As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

WOLVERINE vol 7 #41
“Sabretooth War, part 1”
Writers: Victor LaValle & Benjamin Percy
Pencillers: Geoff Shaw & Cory Smith
Inkers: Geoff Shaw & Oren Junior
Colour artist: Alex Sinclair
Letterer: Cory Petit
Design: Stacie Zucker with Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Mark Basso

COVER / PAGE 1. An amalgam of Wolverine’s face on the left, and Sabretooth’s on the right. It’s the most violent Wolverine story ever told, apparently. Not sure that’s really the selling point of Victor LaValle’s Sabretooth stories, but okay.

PAGES 2-5. Sabretooth kills a group of “X-Men”.

Okay, so. We last saw Sabretooth in the Sabretooth & The Exiles miniseries, in which he defeated Graydon Creed and seized control of Orchis Station Five. Graydon had been travelling the multiverse killing Sabretooths and mounting their heads; he also had the bodies outfitted with collars which let him control them as weapons. That’s where all the headless Sabretooths in the crowd came from.

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As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

NOTE: This post has been revised now that the digital edition has been corrected to include the data pages at the right places.

RISE OF THE POWERS OF X #1
“Data Pages”
Writer: Kieron Gillen
Artist: R. B. Silva
Colour artist: David Curiel
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Associate editor: Lauren Amaro
Editor: Jordan D White
Editor-in-chief: C B Cebulski

THE RISE OF THE POWERS OF X is the companion series to The Fall of the House of X, mirroring the House of X / Power of X twin minis that launched the Krakoan era. And yes, according to the credits pages, the titles have a THE in them.

With the original books, the titles were supposed to be pronounced as “House of X” and “Powers of Ten”. Presumably the same goes for this, but you never know.

COVER / PAGE 1. The near-future X-Men team, of whom more later. They’re surrounded by foliage but in front of a mechanical portal showing what looks to be the sun.

PAGE 2. Recap and credits. The recap basically covers the plot of Immortal X-Men, and then explains that we’re ten years in the future, following the fall of Krakoa. The story title refers to the Krakoan era’s signature device of including text pages in the middle of the story rather than as back matter. It used to be a Jonathan Hickman signature device but it’s ours now.

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As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

FALL OF THE HOUSE OF X #1
“The Trial of Cyclops”
Writer: Gerry Duggan
Artist: Lucas Werneck
Colourist: Bryan Valenza
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White

FALL OF THE HOUSE OF X. This is one of two linked miniseries to complete the Krakoan era, the other being Rise of the Powers of X. The format echoes the twin minis House of X and Powers of X that launched the Krakoan era.

The title also alludes to the Edgar Allan Poe story “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839), though there’s no terribly obvious significance to that fact.

COVER / PAGE 1. Wolverine, Colossus, Nightcrawler and Shadowkat in action. We can see a couple of Orchis footsoldiers reflected in Colossus’s first.

PAGES 2-4. Cyclops dreams about being hung after an Old West show trial.

Timely was the name of Marvel’s Golden Age predecessor. It’s not immediately obvious what that has to do with anything either. Marvel does have an established Old West town called Timely – it was the setting of the 2015 miniseries 1872, which was part of the “Secret Wars” event, and was basically “the Marvel Universe, but a Western”.

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As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

X-FORCE vol 6 #47
“The Greenhouse”
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Daniel Picciotto
Colour artist: GURU-eFX
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Mark Basso

COVER / PAGE 1: X-Force – including Wolverine again – under attack from Stark Sentinels.

PAGE 2. Flashback: X-Force pick up Wolverine.

This takes place after Wolverine #40, which concludes Wolverine’s run of team-ups with non-mutant heroes, and before X-Men #28, where he shows up for the X-Men’s visit to Latveria.

PAGES 3-7. X-Force set up base at the North Pole.

Presumably the narrator means “somewhere deep in the Arctic” rather than “literally the North Pole”, since they’re obviously looking for an appropriately secluded location.

X-Force still have the mobile base that they were hanging around in during the Hellfire Gala (because the remote-controlled Colossus wanted to keep them at a distance where they couldn’t help). Now that the team have escaped Mikhail Rasputin, this means they can actually function as a team again.

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As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

IMMORTAL X-MEN #18
“Happily Ever After”
Writer: Kieron Gillen
Artist: Juan José Ryp
Colour artist: David Curiel
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White

COVER / PAGE 1. A giant Mother Righteous toying with Professor X, Jean Grey, Emma Frost and (oddly, because he’s not even a cast regular) Cyclops.

PAGE 2. Mother Righteous lets Jean lead her through the White Hot Room.

Mother Righteous is our narrator for the issue, breaking the pattern of each narrator being a member of the Quiet Council. That said, she has (effectively) been among the leading figures in the makeshift version of Krakoa within the White Hot Room, which probably qualifies her.

Mother Righteous started following the addled Jean Grey into the desert at the end of the previous issue. As she explains later on, she assumes (correctly) that Jean will be drawn to the location where she can try to ascend to Dominion status.

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As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

UNCANNY SPIDER-MAN #5
“Fade to Blue”
Writer: Si Spurrier
Artists: Lee Garbett & Simone Buonfantino
Colour artist: Matt Milla
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Sarah Brunstad

COVER / PAGE 1. Nightcrawler with techno-organic stuff rounding on him.

PAGES 2-7. Nightcrawler and Silver Sable reveal their ruse.

Okay, now on one level, this is quite clever. Issue #4 went out of its way to verify that they’d checked Nightcrawler’s DNA and it definitely wasn’t Mystique. But since then, X-Men Blue: Origins has established that Mystique does change her DNA when she copies someone, in order to rationalise the Azazel/Nightcrawler connection (as shown in flashback on page 6). So when this issue does the reveal that the scan was just wrong, it’s not just a cheap retraction of the cliffhanger.

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As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

ASTONISHING ICEMAN #5
“Out Cold, part 5”
Writer: Steve Orlando
Artist: Vincenzo Carratù
Colour artist: Java Tartaglia
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Mark Basso

COVER / PAGE 1. A shattered Iceman.

PAGE 2. Flashback: Mr Clean defeats Romeo.

This takes place before page 23 of the previous issue, and shows Mr Clean defeating Romeo while Iceman was off in New York. Clyde, the guard drone was seen in issue #1, and mentioned again by Iceman as one of his security measures last iissue.

Romeo actually puts up more of a fight against Mr Clean than you might expect from him, because it turns out that his empathic powers also extend to imposing painful emotions on people when he hits them. I’m pretty sure that’s new. I’m not entirely sure it makes sense – his powers don’t normally depend on touch – but it’s a nice idea, so what the heck.

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As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

WOLVERINE vol 7 #40
“Last Mutant Standing, part 4”
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Ibrahim Moustafa
Colour artist: Frank D’Armata
Letterer: Cory Petit
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Mark Basso

COVER / PAGE 1: Wolverine and Spider-Man in action against Stark Sentinels.

PAGE 2. Tribute to Alison Gill.

PAGES 3-7. Wolverine enlists Spider-Man to help him enter the Orchis space station.

Oscorp. Peter is leaving the Oscorp building, where he currently works in Amazing Spider-Man. (Norman Osborn is good right now, if you haven’t been following it.) Spider-Man is wearing the Oscorp hi-tech version of his costume here, hence the little glowing bits.

“You’ve alive?” Peter knows perfectly well that some mutants are still on Earth – aside from anything else, he’s appeared over in Uncanny Spider-Man – but presumably this is the first time anyone’s mentioned to him that Logan wasn’t among the mutants who went through the gates in X-Men: Hellfire Gala 2023.

The Orchis jet was stolen by Logan in Wakanda last issue, as the footnote says. If its rightful owner Jun Wei is “expected back at her post in less than an hour”, Wolverine apparently came straight to New York in the hope of getting Spider-Man to help. Seems a bit ambitious, but who knows, maybe he wasn’t specifically looking for Spider-Man. Maybe he just figured that the best way to round up some allies at short notice was to head to Marvel Manhattan, swing a cat, and see who he hit.

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As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

DARK X-MEN vol 2 #5
“The Mercy Seat”
Writer: Steve Foxe
Artist: Jonas Scharf
Colour artist: Frank Martin
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White

COVER / PAGE 1: The two Madelyne Pryors fight.

PAGES 2-5. The Goblin Queen tries to persuade Madelyne Pryor to join forces.

“Carmen Cruz wanted nothing more than to be part of the X-Men.” Referring back to her origins in the cast of Children of the Atom, basically about a group of human fans cosplaying as mutants. Carmen, the one actual mutant in the group, made it to Krakoa with her heroes but has only come to the foreground in the context of this very questionable iteration of the X-Men.

“You let them neuter your mutant abilities?” We were told in issue #2 that Orchis had used Blightswill to remove the Goblin Queen’s mutant powers, and that she didn’t care, claiming to have long since outgrown them. She claims here that she was also lulling Orchis into a false sense of security.

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As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

X-MEN RED vol 2 #18
“The Mended Land”
Writer: Al Ewing
Artist: Yildiray Çinar
Colour artist: Federico Blee
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White

COVER / PAGE 1. A group shot of the cast, for the final issue.

PAGES 2-3. Genesis raises Arakko Prime from the sea to fight Kaorak.

“Autumn Island.” In other words, what’s left of the Autumn Lands now that most of it has got up and walked across the planet. The rebels shown in page 2 panel 2 include Kobak, Khora, Zsen and Sunspot, as well as a bunch of background characters.

“Nine left, eight, seven.” When we left Jon Ironfire last issue, he was singlehandedly fighting his way through the White Sword’s champions – already reduced from 100 to 99 by his own departure. Evidently he’s been doing well.

Genesis is carrying both the Annihilation Staff and Purity (the sword); she still has Sobunar by her side, even though we’ve repeatedly been told that he wasn’t entirely thrilled with some of her choices. Storm challenged Genesis to “raise your island and fight” at the end of the last issue, and she takes up the challenge.

Arakko Prime is the part of Arakko that was the original counterpart of Krakoa on Earth – in other words, Arakko the island, rather than Arakko the planet. The narrator calls it “the living island”, mirroring how Krakoa was billed back in Giant-Size X-Men #1.

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