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

CHILDREN OF THE VAULT #2
Writer: Deniz Camp
Artist: Luca Maresca
Colourist: Carlos Lopez
Letterer: Cory Petit
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Sarah Brunstad

COVER / PAGE 1. The Children of the Vault – Ferro, Serafina, a guy in the background that I don’t recognise, Capitán and Átomo – hover over the public in superhero mode. Bishop and Cable are among the crowd wearing hoods.

PAGES 2-4. Bishop and Cable capture Martillo-131.

Presumably Martillo gets chosen as the target because he’s alone. But our attention is drawn to the fact that Martillo likes the current state of human culture, which the Children’s plan is going to wipe out. He’s more at the stage of regretting its loss than actually turning against the plan, but still.

PAGE 5. Recap and credits

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

ASTONISHING ICEMAN #2
“Out Cold, part two”
Writer: Steve Orlando
Artist: Vincenzo Carratù
Colour artist: Java Tartaglia
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Mark Basso

COVER / PAGE 1. Iceman in action in a city; basically just a generic Iceman cover.

PAGE 2. John Romita tribute page.

PAGES 3-4. Flashback: Teenage Bobby freezes Rocky Beasely.

This is a recap of the Iceman back-up strip from X-Men #44 (1968), part of the “Origins of the X-Men” series which recounts how Cyclops, Iceman, Beast and Angel got recruited into the team. The original story is by Gary Friedrich, George Tuska and John Verpoorten. Bobby is returning home from seeing a film with his girlfriend Judy Harmon when they’re attacked by bullies led by Rocky Beasely. Obviously, in some respects Judy is inconvenient with hindsight, but by serendipity, the bullies do immediately claim that they’re there to “show Miss Harmon just who the real man around here is”, which you could now read differently.

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

X-MEN RED vol 2 #15
“Nothing and Nobody”
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. Storm and Genesis fight, with the Fisher King in the background, suspended in Xilo’s worms.

PAGE 2. Flashback: The young Fisher King meets Azazoth.

In a passing line in issue #6, Fisher King said that his name had been “psychically amputated in the prisons to guard against the Vile Omnipaths.” In this version, the future Fisher King seems quite keen to be rendered invisible, something which will actually give him a power of sorts.

Azazoth is a new character, though someone quite like him was among Genesis’s forces in the previous issue. He’s likely named after Azathoth, one of HP Lovecraft’s gods.

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

X-FORCE vol 6 #44
“The Chronicles of Colossus”
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Robert Gill
Colourist: GURU-eFX
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Editor: Mark Basso

COVER / PAGE 1. Domino, Deadpool and Sage fight Orchis’ X-Sentinels in an alleyway. There’s what looks to be a poster of Colossus’s face on the right-hand wall. Astute readers will note that Deadpool isn’t actually in this issue. He wandered off on page 14 of the previous issue, and wasn’t with the X-Force members who followed Colossus through the portal to Mikhail’s base.

However, the solicitation for this issue refers to X-Force being captured, with “Sage, Deadpool and Domino” trying to reach them before the Sentinels do. Evidently Deadpool got cut from the plot, perhaps because it didn’t make sense for him to be in this book and Uncanny Avengers at the same time.

PAGES 2-3. Domino watches an Orchis checkpoint in Moscow.

Are we… are we seriously just going with the idea that Orchis are openly operating, with the blessing of the authorities, in both the USA and Russia, and that no further explanation is required for that? That’s…. um, well, gosh, that’s quite a choice we’ve made there, isn’t it?

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

IMMORTAL X-MEN #15
“Thirst Things First”
Writer: Kieron Gillen
Artist: Paco Medina
Colour artist: David Curiel
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White

COVER / PAGE 1. A zombie Wolverine attacks.

PAGES 2-4. Selene eats Shaw’s soldiers.

Selene is our designated narrator for this issue, even though she isn’t in the desert scenes. She was voted onto the Quiet Council in issue #12 and hasn’t had her spotlight issue yet.

The soldiers are apparently the same ones that Professor X repelled from Krakoa at the end of the previous issue. Although they’re at an Orchis base, they don’t seem to be wearing Orchis logos on their uniforms, as with the previous issue. There were four of them last issue, and there seem to be only three here, but I doubt that’s meant to be significant.

Selene’s captions get a black chess queen logo. Shaw had a similar black king logo on his captions in issue #6, although Selene is a former Black Queen.

PAGE 5. Recap and credits.

PAGES 6-7. Shaw and Selene return to Krakoa with psi-blockers.

Selene is surprised that Shaw was able to build effective psi-blockers. His back story does involve him being an engineering genius, but it’s rarely a focus of this stories, and she’s right that Shaw would normally delegate this to someone else. We saw last issue, though, that Shaw seems to have realised that he needs to look out for himself rather than relying on his allies.

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

X-MEN vol 6 #26
“Whack-a-Mole”
Writer: Gerry Duggan
Artists: Jim Towe & Javier Pina
Colourist: Marte Gracia
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White

COVER / PAGE 1. The left half of an image of Emma Frost marrying Tony Stark. The other half is on the cover of Invincible Iron Man #10. The solicitation for this issue reads: “WE’RE NOT LOSING AN X-MAN… WE’RE GAINING AN AVENGER!” The moment we swore would never happen-heck, the moment EMMA FROST swore would never happen-is here at last! As the Frost/Stark knot is tied in INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #10, Emma’s mutant family reacts to this surprise news!

The issue as published bears no resemblance to that solicitation whatsoever – the marriage only comes up in the penultimate panel.

The cover art features various characters who aren’t available to attend a wedding due to “Fall of X”, but that’s obviously to avoid spoilers in the solicitations.

PAGES 2-3. John Romita tribute.

PAGE 4. Data page: a quote from Ben Urich about the Kingpin, taken from one of his articles. Urich was investigating the Kingpin in Daredevil back in the Frank Miller run.

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

WOLVERINE vol 7 #36
“Weapons of Vengeance, part 3: Possessions”
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Geoff Shaw
Colour artist: Rain Beredo
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editors: Mark Basso & Darren Shaw

WEAPONS OF VENGEANCE. Despite the “Fall of X” branding on the cover, this arc has nothing whatsoever to do with the arc, unless you count some passing mentions of there not being many mutants around these days. This is a four-part crossover with Ghost Rider, also written by Benjamin Percy.

In Ghost Rider / Wolverine: Weapons of Vengeance Alpha #1 (and don’t get me started on “Alpha #1″) and Ghost Rider #17, extended flashbacks show us that “many years ago”, Ada Flores brought a little boy called Bram Straub to the X-Men Mansion to seek help from Professor X. Flores is the only social worker who has stuck with Bram after everyone else quit. But Bram is not a mutant; he’s demonically possessed. After establishing that fact, Professor X declines to take Bram on (though he does offer to try and put Flores in touch with someone more suitable). Wolverine takes an immediate dislike to the kid because he can sense the demon. Back at the orphanage, Bram (or his demon) kill all the kids in his dormitory and assembles their bodies into some kind of spire before returning to the X-Men Mansion on his own to fight Wolverine. Wolverine and Ghost Rider both go after the monster and get into the usual hero-versus-hero fight, during which the demon escapes.

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

REALM OF X #1
“The White Witch”
Writer: Torunn Grønbekk
Artist: Diógenes Neves
Colour artist: Rain Beredo
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Lauren Amaro

REALM OF X is a 4-issue miniseries tying in to “Fall of X”… though possibly only in the sense that “Fall of X” provides the occasion for the story to happen in the first place.

COVER / PAGE 1: Mirage and Magik charge into action through a Krakoan gate. More of a misdirection cover for the solicits than anything much to do with the contents.

PAGES 2-10. The cast wake up in Vanaheim in the middle of a fight.

The name characters, and a bunch of random generics, evidently wound up here after being marched through the Krakoan gates by Professor X in X-Men: Hellfire Gala 2023. This is plainly not the alien landscape where we saw Forge in X-Men #25, or the featureless desert where Exodus and co wound up in Immortal X-Men #14 – despite Exodus claiming in that issue that the “whole population of Krakoa” was there. To be fair, they were a much larger group than the one we see here, so they may well be the vast majority of the Krakoan population; this issue’s recap page refers to “a handful of other mutants” accompanying the name characters, and Dani later mentions a “dozen” being wounded. We still don’t know why the mutants have been scattered in this way, although some sort of scheme involving Destiny and Manifold seems a realistic possibility.

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

JEAN GREY vol 2 #1
“Mind Maze”
Writer: Louise Simonson
Artist: Bernard Chang
Colour artist: Marcelo Maiolo
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Design: Jay Bowen
Editor: Sarah Brunstad

JEAN GREY. I’d completely forgotten that there was a volume 1, to be honest. It was an ongoing series about the time-travelling Silver Age version of the character, which ran for 11 issues between 2017-2018. I dimly remember it being something to do with her touring the Marvel Universe to prepare herself to become Phoenix. Anyway, it’s nothing we need concern ourselves with.

COVER / PAGE 1. Symbolic image of the face of Jean Grey over the sea, I guess. Lovely image. Nice logo, too.

PAGE 2. John Romita tribute page.

PAGE 3. Jean wonders where she is.

Jean was killed while fighting Orchis in X-Men: Hellfire Gala 2023. She wasn’t wearing the costume shown here, which is her standard present-day costume from X-Men. The idea seems to be that Jean’s consciousness has somehow survived the death of her body, perhaps by decamping to the astral plane, and a disoriented Jean is experiencing visions as she tries to figure out how she got to this point. With the possible exception of this page, nothing in this issue takes place in the “real” world.

“I’m dying… Been there … so many times before.” The most obvious examples are X-Men #100-101 (1976), where she’s dying from cosmic radiation exposure until Phoenix comes along to save her; and New X-Men #150 (2004) where she’s killed by Xorn/Magneto. Jean also has the memories of the deaths of her duplicates Phoenix in X-Men #137 (1980) and Madelyne Pryor in X-Factor #38 (1989). And of course she’s been resurrected during the Krakoan era too.

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

X-FORCE vol 6 #43
“Friend, Farmer, Soldier, Spy”
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Robert Gill
Colour artist: GURU-eFX
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Mark Basso

COVER / PAGE 1. X-Force in action, with Colossus in the leadership role. For some reason the group includes Domino but not Sage.

PAGE 2. John Romita tribute.

PAGES 3-4. Colossus prepares for the Hellfire Gala.

We’re back on the night of X-Men: Hellfire Gala 2023, before all the unpleasantness happens. Unlike the other X-books, this one doesn’t jump forward ten weeks to catch up with Fall of X – it’s a belated Gala tie-in.

Again, there’s some ambiguity about whether the narrator here is meant to be Chronicler (or at least reflecting the inner voice that Chronicler is writing for Colossus). The particularly odd moment is on page 3 panel 4, when Colossus briefly lashes out in frustration – Immortal X-Men #12 spent a whole issue hammering the idea  that Colossus is locked in, after all. Is Chronicler acting it out to be true to his understanding of the character? Or does Chronicler just let his guard down for a moment?

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