The X-Axis – w/c 22 December 2025
X-MEN: AGE OF REVELATION INFINITY COMIC #8. By Alex Paknadel, Edoardo Audino, KJ Díaz & Clayton Cowles. Well, it’s an issue of the Punisher taking Glob Herman under his wing, ultimately leading to him going off on his own to seek revenge. The idea here is that the Punisher isn’t even trying to groom a successor, and thinks he’s just helping the poor kid to defend himself. That kind of works for Glob. It’s kind of weird for the Punisher, who’s apparently given up on vigilante homicide after the X-virus affected his hands, and has retired into a life of general niceness. I don’t really buy the Punisher reacting like that, as opposed to immediately setting about finding another way of pursuing his obsessional agenda – his one dimensionality is the point of him. But viewed as a Glob story, there’s a certain charm to it, and the story kind of requires the Punisher to present himself as a sympathetic figure to Glob. Perhaps it needs to be a bit more of an act for Glob’s sake.
EXPATRIATE X-MEN #3. (Annotations here.) So here we are, at the tail end of the “Age of Revelation” crossover, with just next week’s Finale one-shot to go. And this issue is… a bit of a mess, to be honest. There’s a lot of double-crossing going on and it doesn’t really come together. As near as I can tell, the plot is that the X-Men on the Flotilla thought that they were being hired by Mystique to take this Lyrebird guy to the Darkchild for reasons unknown, in exchange for unspecified intelligence. In fact, Lyrebird was tricking the X-Men into going to Darkchild’s territory as part of a deal with her. But Darkchild never explains why she wanted them, and ultimately just lets them go… and Lyrebird actually did want to go there all along, because and Illyana have a daughter from before she became Darkchild. Conceived at what point on the timeline? Oh god, don’t ask. Oh, and Melée had a side deal with 3K to get their technology into Limbo, for… reasons. And 3K didn’t want Lyrebird to wind up with Darkchild for… reasons? I mean, I think the idea is that Lyrebird was also working with 3K, but in that case, what was up with Melée and Lyrebird last issue? And then the payoff seems to be that everyone learns the lesson that they shouldn’t have got involved in these convoluted machinations, which would be a weird message for an X-Men story to begin with… except the next thing they do is announce that they’re spontaneously going to Philadelphia to appear in Finale, for no apparent reason.
So it’s a mess. It looks nice enough, to be sure, but whatever point it was actually trying to make gets completely lost in a welter of confusion. The Lyrebird/Magik thing comes completely out of nowhere and seems disconnected to anything around it; it might make some sense if it’s setting up a plot point for 2026, but Eve Ewing isn’t the regular writer for Magik, so that seems unlikely. All very weird.
CLOAK OR DAGGER #3. By Justina Ireland, Lonrezo Tammetta, Edoardo Audino, Andrew Dalhouse & Joe Caramagna. This is one of the lower-key successes of “Age of Revelation”. I’m not quite sure that Fenris make sense in this villain role, except by virtue of the thematic link of being another duo who are weakened when they’re apart. But that doesn’t hugely matter, because Fenris are really just there to provide the opposition. Where this book scores is simply on the relationship between the two leads and having more or less get a happy ending and a family in an otherwise dystopian future. Things aren’t so bad for Cloak and Dagger! Sure, they can’t be together for long periods, but they can work around that, they’re doing okay, and they get to be proper superheroes – which Tammetta’s art fits well. Cloak just getting to be a dad is sweet, too. From their personal standpoint, this isn’t such a bad timeline. I mean, up to the point where Revelation is planning to turn the world into Ego the Living Planet, but that’s in another book. It’s rather weird to do happy ending stories in the midst of an event like “Age of Revelation” but it’s nice that we’re getting some.
UNDEADPOOL #3. By Tim Seeley, Carlos Magno, GURU-eFX & Joe Sabino. Guest starring the Exceptional cast, although their main role here is simply to refuse to deal with Deadpool on the grounds that he’s a self-centred mercenary who didn’t even manage to kill Revelation when he was paid to. Fearless turns out to be a traitor, and Deadpool dies heroically in stopping her. That’s basically it. It’s a very nice looking book, and it does a decent job of going for the 70s horror vibe, with Deadpool finally earning his release from quasi-zombie status. I’m not sure it delivers what people are normally looking for in a Deadpool story, being quite a downbeat and sombre affair at the end of the day, but it does at least strike a clear tone and maintain it.
X-VENGERS #3. By Jason Loo, Sergio Dávila, Aure Jimenez, Rain Beredo & Joe Sabino. The Avengers have been given just three hours to avert a war between Revelation and the remains of the USA by providing that President Sam Wilson wasn’t responsible for the attack on the Revelation Territories. And that turns out to be pretty much false peril, because instead of a race against the clock, it just turns out to be MODOK. There’s a reasonable idea in here somewhere, of a battered and beleaguered Avengers team clinging on to their former dignity, but once you’ve made that point, it doesn’t really have a great deal to do with the actual plot of MODOK’s biological weapons. It’s entirely serviceable both as writing and art – nobody seems to have given Dávila any reference for what techno-organics look like, which is unfortunate, but otherwise it looks solidly traditional. Still, it winds up as a rather generic superhero plot instead of really digging into the premise.
Re: Age of Revelation Infinity Comic 8- Jason Aaron’s Punisher run ended with Frank giving up being the Punisher and instead protecting children. That’s probably what Paknadel was thinking of.
Re: Undeadpool 3:
The twist would have worked a lot better if it hadn’t been spoiled by Expatriate X-Men 2.
So I guess we’re supposed to assume that Fearless is both telepathic and can enhance powers? One of them is a secondary mutation?
Re: X-Vengers 3- Yoo has said that the original idea for the book was Doug’s former New Mutants teammates going to confront him.But then Marvel insisted it be an Avengers book. You can tell the original idea would have worked better.
In other news. the Cyclops limited series will feature Robyn Hannover- the doctor from Classic X-Men 41-42 who befriended Scott at Sinister’s orphanage. That’s a deep cut. it will be interesting how Paknadel interprets what happened to her at the end of that story. At the end of the story, she’s kidnapped by Sinister and when Scott sees her next. she’s cold and rude to him. Many readers interpreted that as Robyn being brainwashed. But Claremont apparently intended that Sinister put her in a suspended animation thingie and replaced her with a clone.
“Yoo has said that the original idea for the book was Doug’s former New Mutants teammates going to confront him.”
That explains how we at least got Dani, Sam, and Roberto in the title, even if Roberto is a stooge for Revelation. With Illyana otherwise engaged, and Warlock used to produce the X-Virus… well, I can excuse the lack of Xuan and Amara given that Doug and Xuan rarely overlapped tenures on the team and I don’t recall any significant character chemistry with Amara.
But where the heck has -Rahne- been in AoR? Heck, where’s she been since the fall of Krakoa? I can’t even recall. And she’s one of the ones most likely to want to talk sense into Doug.
But… X-Vengers. Sure. I’m sorry, but I just can’t get over the idea of turning normal people into mutants. Implanting an x-gene or whatever doesn’t make you a real mutant, just a mutate. Black Widow with water powers doesn’t feel like a mutant in the least. Shang-Chi with glass powers is still just Shang-Chi with extra (anyone remember his multiple bodies power? Anyone?).
And once again, as the event winds down, I’m just left underwhelmed and/or baffled by so many of the tie-in stories. And I dearly hope Marvel doesn’t try to pull any “oh ho ho, all these things we hinted at, we shall now try to work into the main timeline.” I don’t want to see Rogue Red/Green, or meet Zane or Lyrebird in present day. It would be as annoying as when DC kept trying to push the needle towards Kingdom Come.
It’s actually kind of funny. Age of Apocalypse had all of these characters that were so popular they were brought over to the main universe. Age of X-Man was so unpopular it took characters such as Kid Apocalypse out of the universe. I think odds are this will be the same, rather than Lyrebird and co. appearing, I think Doug will disappear.
(I don’t know how popular Kid Apocalypse was. I liked him, and that rapper guy used his cosplay. But maybe everyone else hated him.)
It may be for the best if AoR proves so unpopular that no characters are brought over, as everyone brought into the Earth-616 from the AOA only hurt everything they touched.
Hey? Remember that classic topical story Chris Claremont wrote about apartheid? Well, wouldn’t it be better if a fat thing with a long tongue was responsible for the mutate procedure?
Well, what about the Morlocks? What’s that? They’ve served no purpose since the Mutant Massacre and need to go away? Wait until you find out they were created by the Beast! The evil one from the AOA. Oh, and that “Mutant Massacre” storyline that Claremont didn’t get around to explaining? How about Sinister wanted to wipe them out because he somehow knew they were the result of another mad geneticist’s experiments?
Oh, and you like one Cable? What if there was a cooler version of him? What does he do without the TO-virus? He pines after having sex with his genetic mother, of course. For like 60 freakin’ issues.
Then, there’s some guy with an un-PC name. Outside of that issue…I guess he was pretty harmless.
@Si- What happened with Evan was bizarre. Seeley killed him off in Age of X-Man intending for him to be resurrected on Krakoa. Then later writers did a story about clones being banned from resurrection on Krakoa. Then Ayala did a story where Hope made it clear that the Five would resurrect clones no matter what the Quiet Council ruled and Evan was specifically said to be eligible for resurrection. Then Ayala left New Mutants and since then no one has bothered to follow up on whether or not Evan was actually resurrected.
@Michael
I mean, it’s basically a case of “no writers were interested in him”, same as any number of other characters who could have shown up and didn’t.
Officially, per Brevoort, everyone you’ve heard of was brought back at the end of Krakoa and didn’t stay on White Hot Krakoa (+ aren’t 10-15 years older for being resurrected during the timeskip) unless explicitly specified otherwise in-story.
“(I don’t know how popular Kid Apocalypse was. I liked him, and that rapper guy used his cosplay. But maybe everyone else hated him.)”
Oh yeah, I liked Kid Apocalypse. Like just about everyone, I thought UNCANNY X-FORCE was a good time, and then I found him to be a fun addition to Aaron’s cast of students in WOLVERINE & THE X-MEN.
I noticed he was popping up in other stuff after that but didn’t read any of it.
@SanityorMadness- I think that both Evan and Dark Beast were made redundant by the Krakoan era. Evan was created as a good Apocalypse but the actual Apocalypse was the X-Men’s ally during the Krakoan era. Similarly, Dark Beast was created as an evil Beast. but, as Sinister put it, during the Krakoan era, Dark Beast wasn’t even the darkest Beast anymore.
“Yoo has said that the original idea for the book was Doug’s former New Mutants teammates going to confront him. But then Marvel insisted it be an Avengers book. You can tell the original idea would have worked better.”
And I would have bought it, so that’s another difference.
“I don’t recall any significant character chemistry with Amara.”
Doug nearly killed her that one time, if that counts. Although, I’m not sure if that would make her want to save him or kill him and finally be done with evil Dougs forever.
“But where the heck has -Rahne- been in AoR?”
Rahne weirdly drops out of the New Mutants circle pretty often, and almost never interacts/confronts the people you’d think she would, like Doug or Moira. I guess she was on Ayala’s NM team during Krakoa…
Rhane not being in x-force due to x-factor and wxcalibur and then being in x-factor investigations for the 1st reunion run during utopia, might be why she gets left out new mutants gatherings
Wolfsbane would be a difficult character to use in the modern day. Her shtick was to be the repressed little girl battling the wild and free feeling of her power. But she’s an adult now, not hung up so much on fundamentalism. Some writers have tried to have her battling her savage nature, but that just makes ger generic, and really doesn’t fit with the way she was at her peak popularity.
And there’s the added issue that her power is now to turn into five werewolves. What the hell do you do with that in a serious comic?
None of this is to say she’s unusable, but I imagine most writers just wouldn’t bother.
@Si, and yet a guy who shoots out beams from the force dimension is getting a solo
@Si- That was Cullen Bunn’s idea in X-Men: Blue 7-9. He explained it as a secondary mutation. Bunn had Wolfsbane and Firestar working for Emma while she was collaborating with Hydra during Secret Empire to create New Tian. It was horribly out of character- if Emma suggested to them collaborating with Hydra, she’d better be in diamond form to protect herself from wolf-bites and microwave blasts. And in Firestar’s case. everyone has ignored it since. They should have done the same with Rahne.
Alastair is right, though- it’s amazing how little Rahne was in New Mutants-related projects between X-tinction Agenda and the Krakoan era New Mutants title. She was in New Mutants: Truth or Death 1-3, New Mutants vol.2 9-13 and New Mutants: Dead Souls 1-6. And that’s pretty much it.
“And there’s the added issue that her power is now to turn into five werewolves. What the hell do you do with that in a serious comic?”
Hold on. I see potential there.
She’s five werewolves now? Then you start by having her change her codename from Wolfsbane to Wolfpack (I never liked Wolfsbane as a name for a werewolf character anyway. It’s like Superman calling himself Kryptonite).
Next, you give each of the five werewolves that she splits into a different personality. So, you have: shy wallflower werewolf, wild party girl werewolf, prankster goofball werewolf, gloomy brooding werewolf, and Rachel.
What’s Rachel werewolf all about, you ask? I don’t know. Or maybe I do, but I’m not saying. Bet you’re curious, though.
See? Potential.
Michael> Bunn had Wolfsbane and Firestar working for Emma while she was collaborating with Hydra during Secret Empire to create New Tian. It was horribly out of character- if Emma suggested to them collaborating with Hydra, she’d better be in diamond form to protect herself from wolf-bites and microwave blasts.
Wasn’t New Tian “officially” in opposition to HYDRA? Hydra-Cap sold it to Magneto as something he would tolerate until he had the rest of the USA subdued, and then it would be up to New Tian to hold HYDRA off.
Each wolf could be a different color like the Rainbow Lantern Corps. Or the pride flag. Or the Care Bears!
“given that Doug and Xuan rarely overlapped tenures on the team”
They were on the team together from roughly #34 to #54, so 20 issues of that title plus a few more annuals and specials.
“Age of Apocalypse had all of these characters that were so popular they were brought over to the main universe”
Were any of them really popular, though?
@Thom – Now we’re cooking.
Or, they could be a rock band and have catchy nicknames like… I don’t know, off the top of my head, maybe Scary Wolf, Sporty Wolf, Baby Wolf, Ginger Wolf, and Posh Wolf.
Better than Maximus Lobo.
@wwk5d- Nate Grey’s series lasted 75 issues, so I’d say he was relatively popular. Dark Beast was also used a lot as a villain by the writers- the problem, as noted above, was that the more evil the real Beast became, the more Dark Beast seemed redundant.
Well, one of the problems with Rahne is that she had a relationship with one of her teenage students. I’m sure there are all sorts of excuses that can be given, but that’s unfortunately a Hank Pym moment for her.
“”given that Doug and Xuan rarely overlapped tenures on the team”
They were on the team together from roughly #34 to #54, so 20 issues of that title plus a few more annuals and specials.“
Yeah, a stretch that included the entire team dying and being resurrected by the Beyonder, Mutant Massacre, a rematch against Legion, fight against the Magis which saw the team split in half for time travel, and some solo stories, as well as the Asgardian adventure. True, that’s some pretty major stuff, but I don’t recall Doug having much of a bond with either Xuan or Amara for all that.
Meanwhile, Rahne had some pretty heavy baggage following Doug’s death, but that all seems to have fallen by the wayside since his return. I know, a lot of time has passed…
To be honest, some of the New Mutants really don’t seem all that well connected to the team since their original tenure. Amara, Rahne, Xuan have all spent far more significant amounts of time written out of the team, or don’t seem to share in the same sort of group identity. The former X-Terminators like Rusty, Skids, Rictor and Boom-Boom are mixed, but sometimes feel more associated with X-Force than New Mutants.
I’d say that after all these years, the ones most considered New Mutants (and who’d show up for reunions) are Dani, Rahne, Sam, Roberto, Doug, Warlock and Illyan. -Maybe- Rictor, Amara, Xuan and Boom-Boom but no promises.
The less said about Rahne’s Wolfpack mutation the better.
“The less said about Rahne’s Wolfpack mutation the better.”
I disagree. The *more* said the better, I say.
Rahne could swipe the Cuckoos’ shtick, call herself “The Five-in-Wolf” and name her wolves Esme, Sophie, Phoebe, Celeste, and… Rachel.
Dani, Rahne, Sam, and Roberto seem like the core of the NM team to me, with the other O9 characters orbiting around them in different constellations.
Xuan had a different relationship with Xavier, was raising children, and was “killed” early, so it was hard for her to connect with the other students. Amara never tried very hard to fit in and left for the Hellions.
I’d argue there’s still lots of juice left in the O9 characters for a good writer to squeeze, but I’m not sure anyone’s interested in a New Mutants reunion at this point. Also, Doug’s close to ruined now. Once you’ve done an “I took over the future” arc, you’re pretty much done.
—-
Honestly, The Wolfpack would be a decent band name. And I bet they’d have killer synchronized choreography.
@Thom H- The question is whether Doug had decided to turn the Earth into Ego at the point when Future Scott and Present Scott were swapped. If he hadn’t decided to turn the Earth into Ego yet, then he can’t be blamed for something he hasn’t done yet.
“Dani, Rahne, Sam, and Roberto seem like the core of the NM team to me, with the other O9 characters orbiting around them in different constellations.”
I feel almost similarly. The four you mentioned are indeed the core to me, with Xuan, Amara, Illyana, Warlock, and Doug in close orbit around them. The Claremont Nine. Those are the New Mutants to me.
But the X-Terminator kids I have a hard time thinking of as New Mutants. I know they were integrated into the main cast, but I see them as the “Titans West” of the New Mutants. They feel more like a spin-off group to me.
The X-Terminators pretty much were a spinoff group. Rusty and Skids were essentially never New Mutants (lasting a mere 11 issues). Rictor and Boom-Boom were late stage members for a while,but the team never felt the same under Simonson.
It doesn’t help that Xuan kept getting written out while Illyana, Doug and Warlock spent extended periods dead.
I have to wonder sometimes why Xuan was constantly removed. Too many psychics along with Dani? Not dynamic enough? Her personal issues (parenting her siblings)making her feel too old for the rest of the team? Claremont just not having any good ideas? I’m sure the answers are out there but…
“ Also, Doug’s close to ruined now. Once you’ve done an “I took over the future” arc, you’re pretty much done.”
Poor Doug. So many ways in which he could have been immensely useful and respected as a translator, historian, scholar, diplomat, but he had to be a child soldier instead.
@Moo, the Other Michael- I’d definitely say that Boom-Boom counts as a sort-of New Mutant. She was a love interest for both Sam and Bobby.
Rictor is a little less clear. He DID interact extensively with Sam and Bobby in X-Force.
@Moo: Yeah, that’s exactly what I meant. “New Mutants West” is a good way to think about the later (non-O9) characters.
@The Other Michael: Along with the reasons you mentioned, I think Claremont quickly realized he liked Dani best and wanted to put her front and center, which is hard when there’s another team leader. So out went Xuan.
I’m not sure why she was written out the second time. That was around the time Claremont was dismantling the longtime X-Men team, too, so maybe he was just interested in seeing what would happen if he scattered all the mutants a little bit?
Or maybe because of Xuan’s prior history with the Shadow King, she was being removed to be part of Claremont’s aborted Mutant Wars plot, and she would have come back around later?
Karma’s power is a problem because either she possesses the bad guy and the fight is over or she doesn’t possess the bad guy and she’s useless. Claremont came up with ways around this, like when she possessed Legion in New Mutants 44, but gets slapped by a woman to break her concentration, so Legion is no longer under her possession. Though why she didn’t possess him again, well, there’s no good answer there.
I also thought she was written out of New Mutants so Claremont could use her in Wolverine, but he wasn’t on Wolverine for that long.
Also, keeping her away from things, so we can ignore that the Shadow King used to need her power to possess someone (though he took over the corpse of Jacob Reisz) might have been an idea. How much of a threat can he be if Karma beat him pretty much all by herself? But of course, that was when he was Amahl Farouk, and not this ancient psychic entity. Farouk was better!
Though Farouk did possess Doug in New Mutants 34, so we can claim that there was a tiny, tiny piece of Shadow King in him ever since that moment, and that’s the excuse Doug does the Age of Doug. Tom Brevoort, I’ve saved your terrible crossover.
Warlock only died at the end of New Mutants, but he suffered when anybody but Bill Sienkiewicz tried to draw him. Alan Davis could do a pretty good job, but he is a heavy lift for anyone other than Sienkiewicz. I think he also started fading into the background after Doug died? I didn’t stick around for that much after that happened, Louise Simonson’s New Mutants wasn’t the book that I wanted.
Sam-You missed the most unintentionally hilarious yet also incredibly disturbing New Mutants story, where Warlock possessed the corpse of Doug in order to learn about death…even though Warlock was already shown to
understand the concept fairly well. It was truly Weekend at Bernie’s meets Pet Semetary in a crossover no one ever asked for but somehow needed to happen.
@Sam- the problem with the idea that Karma was written out of New Mutants so she could appear in Wolverine is that there was no planned Wolverine series when Karma was written out. Claremont didn’t want a Wolverine series because he thought it would lead to overexposure and Shooter backed him up even though the higher ups wanted one. But after Shooter was fired, DeFalco approved a Wolverine series. Shooter was still editor-in-chief when Karma left.
Karma’s being written out is odd. She was written out to go looking for her missing siblings Leong and Nag but Claremont never clearly explained what happened to them. Supposedly. their fate was supposed to be resolved in a sequel to the original Fallen Angels series but the sequel never came out, so we never got an explanation as to what happened to them. I have no clue if her written out had to do with the second Fallen Angels series since she was written out during the first Fallen Angels series.
There’s no need to explain why Doug does Age of Doug by grasping at Shadow King. He’s been transformed by Apocalypse. This has, to my knowledge, always involved some form of brainwashing (Angel, Caliban, Wolverine, Gambit, Polaris, Sunfire, take your pick). With Doug’s it’s just been a little more subtle. There’s your explanation.
“I’d definitely say that Boom-Boom counts as a sort-of New Mutant.”
@Michael – I’m not saying she doesn’t count. She was on the team, after all. She counts at least technically speaking.
She just doesn’t come to mind when I think of the New Mutants. Like, at all. I associate Tabitha more strongly with books like X-Factor and X-Force than I do The New Mutants. Yes, she dated both Sam and Roberto, but as I said, that incarnation of the group felt more like a spin-off group to me, even though it wasn’t.
Xuan was probably written out of New Mutants for all of the reasons mentioned above. She was an odd fit with the rest of the group, and her power was boring. I’m glad later writers figured out what to do with her.
I agree that Dani, Sam, Bobby, and Rahne are core New Mutants. I include Illyana with that group, given how often she had the spot light in the Claremont issues. Magik became the breakout member of the team and joined the X-Men years later because she has the most going on outside of the New Mutants. She still comes back when there’s a new iteration of the title starring the Claremont cast, however.
“…and her power was boring.”
@Mike Loughlin- I mean, New Teen Titans had Jericho who basically had the same shtick as Karma and he was a series regular for seven years. His power was dramatized more effectively, though. Usually involving a tight close-up of his eyes going dark accompanied by the narration “Contact”.
Jericho’s advantage is that he actually merged with the people he was possessing, unlike Xuan, so no worries about dealing with her motionless, defenseless body somewhere in the background.
Of course, outright possession and mind control is such a dodgy power in terms of consent and usage that it’s usually best left to villains. How many times were Xuan or Dani’s victims left screaming in outrage after being possessed or having their greatest fears flung at them? Yeah, that may be a reason, beyond “it’s boring for the artist to draw psychics standing around” by these sorts of characters either get written out or their powers altered for something more dynamic.
I was just considering a theory that Amara for all her time on the team, got diminished development, then got written out and rarely comes back as part of the New Mutants, because she just didn’t fit in. Backstory? Insane and nonsense. Powers? Visually awesome but ironically -too- high a level for the rest of the team.
Yeah, superstrength and flight with smashing, a werewolf, a psychic, later a teleporter with limited magical gifts, a translator and an alien robot–all nice but limited in some ways compared to “can summon volcanos and level cities.” Writers may have struggled to find situations which offered appropriate threat and response for a team with the likes of both Doug and Amara.
Sure, the X-Terminators, with Rictor and Boom-Boom, were flashy, dynamic, and powerful, but that was late stage, end of the ’80s/early ’90s, action movie era and it was a far different team and feel. Maybe a lava girl would have fit in better with X-Force if she hadn’t been written out ages ago.
Amara’s powers are too specialist. She’s someone you call in either when you’re up against Sentinels or a villain you actually don’t mind mailing and/or killing.
But in most cases, the superheroes are up against living, breathing people whom they’d prefer to defeat without causing them any permanent damage. Amara is useless in those situations because all she does is lava, and lava doesn’t have a stun setting. It’s fucking lava. It’s destructive shit.
So, if she can’t use her powers, what is she meant to do? Recite her backstory to the villain and hope to get a sucker punch on him while he’s buckled over laughing?
I always thought of Amara’s lack of subtlety as a positive feature of the character. She had that “if I get upset, I can alter things for miles around” vibe that Storm originally did.
She, Bobby, Sam, and Illyana had the most to learn in terms of controlling their powers. But Claremont just got bored with Amara, I guess. Too bad. I can think of multiple ways to use her powerset in subtle ways.
Storm’s lack of control could lead to massive damage, but she was also able to stop the inclement weather she had unleashed. Amara’s power, on the other hand, causes a volcano to arise. “Gee, you stopped those bank robbers who had stolen a few thousand dollars. Sure, you caused millions and millions in dollars of damage, and we have no idea how to clean up the entire mess you made of the town. Well…uhh, thanks?”.
Amara’s powers, once again, would have a positive aspect (much like Storm) in a non-violent scenario, in that she could sense coming earthquakes and help people. Of course, mutants don’t do that, so Magma was more of a threat and a liability for the mutant cause than a positive for the X-teams.
“I can think of multiple ways to use her powerset in subtle ways.”
Really? I’d love to hear just two or three of them. Ways in which she’d actually be useful to a superhero team that isn’t trying to kill anyone or cause massive property damage.
“Nate Grey’s series lasted 75 issues, so I’d say he was relatively popular.”
I wonder how much of that was people buying out of a sense of completism, given how even at the time many people thought it was a lackluster title. Other than a small vocal fandom, not that many people seemed sad when the title was canceled.
With regards to the X-Factor wards, Boom Boom and Rictor I do tend to associate with the New Mutants, given that they actually spent a decent amount of time as members. Rusty and Skids not so much, as they only spend a few adventures with the NM before Louise Simonson splits them off from the main group and has them doing their own thing. But technically all 4 of them count as New Mutants member.
Even with all that however I do tend to associate Boom Boom and Rictor with X-Force more than I would the New Mutants.
If Alex Summers can shoot plasma blasts at people and they aren’t irreparably maimed, then Amara can shoot lava bolts at them. There was also a lot of shaking earthquakes that seemed to cause no damage in NYC, thanks to her. Maybe it’s because Manhattan was loose from the time Hercules moved it.
As for Nate Grey’s series, well, 75 issues puts him in at least the top 5 of solo X-characters in series, right? Wolverine, Cable, Deadpool (I know it’s always iffy on whether he’s an X-character or not), and is there anyone else? If you disqualify Deadpool, does that put him in the top 3?
@Sam – Alex’s power involves comic book science dictating that he can lower the power of his plasma bolts. It’s nonsense, but it’s nonsense that you can largely get away with.
But lava is lava. Everyone knows what lava is and what it does. It’s molten rock. There’s not a lot of wiggle room there. Also, unlike with Alex, there’s nothing written in any story that Amara’s ever been in nor in any handbook entry that indicates Amara is capable of emitting “low powered lava”.
Yes, X-Man is the third most popular X-character after Wolverine and Cable. If only they’d involve more mutant characters with incest, surely Marvel could create a lot more breakout star X-characters.
“If Alex Summers can shoot plasma blasts at people and they aren’t irreparably maimed, then Amara can shoot lava bolts at them.”
This, for one. Her lava blasts are effectively the same as a fire-powered character’s flame blasts. And those are shrugged off pretty regularly by invulnerable characters. Or hit a forcefield. Or get countered by cold powers.
But my main point is that with some control, she could do more subtle stuff. Like form a lava moat around the bad guys so they don’t run away.
I assume her body is hot when she’s in lava form, so what if she could just make her hands lava-y and melt stuff? Like locks to get into a villain’s lair. Or some bank robbers’ getaway car.
She could burn a tunnel underground to pop up unexpectedly. Or walk through walls while being held captive.
Or she could form a minor lava flow and heat up/melt something down a hill from where she is. Iceman’s done similar stuff with ice…trails(?) before.
She could cause a minor tremor to knock an opponent off their feet.
I mean, with some combo of the above, she could take on half of Freedom Force without hurting anyone. Before she got conked in the head by Spiral or something.
Does she even physically have to be solid while she’s all magma’d up? Again like Iceman, she could be shot through and recover.
I don’t know. That’s just a few things, but that all sounds useful to me. I don’t think there was ever a rule that she has to create a volcano when she uses her powers. Or if there was, there doesn’t have to be because she also creates lava with her hands.
“And those are shrugged off pretty regularly by invulnerable characters.”
Yes, well invulnerable characters tend to be rather good at shrugging things off.
So, her lava bolts either do significant and possibly fatal damage to an opponent (when they’re not invulnerable), or they’re ineffective (when they are invulnerable).
The other ideas you mentioned sound interesting, but they still make Amara largely unsuited for urban deployment. Iceman makes an ice bridge on 5th Avenue and so what? It’ll melt. Amara makes a lava moat? That’s not going to go over very well.
I will say this about Amara, however. She’s certainly got the whole volcano shtick down to a tee. Her entire publishing history is marked by brief periods of activity followed by long periods of dormancy.
I think it depends on how much readers care (or a writer cares) about the effects of a superhero battle in New York.
The Human Torch shoots fireballs all over the place on a regular basis (or he used to when he lived there) and we don’t cut to flaming garbage cans and convenience stores and poodles after the fact.
And a lava moat would eventually just turn into a ring of uneven rock. It’s a paving issue at most. That is, if anyone even tried to explore more subtle applications of Amara’s powers.
But I’ll stop now. I obviously care way too much about a minor X-character who was neglected 40 years ago.