The X-Axis – w/c 29 April 2024
X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #137. By Steve Foxe, Steve Orlando, Nick Roche, Yen Nitro & Travis Lanham. When a story as slight as this makes it to part 17 and counting…
X-MEN #34. (Annotations here.) One of the problems with Marvel’s approach to crossover events is that they take a storyline from an ongoing title, but spin off a miniseries to carry the core plot for the event, which leaves the original title to hang around doing stuff on the margins of its own plot. That’s pretty much what we have in this issue of X-Men, which feels very much like the bonus material to fill time while the plot takes place in Fall of the House of X. Specifically, that means a further fight with MODOK, who already fled Orchis in defeat in Fall #2. Still… fair enough, he might as well be brought down for a bit more finality.
But the actual plot boils down to MODOK causing a bit of chaos for no terribly clear reason in order that the X-Men can fight him again. And then we get one of those “sounds good, but hold on a minute” moments when Laura declares that the X-Men aren’t going to give MODOK a second chance like the Avengers do. But they did. In issue #8. Of this series. She was there. We do get some wrap-up for a couple of character arcs, which is a better use of these issues: Synch gets his moment with Laura after the death of Talon, and there’s a rather clumsy attempt to tie up the Shadowkat plotline which always felt excessively gritty and forced. And Joshua Cassara is a good artist for MODOK and his grotesques. But it’s an underwhelming story.
CABLE #4. By Fabian Nicieza, Scot Eaton, Lan Medina, Cam Smith, José Marzan Jr, Java Tartaglia & Joe Sabino. The final issue of the mini. The Cable mini takes place during “Fall of X” but has nothing much to do with it – in fact, part of the point is that the older Cable has diverted from the big event to nip in the bud a different problem entirely, because his decades of time travel experience have convinced him that it’s another apocalypse on the horizon. So the “Fall of the House of X” logo on the cover is, um, let’s say optimistic, but the book itself is better for it. The central idea here is that the older and younger Cables split on how big a threat this is because older Cable is entirely focussed on avoiding negative outcomes, while his younger self has no direct evidence of this being a big deal at all, and is still looking for something more hopeful. Ultimately the older Cable is right, even if he learns that he’s lost touch with how to appeal to his younger self; but it also turns out that an attempt to transform humanity into something better runs up against the fact that they reject it anyway. There are maybe a couple too many characters running around as easter eggs for long time Fabian Nicieza readers when it would have been simpler just to create someone new for the story, but it’s a solid enough mini to fill out the line in the dying months of the Krakoan era.
INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #18. By Gerry Duggan, Creees Lee, Walden Wong, Bryan Valenza & Joe Caramagna. Still tying in to Fall of the House of X, Invincible Iron Man has generally been the strongest of Gerry Duggan’s books in the last few months, perhaps because the solo lead gives it more focus. This isn’t its best issue, though. Iron Man teams up with Magneto and Feilong to smash up some Sentinel factories, which is apparently meant to be Iron Man allying with his enemies in an emergency. That kind of makes sense for Feilong, who’s the main villain of this book, but adding Magneto seems redundant, and Duggan has no real idea of what to do with him. The fact that Magneto would work with Iron Man against Nimrod hardly qualifies as news – he’d have done that at pretty much any point this century. It’s Nimrod! And having Magneto snub Feilong by claiming not to have heard of him is another unearned moment – there is just no way that Magneto didn’t know the name of the troublesome human who colonised Arakko’s moon. The end result is to undercut Feilong’s final defeat when it ought to be a huge deal for this book, and the ending feels terribly weak.
WEAPON X-MEN #3. By Christos Gage, Yildiray Çinar, Nolan Woodard & Clayton Cowles. Harmless Exiles-with-Wolverines fluff – more of a collection of fun moments than a satisfying whole, but there are at least fun moments. We get the origin story of Earth-1281 Wolverine, Jane Howlett, done as a pastiche of Origin. I can actually see some potential in this character: she’s not just a gender-reversed Wolverine but a class-inverted one, who never gets driven out of the family home and simply grows up rich. It doesn’t really have much to do with the rest of the issue, though, which is a threat-of-the-month trip to another alternate earth where Onslaught has accidentally cast a spell that needs undoing. There are some cute lines in there, still. The book’s biggest problem is that I don’t really care about the Onslaught/Phoenix stuff, which is meant to be the A-plot. But it does have its strengths.
DEADPOOL / WOLVERINE: WWIII #1. By Joe Kelly, Adam Kubert, Frank Martin & Joe Sabino. Huh, that’s a stronger creative team than you’d expect for a random Deadpool/Wolverine mini. Technically, this might actually be the first post-Krakoa X-book, though who the heck knows, since it’s entirely standalone. Wolverine investigates a string of strange murders in Vancouver and stumbles upon an apparently insane supervillain already fighting Deadpool. Deadpool tries to pass it off as a random team-up, but Wolverine (correctly) guesses that Deadpool actually has something to do with this guy and sets off after him. At least, that’s the thrust of it. Joe Kelly’s not always the most straightforward of writers to follow, and this has got some of his opaque tendencies on show, so a lot will turn on how it comes together at the end of the day – I’m fairly clear what’s happening at the most basic level, but I don’t have much clue why. Still, Kubert’s on form and Wolverine can be a good grounding character for this sort of thing.
Note that Sandman appears with Rhodey in Invincible iron Man 18, and it’s implied he’s been protecting him since Iron Man 10. Currently Sandman is appearing in Amazing Spider-Man 45-48, and in Amazing Spider-Man 45, Peter notes that the X-Men are trying to find a way to disperse the cure for Krakoan Derangement Syndrome. And Sandman was in Ravencroft at the start of Amazing 45. So are we supposed to assume that Fall of the House of X takes place BEFORE Amazing 45 and the cure for “Krakoan Derangement Syndrome” is different from the cure Peter and Kamala dispersed?
Judging from Iron Man 18, it looks like the X-Men are going to have to kill Nimrod several times in Fall of the House of X 5.
Note that in Cable 4, Old Cable makes it clear that Young Cable might not grow up to be him. Since Young Cable was introduced, we’ve seen some scenes that imply Old Cable has Young Cable’s memories and some scenes that make no sense if Old Cable has Young Cable’s memories. Nicieza seems to want to keep things ambiguous. I hope this doesn’t end up like with the Time Traveling Original 5, where the writers kept going back and forth over whether they were from an alternate timeline or not.
I think it was a mistake to send the Cables off on a side quest that had nothing to do with the plot of Fall of X. The ending of Fall of X depends on Hope deciding to convince Xavier to stop Enigma by implementing a plan Destiny, Sinister and Exodus helped come up with that involves killing innocent humans. So the ending of Fall of X- and presumably the anti-mutant hatred of From the Ashes- depend on Hope making what was arguably the wrong choice. And this was because she was trying to emulate Cable. So any Cable series during Fall of the House of X needs to focus on Cable’s and Hope’s relationship, and how Cable raised Hope. and how Cable failed to set a good example for Hope. But instead we have Cable going off on a side quest.
Is there any need for an explanation of the anti-mutant hatred in the Marvel Universe at this point? It’s ingrained. Every time the X-Men go in a new direction (minus Morrison) it’s billed as “humans hate mutant more than ever”. At this point, I imagine roving bands of humans, carrying pitchforks and torches while foaming at the mouth, repeating, “Die mutants! Die mutants!” over and over again. That’s all the humans do like in a zombie apocalypse; they don’t go to work or school, have relationships, or worry about shelter.
“Fall of X” was about humans hating mutants again and the lesson being that negative forces could use that hatred for designs which would end up very badly for humanity as well as mutants. Of course that lesson will never stick.
I’d be perfectly willing to accept a mutant sneezing on a humans salad at a buffet as a reason for why humans hate mutants again in the Marvel Universe.
I may be biased, but I don’t see any particular need for Cable and Hope to share plots anymore.
There was a 2014 “X-Force” series (Volume 4) by Simon Spurrier that ended in #15 (early 2015) with very significant wedge between the two. I actually expected Cable to be kept out of sight for a good while after that.
Yes, they have since reconciled (a 2018 storyline in “Cable”), but I don’t think we have seen any indication of a particularly significant emotional reliance on each other between them since. It probably helps that Old Man Cable was dead for much of that time.
I guess we will see more Deadpool/Wolverine teamup books like Deadpool / Wolverine: WWIII in time for the movie that will come out in the summer.
On a tangential X-topic. since there a several X-Men tie-ins to Blood Hunt: What do we think is going on with Blade in Blood Hunt? He’s using Altantean magics on the Darkforce users and he has Bloodstorm as his servant. We’re all agreed that’s Varnae’s spirit in Blade’s body.right? Varnae was an Atlantean sorcerer before he became a vampire and Bloodstorm was his servant.
It would be so funny if Kid Cable got tangled in the whole “literal past or alternative timeline” mess, considering he was introduced to clean up the O5 tangle.
In ten years we’ll have Kid Rachel Summers taking out Kid Bishop after he got too mixed up after cleaning up the tangled Cables.
.
@Michael: I did not know about the Atlantean Magic, but it would make sense to have Varnae around in some capacity if that is the case.
I assume that will figure into the Midnight Sons tie-in’s plot.
Re: Blood Hunt
I wish this was a single one shot with light-based heroes (Monica Rambeau, Karolina Dean, Dazzler, etc) setting vampires on fire. As it is there is less to read while the vampires stink up a bunch of books, doubly so as it coincides with the gap created by Krakoa petering out and the new X-books slowly ramping up.
I only know Varnae from OHOTMU, but as a teen I loved his big belly and dangly earlobes. It was probably the first actully monstrous vampire I’d seen, in an age of opera cloaks.
@Michael: Bloodstorm or Bloodscream? Bloodstorm was Storm turned into a vampire.
I wonder what Marv Wolfman thinks about Blade being the villain, possibly to be replaced by his daughter at the end.
No, the original Bloodstorm was a clone of Dracula who served Varnae. That’s the one that’s reappearing in Blood Hunt:
http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix4/bloodstormns.htm
And the fact that Blade has a movie coming up is another reason why it’s probably Varnae in Blade’s body. Varnae taking over Blade’s body is easy to undo. Making Balde a true villain, on the other hand, would require a long and difficult redemption arc.
“I actually expected Cable to be kept out of sight for a good while after that.”
It feels like Cable exists in that awkward liminal space of “popular enough to have a solo title” and “not quite popular enough to keep a title going more than a couple of years.”
Like, he’ll always have ‘90s fans who’ll read any Cable book, and he’s been in a movie and had action figures and all. But also, his reason for coming back in time has been resolved, like, eight times. He’s watched Apocalypse’s final, ultimate defeat, once and for all, on multiple occasions. Hell, Apocalypse isn’t even a bad guy currently. By rights, Cable’s story is long over; the character shouldn’t exist anymore, or as you suggested, should be retired for a while until someone comes up with a new hook.
But of course it’s serialized storytelling with no conclusion and he’s still mildly popular, so that can’t happen. So he just… hangs out, getting new missions and artificial reasons to stick around. Marvel isn’t going to leave money on the table by retiring him. But he also doesn’t have ENOUGH fans anymore to be a Wolverine or Deadpool-type character who can keep a book running long term. Nothing wrong with that, but it definitely makes the character feel pretty directionless.
@Michael: Maybe they’ll throw a curveball and make Verdelet the villain behind Blood Hunt.
Hahahaha. Just kidding. Almost no one remembers Verdelet, and if they do, they don’t care about him.
Isn’t Varnae also supposed to be the last Giganthopithecus? Not that anyone other than his co-creator Steve Perry ever acknowledged that.
P.S. Please get Marvel to bring back Dracula’s classic design and ditch the generic fantasy warlord look he’s had for the last couple of decades.
P.P.S. I am not a crank.
Pretty sure any talk about Cable bring tied to Hope any time soon is moot, since it looks like she’s going to be taken Off The Table to shut down the whole “resurrection” thing.
I feel that if Cable were to get a book, the thing to do would be to focus on the “High Lord Ascension” thing that he was babbling about in his early appearances. Stretch it away from the Externals because those characters are as popular as the Eternals (there is precedence for this, as the Twelve did not include Franklin Richards who was one of the two of that group that were established by Louise Simonson). Give him a bit more of an edge and make him a schemer. Eh, it could work.
Alternatively, do a wacky road trip book with him and Stryfe. Cable’s the whiny, neglected brother, while Stryfe is the depressed one.
I think a Terminator style plot would be a good fit for Cable. He could come back in time from a dystopian future where the Machines rule (maybe something called Dominions). He could alternately come back to kill Moira who leads to this future world or to save Hope who is fated to be the saviour of the mutant race. Wait a second. Why is this all sounding so familiar?
I seem to remember there being a James Robinson written Cable series from (I want to say) close to ten years ago now which gave a different take on the character and was pretty good. I think it got cancelled almost immediately, so maybe it had no mass appeal. Mayhaps it was just a mini-series though. I thought it opened up new ideas for where to take Cable without the baggage of the early-‘90s and Apocalypse.
Something akin to Brandon Graham’s revamp of Prophet for Image Comics in the 2010s could work, by going full out in a science fiction direction for Cable. I wouldn’t mind seeing the same creative team from Prophet tackle Cable. Graham and Roy showed they could take outdated, no longer workable early-‘90s junk and turn it into a seemingly lost treasure.
The problems with Cable can be traced to two points in the 1990s. The first was in 1997, when John Francis Moore wrote Cable, Rector and Shatterstar out of X-Force. In Shatterstar’s case it was because his botched origin story had left him damaged goods. Both Rector and Shatterstar were left in semi-limbo until PAD salvaged them in X-Factor.
In Cable’s case, it seemed like this was no big deal since he had his own title. However, one of his major roles was to be the leader of X-Force. Cable would eventually lead X-Force again but for relatively short periods and X-Force would have other leaders like Wolverine. it was no longer his unique niche in the X-Books.
Cable’s other major role was to be destined to defeat Apocalypse. And this is where Marvel made its second mistake. in 1999, Marvel launched the Twelve crossover. in which Apocalypse tries to take over the world at the end of the millennium. This was supposed to be the big showdown between Cable and Apocalypse. But things went wrong. First, editorial demanded that all major developments happen in the X-Men books. So Cable’s showdown with Apocalypse in Cable 75 ended inconclusively when a mind-controlled Wolverine threatened a hostage. Cable literally wound up right back where he started at the beginning of the issue. Then, the crossover ended with Apocalypse taking over Cyclops’s body. But instead of having Cable have to kill his father to stop Apocalypse. instead the fight ended with Apocalypse just teleporting away. Marvel apparently wanted to “kill” Cyclops but didn’t want to do so in a way which would be difficult to bring him back. So instead of Cable killing Apocalypse the big confrontation ended with Apocalypse exiting stage left and everyone pretending that there was no way to get Apocalypse out of Scott’s body and Scott was dead. Annoyingly, everyone acted like this had prevented Cable’s future from taking place. The readers felt this made no sense- Apocalypse could just take over the world in Scott’s body. But the writers doubled down on this by using Cable’s future being “prevented” as an excuse to bring back a youthful Rachel.
The readers could not believe how anticlimactic this was, after years of stories about Cable trying to prevent his future. Marvel belatedly tried to appease the fans with the Search for Cyclops series, where Apocalypse was separated from Scott and killed by Cable. But it was too little, too late.
Arguably, neither Cable nor Apocalypse ever recovered from the Twelve. Cable’s series continued for another couple of years under Robert Weinberg but ever since the Twelve, writers have to keep trying to find new roles for Cable. Apocalypse. meanwhile, rarely appeared in the present day in the decades following the Search for Cyclops. The only real confrontation between the X-Men and Apocalypse between the Search for Cyclops and Rosenberg’s run was Milligan’s Blood of Apocalypse storyline, which wasn’t that good. There were other stories with Warren and Bobby infected with Death Seeds but the real Apocalypse rarely showed up. And Rosenberg’s run was basically killing time until Krakoa. And in the Krakoan Age, Apocalypse was an ALLY of the X-Men.
This, combined with Magneto’s reformation after Morrison left, had an interesting effect on the X-Men’s rogues gallery. Traditionally, the X-Men’s top 5 rogues are Magneto, Apocalypse, Sinister, Mystique and Shaw. But with Apocalypse and Magneto off the table, that left Shaw, Mystique and Sinister as villains. Shaw never really caught on with the readers and Mystique changes sides every alternate Tuesday. The end result of this was that Sinister came to dominate the X-Men’s rogues gallery, to the point where the latter half of their Krakoan Era had FIVE Snisters as the main villains.
But yes, Cable and Apocalypse arguably never recovered from the Twelve.
Rector?
That sounds like a parody character, all things considered.
Rictor is the proper name.
Deadpool can’t even keep a solo book going in recent years.
“The Twelve” was NOTHING like the 1980s promise.
Populating it with 1990s characters and storytelling methods hurt the whole line and burnt the potential.
This is helpful! “The Twelve” happened during a period when I wasn’t reading comics. After getting Marvel Unlimited a few years ago, I tracked down the comics from the event and thought, “This makes no sense; I must be missing some chapters.” But perhaps not.
Without looking it up, I thought Robinson wrote Cable in the late 90s? When Landron (sp) was drawing it? Thought it when when I was working in the comic shop. That was the only time I think I regularly read the book, since he was writing it.
Tom Breevort has two interviews up today- one on AIPT and the other on the Cerebro podcast about the new era. Here’s some tidbits:
X-Factor will be coming out in August and Wolverine in September.
X-Factor will be a government sanctioned team.
Scott and Jean are still married and having a long-distance relationship.
Some mutants lost their citizenship when they went to Krakoa.
Monet will be appearing in Gail Simone’s book.
Bishop and Cable will not be appearing in the early stages. Breevort claims he established a rule that no doppelgängers and no characters from the future will be appearing in the early stages. This might mean that Maddie and Scout won’t be appearing in the early stages.
Then again, who knows? Breevort was widely mocked for claiming that no characters from the future will be appearing in the early stages because Rachel will be appearing in the early stages. So if Rachel doesn’t count as being from the future when she clearly is, then maybe Maddie and Scout don’t count as doppelgängers.
(I have to wonder if Bishop and Cable got barred from early appearances because sales on the Children of the Vault and Cable series were bad and Breevort just doesn’t want to admit it.)
The only clue to Inmate X’s identity Breevort gave was that it’s someone who was created before or in 1980. That means it has to be either Xavier, Moira or Proteus, right? I can’t think of anyone else who would be worth this buildup.
Breevort has a “unified field theory” of Scott and Jean’s relationship that will explain a lot of ill considered storytelling decisions over the years- presumably Scott leaving Maddie and Nathan and hiding his marriage from Jean in X-Factor and having a psychic affair with Emma in Morrison’s X-Men.
Scott’s X-Men will be specifically focused on mutant affairs and Rogue’s will be more of a normal superhero team. If Doctor Octopus is robbing a bank two states down, Scott’s X-Men won’t go after him but Rogue’s will.
Kate will be retired from the X-Men initially because she doesn’t like the person she became.
Kate and Emma won’t be friends like they were during the Krakoan Era but will be at odds.
The first wave of launches lasts until October.
X-Factor will consist of Angel, Havok, Pyro, Frenzy and Feral working for a government/PR team.
They will be fighting against “villains” like the Mutant Underground and X-Term.
Why would Frenzy be put on a PR team? She’s a black woman who murdered a nurse protecting a white child with Down’s syndrome. She’s probably hated by everyone from white supremacists to disability advocates.
So it looks like Alex and Maddie have split up. I wonder if she’s with the Mutant Underground or X-Term.
X-Term seems to be short for X-Terminators. In the original X-Factor series, the original Five would pretend to be mutant hunters and then change into the X-Terminators to rescue the mutants they were supposedly hunting. I wonder if something similar is going on here. X-Factor goes to arrest the mutant “terrorists” and then Warren and Alex contact X-Term to rescue them. Although that would be similar to the last Alpha Flight series.
Encouraging news. I had to check to see if Nightcrawler and Wolverine were assigned to the known team rosters – it would make sense for Nightcrawler to be dealing with heat from Si Spurrier’s plots, and he is one mutant who needs very special measures if he is to be arrested. And Wolverine is Wolverine.
Maybe Inmate X is Sabretooth? That would make a certain amount of sense. Or it could be Ororo, depending on how her next few public actions look for the outside world. Or even Namor. For the real unlikely guesses, I will offer Namorita, Namora, Peter Parker and Ben Reilly.
I’m hoping for Ororo. I feel that she could really use some remedial characterization at the current time. If not her, Proteus. Moira would make more sense if I could be convinced that it is a good time to try to run along with the character. I can’t.