DNX #1 annotations
DNX #1
Writer: Jed MacKay
Artist: Federico Vicentini
Colour artist: David Curiel
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
COVER: The X-Men and the Fantastic Four facing the camera, basically. The art is by Kaare Andrews.
DNX is a crossover running through this five-issue miniseries, X-Men #37-41 and Fantastic Four #17-18. X-Men #37 also comes out this week.
This feels like a story more suited to the scene-by-scene format, so let’s go with that. I’ll use the story pages, since Amazon’s reader still persists in listing every comic as starting at page 2.
PAGE 1. Cyclops recaps the Age of Revelation.
This page is essentially a recap of the “Age of Revelation” event, set mostly in a future timeline in which Revelation had released a “X-Virus” that turned some humans into mutants, and killed the rest. The future Cyclops and Beast attempted to swap minds with their present-day counterparts in order to kill Revelation before any of this could happen, but accidentally swapped places with the original Beast – the Chairman of 3K – instead.
None of what Cyclops is saying here is news to his team – he already told them about his experiences in the Age of Revelation in issue #25.
PAGE 2. Cyclops briefs the X-Men in Philadelphia.
Philadelphia was indeed the place where the X-Virus was first released by Revelation, as established in X-Men: Age of Revelation #0. However, the X-Men’s immediate concern is that the Chairman has been able to replicate the X-Virus using the knowledge he gained in the future. In X-Men #36, the Chairman attacked Magneto to obtain DNA samples from him, believed to contain coded information that had been sent back from the Age of Revelation.
Psylocke rightly points out that this is a different series of events and that there’s no inherent reason why 3K should go for the same location. Cyclops is convinced that the Chairman will feel drawn to go for Philadephia anyway, because of “his own sense of dramatic symmetry”. I’m not sure that’s really a major feature of the traditional Beast character, but it makes some sense for the Chairman and his sense of destiny. In the next scene, the Chairman does indeed take that position – he seems to be arguing that he’s trying to seize control of the events that worked for Revelation in the AoR timeline.
Interestingly, the inexperienced Animalia has made it into this field team (yet the rather more qualified Xorn hasn’t).
PAGES 3-4. 3K on their cloaked headquarters.
3K have always been a fractious outfit – X-Men #24 shows Astra and Cassandra Nova nearly killing one another in the Chairman’s absence. He seemed to be able to reassert control when he returned to the present, but he’s clearly having trouble keeping them in line here. Wyre’s claim that he only wants “a more interesting future” comes from the same issue.
It seems to be the act of flying over Philadelphia while cloaked that Astra and Cassandra regard as stupid, rather than the choice of Philadelphia as a location for the X-Virus release.
As the Chairman points out, Wyre has started talking about the 3K X-Men as specifically his team, rather than 3K’s team. He is indeed responsible for training them. In X-Men #36, the 3K X-Men had been placed under the command of Joseph (loyal to Astra) and Wyre wasn’t present, so he may well be reacting to that.
PAGES 5-7. Beast and Mr Fantastic discuss Magneto.
The other guy with them is Ben Liu, though he doesn’t get any dialogue in this scene.
Magneto was injured by the Chairman in X-Men #36. That issue also established that Magneto and Beast were working on the theory that Magneto’s degenerative condition was something to do with a message from the AoR future being encoded in his DNA (having rejected the earlier theory that it was something to do with Krakoan resurrection, from the earlier issues of X-Men).
Reed is still treating Magneto as a villain years after his face turn, but he’ll be talked round on that later in the issue. Note that Beast somewhat glosses over the significance of what’s happening in Philadelphia at this stage; this isn’t an entirely candid bid for aid.
Reed’s comment about Magneto being “one of the most dangerous individuals to ever walk this planet” is illustrated by a flashback to him removing Wolverine’s adamantium in X-Men vol 2 #25.
PAGES 8-10. Cyclops continues to brief the X-Men.
Scott says that they’ve been “reacting, not acting”, and that “our enemies have come for us”. Since Age of Revelation, the X-Men tried to take the initiative in hunting down Revelation in X-Men #25, but got derailed by events. X-Men #26-30 was the “Danger Room” arc where the X-Men were hunted by the Beyond Corporation, X-Men #31-33 saw the X-Men reacting to the gravitational anomalies caused by Schwarzchild, X-Men #34 was Juggernaut responding to a controversy about a statue, and X-Men #35-36 was the 3K attack that left Magneto incapacitated.
Cyclops offhandedly mentions an “inside man” in 3K, who isn’t identified in this issue or in the X-Men tie-in. We can obviously rule out the Chairman and Cassandra, given her interactions with Kid Omega. Joseph and Wyre have both been good guys in the past, or another possible candidate might be Myriad, the twin mutant from Merle who Cassandra recruited in X-Men #18 – she doesn’t appear in this story. (Or, as pointed out in the comments, he might simply mean the information they got from Schwarzchild’s mind after getting hold on him in X-Men #36 – that would fit with him still relying on inference as to when 3K are going to attack.)
PAGES 11-13. The Chairman offers drinks to 3K, and Cassandra collapses.
Heidsieck is a champagne house. The 1907 vintage is an oddity: some bottles of it were salvaged in 1998 from the wreck of a Swedish ship that sank in 1916. It’s not something that collectors actually tend to drink (though according to a guy on Reddit who claims to have tried it, it’s still fairly drinkable). For some reason, it seems to have been coloured light green here. No wonder nobody’s willing to drink it.
The Chairman actually seems surprised that his gesture is so badly received – partly because he attaches much more significance to the wine than any of the others do. Note that when Astra (wrongly) accuses him of poisoning it, his first reaction is to protest that he’d never poison a 1907 Heidsieck, before making the rather better point that she didn’t drink it. Wyre correctly identifies that Cassandra has come under psychic attack (confirmed later in the issue).
Cassandra’s reasons for distrusting him make sense – 3K is an alliance of convenience with the skills that the Chairman needed to pursue his goals, but doesn’t that make them expendable once the virus is ready to go?
PAGES 14-15. Hank, Beast and Ben continue to argue.
Ben, who seems to have been willing to hang back up to this point, gets rather more active in Magneto’s defence. He seems to be correct in saying that Reed just doesn’t want to risk being responsible for what Magneto might do in future. Reed’s argument that Magneto is more dangerous than a weapon because he isn’t directed by anyone makes little sense, since Magneto obviously directs himself.
PAGE 16. Kid Omega confronts Cassandra Nova.
The psychic battle is shown in much more detail in X-Men #37.
PAGES 17-19. The X-Men board the 3K ship.
Psylocke has been pressed into serving the communications function that Kid Omega normally serves, because he’s busy dealing with Cassandra. She’s not as powerful a psychic as he is, and presumably finds it a distraction from using her own skills.
Temper’s “Contingency: Pietro” move – which is just to cover the floor in ice – is obviously intended for speedsters in general, and named after Quicksilver.
Timebomb seemed to present herself as a rival to Schwarzchild when the 3K X-Men first appeared, and didn’t seem terribly happy about Joseph being foisted on them as a replacement leader in X-Men #36. So Cyclops’ theory that she’s trying to put herself forward as leadership material by attacking without waiting for the rest of her team does make sense.
PAGES 20-23. Sue persuades Reed to help restore Magneto.
Beast’s pitch to Reed focuses both on Magneto’s symbolic importance to mutant culture, and on his return from the dead with a focus on oppression more generally (in Resurrection of Magneto).
Sue seems much more willing to take Magneto’s change of heart at face value, but also rightly identifies that this seems to be a sideshow compared to the Philadelphia thing that Beast glossed over earlier in the story. It’s only when pressed on this that Beast reveals that he thinks Magneto’s problems stem from the message that’s been added to his DNA, and that he wants Reed to help extract it. (Was he hoping to somehow get Reed to do this without clearly explaining why?)
PAGES 24-25. Ben and Johnny attack 3K.
Sue has already despatched them to Philadelphia in advance of finding out what the problem is.
Like Cassandra, Astra doesn’t trust the Chairman not to kill his allies, and refuses to let her bodyguard Joseph leave her side. The Chairman seems infuriated and baffled that nobody trusts him – his own treatment of Schwarzchild, who was booted out of 3K and seemingly killed, might be contributing to his management problems here.
Did anything actually happen in this issue? I didn’t buy it, but it sounds like one could easily skip this first issue and not have missed any information for the wider crossover. Everything contained within seems like recap material of earlier stories. I guess it is DNX #1, but it’s also the culmination of a story that’s been running in MacKay’s X-Men since the beginning (continuing into X-Men #37-41, which seems like it could turn away any of those new readers), and $6 seems like a lot of money to charge for a recap story. Wouldn’t it make sense to have something happen to greatly raise the stakes by the end of the first issue to bring readers back? A twelve-chapter event seems a lot to ask of the barebones plot revealed in this first issue, seems like a lot of decompression will be needed to pad out 12 issues of this.
Maybe I am just so bitter because my beloved FF (one of the few Marvel titles I do read) has been needlessly sucked into this for two issues.
“Joseph and Wyre have both been good guys in the past,”
That was a different Joseph.
I think the “inside man” is Schwarzchild- the Chairman doesn’t know Schwarzchild survived and therefore never bothered to change the codes.
It’s odd that Reed is so insistent that they not restore Magneto’s powers, when Reed admits that they’ve helped more dangerous people. Maybe Reed still hasn’t forgiven Xavier and Magneto for the events of the X-Men/ Fantastic Four series.
Note that this issue confirms that Magneto’s affliction stems from the message that Future Beast sent back in time in an effort to stop the Chariman.
Note that this story seemingly takes place after Armageddon, since Johnny still has his mustache in that story.
Come on, Reed. Charles Xavier’s dangerous world-endangering ex-boyfriend deserves the same help and trust you’ve given your dangerous world-endangering ex-boyfriend in the past
Come on, Reed. Charles Xavier’s dangerous world-endangering ex-boyfriend deserves the same help and trust you’ve given your dangerous world-endangering ex-boyfriend in the past
I love how we simultaneously have Armageddon, DMX, Queen in Black and Infernal Hulk War going on, but have to somehow figure out what order they take place based on the context of Johnny Storm’s facial hair.
I also love how in the same week, we have Pittsburgh nearly destroyed by nukes in Armageddon, and Philadelphia menaced by 3K’s mutant virus in DMX. Did the state of Pennsylvania piss someone at Marvel off or something?
Reed’s attitude is probably informed by the Krakoa Era to an extent, but his points are rather solid. What weirds me a bit is having this Hank of all people making a case that is so flimsy as well as disconnected from his direct experience.
TLDR: I still don’t understand why Magneto keeps being excused.
The obvious conflict in Reed’s mind is bound to be a high point of this event. I also like Sue’s behavior, down to her calling out Reed’s ultimate decision.
You gotta love the self-confidence of a team that learns that the X-Men are in possible danger and immediately sends half of their full roster in advance to start the confrontation on their own – apparently without even having a rough idea of how many foes there are or which abilities they command, or making some attempt at coordinating with the nearby X-Men. It is such a daring move that it ought to put 3K somewhat off-balance for that reason alone. Maybe Sue is counting on the X-Men having at least one telepath present to perceive their spearhead and communicate with their field leader?
Overall, nice to see McKay dwelling on writing the FF. He remains a good character writer, even when lacking full control over those characters.
I sincerely haven’t decided how I feel about the strong indications in X-Men #37 that Quentin does not remember his old age shenanigans in Ben Percy’s X-Force. On the one hand that was an awful and pointless storyline and his aging and magical rejuvenation were among the worst parts of it; on the other hand, that was also where the Chairman originated, so it can’t have been discarded outright.
In hindsight, I think it was a mistake to unify everything this book was doing and building towards around 3K from day one. Like, the whole book has been around this one mystery. MacKay has been doing competent work but I think the focus has been a bit narrow. It’s really hard to care about a villain I just learned about for forty issues when I just know I’m never going to hear from them again very soon.
@The Other Michael- In fairness, I think that Queen in Black and Infernal Hulk War are supposed to take place before Armageddon because of Carol. Armageddon 4 made a big deal of Carol getting caught in an explosion that was designed to kill Colton. In the previews for Avengers 1, Carol’s hair is shorter and she doesn’t seem to be flying. My guess is that the explosion affected Carol somehow but we’ll see next month.
@Josh
Sorry, but I am not following. Are you saying that forty issues are too little to build a meaningful perception and opinion about villain characters?
Johnny Storm didn’t cut off his moustache, did he?
@Si- Yes, he did, in Fantastic Four 15.
And the fandom rejoiced!
@Luis: “TLDR: I still don’t understand why Magneto keeps being excused.”
Magneto’s been mostly an X-Men ally for a few decades of publication now, but sooner or later somebody could probably get a good story out of pointing out how much of that has been the X-Men moving in Magneto’s direction rather than the other way around. Certainly, Krakoa was far closer to Magneto’s vision for mutants than Xavier’s.
He’s never going to revert back to his Silver Age status quo, but I do think we’re due for some pushback against Magneto as an unquestioned good guy. IMO he’d still work better as a dangerous wild card than a guy who can hang out around the base and be treated like anybody else on the team.
Yes for Magneto as a wild card. I wouldn’t even mind if he was a friend and ally to the X-Men, but the world at large still despised him. Did he ever atone for telling the entire population of Earth that he was their new god? Just the communication alone, I remember when everyone got furious when Apple downloaded a U2 song on their phones without asking, this guy was dropping blasphemous diatribes into everyone’s actual brain.
No for Johnny losing the stache. I’m a fervent supporter of facial hair in comics, Richards, Wagner, Chief Judge McGruder, and the fact that he largely grew his to annoy his sister just makes him more human. Though Humberto Ramos was getting a bit out of control drawing the sheer size of the thing.
@Si- Facial hair works on some characters. Shaving Hercules’s beard was a mistake during the 90s. And Strange works best with a mustache.
But a mustache just doesn’t work with Johnny.
@Luis Dantas
Sorry, if I wasn’t clear. I was saying that generally speaking the sole focus of this run has been 3K. I think MacKay is doing a good job overall but I don’t care as much as I want to. I think there’s a lot of reasons but one in particular is he mostly structured all the stakes of this series around just 3K, a brand new threat. It might’ve been more effective for the book to widen its scope a bit and then introduce 3K.
@Luis Dantas— totally possible to do it but I don’t think he’s pulling it off.
I would think recent events with Doom, may also have coloured Reed’s opinion of Magneto. He had tried and failed so many times to get Doom to work in the worlds best interest and when he had the power to do she he betrays his own people. So why would he believe that Magneto would stay on the side of the angels.
I like Johnny’s tache it really works with his character and make him stand out group shots.
Why does Kaare Andrews now draw like he’s an intern for 1990s era Extreme Studios? His artwork is astoundingly ugly now, that’s one of the worst “event covers” I’ve ever seen. I used to dig his stuff and now, ew, just not a fan at all.
I had the impression that DNX was going to be another unnecessary crossover that should have stayed as an arc in McKay’s X-Men series, just like Age of Revelation. This first issue did not change my mind and I still don’t understand why the Fantastic Four are now involved other than “eh, why not?”.
I feel so bitter and jaded about the X-books these days, it makes me sad. The Krakoa era did so much work to pull the line out of the muck and now it’s right back down there in Lemire/Guggenheim territory.
It’s an interesting comparison to the first X-Men vs Fantastic Four, in which Reed refused to help cure Shadowcat’s condition at the time. At least during that time, Reed could be excused as he was having a crisis of confidence brought upon him by Doom. Here, he just seems elitist or downright out of character.
I honestly think the moustache helps Johnny give off “Uncle” vibes now that he’s the only member of the team without kids.
Agreed on that cover. Scott looks like he’s wearing a Cyclops latex mask with a cutout for his actual mouth and chin. Just a bizarre, uninspired choice for a (theoretically) major first issue.
Thank you! That cover is awful. I realize Andrews is constrained by the square format, but the layout is terrible: Lumpy Scott and Reed, a bunch of half faces, and a fiery thumb. Unfortunately, it completely fits the ’90s vibe this era of X-Men has been giving off. Taking a quick gander online, that seems to be Andrews’ style now.
And Johnny’s mustache was perfect. A childish gesture that made him look older. Sometimes distinguished, sometimes a little sleazy. Good character work by North. I hope it’s back again soon.
Andrews is a versatile artists, and I thought he was going for a retro “Mike Allred” style with this cover, and just happened to miss the mark. By a lot.
I feel like ‘Comic Book Covers’ is something Marvel has been struggling with for quite a while now. All the covers are now just bland and generic pin-ups, or just straight-out bad like this one.
Josh-The X-Men titles are having a very difficult time transitioning from Krakoa (featuring all mutants on the same side, except Sinister as the “big bad” in the end, so now overused) with villains. Gail Simone is focussing on magical threats, which doesn’t fit well with Uncanny X-Men. MacKay has one major threat through his entire run (3K), and that features a copy of one of the X-Men as the leader. Someone is going to have to come along a create a direction for the X-line to give the X-teams a purpose again. Simone is writing whatever she feels like without concern to the future viability of the franchise, and MacKay is writing a self-contained, long-form story which will provide no path forward for Marvel’s mutants when he leaves.
Maximum X-Men feels like a mistake. Somewhere between the post-Heroes Reborn era and Uncanny Avengers.
I’m glad someone mentioned the cover, finally. I agree with everyone else. As if charging $5.99 wasn’t bad enough. As of the first issue being a recap plot wasn’t bad enough. As if extending MacKay’s story-arc to twelve chapters wasn’t bad enough. That cover will surely turn many potential new readers away. There’s nothing about it that says this DNX thing is a must-read event.
@Chris V
Totally agree. I credit MacKay for at least attempting to create a new villain for the X-Men to fight but we all know that nobody is picking up the 3K thread once MacKay is gone. Almost certainly, 3K is being used to create whatever status quo follows it.
I just think MacKay might’ve been better served to start off with 3K separate and then coming together, widening out the focus of the book. But whatever.
re: Maximum X-Men: it feels very Heroes Reborn. The idea of a mutant Avengers has worked from time to time (Uncanny Avengers) and it makes sense as a goal of Xavier’s, but it always fizzles out as it goes along. Fix the line!
Morrison tried to create some new villains on the theme of evolution during their run, but writers immediately had no idea what to do with them after that.
I mean, if I were Cassandra Nova, my #1 priority would be creating havoc, not teaming up with a bunch of mutants who, by the way, I hate because I hate mutants. Remember when she was actually scary?
Have there even been any new villains since Cassandra and Sublime? Danger, maybe. Mutina? Hordeculture? Good lord. Orchis was a good idea, at least, but it wasn’t explored fully.
There was also the Children of the Vault, who sort of slot in alongside Orchis.
Orchis was a great idea for the future villains for the X-franchise, but they were ruined after Hickman left. They were turned into another generic anti-mutant hate group, like the Friends of Humanity or whichever. The problem was that their agenda of post-humanity would eventually break the “world outside your window”, in 2026 anyway. Maybe someday people will bemoan the loss of Orchis as the main villains for the X-teams.
I think the problem with Morrison’s villains is that they suffer from diminishing returns. When Marvel brought Sublime back, he was a generic villain. Nova gets less scary the more we see her used, and even Morrison had her as a member of the future X-Men for his final arc (the Jean Grey School rehabilitated her when she was trapped in the form of Ernst), so I think they saw that Cassandra would only work so long as an effective threat before she became like so many other repeat villains who get defeated multiple times.
Yeah, the X-Men franchise (outside Morrison’s run) has tended to rely on Silver Age or Claremont villains since the mid-‘90s.
Xorn is Joseph. i am convinced of this.
This issue was borderline boring. As someone else mentioned, we already know everything about the plot. I hope there are some curveballs to come. For some reason, the stakes don’t feel very high even though they clearly are. I think it’s partly due to the villains infighting and coming across as incompetent. The Mackay X-men need a shakeup. Hopefully that is coming besides just adding Black Cat.
Oh crap — Children of the Vault! They were another great evolution-themed villain(s). I especially like that you can redesign them every time you use them. Endlessly self-generating costume and power upgrades.
And I get the argument that Cassandra is reformed now, but come on — she planned and executed a genocide. Can’t she try a couple more insanely evil plans before she gets boring for good? She’s seemed so small since Morrison left.
@Chris M — One of the reasons why the FF were involved in this crossover, I was told by someone here in another review article that makes sense, is because FF, like the X-Men line, is senior edited by Tom “The Hat” Brevoort, so it’s under the same editorial control even if MacKay doesn’t write FF.
The other reason, which I speculate, is that FF is still selling very well, like top 20-40, even after Ryan North’s run has gone on for over 45 issues across two volumes. The recent relaunch amid OWUD may have actually helped, which is a rarity. The only other books selling anywhere near as well are ASM, DD, and Black Cat, and none of them would work thematically, especially if curing Magneto is a goal.
Speaking of Tommy B, according to online scuttlebutt, yesterday was the day that about 100 Marvel staffers, including him, had to tell corporate whether they’re moving to California with the company or staying put and leaving/retiring by next year. It’s assumed Brevoort would opt not to move since he declined to join DC a decade ago for similar reasons, but that’s just speculation. Nobody knows what anyone decided yet.
Yes, Johnny’s mustache was removed in FF #25, an anniversary issue (sold a few months early). He did it to trick and defeat Nicholas Scratch, who had summoned a duplicate team of Feral Four which included a clean shaven Human Torch. Ryan North spent about two pages having the rest of the Four gasp in shock and awe, as if Johnny just cut off his arm or leg.
But that wasn’t enough. In the letter column, after fielding the latest of a string of letters from fans asking for it to be removed, Brevoort responded:
“Fine, fine, FINE! Are you all happy now?! Seriously, a 45-issue run for what started out as a single-issue gag is unprecedented. The only question now is: What are we possibly going to fill this page up with now that the great mustache controversy has reaches its inevitable end? Johnny’s ‘Stache: 2023-2026 R.I.P.”
This is the mature fellow who is the senior most editor still involved in daily comic functions. Everyone else with more experience and tenure has left, retired, or died.
I think it’s safe to say that while Brevoort didn’t cause all of the problems the X-Line had when he took it over, he’s done nothing to fix them at best, and at worse made them worse or compounded the problem. His only three professional moves — coast behind a hot writer while doing nothing, spit out spinoffs regardless of sales or reader desire, and present an insulting and condescending attitude to fans in every and all printed or online interactions — have failed. I sincerely hope he chooses not to move to California (especially since nobody’s job is safe from Disney’s new CEO even if they do move). My only lament is the only other publisher left in the remote New York City tri-state area is Dynamite Entertainment, which is in New Jersey, and if he goes there, he’ll find some way to ruin Gargoyles.
As for “fixing the X-Men line,” the problem is the MCU and Disney. They will have a “vision” for it film-wise that editors and writers will likely be told to jive with in a short period of time, so everyone is running on a treadmill until then. But even if that were not true, what would be the REWARD for an enterprising editor/writer team for reinventing the X-Men line? What would they get for, say, coming up with an amazing new hook or premise for the books which made their sales jump high enough to rival or even surpass DC’s Absolute line? What would be the endgame for that?
The MCU would rip it off, make a billion dollars, and they would get JACK SQUAT. DIDDLY, BUPKISS, NADA, ZILCH, ZERO, NOTHING. Disney’s CEO wouldn’t even tell his driver to slow down if they stepped in front of his ride. Disney’s executives wouldn’t spit on them if they were on fire. If they whined enough, they’d get a $5000 non-disclosure “shut up” check which some creators have said on record is an insult. Ed Brubaker more or less said he’s gotten more residuals as an extra in one or two MCU films than he ever got from the comics they ripped off from him to make billions. I doubt anyone is that stupid to hand Marvel any such idea. They’d rather keep it to themselves and try ferrying it to Image once they have a following. That’s the game now, one that Robert Kirkman basically mastered.
Shocked that MacKay would drag the plot out? He took about 3 years on Avengers dragging out the main Kang plot, and the last run of it included, via flashbacks and changed perspectives, about 3-5 issues of the team fighting zombies. Yes, 3-5 issues. And like in X-Men, MacKay invented a counter team of disposable villains nobody liked, the Twilight Court, who were just the Knights of the Round Table cosplaying as superheroes (with a few race-lifts and gender swaps), to go with his main villain Myrddin, who was just Kang from 10 Minutes Ahead cosplaying as Merlin, to get a universal relaunch button. A scheme which literally involved beating himself (or a past self) up. Crossovers, ironically, forced MacKay to occasionally deviate from this plot and every one of those issues was an improvement. But his main plot was garbage, and unfortunately he needs an ACTUAL editor to get the best out of him, not an arrogant crossover rubber stamper fiend like Brevoort is. So the idea that 3K here is running long or heading for an extended finish to me is laughable but predictable.
For the record, Canadian tariffs by our Dear Orange Leader have increased the prices of paper and printing in comics, so Marvel (and IDW) has universally made $4.99 the default price with anything else being an extra buck or two, just because. DC has kept half their line at $3.99 and Image still has too.
The last person who cared about delivering story-for-price-value at Marvel was Bill Jemas. Marvel will gleefully sell a 12 issue crossover event at six bucks a pop and decompress it to death. It’s literally how they make their money. That isn’t a joke. Bleeding Cool released the latest quarterly estimates and revealed that Marvel won in the dollar chart by literally selling higher priced comics. Their 3 best sellers, COMBINED, cannot match Absolute Batman, BTW. https://bleedingcool.com/comics/marvel-beats-dc-comics-in-august-2026-marketshare-in-dollars-spent/
Food for thought.
When you had Claremont, Morrison, and Hickman writing X-Men (or someone like Peter David on X-Factor), it felt more like you were reading a novel. Maybe a series of novels. Really good ones where you were happy to wait a year for the next volume to release.
Modern X-Men comics feel more like you’re reading short stories that will just reset to a new short story when you finish the current arc. There just never feel like there are any stakes, no matter how breathlessly the writers try to convince you otherwise. Everything feels so small scale. They’re distracting enough, but everything feels oddly weightless.
It’s pretty hard to develop compelling antagonists when the story has no compelling themes.
It’s similarly difficult to establish compelling recurring antagonists or to use existing antagonists effectively when a series or franchise is not consistently developing compelling themes to its core premise.
Minor editing mistake; “to its core premise” was meant read “relevant to its core premise” in my previous comment.
AMRG> The last person who cared about delivering story-for-price-value at Marvel was Bill Jemas. Marvel will gleefully sell a 12 issue crossover event at six bucks a pop and decompress it to death.
…what are you talking about, Jemas was the one who pushed for decompression most of all!
That’s the ugliest cover I’ve seen since Jon Bogdanove drew a lumpen Cyclops fighting a blubbery Havok on the cover of X-Factor #60 and Cameron Hodge fighting Cable on #61.
@AMRG- “Nobody knows what anyone decided yet.”
We know that David Bogart is quitting. That’s all so far.
“Bleeding Cool released the latest quarterly estimates and revealed that Marvel won in the dollar chart by literally selling higher priced comics. ”
In fairness, it’s possible that SOME of DC’s books are outselling Marvel because they’re cheaper. That’s not the case for Batman or the Absolutes, though- they’re $4.99.
@Chris V, Josh- Maximum X-Men seems to be there largely because the fans complained that some of these characters weren’t getting enough to do. One of its main purposes seems to be to have a book where Storm can be the leader, since MacKay and Simone don’t want her as the leader in their books and Storm’s fans won’t accept her on a team unless she’s the leader.
Also, fans have been complaining that Betsy and Peter weren’t getting anything to do.
I think that it makes sense from an in-universe standpoint. Everything that happened in Armageddon, including the Avengers disbanding, happened because Wolverine refused to let Colton did like he wanted to and instead saved his life at the cost of putting him in a body that was not made for a human being. It makes sense that the X-Men would try to fill in for the Avengers to the best of their ability.
I don’t understand the timeline though. If there are no Avengers, and Wolverine is filling in on this Maximum X-Men team (presumably when he has free time from his Uncanny X-Men gig), then how is Wolverine also a part of this new Avengers team with Miracleman in November? I mean, it seems weird that Wolverine is on a mutant team to fill in for the loss of the Avengers while Wolverine is quite clearly part of the Avengers.
@Chris V: At least from the marketing, the new new Avengers will be more of an underground team striking enemies from the shadows while the X-Men are facing the public, global threats the Avengers would have taken on before their reputation soured. So it will be the same as when Wolverine was splitting time between the teams before: lots of amphetamines.
Oh boy, he’s going to be up all night writing novels in the style of Philip K. Dick again.
MARTIAN TIME-SNIKT.
The Three Stigmata of Lady Deathstrike
The Transmigration of Katherine Pryde
…We Can Remember It for You Wholesale
@SanityOrMadness — That may be true, but I don’t recall Joe Quesada or anyone else at Marvel going, “You can’t encourage any and all writers to make every arc 6 issues for trades because think of integrity!” at all. Instead they were watching Bendis take 6 issues to write a shopping list in USM and selling gangbusters and envisioning swimming in money vats like Uncle Scrooge. You had Mark Millar and Joe Quesada literally justifying decompression in a filmed bonus feature for the first ULTIMATE AVENGERS DVD in 2006 (though for all I know the segment was filmed in 2005).
Jemas was the last person at Marvel who I recall argued to keep comics priced low, especially for comics aimed at younger readers. That was why USM was one of the last comics to be priced, how quaint, at $2.99 back when that was a debate. It was $2.50 for longer than any other book.
Now? Marvel tacks on a buck for any reason, real or made up, and shrugs. I am sure if Marvel thinks tariffs will justify selling 10 pages for $9.99 they will. They sell $6 JEFF comics to kids and shrug.
I am not making Jemas to be a hero; he wasn’t. I was pointing to the absurdity of HIM being the last major figure in Marvel who gave a single rodent’s rear end about “value to the customer.” Nowadays most Marvel execs can barely hide their contempt for readership. I sincerely think certain things get teased just for spite, like the semi-annual, “No, really, we’re reuniting Peter and MJ” which is always bogus, at least so long as Nick Lowe is senior editor.
@Michael — it is very true that Absolute Batman is $4.99 and so are many books at DC. But they still have about a third or half of their books at $3.99 still (like Supergirl, even during the ill fated film push), whereas Marvel has quietly made $4.99 the floor and will add an extra dollar for funsies whenever they want. IDW has done that too, but they have more excuse. They’re barely 3% of the market and their financial turmoil has been openly written about. Marvel is the feather in Disney’s hat.
And yes, so far all we know is Bogart is gone, after 25 years.
I also may be the only one here actually looking forward to Maximum X-Men. Yes, I agree Wolverine is being spread too thin, ESPECIALLY at a time when his solo series is selling poorly and general interest in him is waning. Yes, this does seem like an exercise in “giving certain characters work,” like they’re actors who need residuals. But Chris Yost can be reliable for a solid actioner and the art looks nice. I’m not interested in MacKay’s bogged down arcs or Simone’s wanna-be Vertigo book (which may as well be called THE OUTLIERS: FEATURING ROGUE & GAMBIT). I don’t expect an Eisner out of Max-X, but I at least expect it to be decent.
Well, Marvel was willing to screw their usual customer base (suppliers, retailers, consumers) after falling sales during the mid-to-late 1990s in order to pursue TPBs as they were trying to get comic books out of the “gutters” and make them mainstream, especially with the movies starting. They thought selling actual books at chain bookstores to people who read actual novels was the future of the business and that overpriced floppies sold in dingy specialty stores to mainly obsessive fanboys was a poor marketing strategy (perhaps to a large part correct, but that’s all superhero comics ended up being left with in the end). Eventually, Marvel was hoping to cut out the monthly comic books, thinking that the TPBs sold through Amazon and displayed at Borders (remember them?) and Barnes and Noble would bring in so many new customers that it would be a new “boom”. In the meantime, they had no problem milking their regular fanbase to purchase four minutes worth of reading material each month at full-price.
Marvel has only continued to get worse since that point. It was always a corporation though. Comics have been overpriced for decades, which is why the youth market has steadily dropped off since the early-‘90s, leading to a tendency of loss in overall sales.
As far as Ultimate Spider-Man, it was also Marvel’s best-selling title, by a lot. Marvel could afford to keep it priced at $2.50 (which is the equivalent of $4.60 with inflation in 2026, by the way; I realize that’s not quite $5 a book) and still make as much profit as the next highest-selling comics priced at $0.50 more.
This isn’t about Jemas one way or the other. Jemas was hired for a certain purpose by Marvel as an outsider figure that promised me to shake up the comic industry and bring the medium into the mainstream.
I concur that Christopher Yost should write something at least decent.
I am, however, reminded of the time Marvel decided to add another X-Men team book to the line-up, Amazing X-Men, which started with a Jason Aaron arc and was then handed over to Yost. It was decent. It might be worth some points at a convention trivia quiz as the first time Firestar was an X-Man.
It was fun for five minutes at a time and that’s the best I can say about it… and I’m kind of expecting Maximum X-Men to be about the same.
(Fingers crossed Maximum X-Men fight a team-up of the Inhuman Maximus and the Austen-era Maximus Lobo. And Mammomax, why not.)
Do Adamantines Dream of Electric Snikt?
@Krzysiek Ceran — I don’t disagree about your estimation. But the bar for me is low.
Let’s be honest; the odds of Maximum X-Men surviving beyond 10 issues are low, and if the sales are horrid it will barely get 5. If it lasts the full ten, that’s two arcs, maybe three if Yost is wise. Even if one is terrible or underwhelming, that’s good enough in today’s climate. I don’t expect it to be more than “fun for 5 minutes,” because it’s unlikely to be on shelves much longer than that.
Besides, some characters like Colossus, Firestar, and Justice could and have done far, far, FAR worse than a standard shallow team-action book where they fight random monsters and Handbook villains.