The X-Axis – w/c 7 July 2025
ASTONISHING X-MEN INFINITY COMIC #28. By Alex Paknadel, Phillip Sevy, Michael Bartolo & Clayton Cowles. Back to the storyline in progress, following the Vigil tie-in last week. And apparently we’re not doing the Wicker Man – we’re just doing an island community where the people in charge are out for revenge on mutants after the drugs ran out, and have forced everyone else into line. And there’s a symbiote involved somewhere, which is played as a reveal, but I thought was already pretty clear last issue. It’s not clicking for me right now, but there’s nothing wrong with it.
UNCANNY X-MEN #17. (Annotations here.) In which the hot film of the summer is a slasher film with a mutant as the killer. I like the idea, particularly because it avoids making the film itself an outright anti-mutant screed. If you were making horror films in the Marvel Universe, then a killer with powers would be a pretty natural direction to go in, and it’s not like there haven’t been plenty of murderous mutants over the years. Okay, yes, it does strain credibility a bit that we’ve made it to 2025 without someone doing this before. But if you apply that sort of logic too rigorously to a book that’s been running since 1963, you’re going to wall off an awful lot of story material.
Magik #7 annotations
MAGIK vol 3 #7
”Beneath the Veil”
Writer: Ashley Allen
Artist: Germán Peralta
Colour artist: Arthur Hesli
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Editor: Darren Shan
MAGIK
Since Dani took Cal (in issue #5), she hasn’t been able to sense the tracking spell she put on him (as mentioned in issue #3). Dani says that this is because the base’s defences are interfering with her tracking spell.
Before realising that Cal is possessed, she uncharacteristically hugs him and apologises for “involv[ing] you with Liminal”. That’s not quite what happened – he rather insisted on coming along with her – but she did decide to accept him on the view that she would be best placed to keep him safe. Protecting him is her top priority, and she doesn’t trust the Society of the Eternal Dawn to take care of him. Since they seem to be focussing entirely on Liminal and ignoring Cal himself, and their treatment of him seems at least harsh, her scepticism is understandable.
Laura Kinney: Wolverine #8 annotations
LAURA KINNEY: WOLVERINE #8
“Honor Bound”
Writer: Erica Schultz
Artist: Giada Belviso
Colour artist: Rachelle Rosenberg
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso
WOLVERINE.
She mentions checking the Treehouse for “new leads” – that refers back to the message drop that she found in issue #1.
When going after MGH dealers, she chooses to wear her black and grey X-Force uniform from the Utopia period. She observes that “being on X-Force taught me that you can do things that no one has to know about”. In practice, she seems to be using it for added stealth.
She refers to Bucky telling her in issue #5 that “if there’s one thing a Wolverine has, it’s time”. His point was that she had plenty of time to figure things out and come to terms with pars of her life.
Seeing Polly and Haymaker as a couple reminds her of her illusory life in issues #6-7 where she was in a couple with Julian Keller, and makes her wonder whether that’s what she always wanted. NYX was clearly setting the two of them up as a couple before it was cancelled.
Uncanny X-Men #17 annotations
UNCANNY X-MEN vol 6 #17
”Murder Me, Mutina”
Writer: Gail Simone
Artist: Luciano Vecchio
Colour artist: Rachelle Rosenberg
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
THE X-MEN.
Rogue. She seems genuinely surprised at the existence and success of a slasher movie where the killer is a mutant (see below). She assumes that it’s likely to lead to attacks on mutants, and worries about the Outliers.
Gambit. He’s entirely unbothered about Calico and Jitter being suspended from school – he seems to be taking it as read that they were defending themselves against a bully (which isn’t quite what happened).
Nightcrawler. Well, he’s there, but there’s not much to say about him this issue.
Jubilee. She argues that mutants need a PR firm. They did in fact hire a woman called Kate Kildare during the San Francisco / Utopia era.
Charts – 4 July 2025
At last, could we be resuming normal turnover?
1. Lewis Capaldi – “Survive”
Another new number 1! We last heard from Lewis Capaldi in January 2024, when “Strangers” reached number 37. But that was a single that he barely promoted, having withdrawn from live shows on mental health grounds after summer 2023, when he had an episode of Tourette’s syndrome during his set at the Glastonbury Festival. He promoted this single with a surprise set at the 2025 Festival. That clearly made a big difference, since he released a covers EP last month that seems to have gone mostly unnoticed.
The X-Axis – w/c 30 June 2025
ASTONISHING X-MEN INFINITY COMIC #27. By Alex Paknadel, Phillip Sevy, Michael Bartolo & Clayton Cowles. This is a Hellfire Vigil tie-in, awkwardly interrupting an unrelated storyline featuring two of the same characters. It basically exists to explain Banshee grudgingly agreeing to attend the Vigil at the last minute, having started off with no desire whatsoever to commemorate the place where his beloved Moira turned out to be going through the motions, and then killed him. Cassidy Keep’s last remaining leprechaun reminding him of the story of Tir Na Nog, and the upshot is for Sean to accept that Krakoa was a time of lost innocence for the generation below him. I’m not sure you can really pull that line with characters like Husk and Skin who have been around since the 1990s, but the basic idea works well enough.
X-Men: Hellfire Vigil #1 annotations
X-MEN: HELLFIRE VIGIL
Writers: Jackson Lanzing, Collin Kelly, Jed MacKay, Stephanie Phillips, Geoffrey Thorne, Gail Simone, Eve Ewing, Alex Paknadel, Jason Loo & Murewa Ayodele
Artists: Javeir Garrón, Sean Parsons, Roi Mercado, Marcus To, Luciano Vecchio, Federica Mancin, Declan Shalvey and Sara Pichelli
Colour artist: Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Tom Brevoort
Honestly, I wavered about whether to give this an annotations post at all – it’s basically an anthology issue of mostly five-page stories by the creative teams of various X-books, the unifying theme being an anniversary event to commemorate the fall of Krakoa. But it does include 11 pages of material from the X-Men creative teams which are somewhat important to that book. Treating it as a single story doesn’t make sense, so instead we’ll take each segment in turn.
PAGES 1-5: NYX
Ms Marvel attends the New York vigil.
The New York event, held at the Treehouse, appears to be a fairly sombre affair, with characters in mourning dress holding candles. There are anti-mutant protestors visible in the background, but the police are apparently keeping them away. I’ll run through the list of visible attendees at the end of the post, although there are a good number of background generics in there too.
X-Men #19 annotations
X-MEN vol 7 #19
”Revelation”
Writer: Jed MacKay
Penciller: Netho Diaz
Inker: Sean Parsons
Colourist: Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
REVELATION
The X-Men don’t appear in this issue at all. Instead, the de facto star of the book is Doug Ramsey in his new guise as Revelation.
We last saw Doug in X-Men: Heir of Apocalypse, where he won Apocalypse’s tournament, accepted the hazily-defined role of “heir” (with Apocalypse himself retreating to Arakko), and was transformed by Apocalypse. The actual transformation took place off panel in that story; here, the first two pages show it in flashback, with Doug’s body being eaten away and rebuilt. He has nightmares about this every night, but still talks positively about the experience.
Apocalypse also gave Doug pale skin, lightning bolt designs on his face and upper arms, a gold robe, and weird marking on his bald head. Doug has backtracked heavily on this: while he’s kept the name “Revelation”, he’s grown his hair back, which “makes me feel more like me”. He wears a “Krakoa was for lovers” T-shirt. His personality appears basically unchanged from the Krakoan era.
Daredevil Villains #54: Mr Hyle
DAREDEVIL #162 (January 1980)
“Requiem for a Pug”
Writer: Michael Fleisher
Artist: Steve Ditko
Colourist: Petra Goldberg
Letterer: Jim Novak
Editor: Allen Milgrom
So here’s where we are. Frank Miller is already established as Daredevil‘s artist. In just a few issues time, he’ll take over as writer and bring the book back to commercial success and critical acclaim. Daredevil will go into the 1980s as the book of the moment.
But we’ll get back to that. In the meantime, here’s a fill-in issue by Michael Fleisher and Steve Ditko. “Requiem for a Pug” is a melodramatic throwback which re-enacts Daredevil’s origin story and dares to ask: what if the Fixer had been a black guy with a leopard?
The story opens with Daredevil helping to shut down a “meson-reactor” which is about to explode. In the process, he’s exposed to vast amounts of radiation. Radiation, as we all know, is magic stuff that makes the plot happen. So as Matt makes his way home that night, he collapses in an alley. Then he wakes up the next morning as an amnesiac. Because that’s what radiation poisoning does.
Charts – 27 June 2025
Right, for real this time.
1. Sabrina Carpenter – “Manchild”
At long last, the chart rules deem Alex Warren’s “Ordinary” to be far enough past its peak to boot it down the charts. The downweighting rule – “accelerated chart ratio”, if you prefer the official name – is a singularly blunt instrument, and “Ordinary” lands at this week’s number 9. It would otherwise still be number 1 by a healthy margin.
More by default than anything else, “Manchild” returns to number 1 for a second week, but it’s less than 10% ahead of the number 2 single and falling, so it may not be there long. That number 2 single is “Dior” by MK featuring Chrystal, which… nope, still hate it. It’s MK’s biggest hit, though – his previous peak was 7. We used to have to asterisk that with the fact that his real biggest hit was his remix of “Push the Feeling On” by the Nightcrawlers in 1994, but that peaked at 3.
4. Fred Again, Skepta & PlaqueBoyMax – “Victory Lap”
That’s a Fred again.. track? Really? I would not have guessed that. It’s his biggest hit since “Adore U” reached number 4 in 2023. Astonishingly, it’s only Skepta’s second top 10 hit – the other was a guest verse on Wiley’s “Can You Hear Me”, which reached number 3 in 2012.
