By normal standards, a very quiet week.

X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #96. By Alex Segura, Alberto Alburquerque & Pete Pantazis. This is the start of a Polaris story. And it’s a pretty reasonable angle which I don’t think has been done before – after reminding us rather heavily at the start that Polaris has spent a distressing amount of her career under mind control of one sort of another, she gets dragged by an old college friend into investigating a cold case where the murderer seems to be her in the days when she was possessed by Malice. I get that we don’t want Polaris to be a character overshadowed by this sort of thing, but it’s a reasonable enough hook. There are also some pretty blatant hints that all is not as it seems, since something is very obviously up with the old college friend – subtlety is not this story’s strong point – but it’s pretty dense and it hits the ground running.

X-MEN RED #13. (Annotations here.) The parallels here with the collapse of the Quiet Council are presumably intentional, as we build to Hellfire Gala 2023. This is Genesis confronting the Great Ring, and everything more or less falling apart instantly. I’m still not all that interested in Genesis in her own right, but the contrast between her and the regular cast works better here, as she tries to drag Arakko back to the way it was before Al Ewing started rehabbing it. There’s a certain sleight of hand going on here – Genesis is asserting the sort of one-dimensional Arakko that X-Men Red was at pains to emphasise was never a fair reflection of their rounded culture, but evidently it’s a pretty good reflection of Genesis herself. At any rate, she’s a great foil for the regulars here. It’s a very talky issue – essentially an extended meeting in one location – but Jacopo Camagni makes it work. New Great Ring member Lycaon is fun but it seems an odd place to bring in what’s effectively a comedy character.

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X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #95. By Jason Loo & Antonio Fabela. This is the end of the FF team-up arc and it’s what you’d expect. You can see the idea – the rogue dupes are a way of externalising Madrox’s inner doubts about accepting responsibility, becoming a family man, and so on. And that’s a pretty good idea. But it winds up being tagged on to a rather routine action story, and the FF’s role as guest stars never quite clicks. Yes, they’re the superhero family so they offer something Madrox can feel insecure about… but along with Blastaar they wind up cluttering the plot more than helping it.

IMMORTAL X-MEN #13. (Annotations here.) There are only twelve members of the Quiet Council, so with issue #13 we move on to Cypher, the low key observer. Once again, Lucas Werneck does great work with his reactions, and generally in bringing visual life to an issue that’s almost entirely conversation. The big surprise here is that the collapse of the Council continues to run faster than you’d expect. I’d assumed things would be building to a head during the “Fall of X” event, but instead the Quiet Council is imploding already, At first glance there’s something a little awkward about Professor X dutifully playing along with his non-voting role in the previous issue, only to turn around here and decide to help tear everything down, but I suppose the key distinction is that he still isn’t trying to put himself into a position of power. And there’s a very good scene here that finally confronts head on the question of what Krakoa ever had to do with Xavier’s dream of coexistence. Excellent as ever.

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I’m still on holiday, but time for a quick round-up of this week’s X-books anyway.

X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #94. By Jason Loo and Antonio Fabela. Okay, I see where this is meant to be going. Madrox wants to impress Reed Richards by showing how far he’s come since his debut in Giant-Size Fantastic Four – he conspicuously doesn’t care that much about the rest of the FF – but finds himself in a storyline involving his own evil renegade dupes. And those dupes are part of him, and therefore that’s embarrassing. I kind of get that, but there’s something a bit odd about positioning Reed as the paragon family-man that Madrox aspires to be – aside from the fact that he’s never come up before, Reed has always been defined more by his awkwardness in that role. Still, he is the patriarch of the MU’s top family-themed superhero team and I guess you could see how Madrox aspires to that… ish? There’s something in that angle, but the A plot with the dupes and Blastaar really isn’t doing much for me at all.

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Okay, then – let’s take a quick run through this week’s X-books. As previously mentioned, no annotations this week or next, while I’m on holiday. But the next Incomplete Wolverine post will be up on Saturday.

X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #93. By Jason Loo & Antonio Fabela. This is a sequel to the last “X-Friends” arc, in which a bunch of Madrox dupes went off and became space pirates. This time, they’re back and allied with, um, Blastaar – for no particularly obvious reason beyond the fact that the FF are guesting in this arc. Like the previous Jason Loo arcs, this one falls very much in the category of “Okay, I Guess?” There’s nothing especially wrong with it, the art is decent, there’s a theoretically decent hook (the pirate leader dupe still views Madrox’s daughter as his own child)… yet I can’t honestly say I find it very engaging. Lightweight is fine – the X-books could do with some of that, and this title is a good place for it. But this raises a gentle smile rather than being a fun romp, which doesn’t really feel enough.

X-MEN: BEFORE THE FALL – THE HERALDS OF APOCALYPSE #1. By Al Ewing, Luca Pizzari, Stefano Landini, Raphael Pimento & Ceci De La Cruz. To all intents and purposes this is an extra issue of X-Men Red, though the branding gives it added justification for ignoring the regular cast entirely in favour of filling in some of the back story of Genesis. What it isn’t is a story about the Heralds of Apocalypse, despite the Horsemen’s prominence of the cover – but the actual story content matches the solicitation, so presumably plans didn’t change that much.

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