Empyre: X-Men #4 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
This is the final issue of Empyre: X-Men, so a proper review will follow. Meanwhile…
EMPYRE: X-MEN #4
“Un-Ring”
by Jonathan Hickman, Jorge Molina, Lucas Werneck & Adriano di Benedetto
Everyone else has had their fun on the middle chapters, but Jonathan Hickman’s back for the (vaguely) serious bit.
COVER / PAGE 1. Magik, Angel, Wolverine and M/Penance being consumed by plants. Wolverine does not appear in this issue. The glowing sword sticking out of the rock is presumably Magik’s Soulsword.
PAGES 2-3. Recap and credits.
PAGES 4-5. Flashback. The Scarlet Witch realises she’s brought back a bunch of zombies and beats a hasty retreat.
(more…)The Incomplete Wolverine, Part 5
Part 1: Origin to Origin II
Part 2: 1907 to 1914
Part 3: 1914 to 1939
Part 4: World War II
We’ve reached the postwar era. We’re not quite at Team X just yet, but we’re certainly getting back into some better known parts of Wolverine’s back story.
According to Logan: Path of the Warlord – and we’ll get to that story shortly – after World War II, Logan returns to Madripoor in search of easy money. There, he gets involved with the mysterious firm of Landau, Luckman & Lake, who specialise in “all kinds of shady stuff”. As one of their agents, he visits Japan again and fights Kimora, an alien warlord who’s been brought to Earth through a portal opened by a Dr Carling. Why Logan’s fighting alien warlords, even vaguely samurai-ish ones, at this stage of his career… well, he just is. But more of Kimora in a bit.
Landau, Luckman & Lake were introduced by Chris Claremont in Wolverine vol 2 #5, which shows a photograph of Logan with his LLL contact Chang. That photo is described as a 19th century tintype, which might have been intended to imply that Logan was an adult in the 1800s – if so, that obviously can’t survive Origin. But the same story shows that Chang is around in the present day, and LLL are generally hinted to be a bit weird right from the off, so it’s equally possible that Claremont was thinking of time travel or dimension hopping.
Charts – 14 August 2020
Ah, controversy.
1. Joel Corry featuring MNEK – “Head & Heart”
Three weeks, and it heads up a static top three. It’s still growing, so it could be here for a while.
4. Cardi B featuring Megan Thee Stallion – “WAP”
Not a song about the early days of wireless internet, but a bold new contender for the coveted title of Most Futile Radio Edit. Mind you, apparently YouTube rejected the “explicit” version and accepted this one, so it must have ticked some sort of box, despite its frankly token effort at disguising the repeated sample from Frank Ski’s “Whores in This House”. And that was the least of the radio editor’s problems.
(more…)X-Force #11 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-FORCE vol 6 #11
“Red Dawn”
by Benjamin Percy & Bazaldua
COVER / PAGE 1. Colossus fights Omega Red. Omega Red does not appear in the issue, which always makes me wonder if plans changed after the cover was commissioned.
This is a “Path to X of Swords” issue. In this case, it’s fairly easy to see which element ties in to the crossover, but it still emerges from things that have happened in this book.
PAGES 2-5. The latest batch of lab-grown soldiers turn out to contain “Russian doll” assassins.
The soldiers. These are the bad guys that Wolverine and the Marauders defeated in Wolverine #3. They don’t look all that similar in the two issues, since Adam Kubert depicts them with some sort of swirly energy effect on their costumes, while Bazaldua just presents it as red armour-type stuff.
(more…)Marauders #11 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
MARAUDERS #11
“To Live and Die on Krakoa”
by Gerry Duggan & Stefano Caselli
PAGE 1 / COVER. Kate’s funeral. Storm and Emma (with Lockheed) send her body out to sea. This doesn’t exactly reflect the scene in the issue, since Lockheed isn’t at the funeral (he doesn’t show up until later) and Emma doesn’t wear white in the story (but she’s more recognisable this way).
The issue has a “Path to X of Swords” logo in the top right, though nothing about the story is obviously linked to the crossover, as opposed to storylines that were already in progress.
PAGE 2. Nightcrawler writes another letter to Kate.
We saw another one of these letters in issue #10. In that issue, it was an email. This one seems to be hand-written.
(more…)Empyre: X-Men #3 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
EMPYRE: X-MEN #3
“Staff Infection”
by Vita Ayala, Zeb Wells, Ed Brisson & Andrea Broccardo
We’re firmly into “quite silly” territory by this point, plus it’s mainly an extended fight scene, so this ought to be quite short.
COVER / PAGE 1. The Cotati on one side, the zombies on the other, and X-Men stuck in between. Cyclops, Polaris, Colossus and Magneto appear, none of whom are in the issue.
PAGES 2-3. Recap and credits. You’ll note that the writers have changed again, continuing the jam session.
PAGES 4-6. The Cotati who were killed by the zombies return from the dead as zombie Cotati.
They’re called “ghouls” later in the issue, to distinguish them from the regular zombies.
PAGES 7-9. The psychics join the fight.
Okay, now I understand what was meant to be happening in issue #2. Black Tom sent some Krakoan golem things (the “organic defense system”) through the gate to Genosha. They didn’t do all that well because they needed a local source of power. And Krakoa feeds particularly on psychic energy, so Magik has called in a bunch of psychics to help provide that local power source. Alright.
(more…)Giant-Size X-Men: Fantomex #1
If you’re looking for a reason to buy Giant-Size X-Men: Fantomex #1, it’d be the art. The Giant-Size issues are much more of an art showcase than the regular issues, and this story gives Rob Reis plenty to play with. It’s got the insanity of the interior of the World, a hidden world developing in a time bubble, getting ever stranger as the series goes on. It’s got Fantomex interacting with characters from a range of different eras. It’s got ridiculous D-list superheroes to be designed and thrown away.
And much of it builds to a reprise of “Assault on Weapon Plus”, by Grant Morrison and Chris Bachalo. If you’re going to revisit a story defined by Chris Bachalo then you need a strong style of your own. Reis pulls all of that off very well. It looks absolutely lovely. The splash page near the end of Ultimaton, in his ridiculously unwieldy armour, hovering gently in the air in front of Fantomex – that’s beautiful.
(more…)X-Men/Fantastic Four: 4X
Very much on the fringes of the X-books, X-Men / Fantastic Four didn’t get a mention in the X-books’ release schedules, and comes from the FF’s editorial office. So you might well wonder how much weight to give it in the context of the X-books as a line. In the short term, that turns out to be largely academic, since the main plot developments are about Franklin Richards, and they matter far more to the Fantastic Four. But it’s also the first time we’ve seen the X-Men interact at length with other major superheroes in their current mutant nationalist mode, and on that level it might be more significant.
It’s certainly pretty – it’s the Dodsons, after all. Their clean lines and curves, and the light colours of Laura Martin, lend themselves to good, traditional superhero team-up fare. They’re perhaps not the artists I’d naturally choose for a Dr Doom story, given that his aesthetic is all about gloomy castles – but here he’s conveniently off on a desert island, so all is well.
(more…)Charts – 7 August 2020
Well, this is painfully quiet.
1. Joel Corry featuring MNEK – “Head & Heart”
Three weeks at number one, and with a very comfortable lead. Further down the top 10, some modest climbers. “Lighter” by Nathan Dawe featuring KSI climbs 4-3 (and Dawe’s previous single “Flowers” rebounds from 27 to 19, too). “Watermelon Sugar” by Harry Styles climbs 7-4 in a remarkably slow burn, finally reaching the top 5 in its 20th week on the top 40. “West Ten” by AJ Tracey & Mabel climbs 9-5. And “Secrets” by Regard & Raye – which made it to 7 a month ago – finally reaches the dizzy heights of 6.
7. Billie Eilish – “My Future”
(more…)Empyre: X-Men #2 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
EMPYRE: X-MEN #2
“Growing Strong”
by Gerry Duggan, Ben Percy, Leah Williams & Lucas Werneck
So far as the writing is concerned, Empyre: X-Men is basically a jam session for the writers of the regular X-books. So this isn’t a particularly serious book – as if that wasn’t obvious from the mutants vs zombies vs plants vs old women set-up – and we can take this one pretty quickly.
PAGE 1 / COVER. Angel and Magik face off against a Cotati.
PAGES 2-3. Recap and credits.
(more…)