The X-Axis – w/c 7 August 2023
X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #99. By Alex Segura, Alberto Alburquerque and Pete Pantazis. The end of the Polaris four-parter, which turns out to be pretty straightforward, really. Mesmero wants to prove something because he sees his first encounter with Polaris as the only time he was really an A-lister. For reasons that aren’t exactly clear, he controls Dani and gets her to do the attacking rather than just mind-controlling Lorna directly – um, why is Dani, who actually has psychic powers, an easier target than Lorna? And there’s a fairly routine “overcoming our past” bit at the end. Inoffensive, I guess, but it only touches on any of the themes it raised, and it’s nothing you need to go out of your way to read.
IMMORTAL X-MEN #14. (Annotations here.) Okay, after a slightly shaky start Fall of X seems to be hitting its stride. We’re no longer doing the spotlight issues here – instead, we’re following the former members of the Quiet Council, or at least those who aren’t off in their own books. Professor X is still keeping his silent vigil on Krakoa – and Gillen and Werneck demonstrate that they’re good enough to spend five pages recapping the plot and still make it interesting through the montage approach and the intercutting with his blank reactions. Sebastian Shaw has belatedly figured out that he’s been outwitted by Mother Righteous, because he doesn’t understand magic as well as he thinks he does, and he sets about trying to rectify the situation. And Exodus gets to do… well, I mean, of course his reaction to being dumped in a desert with the civilian population of Krakoa is to do Moses. The guy calls himself Exodus. This is the role he’s always wanted. Moreover… all this does read like a finite story rather than a long-term return to the 198, which is what worried me initially. So that’s reassuring.
CHILDREN OF THE VAULT #1. (Annotations here.) Hey, a logo that doesn’t use the standard X-font! It’s a bit 90s Marvel UK for my taste, but sure, the Children of the Vault shouldn’t have the standard design. Despite the title, this is actually a Cable/Bishop series in which they team up to deal with the threat of the Children of the Vault, who have decided to take over the world in the mutants’ absence by posing as heroes. Why conquer the world when you can make everyone love you with a literal viral idea? It’s a teensy bit parallel-universe – shouldn’t they be registering a bit more in other Fall of X books? – but maybe that’ll come with time. The approach to Cable and Bishop as a duo is a little curious as well, referencing the Cable series but not really committing to just how appalling Bishop was in that book. But… that said, I think I prefer seeing them written as professionals who’ll work together if there’s nobody else around, which is a subtler approach. The Children’s gimmick isn’t entirely novel, but it’s nicely done here, and this feels like a strong start to a series that has its own identity rather than just being part of Fall of X. Quite promising.
GHOST RIDER / WOLVERINE: WEAPONS OF VENGEANCE ALPHA. By Benjamin Percy, Geoff Shaw, Rain Beredo & Travis Lanham. This is the first part of a four-part crossover between Wolverine and Ghost Rider; since Benjamin Percy is the regular writer on both titles, it’s a natural fit. It’s a slightly odd time to be doing it, in the first month of Fall of X, but maybe it’s not a bad move to get Wolverine occupied with something else instead of finding busy work for him. The set-up here is pretty simple: years ago, Wolverine and Ghost Rider fought a demonically possessed kid who was brought to the X-Men Mansion because his carers mistakenly thought he might be mutant. Now the kid is back and they fight him again. Presumably we’ll get some more flashbacks to the previous conflict as this goes along. It’s a surprisingly gentle first issue in many ways, taking us back to the early 80s X-Men and Xavier as straight ahead teacher, with pleasantly understated art. Granted, the kid seems to have managed to visit the X-Men Mansion on a day when all the lightbulbs needed changing, but that’s demonic possession stories for you.
I feel obliged to point out that the chronology here doesn’t seem to work at all. The X-Men references pin this down quite precisely to somewhere around X-Men #139 in 1980. But the Ghost Rider has Roxanne Simpson with him, who was written out of his book in 1978 and didn’t return until 1983 – and spent the period in between as an amnesiac. So, er, yeah, that’s an issue. Maybe magic does weird things to time? But this is very readable and I enjoyed it much more than I was expecting.
LOVE UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #62. By Carola Borelli, Carlos Lopez & Ariana Maher. So we’re doing Rogue and Gambit in a heist-off, and this issue is… maybe a bit heavy on the set-up for an Infinity Comic? But I see where we’re going with this. At first glance Gambit ought to win this hands down, what with thievery being his schtick, and Rogue being a battering ram. But Rogue can do stealthy if she wants – kind of – and more to the point, what’s going to mess up Gambit’s plans is having Rogue running around as an X-factor. Okay, that’s kind of cute. It’s disposable stuff but it feels like writer and artist both get the characters – and that’s the key to this this sort of thing.
Bleeding Cool has important (and confirmed) news on what will happen to the X-Franchise after the onset of the Fall.
https://bleedingcool.com/comics/tom-brevoort-has-been-put-in-charge-of-the-x-men-at-marvel/
I for one am excited.
Reading the short synopsis of the Children of the Vault makes me hope that they’ll pull out a bio-modem, one of the Children will put a pink/magenta sock on their head, and Paul will start transcribing chunks from his Lightning Round podcast in the annotations.
Luis-I’m not sure why this news is exciting. It’s not happening until after “Fall of X” sometime next year. Brevoort doesn’t mention anything about a change of direction or what will come next for the books. It’s not news about a new creative team taking over. It’s a non-story, at this point. It may develop into a more important announcement closer to Brevoort becoming editor.
My hot take – they want a senior and steady hand on the xbooks when they get integrated into the MCU.maybe even have them more closely mirror the MCUv3rsions.
Tom Brevoort was the editor under which the Avengers recovered from their lowest back in 1998. He has lots of common sense.
The one concrete detail we get about story is that Breevort’s X-office will continue Jordan White’s direction. I wouldn’t be surprised if that means staying on Krakoa as others here have suggested. That would definitely make it easier to explain mutants in the MCU.
If mutants had been in Manhattan (or the surrounding NY area) this entire time, they would have been conspicuously absent during the Chitauri invasion, at the very least. Self-exiled on an island in the middle of the ocean? Much easier to sit out world events.
Luis-That was in 1998. 2023 is a long time after, and a very different Marvel, than when Brevoort fixed the Avengers. That’s similar (although maybe not as extreme) to getting excited about Chris Claremont writing a comic today based on what he did with the X-Men in the late-‘70s and 1980s.
Thom-I expected that the MCU might like the direction of the line under Krakoa. Mutants haven’t been seen in the MCU yet because a long time ago, Xavier and Magneto established a hidden island sanctuary where mutants could hide and develop in peace due to the persecution by humans facing mutants. Now, something happens which brings mutants into contact with human society again.
I could even imagine a scene near the beginning of a new X-Men movie where Xavier’s telepathic message to the world from HoX/PoX is redone, only with Xavier announcing the existence of mutants/Krakoa to humanity.
“Continuing Jordan White’s direction” doesn’t mean much to me in terms of preserving Krakoa as a setting. For all that we know the current Fall of X stuff might lead to Krakoa being discarded.
As much as I agree Krakoa could be a great way to bring mutants to the MCU, the current editorial line Marvel is so strongly driven by nostalgia that it’s hard to not worry about the HoXPoX radical stuff being shoved back while we return to more familiar mutant oppression settings.
Chris V> Thom-I expected that the MCU might like the direction of the line under Krakoa. Mutants haven’t been seen in the MCU yet because a long time ago, Xavier and Magneto established a hidden island sanctuary where mutants could hide and develop in peace due to the persecution by humans facing mutants. Now, something happens which brings mutants into contact with human society again.
I mean, doesn’t that basically complete the “inhumans are mutants, mutants are inhumans” loop?
First, introduce the FF.
Then, Jean or Kitty escape Krakoa and start dating Johnny.
Finally, the X-men show up to bring back to safety .
I really hope they don’t do “mutants were hiding on their living island all along”. Comics ate vast, they can hold any number of hidden cultures. The MCU though? People will call it White Wakanda.
I don’t know. Despite very recent trends, I stand unconvinced that the X-Men work best integrated with the larger MCU in comics, let alone movies.
@Luis Dantas: I think the X-titles work best when they don’t have to interact with the larger MU. Claremont & co. rarely had any (non-cameo) crossovers. Fans asking the question about why MU citizens hate mutants but not other superhumans doesn’t help. (BECAUSE THEIR CHILDREN COULD BE FREAKS THAT WILL RENDER HUMANS OBSOLETE MANY OF WHOM ARE ANTI-SOCIAL AND/OR CAN’T CONTROL THEIR POWERS whereas the FF & most of the Avengers were created by science/are aliens/ trained to be able to fight superhumans despite having no powers and are adults)
I don’t know how the MCU will incorporate mutants unless they are a new development due to [insert pseudoscientific explanation].
@Si- the other problem is that the reason nobody does hidden cultures anymore is because with spy satellites, etc. it’s impossible to hide a large number of people any more. Even when Claremont introduced Nova Roma people were complaining that it was an outdated trope.
Brevoort taking over is dismal news to me: we’re talking about someone who trades in cheap outrage and antagonism, who has explicitly advocated that Marvel should prioritize straight white male readership above all else, and who has shown no understanding of what the X-Men are or what they represent. Nothing good will come of this.
How many secret vaguely mutant societies do the x-men have anyway? The X-Men themselves are now one sort of with them moving to Krakoa, but there’s Nova Roma, The Neo, Children of the Vault, and even the Hellfire Club was one.
In a way, hidden Krakoa would be more like Paradise Island than Wakanda, Gorilla City, Kun Lun, Shamballa, Savage Land, Skataris, and the Inhumans being in the Himalayas or on the Moon.
Boy,there are a lot of hidden cities in comics.
@Diana: never heard any of that – even hints of any of that – before. Do you have any sources?
@NS: aren’t the Neo all dead? I don’t remember the current status of Nova Roma, but it may have been destroyed or evacuated as well.
There are also the Morlock tunnels, of course. And isn’t there some sort of hidden community under the surface of Marvel Universe San Francisco? IIRC Venon operated there for a while.
Looks like the original blog post by Brevoort is gone, but here’s an article about the “white American male” thing:
https://www.cbr.com/whenever-your-leads-are-white-american-males-youve-got-a-better-chance-of-reaching-more-people/
It’s unclear to me how much he knows about the X-Men or their themes, although judging by his blog he was definitely a fan during the Claremont/Byrne years:
https://tombrevoort.com/2023/07/23/bhoc-uncanny-x-men-116/
@Luis:
https://www.cbr.com/whenever-your-leads-are-white-american-males-youve-got-a-better-chance-of-reaching-more-people/
https://www.themarysue.com/marvel-tom-brevoort-female-characters/
https://townsquare.media/site/622/files/2011/05/tom-brevoort.jpg
Then there’s the minor detail that in 20+ years of him running the Avengers line, he doesn’t seem to have ever hired a single woman writer.
@Luis: Can’t seem to post links, but feel free to look up Brevoort’s comments on “white American male leads”, his comments regarding women protagonists and sales, and the minor fact that in 20+ years running the Avengers line he has apparently worked with a grand total of zero women writers.
Kelly Sue DeConnick wrote Avengers Assemble under Brevoort.
Any comments with links automatically get referred for manual approval by the spam filter, just so people know.
When asked why there weren’t more artists of color at Marvel when the company produced hip-hop album variant covers, Btevoort responded dismissively, saying he didn’t see the connection. He ended up apologizing for the tone of his response.
He has stated that white, American, male lead characters sell better because (he perceived) the audience was mostly white and male. He stated that if fans demanded/bought more comics with female leads, Marvel would publish them. This was in 2011.
Some fans have complained publicly that he was a jerk to them.
That’s what I found after a few minutes googling, using the terms Diana suggested. I’m curious what he’ll say about the contents of the X-books, given that they’re currently more diverse than most other Marvel comics.
@Mike: On the point of fans being responsible for promoting women-led books, I’m reminded of the immortal words of Jude Terror:
“The next time some Uncle Fester looking blowhard motherfucker deeply entrenched in the comics establishment lectures you on Twitter about how it’s your responsibility to keep the comics you love afloat, politely let him know that it is, in fact, Marvel’s job to sell comics, not yours, and for the past twenty years, they’ve been doing an absolutely awful job at it, regardless of their increasing profit margin.”
Truly, the classics never go out of style
For each its own. I don’t personally see any reason to deny Brevoort a chance.
For one thing, ten or more years can make quite a difference in hearts and minds.
@Luis: Not in this business
I don’t see why Brevoort shouldn’t take over the X-Men. There’s nothing guaranteeing that Marvel Comics have to be good or even readable.
@Diana: that’s a great quote! I remember the Outhouse from back in the day, that was an entertaining read.
It’s hard to tell what sells books, but blaming the readers for your inability to connect outside of a limited demographic is not good. A few years later, Kamala Khan and Miles Morales would become popular, while Captain Marvel gained a cult following and female Thor outsold the Odinson.
@Luis Dantas: I believe the Neo were killed off by The Evolutionaries. However, wouldn’t they be in line for resurrection? I thought they were mutants (despite frequently saying they were something more) but when they were killed it was implied that they weren’t as I think The Evolutionaries killed them by targeting their specific genes. The story line wasn’t great so I don’t remember it well.
Who knows whether the Neo can even be recorded by Cerebro. Ultimately it falls to editorial decision.
@Diana, I honestly have no idea how you can be so certain that Tom Brevoort has not significantly changed his perceptions, choices and attitudes in over ten years.
“Tom Brevoort was the editor under which the Avengers recovered from their lowest back in 1998. He has lots of common sense.”
He also edited the entirety of Bendis’s run, or should I say, he “edited” Bendis’s run.
“Sebastian Shaw has belatedly figured out that he’s been outwitted by Mother Righteous, because he doesn’t understand magic as well as he thinks he does”
That’s because “magic” is a contrivance by writers to make things happen without any rational, in-story means to bring them about.
@Luis: Because to this day he’s never walked back any of those opinions? Because he tends to doubles down when challenged on those opinions? Because even a casual look on Marvel.com at the books he’s currently editing includes zero books led by or written by women?
If anything, I’m unclear on the argument as to why Brevoort should be given the benefit of any doubt at this late stage of his career.
Luis, I’m with Diana here. Yes, people can change a lot over ten years, but when people change a lot you see it reflected on their attitudes and maybe even some candid admissal of thinking differently now. Nothing on Brevoort suggests me that happened.
Cosign w/ Diana and Miyamoris. As a hiring manager, I brought people onto my teams or elevated existing team members to higher posts based on their work experience, quality of work, past accomplishments, and previous, documented patterns of behavior–all observable, measurable factors in evidence-based hiring practices. I did *not* base these decisions on my hopes and dreams for who I wished they would become (especially hopes and dreams utterly disconnected from reality), which–from the outside looking in–this Brevoort situation appears to be.
Normally, I would give even a company like Marvel the benefit of the doubt because there are sometimes contextual factors that play a part of the employee selection process that we are not privy to; we just don’t have all the information because we don’t work there. But. But! Based on other official statements and patterns of behavior from high-ranking Marvel employees (e.g., David Gabriel’s “diversity doesn’t sell” comments, top brass sticking by Akira Yoshida Cebulski after his blatant yellowface charade was exposed, Cebulski’s own weak-sauce apology), the Marvel C-suite has consistently demonstrated a pattern of apathetic and dismissive culture of behavior towards diversity and racial sensitivity and an affinity for excusing disqualifying (even termination-worthy) behavior and offenses of white people that inspires little hope from me re: Brevoort.
As the maxim goes, the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.
Would love to be proven wrong, though.
By making Tom Brevoort the X-book editor, I honestly can’t tell whether that is a sign of confidence for the books that they’d put their most powerful editor on the line to make things smoother for it or an indication that the books have gone too far from the Marvel norm and their most powerful editor needs to get things back to normal (aka most likely the school at Westchester).
My own experience with Brevoort is that I was on a message board with him about 25 years ago. To be frank, I thought he was a bit of a jerk, but I can’t say whether that’s “real jerk” or “internet jerk”.
@Luis Dantas It is true that Brevoort was the editor who pulled the Avengers out of their nadir, but I think the bulk of the credit should go to Kurt Busiek. His Avengers might not have been particularly innovative or as good as his Thunderbolts, but he was more than solid, even if I didn’t like what he did to Carol Danvers.
Bringing Tom Brevoort on as the X-book editor could be a signal that they want the X-books to reflect the upcoming X-Men movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
@Sam: also, George Perez was a huge draw. I’d argue he was the main draw. Busiek had written Marvels, Astro City, and Thunderbolts- all great! But Perez’s art just sang, especially after Liefeld, Yaep, and Wildstorm’s B-team.
I wonder if Brevoort got the job because no one else stepped up. After the Krakoa era upended the whole franchise, I’m sure a lot of editors blanched at either changing or continuing that direction.
I was wondering if maybe it due to Jordan White running out of ideas for how to follow up on the “Fall of X” also (we know Gillen is going to be leaving), so Marvel handed the book to Brevoort. The event may end with an open-ended finale leaving open the idea that they may continue with a new version of Krakoa or they may move in a new direction, leaving it with the new creative team to figure out where the books go next.
I fully expect that Jason Aaron or Donny Cates (if he’s ready) will be given the main X-Men book.
I’ve said it before, it’s a sad indictment that Krakoa may be going the way of Genosha after 4 years of being front and centre, and we never once saw a regular person’s house.
It’s hard to care, really.
@Mike Loughlin You are right, George Perez gave the book a very classic look and had been the penciler from previous runs (his art is the only good thing about the infamous Avengers #200). Really, it was a back to basics team on almost all levels.
While I think it was a fine run, I’m not sure that anything really long lasting came out of it except Carol Danvers being an alcoholic. I don’t think Silverclaw or Triathalon have set the world on fire, and I can’t think of a major new villain that was created during the run; Busiek seemed to delight in pulling out obscure characters like Imus Champion.
Haven’t tried Busiek’s work on the Avengers yet (aside from maybe one issue that crossed over with Thunderbolts – the one when Hawkeye decides to take charge of Tbolts) but if his work on Thunderbolts is anything to go by then yeah, the merit is more his than Brevoort. Of course editors having vision is important, but it doesn’t mean much if you don’t have the right writer to execute and even complement this vision.
@Chris V, I heard already about Gillen wanting to leave, but do you have a specific source of that? And did he give a timeframe? Because he mentioned on Bluesky there’s a wild twist coming for Immortal #17 and I get a strong feeling that New X-Men thing Marvel is teasing is going to be written by him, so I see at least a year more left for him there.
Arguably, the most significant thing about Busiek’s run is it made Carol Danvers a major character again, when she’d spent the time since punching Rogue into space as a minor character.
The really weird thing about Busiek’s run is the Madame Masque retcon. Busiek wanted to redeem Madame Masque from the villain she’d become since Michelinie and Layton’s run. So you might want to think he’d establish that all her appearances since then were doubles created by Nefaria or something.Instead he established that all of Madame Masque’s appearances since then were doubles created by WHITNEY HERSELF and she killed an innocent for “conspiring” with one of her clones (translation: befriending one of her clones.) I don’t know what the point of that was, since it just invalldates several of Whitney’s appearances without making her sympathetic. And unsurprisingly Whitney went back to being a villain right after Busiek used her.
@Miyamoris: From Gillen’s newsletter:
“I just handed in Immortal X-men 13, setting up Fall of X. Lucas is on the back end of 11, which means I’m a comfortable 2 issues ahead of him. Paco is finishing off his part of Dominion, and then goes straight over to the Sinister 4. I could pile into 14, as I know what it should be beat for beat, but suspect I’m going to sit on it a little longer and let the whole arc simmer. You get too far ahead in the X-Office, and you’re risking coming unstuck from everyone else… plus we’re at the point in the story when I really want to make sure all the fine details are perfect. We’ve moved into the back half of my run, so things will start closing in, and you have less space to manoeuvre. Instead, I’ll probably go back to the OGN – the artist is still only just starting the first act, but getting it off my desk would likely be a good idea.”
Ewing’s also mentioned offhand that the Genesis War is the back half of Red, so I wouldn’t at all be surprised if both books end by #24 at the very, very latest
I agree with Tom Brevoort — I don’t want him editing the X-Men line.
Quoting Brevoort:
“And that’s why you really don’t want me editing many X-Men comics—the things you like about the book and the characters aren’t the things that work for me. (I’ll tell you this much: were she not already dead, I’d delight in dropping a concrete block on Illyana Rasputin’s head, so annoying did I find her Magik persona.”
“Haven’t tried Busiek’s work on the Avengers yet (aside from maybe one issue that crossed over with Thunderbolts – the one when Hawkeye decides to take charge of Tbolts) but if his work on Thunderbolts is anything to go by then yeah, the merit is more his than Brevoort.”
Well, Brevoort *did* also edit that Thunderbolts run…
All sorts of writers and editors have changed things that were considered important previously in the X-Franchise.
If anything, it suffers from excessive attachment to the status quo and characters from decades ago.
“But Perez’s art just sang, especially after Liefeld, Yaep, and Wildstorm’s B-team.”
The funny part is George Perez got 1997’s Avengers because in 1995 he was working on Ultraforce, essentially a knockoff Avengers team.