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

A.X.E.: JUDGMENT DAY #4
Writer: Kieron Gillen
Artist: Valerio Schiti
Colour artist: Marte Gracia
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort

COVER / PAGE 1. Various characters look alarmed as the Progenitor poses with thumb poised.

PAGES 2-3. Recap and credits.

PAGES 4-5. Captain America tries to calm the crowd at the Treehouse.

The Progenitor’s narration here seems to confirm that everyone is being judged by their own standards, something which becomes even clearer as the issue goes on. (“They must decide what ‘hero’ means… He needs to believe the world is fundamentally a good place… The world may think differently.”)

“He failed his test…” Last issue. Of course, since Captain America is fundamentally modest, and aware of the gap between his values and reality, he’s going to judge himself as a failure. Clearly, he’s having little or no impact on this crowd.

PAGE 6. The Avengers Mountain cast make plans.

Left to right in page 6 panel 2, that’s Ajak, Iron Man, Sersi, Starfox, Makkari, Mr Sinister and Phastos.

(more…)

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

X-MEN RED vol 2 #6
“The Hour of Magneto”
Writer: Al Ewing
Artist: Stefano Caselli
Colourist: Federico Blee
Letterer & Production: Ariana Maher
Design: Tom Muller
Editor: Jordan D White

COVER / PAGE 1: Magneto’s broken helmet in the foreground, while Storm fights in the background.

PAGE 2. Data page. A transcript of Craig Marshall’s field recording, which continues into the following scene. As far as I know, he’s a new character. He’s also the first indication we’ve had that ordinary humans are welcome to explore Arakko beyond the Diplomatic Zone, if they’re actually able to get to Mars in the first place. (This being the Marvel Universe, it seems to be just taken for granted that NASA has access to technology that can reach the Moon – it’s possible that he got a lift to Phobos from Feilong, of course.)

(more…)

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

NEW MUTANTS vol 4 #29
“Fights and Feelings”
Writer: Danny Lore
Artist: Guillermo Sanna
Colourist: Dan Brown
Letterer & production: Travis Lanham
Editor: Sarah Brunstad

COVER / PAGE 1. Warpath and Akihiro (as we’re calling him in this story) fight, with a looming villain in the background. The cover strapline is not what happens in the story, though it is Akihiro’s perspective at the start of the story.

This issue has a guest creative team, which means it’s what we used to call a fill-in issue back in the day.

PAGES 2-4. Akihiro attacks Warpath.

Akihiro is normally referred to as Daken, but his real name Akihiro is used throughout this issue, including on the recap page. Over in this week’s Marauders, he seems to be dumping the Daken name.

Akihiro is upset that his younger sister Scout is missing, and blames the New Mutants for reasons we’ll get to. Quite why that leads him to attack Warpath without explaining himself isn’t clear, nor is it really behaviour that’s consistent with the way he’s written in his home book Marauders. (Strictly speaking, Scout is a clone of X-23, who in turn is the lab-grown genetic daughter of Akihiro’s father Wolverine. But he and Scout – and X-23 – have treated each other as family for years now.)

(more…)

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

WOLVERINE vol 7 #24
“Hell to Pay”
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Federico Vicentini
Colourist: Frank D’Armata
Letterer: Cory Petit
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Mark Basso

COVER / PAGE 1. Wolverine fights a pack of hellhound things with glowing eyes. The Hellbride has one of them later in the issue.

PAGES 2-4. The Progenitor challenges Wolverine to prove that his value is greater than the value of the people he killed.

The Progenitor. This is an A.X.E. tie-in, and the Progenitor is busily judging everyone on the planet. Like most people, Wolverine is confronted by the Progenitor in the form of people to whom he feels the need to justify himself. In Wolverine’s case, that’s obviously going to be all the people he’s killed over the years, since it’s practically a trope of the character anyway. The novel point is about him having to positively justify himself.

(more…)

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

MARAUDERS vol 2 #6
“Even Odds of Destruction”
Writer: Steve Orlando
Artist: Andrea Broccardo
Colour artist: Matt Milla
Letterer & production: Ariana Maher
Design: Tom Muller
Editor: Jordan D White

COVER / PAGE 1: A group shot of the Marauders with the Progenitor looming behind them.

PAGE 2. Lockheed watches the Theater of Pain.

This is picking up on the subplot from the opening page of issue #2, where Lockheed found some mutilated corpses in a ruined church with “X” symbols on the altar, and “LOVE” spray painted on the walls. The same symbols appear on the wall here, confirming that Lockheed has been on the trail of the Theater of Pain. The Marauders fought the Theater’s leader Brimstone Love in Marauders Annual #1 (effectively the first issue of Steve Orlando’s run). That issue also saw Brimstone Love pushing the angle that the Xavier’s dream of coexistence was the right one, the point being that the mutant separatism of Krakoa was a betrayal of it.

(more…)

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

IMMORTAL X-MEN #6
“The Devil’s Party”
Writer: Kieron Gillen
Artist: Lucas Werneck
Colour artist: David Curiel
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White

COVER / PAGE 1: Sebastian Shaw, apparently in the middle of the ritual from the end of the story.

PAGES 2-3. Mr Sinister tells Destiny about the plan to attack the Progenitor.

This is a significantly expanded version of a sequence on pages 8 and 9 of A.X.E.: Judgment Day #3. All we see in that version is Sinister making contact with Destiny and telling her “I have some most useful information… just time it right.” This version makes clear that Sinister tells Destiny about the actual risk, but encourages her to conceal it from the rest of the Quiet Council. Jean does accuse him of concealing the risks in Judgment Day #3, but he denies it and claims that she would have known the full picture if she’d been on the Quiet Council.

(more…)

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

KNIGHTS OF X #5
“Fort Krakoa”
Writer: Tini Howard
Artist: Bob Quinn
Colour artist: Erick Arciniega
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Design: Tom Maher
Editor: Sarah Brunstad

COVER / PAGE 1: Captain Britain on the throne, flanked by Merlyn and Saturnyne.

PAGE 2. Merlyn is angry.

This is basically a recap page.

“On the way to his last stand, Omniversal Majestor Merlyn has been betrayed.” This is the final issue of Knights of X and it really feels like it’s rushing to a conclusion that it was meant to get to at much greater length. The narrator is having to spell out beats. Merlyn was indeed pursuing Roma and Saturnyne into Mercator at the end of the last issue but there wasn’t anything about it being a last stand. (To be fair, the narrator doesn’t say that Merlyn knew he was on his way to a last stand.) The “betrayal”, I assume, is the letter from King Arthur that appeared as a data page last issue, in which he told Merlyn that he was going his own way to confront Mordred and somehow address his kingdom’s future.

All the stuff about Merlyn’s “ragged army” seems to suggest that Merlyn has been suffering a longer series of reverses rather than just losing the one battle in the Crooked Market. There’s a whole load of missing set up to get to this point, but then that’ll happen when a book gets cancelled with issue #5.

(more…)

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

X-FORCE vol 6 #31
“The Hunt for X, part 2: Anatomy of a Killer”
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Robert Gill
Colourist: Guru-eFX
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Mark Basso

COVER / PAGE 1: Kraven, wearing Beast’s fur and with Deadpool’s head on a spear.

PAGES 2-4. Kraven confronts the Progenitor.

As I covered last time, this Kraven is a clone of the original who debuted in 2019. Since he has the original’s personality, and his obsession with nature red in tooth and claw and so forth, he dislikes not having a proper birth; presumably it serves as a symbol of his own artificiality. He seems to hope that a confrontation with teh Celestial will give him some sort of symbolic rebirth.

The first chapter of this arc was billed as an A.X.E. crossover despite having no actual crossover content, but the arc as a whole clearly is a tie-in.

(more…)

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

X-MEN vol 6 #14
Writer: Gerry Duggan
Artist: C F Villa
Colour artist: Matt Milla
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White

COVER / PAGE 1: A hooded Cyclops in shackles. This is probably a hangover from an abandoned earlier idea, since it bears no resemblance to the story, and nor does the  solicitation copy: “WAS CYCLOPS RIGHT? – AN A.X.E. TIE-IN! Are ANY of the X-Men right? Only one can judge them and the Day of Judgment is here, for good or ill, and the newest team of X-Men must face the truth about themselves and what they have done.”

This is X-Men‘s second and final tie-in to A.X.E..

(more…)

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

MARAUDERS vol 2 #5
“Hell Can Wait”
Writer: Steve Orlando
Artist: Andrea Broccardo
Colourist: Matt Milla
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Design: Tom Muller
Editor: Jordan D White

COVER / PAGE 1: Bishop fights Nemesis – I guess? I mean, in terms of the layout, it looks more like they’re fighting side by side, but that doesn’t make sense.

PAGE 2. Xandra is resurrected.

Xandra was assassinated by the Kin Crimson in issue #3. We already learned in X-Men Red #4 that Xandra survived her assassin by psychically transmitting her memory and her genetic code to Cerebro (don’t ask how she’s able to sequence her own DNA), and that explanation gets repeated in this issue.

PAGE 3. Aurora and Daken fight Chronicle and the Kin Crimson.

PAGE 4. In the past, the Acolytes react to the fight with Nemesis.

A footnote confirms that this scene takes place during X-Men #42 (1995). So, here’s how the story played out the first time round:

(more…)