

He claims that Professor X’s injunctions against invasive telepathic interrogation don’t apply “in times of war”, and apparently regards this as applying to the Mutant Liberation Front even though they’re amateur-hour bozos.

He greets Cyclops warmly and calls him dad, but we’re told later that beneath the surface he’s telepathically deflecting both Cyclops and Kid Omega with everything he’s got. He references Cyclops “rais[ing] me in the distant future to save me from a weaponized infection”, which is the Adventures of Cyclops & Phoenix miniseries.

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X-MEN vol 7 #33
“Anomaly, part 3”
Writer: Jed MacKay
Penciller: Tony S Daniel
Inker: Mark Morales
Colourist: Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort

COVER: Magneto, in his classic costume, holding off a hail of bullets – precisely the sort of thing he can’t do any more.

THE X-MEN:

The Beast. Well, he’s still in charge in this issue, but it’s not really about him. Magneto rather marginalises him, and he can’t do much to help Kid Omega and Ben Liu. He does manage to persuade Department H to back off, though, even if it happens off panel, so you can chalk that up as another successful bit of diplomacy from him.

Ben Liu. Kid Omega references him being experimented upon by 3K and then dumped on the streets, which is the lead-up to his debut in issue #2. There are some brief flashbacks in this issue to the experiments themselves.

Kid Omega views him as a newbie who isn’t as hardened as the other X-Men (which is obviously right). This lack of faith seems to encourage Ben to step up and help to defuse Schwarzchild’s psychic traps, though really his only contribution is to experience some pain while Kid Omega does all the work. The booby traps set by Cassandra Nova are supposed to take the interlopers to their “Black Bug Rooms” – from New X-Men #116 – which Kid Omega describes as a manifestation of your shame and fear. For Kid Omega, this apparently works, though it takes place off panel. In Ben’s case, he ends up in Schwarzchild’s room – presumably because he has the same traps himself, which screws up how it works, but it’s not directly explained.

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WOLVERINE vol 8 #23
“Power Grab”
Writer: Saladin Ahmed
Artist: Julius Ohta
Colour artist: Jesus Aburtov
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso

COVER: Taskmaster advances on Wolverine, with adamantium claws extended. This doesn’t actually happen in the story, where Taskmaster only has the copied healing factor.

This is a pretty straightforward issue, but we’ll run through it anyway.

WOLVERINE:

For those just joining us, his healing factor has been switched off by nanites, and his right-hand claws are still broken from the fight with the Adamantine in issue #20. The previous issue established that his adamantium is poisoning him without his healing factor (which has happened before), but was rather inconsistent about how far this was affecting him – at times he seemed to be having trouble standing, but he also seemed able to hold his own against Taskmaster. This issue seems to be saying that his berserker rage is partly responsible for keeping him on his feet, and that his enhanced senses still give him some advantage in anticipating Taskmaster’s moves.

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UNCANNY X-MEN vol 6 #31
“Mars Needs Mutants, part two: The Devil I Know”
Writer: Gail Simone
Artists: Jim Towe & David Baldeón
Colour artist: Matthew Wilson
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort

COVER: One of the Nur holding an unconscious Rogue, with UFOs above. This doesn’t happen in this issue – indeed, Rogue doesn’t appear at all. The slogan “They Came From Beyond!” might just be generic, but there was a film called They Came From Beyond Space in 1967 (based on Joseph Millard’s 1941 novel The Gods Hate Kansas, which seems a bit harsh, but I’ve never been there so I’ll have to take his word for it).

This issue also include part two of “Mind and Matter”, a serialised 5-page back-up strip for Marvel Voices celebrating Disability Pride Month. It’s got nothing to do with the X-Men, so I won’t be covering it. At least in the digital edition, there doesn’t seem to be any indication of where you can read part one – if you were wondering, it’s in Amazing Spider-Man #32.

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