Secret X-Men #1
SECRET X-MEN #1
“The Secret X-Men”
Writer: Tini Howard
Artist: Francesco Mobili
Colourist: Jesus Aburtov
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Jordan White
So, um. This. It came out back in February and I said at the time that I was going to review it and then I completely forgot about it. And then somebody mentioned it in the comments and I remembered I hadn’t done it.
Look, I’d have remembered when it showed up on Marvel Unlimited.But it’s fair to say the impact that this thing made on me was, shall we say, transitory. It vanished from memory awfully quickly. I can’t say the thought of re-reading it for this review filled me with enthusiasm.
The high concept is that this is a one-shot about the characters who were in the public vote for the new X-Men team, back when Marvel were promoting the Hellfire Gala, but who didn’t get in.
The plot, then. Sunspot is swanning around in the Shi’ar Empire, claiming to be the leader of the X-Men in order to impress girls. So Deathbird enlists him to help defend Empress Xandra against yet another assassination attempt, and asks him to bring the X-Men to a secret location. Of course, Sunspot doesn’t have an X-Men team to bring, so he sets about calling the guys who wanted to be on a team. It kind of makes sense for the characters who were particularly keen to be on the team, or who feel aggrieved that they’re overlooked. You can see it for Sunspot. Maybe Marrow, who would insist she doesn’t want to be on the team, but is also Professionally Aggrieved. Tempo, though? A character who had to be needled repeatedly just to join the Marauders? Forge, who’s rushed off his feet in other books? Hmm.
X-Men Legends #12
X-MEN LEGENDS #12
“Start Again”
Writer: Chris Claremont
Penciller: Scot Eaton
Inker: Lorenzo Ruggiero
Colourist: Rachelle Rosenberg
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
With hindsight, the tricky thing about the X-Men Legends format is that it’s trying to bring back former creators to do something that recalls their original run, but in most cases those original runs had ongoing soap opera storylines. So a one-off short story is already a bit off model. Fabian Nicieza got round that problem with his arc by simply resolving an actual dropped plot; Larry Hama just did an episodic story. And other stories have kind of invented a gap for the sake of plugging it.
This is kind of in that territory. It fills a gap between the end of Fall of the Mutants (when Nightcrawler comes out of his coma, just as the X-Men are believed dead in Dallas) and Excalibur Special Edition #1, the origin story of the spin-off team Excalibur. It’s a real gap, but it’s not exactly one that was crying out to be filled – nobody at the time felt that we were skipping over important stuff. But then again, if you’re looking for potential gaps, this isn’t a bad choice. It’s a big moment for Kurt and Kitty and you can do a little bit of work here to set them up for their return to action.
Immortal X-Men #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
IMMORTAL X-MEN #1
“The Left Hand”
Writer: Kieron Gillen
Artist: Lucas Werneck
Colourist: David Curiel
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Jordan D White
IMMORTAL X-MEN. Despite the name, this is a series about the Quiet Council – and not all of them are exactly X-Men. It’s the first series with this title, not to be confused with just-plain-X-Men, which is about the New York based superhero team.
The series logo – an X with twelve dots around it – represents the twelve members of the Council in their groups of three.
COVER / PAGE 1. It’s the Quiet Council doing Leonardo Da Vinci’s The Last Supper, albeit somewhat compressed to get it onto a double page spread. The original painting, specifically, is meant to show the moment after Jesus has announced that one of his apostles will betray him. It’s probably not desperately important which apostle is represented by which Quiet Council member, particularly as most of the Apostles can only be identified by external sources rather than from the painting itself, but that’s no reason not to tell you anyway, right? More fundamentally, the original painting groups the apostles in threes, which mirrors the division of the Quiet Council – and that’s sort of reflected here. Working roughly from left to right along the table (and going by the rather more spaced out arrangement in the original painting):
- Colossus is Bartholomew.
- Storm is James the Less.
- Nightcrawler is Andrew.
- Mr Sinister is, of course, Judas Iscariot. He’s knocked over his wine glass; in the original painting, Judas has knocked over his salt cellar.
- Exodus is Saint Peter. Befitting his religious bent, he’s the only character to be drawn with a halo.
- Death – who is absolutely not a member of the Quiet Council and whose attitude to this whole “resurrection” thing remains unclear – is in John’s position.
- The empty chair in the centre, with a Phoenix emblem on the back and Magneto’s helmet sitting in front, is where Jesus would be.
- Sebastian Shaw is Thomas, the doubting one.
- Emma Frost is James the Greater.
- Kate Pryde is Philip.
- Professor X is Matthew.
- Mystique is Jude.
- Destiny is Simon.
X-Men Legends #11
X-MEN LEGENDS #11
“Monsters”
Writer: Louise Simonson
Artist: Walter Simonson
Colourist: Edgar Delgado
Letterer: John Workman
Editor: Mark Basso
“Monsters” is the second X-Men Legends issue by Louise and Walter Simonson, and takes place at around the same time as their previous story. The two aren’t really connected, though, or at least only by slenderest of margins. The previous issue was basically an issue of X-Factor, the book they worked on together back in the 1980s. This is a New Mutants story, a book which Louise Simonson wrote, but which was being drawn around that point by Bret Blevins.
If the premise of this book is to recapture something of a classic run… well, Bret Blevins and Walt Simonson are very different artists. Blevins’ New Mutants run veered to the spindly and grotesque, and it has to be said that his costume designs were a bit of a mess. (I always liked Mirage costume, but that’s very much the exception.) Perhaps that’s one reason why this story revolves around villains from X-Factor, namely the original Horsemen of Apocalypse.
Wolverine #14-19
WOLVERINE vol 7 #14-19
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Penciller: Adam Kubert (#14-16), Lan Medina (#17), Paco Diaz (#18), Javi Fernandez (#19)
Inker: Adam Kubert (#14-16), Cam Smith (#17), Paco Diaz (#18), Javi Fernandez (#19)
Colourist: Frank Martin (#14-16), Espen Grundetjern (#16), Java Tartaglia (#17-18), Dijjo Lima (#18), Matthew Wilson (#19)
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso
I know. This review is so late that the trade paperback has been out for over a month. But still, it’s the last really late book on my review backlog, and better late than never. So.
Benjamin Percy’s approach to his ongoing titles has always involved cutting back and forth between different story threads every few issues or so. It’s not so much a case of everything dovetailing together. It’s more a way of doing lengthy storylines without devoting 12 straight issues to them. In theory, at least, if you don’t like this one, there’ll be another one along in a minute. Here, we have two arcs from ongoing storylines plus a curious little final issue experiment – and yes, they are indeed different.
I find Percy’s work a bit of a mixed bag. You certainly can’t accuse him of taking the line of least resistance. Both here and in X-Force, he’s not a writer given to replaying the hits – which is a bit ironic, considering that he’s just done X Lives of Wolverine, but we’ll come to that. He likes the organic tech, the big ideas like fiction-themed mind control, the new characters like Solem. That’s a big plus. On the other hand, not all of those ideas are winners, and the execution can be patchy. Still, it’s good when it all clicks, and it earns some goodwill from me, even if there’s other stuff that frustrates me.
Charts – 25 March 2022
We won’t be long with this one.
A third week for Dave in a very, very dull top ten – the top seven is completely static. By the way, his only other number 1, “Freaky Friday”, only had a week. So by that metric, this is comfortably his biggest hit.
Anyway, in search of new entries we have to trawl all the way down to…
31. Joel Corry, David Guetta & Bryson Tiller – “What Would You Do”
They’re not kidding about that strobe warning at the start of the video, by the way. Anyhow, this is very much what you expect from something credited to Joel Corry and David Guetta – it’s very polished, it’s very professional, you can hear their signature stuff in it. You don’t come to these guys for innovation.
X Deaths of Wolverine #5 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X DEATHS OF WOLVERINE #5
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Federico Vicentini
Colourist: Dijjo Lima
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso
COVER / PAGE 1. Wolverine fights Omega Wolverine. This is the other half of the image from the cover of X Lives of Wolverine #5, with elements of a fight between Wolverine and Omega Red spreading onto the page.
PAGES 2-4. Moira’s life flashes before her eyes as she dies.
She’s inside a sort of Krakoan battle suit thingy that she stole last issue.
Page 2, and the bench panels on page 3, are a parody of the flashback from Powers of X #1 in which Moira approaches Charles Xavier and reveals her previous lives to him.
Marauders #22-27
MARAUDERS #22-27
Writer: Gerry Duggan
Artists: Matteo Lolli (#22 and #26-27), Klaus Janson (flashback in #22), Ivan Fiorelli (#23), Phil Noto (#24-25 and # 27)
Colourist: Rain Beredo (#22-23 and #26-27)
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Jordan White
I’ve said before that the period between “Hellfire Gala” and Inferno showed some definite signs of drift for the X-books. Nowhere was that more obvious than with Marauders, which had been a very focussed, very successful book for its first 22 issues, but loses its way badly in the last few issues of the Gerry Duggan run.
The first 20 issues have a central spine to them, of Kitty feeling isolated, getting killed, returning to claim her identity and take revenge on Shaw, and so on. But that’s all finished by the time of the Hellfire Gala, and the book doesn’t really find anything to replace it in these closing issues.
By way of reminder, here’s what happens. Issue #22 is the Lourdes Chantel story, with guest art from Klaus Janson, which retcons the death of this minor character from a Classic X-Men back-up strip. It now turns out that Emma Frost created an illusion of her death to enable her to escape her abusive relationship with Sebastian Shaw, who to this day still looks back on that relationship fondly as his true love. This is the closest the book comes to a central theme in the closing issues, and it’s good enough as far as it goes, though Lourdes herself never really seems to develop much beyond a cipher.
House to Astonish Presents: The Lightning Round Episode 8
Lightning strikes eight times! It’s really very dangerous to be out here! Get to shelter!
Paul and Al are back to talk about Thunderbolts #21 and Captain America/Citizen V ’98, with all the extraneous cover blurbs, world-class pauldrons and embarrassing Pritt-Stick accidents that entails. Come on in! The water’s Thunderbolts!
The episode is here, or here on Mixcloud, or available via the embedded player below. Let us know what you think, in the comments below, on Twitter, via email or on our Facebook fan page. And as always, there are some beautiful shirts over at our Redbubble store. They would look great on you! I mean, obviously everything would look great on you. But these give us a few quid a pop.
Charts – 18 March 2022
Another quiet week for singles.
That’s two weeks, and it’s on course for a third.
2. Aitch featuring Ashanti – “Baby”
Dave might be able to afford to buy out the sample credits, but Aitch is still doing it the traditional way. Ashanti’s “featuring” credit is thanks to this track sampling her 2003 hit “Rock Wit U (Aww Baby)”. That track got to number 7 in the UK and was part of a respectable run of top 10 hits, though her only number one was as a guest on a Ja Rule single, “Wonderful”. She hasn’t had a hit single since 2008.
