WOLVERINE vol 8 #11
“Only a Mother”
Writer: Saladin Ahmed
Artist: Martín Cóccolo
Colour artist: Bryan Valenza
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso

PAGES 1-2. Wolverine and Sabretooth start to fight.

So, okay, let’s stick with this format…

“He’s found us!” Elizabeth’s comment doesn’t make much sense logically – they’re in the room where she was kept chained up. If Sabretooth was her captor, what would he need to find? But the whole point of this story is that the sense memories cause Wolverine to gloss over the logical problems, as we’ll see.

PAGES 3-5. Wolverine and Sabretooth fight.

“Disappointed I ain’t dead?” Wolverine killed Sabretooth in Wolverine vol 7 #50, just last year.

“This ain’t the first time you proved too stupid to die, Victor.” Sabretooth has indeed come back from apparent death on plenty of previous occasions. He was beheaded in Wolverine #50; mind you, he was also beheaded in Wolverine vol 3 #55, and that turned out to be a clone. Oh, and he was beheaded for real in War of the Realms: Uncanny X-Men #3, but that was just before Krakoa, when everyone was conveniently dropping dead. Since it was presumably resurrection that brought him back that time, he ought to be dead for real this time, but… come on, it’s Sabretooth.

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PHOENIX #13
Writer: Stephanie Phillips
Artist: Roi Mercado
Colour artist: Java Tartaglia
Letterer: Joe Sabino
Editor: Annalise Bissa

You know, I’m thinking maybe I’ll go back to the scene-by-scene format, especially now that the post-Krakoan books have been around long enough to build up a bit of continuity. As with the last time I did this, I’m going to use the story page numbers, since Kindle still can’t count.

Page 1. Flashback: Jean raises Nathan Summers.

This is an original (and largely generic) scene which takes place somewhere during the 1994 miniseries Adventures of Cyclops & Phoenix. It’s attempting to set up Jean and Cable’s relationship without getting too far into the weeds of 90s continuity. For anyone not familiar, however:

Nathan is the child of Cyclops and Madelyne Pryor, who was a clone of Jean. In X-Factor #68, Nathan is sent into the far future so that the Askani can save him from a techno-organic virus; after some back and forth, it turns out that he returns to the present day as Cable to try and avert that future timeline. In Adventures of Cyclops & Phoenix, Scott and Jean are brought forward in time to that future and wind up spending several years raising Nathan as his adoptive parents, though Cable only discovers this later on.

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UNCANNY X-MEN vol 6 #18
“Corn Dogs and Carnage”
Writer: Gail Simone
Artist: Luciano Vecchio
Colour artist: Rachelle Rosenberg
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort

THE X-MEN

Calico. Either she’s having nightmares about Mutina following the previous issue, or Mutina is genuinely stalking her. These encounters prompt her to sleepwalk, something she’s been doing “almost every night of late.” The very strong implication is that Mutina really is teleporting into Calico’s room to threaten her at night – when Gambit and Jubilee try to take her back to her room, they find the bed slashed, along with the painting on the wall. It was fine when she got up to start her sleepwalking a few pages earlier.

According to Gambit, she’s a hopeless cook (“she don’t know how to cook toast”), presumably because her rich family always had people to provide her with food. Despite this, she tries to make pancakes while sleepwalking, and seems at least to be vaguely aware of the correct ingredients. While sleepwalking, she recites some of Mutina’s threats, but also says “Everyone cooks, everyone cleans”, which are two of the Haven house rules from issue #3.

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X-MEN: AGE OF REVELATION #0
Writer: Jed MacKay
Penciller: Humberto Ramos
Inker: Victor Olazaba
Colourist: Edgar Delgado
Editor: Tom Brevoort

This one-shot is basically an extra issue of X-Men, acting as a prologue for the upcoming “Age of Revelation” crossover. It’s a 20 page story with some promotional material at the end. Since the story basically consists of Xorn narrating how this timeline came about, it doesn’t really lend itself to a character-by-character breakdown. So we’ll do it page by page.

Kindle’s page numbering for comics is still broken – it still insists that they start on page 2 – so I’ll just go with the story page numbers. (When does this Neon Ichiban thing start, anyway?)

PAGES 1-3. The Seraphim down a Quinjet.

Xorn. Our narrator throughout this issue is Shen Xorn, who’s been hanging around in the background throughout Jed MacKay’s run, not doing a great deal. We’ll come to why he’s potentially important to the “Age of Revelation” storyline.

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EXCEPTIONAL X-MEN #11
Writer: Eve L Ewing
Artist: Federica Mancin
Colour artist: Nolan Woodward
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Tom Brevoort

THE CORE CAST

Axo. He recognises Bronze’s crush Reggie (see below) – it’s not immediately clear how, but presumably she pointed him out somewhere along the line. He seems to be bringing it up to change the topic from a game that he clearly has no interest in playing, but it seems that he and Thao already know about Reggie, and there’s no suggestion that he’s embarrassing Trista just by pointing him out.

His reaction to encountering a tiny energy phenomenon in the park is to say that they should call Kitty or Emma. (Yes, he says “Kitty.”) As he points out, not only is he the most naturally cautious of the trio, but he was also the one who was most directly at risk of death in the previous arc; not unreasonably, he thinks that this gives his view on the matter some weight.

He’s seen the 1971 film A Clockwork Orange, or at least recognises the notorious Mojo-style eye scene.

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MAGIK vol 3 #7
”Beneath the Veil”
Writer: Ashley Allen
Artist: Germán Peralta
Colour artist: Arthur Hesli
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Editor: Darren Shan

MAGIK

Since Dani took Cal (in issue #5), she hasn’t been able to sense the tracking spell she put on him (as mentioned in issue #3). Dani says that this is because the base’s defences are interfering with her tracking spell.

Before realising that Cal is possessed, she uncharacteristically hugs him and apologises for “involv[ing] you with Liminal”. That’s not quite what happened – he rather insisted on coming along with her – but she did decide to accept him on the view that she would be best placed to keep him safe. Protecting him is her top priority, and she doesn’t trust the Society of the Eternal Dawn to take care of him. Since they seem to be focussing entirely on Liminal and ignoring Cal himself, and their treatment of him seems at least harsh, her scepticism is understandable.

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LAURA KINNEY: WOLVERINE #8
“Honor Bound”
Writer: Erica Schultz
Artist: Giada Belviso
Colour artist: Rachelle Rosenberg
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso

WOLVERINE.

She mentions checking the Treehouse for “new leads” – that refers back to the message drop that she found in issue #1.

When going after MGH dealers, she chooses to wear her black and grey X-Force uniform from the Utopia period. She observes that “being on X-Force taught me that you can do things that no one has to know about”. In practice, she seems to be using it for added stealth.

She refers to Bucky telling her in issue #5 that “if there’s one thing a Wolverine has, it’s time”. His point was that she had plenty of time to figure things out and come to terms with pars of her life.

Seeing Polly and Haymaker as a couple reminds her of her illusory life in issues #6-7 where she was in a couple with Julian Keller, and makes her wonder whether that’s what she always wanted. NYX was clearly setting the two of them up as a couple before it was cancelled.

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UNCANNY X-MEN vol 6 #17
”Murder Me, Mutina”
Writer: Gail Simone
Artist: Luciano Vecchio
Colour artist: Rachelle Rosenberg
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort

THE X-MEN.

Rogue. She seems genuinely surprised at the existence and success of a slasher movie where the killer is a mutant (see below). She assumes that it’s likely to lead to attacks on mutants, and worries about the Outliers.

Gambit. He’s entirely unbothered about Calico and Jitter being suspended from school – he seems to be taking it as read that they were defending themselves against a bully (which isn’t quite what happened).

Nightcrawler. Well, he’s there, but there’s not much to say about him this issue.

Jubilee. She argues that mutants need a PR firm. They did in fact hire a woman called Kate Kildare during the San Francisco / Utopia era.

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X-MEN: HELLFIRE VIGIL
Writers: Jackson Lanzing, Collin Kelly, Jed MacKay, Stephanie Phillips, Geoffrey Thorne, Gail Simone, Eve Ewing, Alex Paknadel, Jason Loo & Murewa Ayodele
Artists: Javeir Garrón, Sean Parsons, Roi Mercado, Marcus To, Luciano Vecchio, Federica Mancin, Declan Shalvey and Sara Pichelli
Colour artist: Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Tom Brevoort

Honestly, I wavered about whether to give this an annotations post at all – it’s basically an anthology issue of mostly five-page stories by the creative teams of various X-books, the unifying theme being an anniversary event to commemorate the fall of Krakoa. But it does include 11 pages of material from the X-Men creative teams which are somewhat important to that book. Treating it as a single story doesn’t make sense, so instead we’ll take each segment in turn.

PAGES 1-5: NYX

Ms Marvel attends the New York vigil.

The New York event, held at the Treehouse, appears to be a fairly sombre affair, with characters in mourning dress holding candles. There are anti-mutant protestors visible in the background, but the police are apparently keeping them away. I’ll run through the list of visible attendees at the end of the post, although there are a good number of background generics in there too.

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X-MEN vol 7 #19
”Revelation”
Writer: Jed MacKay
Penciller: Netho Diaz
Inker: Sean Parsons
Colourist: Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort

REVELATION

The X-Men don’t appear in this issue at all. Instead, the de facto star of the book is Doug Ramsey in his new guise as Revelation.

We last saw Doug in X-Men: Heir of Apocalypse, where he won Apocalypse’s tournament, accepted the hazily-defined role of “heir” (with Apocalypse himself retreating to Arakko), and was transformed by Apocalypse. The actual transformation took place off panel in that story; here, the first two pages show it in flashback, with Doug’s body being eaten away and rebuilt. He has nightmares about this every night, but still talks positively about the experience.

Apocalypse also gave Doug pale skin, lightning bolt designs on his face and upper arms, a gold robe, and weird marking on his bald head. Doug has backtracked heavily on this: while he’s kept the name “Revelation”, he’s grown his hair back, which “makes me feel more like me”. He wears a “Krakoa was for lovers” T-shirt. His personality appears basically unchanged from the Krakoan era.

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