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

LEGION OF X #8
“Family Ties”
Writer: Si Spurrier
Penciller: Netho Diaz
Inker: Sean Parsons
Colourist: Federico Blee
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Sarah Brunstad

COVER / PAGE 1: Mother Righteous, surrounded by images of the cast (and focussing in particular on the transformed Nightcrawler. She isn’t actually in the issue, but her influence is apparent. We saw her with these sorts of viewing globes in the previous issue.

PAGE 2. Stan Lee tribute page.

PAGE 3. Chamber and Husk waver over whether to go into the room.

We’re picking up here from the cliffhanger, where Nightcrawler, Dr Nemesis and Pixie showed up at Archangel’s office only to find him demonically transformed and locked in battle with the Black Knight. At the start of the previous issue, Nightcrawler despatched Chamber and Husk to visit Archangel, in response to a “hazy” request for an investigation. This is them showing up separately.

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

X-MEN RED vol 2 #9
“Return of the King”
Writer: Al Ewing
Artist: Stefano Caselli
Colourist: Federico Blee
Letterer and Production: Ariana Maher
Design: Tom Muller
Editor: Jordan D White

COVER / PAGE 1: Abigail Brand playing an increasingly convoluted chess-like game, with a broken Storm piece.

PAGE 2. Stan Lee tribute

PAGE 3. Data page: a memo from Professor X to the rest of the Quiet Council. Essentially, Abigail Brand has persuaded Xavier that after Magneto died in A.X.E.: Judgment Day, leaving clear directions not to resuscitate him, they need to resurrect Vulcan (following his death at the hands of Tarn in issue #3) in order to have access to his power. She’s also persuaded him that an excellent idea would be to give Vulcan a crash course in some sort of therapy as part of his resurrection, supposed in order to stabilise him.

Obviously this is all part of Brand’s plan for Vulcan to go crazy (as seen at the end of the previous issue), and Xavier walks straight into it. He comes across here as gullible but also overconfident in his own abilities, despite paying lip service to his limitations. Ewing also writes Xavier confidently proclaiming absolute moral rules that he would never break “under any circumstances” – only to immediately qualify them with “absolute necessity”, which could mean anything. Basically, Xavier’s fatal flaw in this reading is that he believes his own hype.

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

MARAUDERS vol 2 #9
“Here Comes Yesterday, part 3”
Writer: Steve Orlando
Artist: Eleonora Carlini
Colourist: Matt Milla
Letterer & production: Ariana Maher
Design: Tom Muller
Editor: Jordan D White

COVER / PAGE 1. Kate and Bishop fight the possessed Fang.

PAGE 2. Stan Lee tribute page.

PAGE 3. Nightfount is updated on progress.

Nightfount. Nightfount was seen briefly in the previous issue, but this is the first time we’ve seen him at any length. He was described last time as “Threshold’s defector” who “leads the Unbreathing against us, razes our cities, intent on reigniting the Oxygen Wars”.

We’ll find out later in the issue who Nightfount actually is, but the design of his helmet is a big clue, as is the fact that he already knows about Arkea and Sublime by name, even though the duo only learn those names from reading the Marauders’ minds later in the issue.

PAGE 4. Recap and credits.

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

IMMORTAL X-MEN #9
“The X Lives of Moira VI”
Writer: Kieron Gillen
Artist: Lucas Werneck
Colourist: Davie Curiel
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White

COVER / PAGE 1: Kate Pryde, with swords, confronts a gun-toting Mr Sinister.

PAGE 2. Tribute to Stan Lee. He was born on 28 December 1922, so presumably we’re getting this page throughout the month of December.

PAGES 3-5. Kate Pryde attends a Quiet Council meeting.

Kate Pryde is principally a Marauders character, but the format of Immortal X-Men is to do an issue from the standpoint of each member of the Quiet Council. This is another issue where that format gets stretched a bit in deference to the wider plot, since this is mainly about Mr Sinister’s storyline and his abuse of clones of Moira MacTaggert.

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

X-FORCE vol 6 #34
“Blackout”
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Chris Allen
Colourist: GURU-eFX
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Editor: Mark Basso

COVER / PAGE 1: Domino, Wolverine, Deadpool and Maverick in space, with the face of Sevyr Blackmore behind, and Beast’s hidden prison moon in the background.

PAGES 2-4. Sage monologues about her drinking.

A montage sequence in which Sage basically tells us that relentless exposure to trauma in her work is driving her to drink.

There’s a lot of apparently Krakoan text on these pages:

• In page 2 panel 3, the word by her left thumb is DATASET.
• The message scrolling over her left hand is DATASET MASTER followed by a third word that doesn’t seem to be Krakoan at all.
• The word to the right of the caption seems to be ARCHIVE, but with the A represented by the symbol that was used in Excalibur to represent The Artist Formerly Known As Apocalypse.
• To the right of that, ARCHIVE again, but with the correct Krakoan.
• The symbols on the far right aren’t Krakoan, but seem to match the third word from the message above.
• In page 3 panel 2, both words just say DATASET again.
• In page 4 panel 1, the word on the screen seems to be just random symbols, while the symbols floating around Sage don’t seem to be actual Krakoan text at all. I guess they’re intended to represent generic text and information overload.

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

IMMORTAL X-MEN #8
“Part 8: The Curious Case of Dr Essex and Mr Sinister”
Writer: Kieron Gillen
Artist: Michele Bandini
Colourist: Davie Curiel
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller, Jay Bowen & Kieron Gillen
Editor: Jordan D White

COVER / PAGE 1: An ageing photo of Irene and Raven in Victorian times.

PAGE 2. Data page – a quote supposedly from Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). “Fate is the word cowards use to describe the things they’re too weak to change.”

It comes from X-Men Legacy #214, in which Mr Sinister attempted to take over Professor X’s body, in a scheme which is referred to later in the issue. Sinister claims that, because of his tinkering with Xavier’s DNA, Xavier is fated to become his new body; Xavier defeats him, delivering the line and attributing it to Nietzsche. In fact, I can’t find any reference to this quote on Google that isn’t either referring to the X-Men Legacy issue, or including it in a list of inspirational quotes that seems to postdate the Legacy issue. (The inspirational version has it as “things we’re too weak to change.”)

Here, of course, the quote takes on a context of referring to Destiny, whose very name is an ironic contradiction of the fact that she devotes her life to trying to use her foreknowledge of the future to alter it.

PAGE 3-5. 1943. Mystique breaks into Alamagordo.

Alamagordo. Alamagordo is a city in New Mexico, but the local air force base was also the site of the world’s first nuclear test, in 1945. X-Men #12 (1965) establishes that Professor X’s father worked there, the original idea being to imply that Professor X had become one of the first mutants as a result of his father’s exposure to radiation.

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

SABRETOOTH & THE EXILES #1
“X-Isle”
Writer: Victor LaValle
Artist: Leonard Kirk
Colourist: Rain Beredo
Letterer: Cory Petit
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Mark Basso

SABRETOOTH & THE EXILES is a 5-issue miniseries and a direct continuation of the recent Sabretooth miniseries by the same creative team. The recap page covers the set-up, but for any newcomers, the following points are worth flagging. First, Sabretooth was sent to the Pit for breaking the “murder no man” law before it was actually made, and without any sort of trial, and in circumstances where he arguably believed he had a promise of amnesty. Much of the first miniseries is a discussion of the nature and function of prisons and authority. When he escaped, his fellow “exiles” (meaning here prisoners in the Pit) were sent after him by Mystique and Destiny, but the rest of the Quiet Council don’t yet know that the prisoners have all escaped.

This series has no connection with any of the previous incarnations of Exiles.

PAGE 2. Data page. A prologue by Mole, originally a very minor background character from 1980s X-Factor, who got to play a more important role in the plot of the first mini. He’s restating another of the core themes of the first series, that the background characters are marginalised and ignored by the stars, even the heroes.

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

LEGION OF X #7
“The Hand That Mocked Them, And The Heart That Fed”
Writer: Si Spurrier
Penciller: Netho Diaz
Inker: Sean Parsons
Colourist: Federico Blee
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Sarah Brunstad

COVER / PAGE 1: Beast, Lost, Jean Grey, Vox Ignis, Pixie and Blindfold reacting in horror, while a thorned and horned Nightcrawler looks to be in pain.

PAGES 2-4. Nightcrawler briefs the Legion.

The two characters heading through the gate into the Altar are Maggott and Blob. Maggott’s getting an unusual amount of page time these days, albeit mostly as a background character.

The recognisable Legion members are Lost, Dr Nemesis, Chamber, Pixie and Fabian Cortez (standing separately from the others, but behind Kurt – without knowing his background, he’d look like a completely normal second in command). There are a couple more that don’t seem familiar, though I feel sure I ought to recognise the unnamed woman with the black hair and the cape. I’m completely blanking on her, though.

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

MARAUDERS vol 2 #8
“Here Comes Yesterday, part 2”
Writer: Steve Orlando
Artist: Eleonora Carlini
Colourist: Matt Milla
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Design: Tom Muller
Editor: Jordan D White

COVER / PAGE 1. A rather nice pin-up of Fang, Psylocke and Aurora by Peach Momoko. Nothing specifically to do with the story, but very pretty.

PAGE 2. Obituary for Tom Palmer.

PAGE 3. Flashback: The Threshold Three are sent into the future.

The unnamed character speaking here is Grove, who was named in the previous issue and identified as the leader of the uninfected Thresholders. The three characters that they’re sending into the future are Theia, Amass and Crave, the three Thresholders who were revived in the present day in the previous issue.

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