The X-Axis – w/c 1 December 2025
X-MEN: AGE OF REVELATION INFINITY COMIC #5. By Tim Seeley, Phillip Sevy, Michael Bartolo & Clayton Cowles. Part 2 of the Magik story, then. The basic idea here is that thank to the Bloodstones that were conjured by Belasco back in her origin story, when Illyana dies, she gets split into Illyana, whose soul goes to Belasco, and the Darkchild, who for no discernible reason winds up imprisoned by S’ym. So the story seems to be them manipulating S’ym and Belasco into going to war with each other in order that they can be reunited and escape Limbo. Since we know that the Darkchild winds up running Providence, this evidently doesn’t work out as planned. I can’t say I find any of this especially interesting. By its nature, it’s re-treading previous stories – to be fair, that’s partly the point – but they aren’t stories that I have any great desire to revisit in the first place. Belasco and S’ym aren’t very compelling characters and I don’t really see the point of this. I can imagine a world where the 2026 direction includes a bunch of things that were foreshadowed in “Age of Revelation”, which could run to Cyclops reporting back to Magik that she needs to do something about this before she died. But that’s still a Belasco story and I’m not very interested in that either.
AMAZING X-MEN #3. (Annotations here.) This is more like it. Sure, the pacing of Amazing X-Men is weird if you try to see it as a three-issue miniseries, because it isn’t one – it’s issues #2-4 of a storyline that also includes the Overture and Finale one-shots. And sure, all that the characters have really achieved in three issues is to travel to Philadelphia, without any apparent plans for what they’re going to do when they get there. But I don’t really mind any of that, because the relatively sparse main plot is leaving plenty of space for more subtle character work and for hints about the wider story. It’s not so much having Glob Herman turn into a psycho, which is kind of obvious. It’s having Psylocke seem more sympathetic than any of the supposed X-Men, and Schwarzchild coming across as the reasonable one among the future team when we’ve only seen him as a glorified henchman to date. The Beast subplot is working nicely – it seems fairly clear at this point that this is the Krakoan Beast, but it’s being set up in such a way that it’ll feel satisfying when it’s actually revealed – and throwing in the fact that nobody remembers the storyline about Magneto’s supposed degenerative disease is intriguing. Asrar’s art is consistently excellent as well, and playing to the book’s more character-driven strengths. Even though Jed MacKay’s two books are the ones carrying the weight of the plot for “Age of Revelation”, you can make a case too that Amazing X-Men does benefit from the existence of the wider event, since it’s helping to fill out a more-or-less consistent world that this book only has space to touch on.
BINARY #3. (Annotations here.) Jean Grey makes her inevitable return after ten years’ incubation within the Phoenix Force, and Binary heroically sacrifices herself so that Jean can be the sole Phoenix – after winning the townsfolk back on side again. I can see what this book is going for – Carol Danvers as a stand-in Phoenix who doesn’t really have the aptitude to wield it properly but does at least spend ten years holding it in check and protecting her home town in a way that’s both impressive and, by Phoenix standards, slightly underwhelming. And it all looks dramatic and shiny enough. But the end result doesn’t really work. Part of the problem is that it wants Carol Danvers to be an underdog rising to the challenge, which is a story you could have done with her twenty years ago, but feels weird now that her established portrayal is as the Marvel Universe’s most hyper-competent female hero. Once you’ve plugged a character so emphatically into the slot of “you don’t need expensive Wonder Woman, we have Carol Danvers at home”, it’s hard to go back.
There’s more to it, though. The town never feels convincingly like a place – what do these people do, other than go to meetings and get angry? Where do they get food? What do they do to pass the time? Are there children? If they’re dealing with people on the outside, how does that work? Does Revelation have any view at all about Phoenix being a potential problem to him? Madelyne Pryor’s role also requires you to think back to an earlier version of the character; it doesn’t fit within anything that’s been done to steer her in the direction of Limbo in the last few years. And once Jean has returned, nothing changes – she apparently just carries on defending the town. Of course, there’s a fundamental problem with using Phoenix in crossovers, which is that she’s so powerful that she immediately breaks the plot. But the solution to that is to not use Phoenix in crossovers. I certainly don’t want her to show up in Finale as a deus ex machina.
There’s the core of a half-decent story in here, but Carol Danvers was the wrong character to do it with. Maybe it would have worked with Firestar?
LAURA KINNEY: SABRETOOTH #3. (Annotations here.) Well, that didn’t work. And it’s not like Binary, which didn’t work, but you can see what it was going for and how that might have seemed like a worthwhile idea. This book feels fundamentally misconceived from the ground up, and then botches the execution on top of that – it’s weirdly paced, and not especially attractive to look at, with an artist who can’t draw children being asked to draw emotional sequences with a child. Even pinning down the core concept here is difficult. The material about Laura having marrying Sabretooth’s never-before-mentioned son never feeds into anything, but I’ll assume it might be a plot thread that gets picked up by Jody Houser in Generation X-23. At any rate, it certainly isn’t the core idea of this book. So the idea seems to be about Revelation manipulating Laura and her narration rationalising what she’s instructed to do, all while her overriding impulse is to protect her son within those parameters.
To the extent that any actual theme is discernible here, the final scene tries to tell us that Laura was especially vulnerable to manipulation because of her desire to belong. I don’t think I buy that as a reading of Laura’s character in the first place, but that’s beside the point: The whole premise of Revelation is that he can control everyone, so you just can’t do a “Laura was so easy to manipulate” story with that character. I wonder whether this started out as a story that was trying to make some sort of point about how Logan had to be broken to bring him under Revelation’s control, but Laura was so much easier to bring on side – but if so, the story really fails to bring that out. On top of that, we have a trip to Arakko that bears no resemblance to what we saw in the World of Revelation one-shot and simply reverts to the original, one-note version of Arakko, which was never any good. The emotional anchor of the final issue is a young boy whose only personality trait is CHILD. And the “everyone dies” ending might just about work if it was pitched as a cliffhanger into Finale, but when labelled simply as END it feels downright amateur.
God knows what went wrong with this book, because I can’t believe it got commissioned on the basis of a pitch that resembles what made it to the page. But the end result is seriously bad.
Binary “There’s the core of a half-decent story in here…”
Yeah, this was bad but didn’t feel like an insult. So if we gave it a discontinued letter grade, maybe a D+? Instead of F-the readers.
Re: Age of Revelation Infinity Comic 5- This issue has a major continuity error. We see a flashback to Illyana manipulating Peter and Mikhail to turn them against each other as a child. But Mikhail was trapped in another dimension before Illyana was born and only escaped after Belasco had corrupted her. It’s not clear if this is deliberate- Amazing X-Men suggests that Age of Revelation might be an alternate reality and not a true potential future. Of course, if it is an alternate reality that diverged before Illyana was born, then this arc becomes even more pointless, because nothing that’s true for this Illyana might be true for 616-Illyana.
The sales figures for November 2025 are out. X-Men of Apocalypse 1 came in 22nd, Amazing X-Men 2 came in 23rd, Unbreakable X-Men 2 came in 38th, Spider-Man and Wolverine 7 came in 45th, Book of Revelation 2 came in 51st, Rogue Storm 2 came in 52nd, The Last Wolverine 2 came in 58th, Iron & Frost 2 came in 59th, Laura Kinney: Sabretooth 2 came in 64th, Radioactive Spider-Man 2 came in 71st, Sinister’s Six 2 came in 73rd, Longshots 2 came in 94th, Binary 2 came in 99th, Undeadpool 2 came in 118th, X-Vengers came in 134th, Expatriate X-Men 2 came in 137th and Omega Kids 2 came in 139th.
This is horrible. Age of Revelation actually succeeded in making the X-Titles’s sales WORSE. The only Age of Revelation titles that made it into the top 50 were Amazing X-Men and Unbreakable X-Men. And to make things even worse, DC dominated the top 10. DC’s KO crossover was actually successful, unlike Age of Revelation.
X-Men of Apocalypse was a bright spot, but even so, it barely sold better then a normal issue of X-Men.
How much longer can Breevort keep his job under these circumstances? The higher-ups have to be getting antsy.
Re Binary. I seem to remember that during that weird period when Alpha Flight was a space-based team led by Captain Marvel she was suddenly being written as a lot less competent and confident, so it’s happened before.
Re Magik. Why do they keep bringing Sym back and not Nastihr or whatever the other demon was called, the one that actually did the work corrupting Madelyn Pryor? Neither are winning awards for ’rounded and interesting character’ but still…
Re Laura Kinney. During ‘Sins of Sinister’ one of Storms followers who was, at that time, a completely new character to us, said he’d betrayed her during the war on Arrako that hadn’t happened yet to us, but when that came round, he didn’t, presumably because there was now a time crunch to round the story out before the end of Krakoa. So there’s no guarantee this son of Victor will ever turn up again after this story, but I’m not reading this or likely to pick up Generation X-23 so it’s no skin off my nose if I turn out to be wrong.
I do appreciate how easy it is at the moment to just ignore large amounts of the X-Line and not have to get them, even in a supposed line-wide crossover. I wish they’d done this more in the nineties.
“Why do they keep bringing Sym back and not N’astirh”
I am thinking that they remember fondly how good the original Magic 4 part mini was. S’ym was given a degree of personality that came through as not great depth but at least seemed fleshed out. Also given that he has based on Dave Sim, they could immediately recognize traits that some of them worked along with. N’astirh wasn’t more than a plot device.
With Belasco recently appearing in an Avengers title with two arms I thought that was because Limbo is chaotic time wise and this was an earlier Belasco. Kang is similarly presented as a puzzle for which version of which timeline he is from. Then I thought maybe he isn’t earlier and reforming the arm he sacrificed to the Elder Gods would not bring retribution since they are already destroyed. Or just an art mistake?
More bad news- Kaare Andrews has announced that Spider-Man & Wolverine 10 will be his last issue on the title. It’s not clear if that means that the series is cancelled or merely that this is his last issue on the title, but considering that Marvel often cancels titles with the 10th issue, the former seems more likely.
So if Spider-Man & Wolverine is cancelled, that would mean that ALL the From the Ashes titles except X-Men, Uncanny X-Men and Wolverine have been cancelled. (Storm and Magik are miniseries.) Brevoort’s idea was to flood the market with books and see which ones survived but X-Men, Uncanny X-Men and Wolverine were the only ones that did. Wow, Brevoort- you proved that people like X-Men, Uncanny and Wolverine- I’d never have guessed that. Magik, the most promising of the new titles, was cancelled for the duration of Age of Revelation and we got the Infinity Comics arc which no one likes. So basically all of the From the Ashes titles except X-Men, Uncanny and Wolverine failed and Brevoort sabotaged the one that people liked. From the Ashes has been an unprecedented disaster.
@Michael – thank you for the sales news, I like being able to read it summarized here.
@Michael
Yes, the cover of SM&W 10 is the typical last issue cover. I’m not surprised it ends with this issue. Probably even the decision to do 10 issues instead of 5 was made on the fly, given how abruptly the first narrative arc ended and how disconnected the second one is (set in an alternate reality, a typical solution to avoid thinking too much about it…).
Storm: Earth’s Mightiest Mutants should be an ongoing, initially mistakenly promoted as a miniseries. At least, that’s what Ayodele said on X. https://x.com/AyodeleMurewa/status/1990461863864512669
A few days earlier, I met Federica Mancin in person and she referred to the series as a miniseries. It is likely that the artist was only commissioned for the first five issues, and sales will likely determine whether the series will continue and with which artist.
Marvel is advertising Storm as a 5-issue mini-series in their Marvel Previews catalogue (my local store gives them to customers free each month with a purchase). This is looking very similar to the Weapon X-Men mess. I’m guessing Brevoort commissioned Storm as an ongoing while it was one of the better selling X-titles, but then the sales severely dropped. So, Marvel may be attempting to sabotage the book at this point to get it cancelled, as they may not think it deserves to be greenlit again, at all, but if the sales exceed expectations, they can claim it was always supposed to be an ongoing.
@Loz- One thing that a lot of writers forgot about is that it was S’ym, not N’astirh, that turned Maddie into the Goblin Queen. S’ym tricked Maddie in a dream, and used his finger to turn her into the Goblin Queen and she had a completely different personality as the Goblin Queen- even dressing and talking differently. N’astirh later tried to manipulate her but S’ym’s role in the process was forgotten about by many writers. (To be fair, Simonson threw in a couple of lines of dialogue that suggested that turning her into the Goblin Queen was N’astirh’s idea.)
The reason why S’ym is brought back is because he often abused Illyana during her childhood. He’s a personification of Illyana’s abuse. So of course, Jed MacKay had Mary Jane Watson, whose father was an abusive jerk, say that she liked S’ym even though he’s a demon.
Given AOR’s sales figure, this doesn’t look too good for Shadows of Tomorrow. Brevoort is going to have to make some hard changes if he wants to salvage this era. If Shadows of Tomorrow is just a continuation of FtA, then it will just be another failure. I don’t know if continuing to do solo books is effective. Flooding the market and seeing what sticks was not a good idea. I don’t see how they are going to pull this off without another Hickman or Morrison to headline the X-books. They have some time before the Marvel synergy comes into focus within the next few years.
Some of the issues lie in them doing solo books for characters who don’t have a wide appeal. Doing a solo Cyclops book while he is already heavily featured in a mainline X-book doesn’t seem like a good idea. I know some people here like Ewing’s Exceptional X-Men, but the book felt disconnected from the rest of the X-line. If Ewing continues that trend, then another mainline X-book will fail again. McKay and Simone need to deal with all the spinning plot strings that are dangling in the air, and probably don’t do any crossovers for the foreseeable future.
Belasco remains one of the weirdest of all the characters to be pulled into the X-Men titles. He was a minor Ka-Zar villain co-created by Bruce Jones.
Jones seems to have named him for David Belasco, the famous theatrical producer who created pre-cinema “special effects,” as well, perhaps, as Emeric Belasco, the villain of The Haunting of Hill House. Underlining the theatrical element to this name, Belasco seems to be working out of an ancient Atlantean theme park that inspired the Inferno portion of Dante’s Divine Comedy. (And the story makes an utter hash out of the actual history of Dante and Beatrice, not least the in real life Dante barely knew the real Beatrice.)
Then, because Jones tied Belasco tot he Elder Gods, Claremont uses him as Magik’s corrupter because Claremont always likes going back to his N’Garai material that dates back to his stories in 1970s Marvel horror titles.
But Claremont’s otherwise not that interested in Belasco, who vanishes entirely following his first arc in the Magik miniseries, displaced entirely by S’ym. S’ym and the demons of Limbo, in turn, don’t seem to be related to the N’Garai.
When he does return, it’s in, of all things, a Punisher storyline where he’s acting as a generic devil-like figure. It’s really the post-Claremont writers that brought Belasco back as a minor X-books villain, entirely because of his connection to Magik’s origin.
Mostly he just seems to be a generic evil sorcerer who worships demons, much as Selene is functionally just a sorceress-slash-vampire straight out of a fantasy series, but defined as a mutant mostly to justify using her as an X-Men villain.
Claremont was almost like Alan Moore in that he would insert things he had read about or seen filtered into his own stories, only in a much less metatextual manner than Moore. There is a city of vampires named “Selene” in a French novel from the 1800s. I can only assume that Claremont either read the novel or heard it talked about in the early-1980s. It’s so obscure that Claremont probably guessed no one would recognize this seeming “coincidence”, but it happens so often in Claremont’s comics, it must be an oblique reference. Suddenly, there is an ancient vampire sorceress mutant named Selene showing up in New Mutants. Moore did include the vampire city of Selene in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
@Omar- It’s not clear if the Elder Gods that Belasco serves are the same as the N’Gari. There are mutliple sets of Elder Gods in the Marvel Universe. And Legion seemingly destroyed the Elder Gods Belasco served, but then the N’Gari showed up in Fear Itself. And in Ackerman’s Iron Man Belasco was serving masters who gave him the power to perform feats such as enslaving Dr. Druid and resurrecting Justine Hammer but it’s not clear if these masters were the same Elder Gods he originally served or different demons.
Belasco’s first appearance after the Ka-Zar issue that crossed over with the Magik series was in Fantastic Four 314. In that issue, he claims that he was one of the sorcerers that banished the Cat People to the Land Within. This has never been mentioned again. After that, he appears in the Punisher storyline.
“It’s so obscure that Claremont probably guessed no one would recognize this seeming “coincidence”, but it happens so often in Claremont’s comics, it must be an oblique reference“
Thank the Elder Gods you are here to prove Claremont wrong. And also to let us know how exactly Claremont ended up giving Selene her name.
Been a while since I read the Magik mini from the 80’s, but I recall at the heart of it, Belasco represents the horror of grooming. He’s basically Vecna from Stranger Things. It’s a very topical strand of horror right now.
S’ym is a character who appeared in various stories over the years and was Magik’s arch-enemy in most of them. N’astirh is a retcon character that died at the end of the only story he was in (at the time). He just doesn’t have the same pedigree.
Plus of course, S’ym is a cartoon turned grotesque, calling people “toots” and smoking a cigar while he does evil. N’astirh is a far more generic devil figure.
Where do you even buy cigars in Limbo?
Considering S’ym was a reference to Cerebys and Dave Sim and how S’ym is portrayed as abusive to Illyana as a child you have to wonder if Claremont knew something about Dave Sim in light of what has been revealed about him in the past few years.
I’ve always wondered why N’astirh was created for Inferno ‘89. Did they want to keep S’ym for later use? Did they not like the idea of the crossover villain being a spoof of Dave Sim?
@Omar- What’s even weirder is that S’ym is shown as responsible for Maddie’s transformation into the Goblin Queen in X-Men 234. And later on, he has nothing to do with Maddie for the rest of the crossover. As mentioned, Simonson tries to explain it away by suggesting that corrupting Maddie was N’astirh’s idea but that just raises the question why N’astirh would trust S’ym with such a task instead of doing it himself.
And the idea that S’ym has the power to turn people evil is completely forgotten about until Dark Web.
Was N’astirh a last minute addition?
“Was N’astirh a last minute addition?”
Uncanny X-Men 234 and X-Factor 32 (N’astihr’s first appearance) hit the shelves a week apart.
From memory, and I may well be wrong here, S’ym was more of a monstrous henchman who was there to fight the X-Men, and didn’t interact much with Illyana in the miniseries. Then he henched for Magik for a bit, before rebelling and becoming more of an equal opposite arch-enemy. It wasn’t until Louise Simonson that the child abuse angle was really brought to the forefront. Before that, the abuse was all Belasco (though again, I could be wrong. It’s not something I’ve ever wanted to dwell on.)
sagatwarrior: “McKay and Simone need to deal with all the spinning plot strings that are dangling in the air”
Idunno. Claremont was infamous for his dangling plot lines, but that didn’t stop him from creating an extremely successful run, overall. I personally prefer fewer danglers, but they’re demonstrably not always a problem.
I was going to post about N’astirh being in Phalanx Covenant, but nothing turns up on Google. What am I mis-remembering?
The difference is, I suppose, that Claremont seemed as if he’d be writing X-Men until the end of time. And he often resolved danglers years later, so they seemed fair. Nobody expects a writer to be around even a year later these days, and there’s no pressure for the next writer to continue the same stories. So dangling plots seem more like a waste of space that could be used for actual pay-off.
Oh, I see – Shinar in Phalanx Covenant and N’astirh are 2 separate characters. Well I never.
Probably Shinar, the Phalanx-assimilated dog. It’s something best not to think about. His design did look vaguely similar to N’astirh’s red form.
N’astirh didn’t return until Magik was back in the 2000s.
Shinar was a supervillian that evolved from the dog from Little Rascals, right?
(I’m not joking, I think that was the intent)
In New Mutants #14, where S’ym comes to collect Illyana for Belasco, she freaks out remembering how Belasco sent him to punish her when she was bad.
Magik was also one of S’ym’s daughter Despair’s (Dessy’s) teachers at Strange Academy. He showed up for parents day.
Bleeding Cool’s Weekly Bestseller List is out. NONE of the Age of Revelation titles made the top 10. Amazing X-Men even got beaten by Ultimate X-Men, which is unusual- MacKay’s X-Men usually does better than Ultimate X-Men. Brevoort has done a truly amazing job of sabotaging the X-Men.
@Si-i think some people. including you, are being too easy on Claremont. If you let a subplot drag on for years. it’s nobody’s fault but your own that it doesn’t get resolved. Claremont once complained that he never had the chance to resolve the Mariko-being-unable-to-marry-Wolverine-until-she-got-the-Yashida-Clan-out-of-organized-crime plot. But he had NEARLY EIGHT years to do so.
Comparing Claremont to current writers is a bit of apples and oranges because of the way the industry has changed. When Claremont was writing, the majority of stories were done in 1-3 issues, and each issue generally could be taken as a stand alone issue with maybe a cliffhanger (oh, the number of Claremont cliffhangers). While we’re no longer in the era of decompression where an average story takes 5 or 6 issues, it’s still in the 2-4 issue to a story range. For example, all these AoR books are 3 issues which would be comparable to Claremont’s Australian Brood story (which had the above mentioned subplot where Sym corrupted Madelyne in a dream). And that Brood story was hinted at almost 2 years earlier, in a few pages.
Now we have gotten some one and done story issues relatively recently (I’m thinking of Hickman’s X-men), but it seems to be much more infrequent. Picking out X-men 200-210, we have the Trial of Magneto (a follow on from the previous issue), X-men fight future Sentinels (Secret Wars 2 crossover), X-men talk Rachel out of destroying the universe (Secret Wars 2 crossover), Nightcrawler saves a European princess, Wolverine fights Lady Deathstrike (intro of the Body Shoppe), X-men fight Freedom Force in San Francisco, Rachel tries to kill Selene, X-men vs. Hellfire Club then they team up against Nimrod (follow on from the previous issue, 2 issues), and a consolidation issue that kicks off the Mutant Massacre.
I picked that stretch because I happened to remember them. It may or may not be completely representative (I think the next 10 issues are grouped into fewer stories, but at least 2 of them are 2 issues). If we were to take 11 issues of a FtA book, I don’t think we’d have as many stories. And we’d have a cover tempting and lying to us about hippo-riding going on in the issue.
There’s a difference between dangling plot-threads and surprise reveals. Claremont used sub-plots to set up further story-arcs, some which he returned to, others of which seemed to be dropped over the years. In the 1990s, this turned into the main reason to pick up the titles: “Who is Onslaught?”. There weren’t many compelling stories in between the first hints and the big reveal, the readers were strung along by the promise of eventually finding out the identity of Onslaught. “Onslaught” isn’t an isolated incident, I’m just singling out that arc. Claremont told satisfying stories in between, regardless of if a seeded sub-plot was given a solution or not. All of the narrative wasn’t given over to stringing along the readers.
The lead “From the Ashes” books seem to rely heavily on surprise reveals, like they’re trying to recapture the ‘90s. “Who or what is 3K?” Build up to the reveal of Nova. Build up to the reveal of Astra. Build up to the reveal of Wyre. Looonnnggg wait for The Chairman. New mystery: Who is running ONE now? Very little else happened in X-Men other than build-up to reveals of mysteries, except the current arc with Doug, which was to set up the “big crossover event”.
Uncanny isn’t quite as bad in this regard, but Simone set up the mystery of “the Endling” on issue #1, and then apparently simply gave away the identity in a throwaway line as part of a crossover which has almost nothing to do with Simone’s plotting. There also may, or may not, be mysteries revolving around Greymalkin (or those may be dropped plot points), but they were meant to be part of the narrative drive behind Uncanny when it launched. Now, it may simply be a book about Simone’s new young mutants.
Michael> i think some people. including [Si], are being too easy on Claremont. If you let a subplot drag on for years. it’s nobody’s fault but your own that it doesn’t get resolved. Claremont once complained that he never had the chance to resolve the Mariko-being-unable-to-marry-Wolverine-until-she-got-the-Yashida-Clan-out-of-organized-crime plot. But he had NEARLY EIGHT years to do so.
Also, Wolverine got an ongoing solo book, which Claremont launched and then quit within a year. And he never seemed quite reconciled to that – his whole thing about Wolverine’s healing factor slowing down and his supposed plans for “Mutant Wars” never made a single allowance for his successors (notably Larry Hama) being the chief writer of Wolverine (and, indeed, the Wolverine solo book never reflected anything Claremont was doing to Wolverine in UXM, apart from Jubilee becoming his sidekick. Nor did any guest appearances – of which there were many in that late-80s/early-90s period – either, they largely took their lead from the solo).
Too easy on Claremont? For dangling subplots? What are we supposed to do? Egg his house?
Look, I’ve done my own fair share of shitting on Claremont in the past for his quirks and flaws that irritated me as a reader, but I remain mindful that those things collectively do not come close to outweighing his successes.
Secondly, two things happened over the course of the eighties, neither of which were good for Claremont:
1) Louise Simonson ceased to be his editor. Simonson and Claremont worked well together. Ann Nocenti spoke of how she was in awe of how Simonson handled him. She could get the best out of him and get him back on track when he trailed off. He would occasionally tell Simonson that he was out of ideas at which point Simonson would rattle off a list of dangling plots that he’d left lying around and he’d choose one and get right back to work. Claremont didn’t have that kind of working relationship with Harras. Simonson was a writer’s editor. Harras, on the other hand, was not a writer’s editor. He was a suit’s editor. He was a corporate guy, which brings me to…
2) Marvel changed hands and became a publicly traded company. That’s when Marvel started going to shit creatively because once that happened, long term planning and plotting went out the window. Everything was about the short-term. Everything was about making those quarterly statements look good. It became all about setting up the next big event crossover and it’s been that way ever since. That was not the way Claremont was used to working, and under those conditions without Simonson’s guiding hand, of course some of his dangling plots were going to be lost between the couch cushions. He was old school and the industry changed around him.
So no, I don’t think anyone’s being “too easy” on him.
I don’t really understand this strange insistence that on the one hand MacKay and Simone need to address their dangling plot threads *now*, while at the same time bemoaning a time when writers like Claremont were allowed to cook and make long-term plans. Why the urgency?
MacKay, at the very least, doesn’t seem to be a writer Marvel shuffles around all that often – his Moon Knight run’s been going for what, 50 issues now? 60? When was the last time a writer stayed for that long on an X-book?
“Simone set up the mystery of “the Endling” on issue #1, and then apparently simply gave away the identity in a throwaway line as part of a crossover which has almost nothing to do with Simone’s plotting.”
And
“I don’t really understand this strange insistence that on the one hand MacKay and Simone need to address their dangling plot threads *now*, while at the same time bemoaning a time when writers like Claremont were allowed to cook and make long-term plans. Why the urgency? ”
My feeling is that the Endling reveal was a sign that Brevoort is rebooting the line, and even the returning creatives will not be picking up where they left off. Whatever change will be more that the return from AOX, and more than a “red skies.” Therefore I am stating now that while I agree with everyone that this Beast not being “our” Beast, the Chairman will be revealed to be one of the many Michael clones. It makes sense.
“Therefore I am stating now that while I agree with everyone that this Beast not being “our” Beast, the Chairman will be revealed to be one of the many Michael clones. It makes sense.”
Leading into the next big crossover: “Every Michael Everywhere All at Once”.
Which should actually be the name of this site.
Michael was the no. 1 name given to boys in the US each year for 44 years running, until 1998. As every US Michael born in that time frame knows, every class roll call, at all levels of education, likely included 4-5 Michaels, even if the class only had, say, 20-25 students in it. Apparently many of us identified with X-men comics, as members of a hated and feared minority of same-named Michaels. An X-Michaels or Stepford Michaels or X-Tenuating Michaels title could be a runaway success, irresistible to the legion of Michaels buying comics. The name means “He Who Is Like God,” imagine the possibilities.
*Dons Scarlet Witch costume* (Yeah, I have one. So what? Shut up.)
No more Michaels.
Please work.
@Diana- I think that people are worried about a repeat of what happened with MacKay’s Avengers run. In MacKay’s run, Kang and his rival Myrddin are searching for the Missing Moment but Kang tells Carol Danvers the world will have to experience a number of Tribulation Events before one of them can claim it- the Impossible City, the Endless Night, the Cannibal Culture, the King of Magic, etc. But the Avengers only wound up experiencing two Tribulation Events- the Impossible City and the Endless Night (Blood Hunt). Then Mackay found out he was only getting 36 issues for his Avengers run. So Myrddin found a way to claim the Missing Moment without the rest of the Tribulation Events. Apparently, the real Tribulation Event was MacKay’s writing, since a properly paced run would have been able to tell the story of multiple Tribulation Events over 36 issues and still leave space for the final showdown with Myrddin.
@Moo- I don’t think anyone is disputing that Harras is a bad editor if you want danglers resolved. Just ask Spider-Man fans how they feel about Harras ordering the Spider-Man writers to include a scene suggesting Spider-Man’s baby was alive in Norman Osborn’s custody and then never resolve it. But at the same time some of Claremont’s plots had been dangling for years by the time Harras became editor. The previously mentioned Mariko plot had been dangling for nearly five years when Harras became editor. The question of the relationship between Nightcrawler and Mystique had been dangling for seven and a half years when Harras became editor. This doesn’t mean we have to demonize Claremont but it is something we need to keep in mind when criticizing the current writers.
“This doesn’t mean we have to demonize Claremont but it is something we need to keep in mind when criticizing the current writers.”
Er.. why? Why would you need to keep in mind the way Claremont wrote comics at a different time under different circumstances when criticizing the writers of today? That was forty years ago. How does that have any bearing on today?
Incidentally, Simonson obviously kept track of Claremont’s loose plot threads since she was able to treat his occasional writer’s block with, “What about this, or what about this?” so I assume she was aware of those examples that you mentioned. But if Claremont had momentum going on whatever storylines he happened to be working on, then I certainly wouldn’t bother him to address plot danglers, and it looks like Simonson didn’t either.
Besides, if unanswered questions were *really* an issue, the fan mail would have reflected that, don’t you think? I mean besides just an occasional mention from a fan here and there. The demands to tie off lingering subplots should’ve been pouring in, I would think. Evidently, they weren’t as big a deal as you seem to think they should’ve been.
“the power to perform feats such as enslaving Dr. Druid”
I don’t have the hatred for Dr. Druid that some other forums do, but this is a pretty low bar.
I saw the ICV2 data recently, of course they don’t represent the entire market, but from what I see, X-Men books are doing poorly. Brevoort is managing to make people not care about this franchise.
It’s cool to see some characters getting solo books, but they usually never manage to maintain the focus of the X-Men; it should be the teams, that’s where they shine. Besides, his strategy of flooding the shelves with X-Men books isn’t working.
While ICV2 and Bleeding Cool comic book data do not cover the entire comic book market, they still give us a clear picture of the health of the X-line. Brevoort is going to have to make some quick changes, or they will just remove him. That is why I said in an earlier post that McKay and Simone need to start dealing with their months-long subplots that have been on the back burner for some time. I understand the need for long-term plot planning. But if sales are declining, then you have to start developing the plot to keep people interested. Otherwise, Shadows of Tomorrow will be DOA.
I feel called out for being a Michael. Let’s just say decisions were made and I have to live with them.
I really do hope the X-Books see a better overhaul before it’s too late.
“I feel called out for being a Michael.”
Yeah, it’s not right. The people doing it should be ashamed of themselves.
“I really do hope the X-Books see a better overhaul before it’s too late.”
Too late? Like, as in you’re concerned that the whole line might be canceled?
You know, I’d kind of like to see that, actually. I mean, it’s not like X-Men hasn’t been canceled before. That might even be a good thing. Give the franchise a rest. Let people miss it. Give it a couple of years and then bring it back as a one-book series again.
I meant a one-book franchise, not a one-book series. Obviously a series can only be one book. Unless we’re talking about a series of different books. But we’re not talking about that. We’re talking about a single ongoing series. Actually, not “we’re” as I’m the only one talking about it at the moment.
The Magik story is really hamfisted. It brings back the nonsense of Darkchild being a separate entity. Illyana has died before, her soul didn’t go to Limbo that time. What’s Belasco doing back anyway? And didn’t Illyana get the bloodstones back?
The Generation X story wasn’t great, but at least it held together and had some kind of excuse for existing.