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

SINS OF SINISTER: DOMINION #1
“Sins of Sinister, part 11: ∞ Deadly Sins”
Writer: Kieron Gillen
Artists: Paco Medina & Lucas Werneck
Colour artist: Bryan Valenza
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White

COVER / PAGE 1. Mr Sinister in prayer – the present-day version, not the far-future one.

PAGE 2. The Storm System, 1000 years in the future.

This establishing shot joins the action at page 11 of Nightcrawlers #3. As Vox Ignis explained in that story, the Spirits of Vengeance (who left Earth early on) have possessed Galactus, fuelled by his rage at what Sinister has done to the universe.

PAGE 3. Sinister and Moira talk.

So far as these characters are concerned, we’re picking up from Storm and the Brotherhood of Mutants #3, which ended with Sinister shooting Jon Ironfire through the head. Moira’s absence was noted by Sinister in that issue, but it wasn’t clear that he was in radio contact with her. (There’s no contradiction, though, because Sinister doesn’t know where she is.)

The dead characters lying on the ground around Ironfire are Bloodroot (the red one), Old Oda (the bird) and Genas Mind-Flayer (the furry guy in the hood). Not that it really matters at this stage.

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

NEW MUTANTS: LETHAL LEGION #2
“Terrible Decisions”
Writer: Charlie Jane Anders
Penciller: Enid Balám
Inker: Elisabetta D’Amico
Colourist: Matt Milla
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Sarah Brunstad

COVER / PAGE 1: Escapade in front of a Lethal Legion recruitment poster, having apparently swapped roles with Grim Reaper – who isn’t in this story, but did have an involvement with an earlier version of the Lethal Legion. The papers blowing around her include photos of Dani, Rahne and Gabby.

PAGES 2-4. Wolfsbane and Morgan flee into an underground survivalist camp.

They disturbed this thing last issue, while hunting for potentially useful technology in an abandoned underground lab that once belonged to Spencer Smythe. It seems to be just some Thing Living In The Tunnels.

They stumble into what seems to be some sort of anti-mutant survivalist camp, hiding away from some sort of mutant-related apocalypse. So far as we can tell from this issue, this bunch seem relatively harmless – they really do just want to hide away in the tunnels and sit out the end of the world.

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

X-FORCE vol 6 #39
“Internal Affairs”
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Robert Gill
Colour artist: Guru-eFX
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Mark Basso

COVER / PAGE 1. Colossus and Wolverine (Laura) in action.

PAGES 2-7. The Quiet Council discuss the Beast.

Wolverine‘s appearance here is a direct repeat of page 11 of Wolverine #32. In the original scene, Wolverine has just marched into the Quiet Council chamber and dumped the body of the Beast (complete with the fungal boobytraps seen earlier in that issue). Wolverine complains about Beast being given “carte blanche”, and refuses Professor X’s request to talk about it privately. That scene ends with the first three lines of dialogue here. Wolverine’s brief exchange with Sage as he leaves the room is new.

The Quiet Council. As in Wolverine #32, Nightcrawler and Mr Sinister are both missing, without explanation. This avoids the need to address their status quo changes in Legion of X and Immortal X-Men.

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

NIGHTCRAWLERS #3
“Sins of Sinister, part 10: The Sacred Heart”
Writer: Si Spurrier
Artists: Lorenzo Tammetta & Phillip Sevy
Colourist: Rain Beredo
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White

COVER / PAGE 1. Mother Righteous, in front of a Ghost Rider-possessed Galactus.

PAGE 2. Mother Righteous recaps the last few centuries.

The Silver Mercator is apparently some kind of hybrid of the Silver Surfer and Mr M (most recently seen in Knights of X).

The Low Key Corps appear to be some sort of collection of alternate versions of Loki, perhaps under reference to the Loki variants seen in his TV show. The name seems to imply something akin to the Council of Cross-Time Kangs.

Auntie Fortune is the Nightcrawler chimera based on Domino, as seen in the previous two issues. As Righteous says, she was one of the first Nightcrawler chimeras to be recruited. We saw her in the previous issue as a frail old woman – apparently she’s been kept around as some sort of ghost (she appears to be see-through), perhaps for her symbolic value as an original. The thing floating next to her is presumably one of the Cortez lanterns mentioned in issue #1, which use the brain tissue of the late Fabian Cortez to provide power boosts.

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

STORM AND THE BROTHERHOOD OF MUTANTS #3
“Sins of Sinister, part 9: The Song of the End”
Writer: Al Ewing
Artist: Alessandro Vitti
Colour artist: Rain Beredo
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Design: Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White

COVER / PAGE 1. A symbolic image of a godlike Sorm with a hazy crowd looking up at her.

PAGE 2. Establishing shot of the World Farm.

It was on fire when Mr Sinister arrived at it in Immoral X-Men #3 – apparently, this is just its standard appearance.

The narration follows the 6-4-5 syllable pattern of Lodus Logos’s dialogue in X-Men Red – the “Great Lodus” referred to here.

The Storm System. In Immortal X-Men #3, Destiny’s vision of possible future timelines includes “the Storm System” as one possible end point, following “the Empire of the Red Diamond”.

PAGE 3. Jon Ironside and Khora.

“What Arakko once meant – what it’s come to mean again”. The inhabitants of the World Farm consider themselves the continuation of Arakki culture, since they’re based on the survivors of the original Arakko’s destruction. Prior to relocating to our dimension, Arakko spent centuries in eternal war in the dimension of Amenth; as this particular timeline has turned out, the society’s relatively peaceful time on Mars turned out to be a blip.

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

X-MEN vol 6 #21
“Lord of the Brood, part three”
Writer: Gerry Duggan
Artist: Stefano Caselli
Colourist: Federico Blee
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White

COVER / PAGE 1. Cyclops and Rogue fight the Brood. This continues the fight scene which has been shown over the covers of recent issues of X-Men and Captain Marvel (which is where Rogue has been appearing).

In Captain Marvel #47, Captain Marvel’s team defeat a bunch of Brood and rescue Rogue. Binary is found hooked up to some sort of organic machinery. In what might politely be termed a high degree of plot convenience, it turns out that Binary can only be freed if someone else takes her place, and Captain Marvel duly makes the required heroic sacrifice. Rogue explains that the Brood faction in the Captain Marvel arc are led by a Brood Empress who resents Broo’s control over them and took the opportunity to break free of him when it arose. (X-Men has established that this was brought about by Nightmare, but the Captain Marvel cast don’t know this yet.) The Empress blames the Kree for creating the King Egg that gave Broo control over her race in X-Men vol 5 #9, and has a convoluted scheme to convert superheroes into Brood in order to use them as an army against the Kree; the part-Kree Captain Marvel is particularly key to this plot. The issue ends with the heroes largely defeated and a groggy Captain Marvel apparently unable to register the giant Brood Empress looming over her.

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

WOLVERINE vol 7 #32
“Weapons of X, part 2”
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Juan José Ryp
Colourist: Frank D’Armata
Letterer: Cory Petit
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Mark Basso

COVER / PAGE 1. The real Wolverine amidst an army of Beast’s clones.

PAGES 2-4. Beast’s Wolverine clones kill Lord Stewart.

Lord Stewart is a one-off character. Some publishers try to avoid using the names of real people; Marvel’s legal department is apparently made of sterner stuff.

“Since the UK pulled out of the treaty…” Back at the first Hellfire Gala, thanks to the machinations of Coven Akkaba over in Excalibur.

The Krakoan flowers were sourced via Maverick, as he confirms in passing on page 15. It’s rather odd for Lord Stewart to plant the things here and then express surprise that the local wildlife are eating them (particularly as the stag will be part of a herd that he deliberately keeps for hunting purposes), but then he’s probably not meant to be very bright.

Beast presumably deems this an assassination-worthy event because Stewart is trying to break the monopoly on Krakoan plants, but that’s hardly much of an excuse. And, of course, the poor stalker is there to make sure that we have an unequivocal victim.

The Wolverine clones are all wearing the same control collars that Beast put on the real Wolverine in the previous arc – implying that there would be a real risk of this going very badly wrong for him if one of them happened to get cut free.

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

IMMORAL X-MEN #3
“Sins of Sinister, part 8: Our Nine-Hundred-Years-and-Counting Mission”
Writer: Kieron Gillen
Artist: Alessandro Vitti
Colourist: Rain Beredo
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White

COVER / PAGE 1: Sinister and Rasputin on the run from Exodus.

PAGE 2. Data page, with an opening quote from Candide. Candide is a satire on Gottfried Leibniz’s philosophy. Basically, Leibniz argued that if a better world was possible, God would have created that world instead. Therefore, this must be as good as it gets, and what appear to us to be flaws must in fact be optimum in the grand scheme of things, albeit for reasons that we may not be able to grasp. (This philosophy is often referred to as “optimism”, which didn’t have its modern meaning in Leibniz’s day; for modern readers, “optimum-ism” is probably a fairer reflection of what he was getting at.)  The basic joke of Candide is to bombard the characters with things that are obviously just plain bad and watch them try to rationalise it away.

PAGES 3-8. Rasputin boards Prayerworld 537-2389 and retrieves a mission.

“Psychic log: the mission continues.” As with the story title, this echoes Star Trek. Rasputin’s ponytail is used as an icon to mark her narration. She makes sure to tell us at the outset that she believes they’re working to save the universe. The crew members who were aboard the Marauder when Sinister stole it last issue have apparently all died and gone unreplaced.

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

SABRETOOTH & THE EXILES #5
“Station Five”
Writer: Victor LaValle
Artist: Leonard Kirk
Colour artist: Rain Beredo
Letterer: Cory Petit
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Mark Basso

COVER / PAGE 1. Sabretooth fights alt-Sabretooths. There aren’t many established alt-Sabretooths who are particularly noteworthy or recognisable beyond one-off What If stories, but that’s the Age of Apocalypse Sabretooth with his back to us in the foreground. (He’s been dead since 2013, though, which is why he’s not in this arc.) The one on the right is simply another Sabretooth in traditional costume. On the left we have someone who certainly looks like he ought to be recognisable, but nobody’s coming to mind. The guy lying unconscious on the ground is just a Sabretooth in a suit, an outfit which he sometimes shows up in for Wolverine stories, particularly in the Hama years.

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

BETSY BRADDOCK: CAPTAIN BRITAIN #2
“Two Captains, One Country”
Writer: Tini Howard
Artist: Vasco Georgiev
Colourist: Erick Arciniega
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Sarah Brunstad

COVER / PAGE 1. Captain Britain and Captain Carter fight the Furies.

PAGES 2-4. The Captain Britain Corps repel Morgan Le Fey and her Furies.

This continues directly from the end of issue #1. Basically, Morgan’s plan is to find her own, more pliable Captain Britain and use her as a vehicle to promote her own vision of Britain. Last issue, she tried recruiting Captain Pretani of Earth-5411 who, being a member of the Captain Britain Corps, had no interest whatsoever.

Morgan presumably retreats, not because the Furies aren’t capable of doing serious damage to the Corps – they evidently are – but because this fight isn’t achieving her wider goal, which is to find a stooge. We’ll see later that the Furies are unimpressed by her priorities.

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