The X-Axis – w/c 25 November 2024
X-MEN: FROM THE ASHES INFINITY COMIC #25. By Tim Seeley, Eric Koda, KJ Díaz & Clayton Cowles. Apparently this is the final issue, though that really just means that they’re changing the name of the book. You can’t keep naming it after the relaunch forever, after all. It’s the end of the Thanksgiving arc with Beak and his family, and it doesn’t do anything that will come as a huge surprise. At the end of the last issue, Beak was downcast and depressed to learn that the Beast hadn’t been working on a cure for his daughter after all. In this issue, a chance encounter restores his sense of hope. It’s very sentimental – it’s playing the dying child card, after all – but you can get away with that in a holiday story. And it does get away with it, through some gentle pacing and some nicely observed detail both in writing and art. It’s a lot better than a summary makes it sound.
UNCANNY X-MEN #6. (Annotations here.) This is a transition issue between the “Red Wave” arc and the “Raid on Graymalkin” crossover – although you could equally bill it as the first part of “Raid on Graymalkin”, since it sees two of the main cast get captured and carted off to jail. But it’s got a fill-in artist, Javier Garrón, which might explain why it’s being classed as something separate. Good art, though – closer to Nick Bradshaw than regular artist David Marquez, but a clean line and a storng sense of body language suit the book.
The main focus of the issue is on the four Outliers being sent off to the local school together. Since they’re clearly part of the core cast, even if they’re not technically X-Men yet, it’s a good idea to give them a downtime issue before going into the crossover. And I’m all in favour for doing more to get the X-books into the real world more often, though I can’t help wondering whether this book and Exceptional are covering very similar territory in having so many teen trainees around. Calico is clearly getting the bulk of the attention here, but maybe that’s necessary, since she’s the one who’s going to be taken off the board, so getting us invested in her is the most pressing task. Deathdream and Ransom get fleshed out a little more too, though Jitter is still a bit sketchy.
I’m still not sold on the Graymalkin prison as villains – it’s too early to go back to Orchis, and we haven’t really established what makes these guys different. And it feels too early to be going to a fight with them, when the X-Men have barely interacted with them to this point (except in the sense that they’re allied with Sarah Gaunt, but the X-Men don’t seem to know that). Still, we’ll see where all that is going when the crossover is underway.
MYSTIQUE #2. By Declan Shalvey, Matt Hollingsworth & Clayton Cowles. This is going to be one of those books where I won’t know what to make of it until it ends. It’s building up a complicated mystery story which I’m not sure I’m following, and a lot is going to turn on whether it sticks the landing. In the meantime, it’s doing some quite effective things in terms of distancing us from Mystique and showing her through other people’s eyes, to play up the uncertainty about which characters might be her at any given time. Granted, there’s a bit of gratuitous shapechanging for the sake of visual flair too. But I can see that it’s making good use of Mystique as a source of confusion. What it isn’t really doing is drawing me into the story, because… well, because it’s confusing and I don’t really feel like I know what’s going on or what’s at stake. It’s a puzzle box book, and we’ll have to see it if it can pull off the solution.
DAZZLER #3. By Jason Loo, Rafael Loureiro, Java Tartaglia & Ariana Maher. Dazzler’s tour dates are getting cancelled because of the chaos that keeps affecting her shows, and Lila Cheney takes her to Japan for an issue to have fun. That leads to a basically random fight with Arcade, who just happens to be in the area and has a stab at claiming the open contract on Dazzler. It’s really just a random fight issue, but it does that well enough. Loureiro does some fun go-kart chase scenes, which isn’t an easy thing to pull off. As with previous issues, the book’s main problem is that it’s terribly heavy-handed when it does deal directly with its core theme of Dazzler standing up to prejudice, and while that’s more marginal in this book, the lyrics of Dazzler’s songs probably would have been better left to the reader’s imagination.
Also, about the Greymalkin mess, how is this going to interact with the whole One World Under Doom thing? Are they just going to Red Skies it and say “yeah, Doom’s in charge, but nothing’s changed”?
The one thing that bothers me about the Infinity Comic is that the reason that Beak was depressed in the previous issue was because the cure for Kara was lost with Evil Beast and now Good Beast has to start working on it all over again at the beginning. And this issue his hope is restored when he meets a doctor who’s willing to work on a cure for Kara. But Beast was already willing to work on a cure for Kara- the problem was that he had to start all over again and whatever progress the other Beast made was lost. But I suppose it works because Beak has never been a logical man and the story was more about restoring Beak’s hope than curing Kara.
West Coast Avengers 1. which features Firestar. was out this week. A lot of readers didn’t like that Angelica was reacting to her ordeal of being undercover with Orchis by drinking with villains and if the solicits are to be believed there’s even worse behavior from Angelica ahead.
I wonder what’s going on with Ultron. The story does seem to acknowledge that Ultron was separated from Hank Pym in Avengers Inc. But the good Ultron doesn’t seem to be Mark from Avengers Inc. I’ve seen it theorized that the good Ultron is Hank Pym somehow.
By the way. a lot of readers didn’t seem to get that there were two Ultrons- the good Ultron had a red energy signature and the bad Ultron had a blue energy signature.
In other news. the conclusion to Venom War came out this week. (It had a Wolverine tie-in.) It felt like an anticlimax.It seems like the problem was that Ewing wasn’t originally planning to end the Meridius storyline this way. He definitely didn’t want Eddie to become Carnage. And it seems like Carnage’s involvement came out of left field.
For starters. the idea that it was Dylan who destroyed the world in the Bad Future and not Meridius, Carnage or Eddie wasn’t fully developed. It wasn’t without foreshadowing- the Venomworld scenes. Old Dylan saying the moment he stabbed his father was the worst moment of his life even though his father survived- because it was the moment that led to the destruction of the world. But we didn’t get to see what mistake Dylan made that led to the destruction of the world- just a vague remark from Meridius that Dylan thinks small.
Second. Meridius’s whole motivation was to avoid becoming the Eventuality. But it’s never clearly explained how Meridius thought this scheme would enable him to avoid becoming the Eventuality.
As an aside, is the idea supposed to be that what drove Meridius insane was not his fear of becoming the Eventuality but his knowledge that his son was fated to destroy the world? We saw Meridius thinking of his father during the Venom issues and Eddie’s father became abusive to Eddie after Eddie killed a man while driving drunk. Is the idea that the Brock men went nuts because of their inability to love their children once their children caused innocent deaths? If that’s the case, it could have been developed more clearly.
Also. why did the Eventuality show Dylan the image of Eddie on a rampage in the future when Dylan asked what will happen if his dad reunites with the symbiote? Looking back, the Eventuality told Eddie he was planning on acting like a villain to test his successor. so that’s the image the Eventuality showed Dylan- just out of context. And when Dylan asked how to stop this. the Eventuality said “You’ll know when you’re older”, pointing him toward Old Dylan?. So are we to believe the Eventuality arranged all of this to stop Dylan from destroying the world?
@SanityOrMadness- Breevort has said Weapon X-Men was delayed so that it could be launched during One World Under Doom, so obviously Breevort knew One World Under Doom was coming in advance and was able to plan accordingly.
The preview for X-Men 8 makes it clear that Warden Ellis kidnapped Beast as a favor to the President of Terra Verda. So they’ll probably do something like you suggested. It’s really not much different to say that “Warden Ellis does the occasional favor for the President of Terra Verde” and “Warden Ellis works for the King of Latveria”. Especially since Warden Ellis’s plans for mutants seem to involve putting them under her control, not exterminating them. Since Doom wants all superhuman beings under his control, their agendas dovetail.
I’m not sure that’s accurate. Storm’s role in One World Under Doom seems to be as the goddess of peace, who will work to end the enmity between humans and mutants. Warden Ellis’ goals seem to be to segregate and neutralize mutants purportedly for the safety of humans. It doesn’t seem as if Doom would agree with the idea of locking up mutants. Doom’s goal for mutants does seem like it would accomplish Ellis’ agenda, although in a completely opposite manner, but would also make Greymalkin unnecessary.
I was wondering if Marvel was doing this “Raid on Greymalkin” cross-over now to rush a conclusion for Greymalkin before One World Under Doom.
In non-X news this week, I’m really liking Spencer Ackerman’s Iron Man. He feels like a better fit as “serious writer does comics” than Ta-Nehisi Coates on Black Panther and Captain America. It’s pretty clear Ackerman knows his material, with references to a number of past storylines, and he’s also trying to give us something new with an Iron Man willing to resort to do some unheroic things. Plus the bit with Iron.GPT was great.
I’m not sure how well this with mesh with West Coast Avengers (or Avengers for that matter), and the book is a lot more dense reading than some of the other stuff out there, but I’m in for it.
@Chris V- Sentinels 5 comes out in February and the solicits make it seem like Graymalkin is still in operation and Ellis is still the warden. Plus, Uncanny X-Men 10 comes out in February and the Outliers are being hunted by those dog-Sentinel things we saw Ellis working on in Sentinels 2.
Boy, Venom sure turned out to have lasting power.
I guess the universe does not conspire to give me what I want.
I guess this man is motivated because Beak saved his life during planet x, where as Hank will soon find out the Beak almost battered him to death with a Baseball bat and may not think he is worth helping.
I have been having trouble with Venom war the whole space god venom period is just a bit to much for my tastes. Symbiotes have become to Marvel like Lantern rings for DC 10 years ago. There are millions of them and they make the used all powerful until they become uninteresting. Did Black widow need a symbiote ? should carnage be immortal so that he can even create his own body? Are they even hurt by sound and fire anymore ?
I think the idea is Beast would be starting at square 1 and probably spend half his time inventing other crap or punching robots. The doctor, on the other hand, has already done a lot of the general study required, and doesn’t have any hobbies outside of lurking in airport toilets.
In other news, Joe Casey has said that Weapon X-Men will feature villains from outside the X-verse and like his Cable run, the characters will often run into non-X heroes.
What is it with the From the Ashes titles featuring non-X villains? Phoenix features non-X villains. Storm has Oblivion as the Big Bad, who first appeared in an Iceman series but since then has been a general Marvel Universe character. X-Factor has Darkstar as the Big Bad, who is a mutant with connections to Warren and Bobby but is usually more of a general Marvel Universe character. And X-Force spent the last three issues fighting Nuklo, who is a mutant but is a general Marvel Universe character.
Then again, this seems to be part of a larger effort by Breevort to integrate the X-titles into the Marvel Universe. Phoenix is intended to serve as a way to relaunch Marvel’s cosmic titles. Storm has joined the Avengers. X-Force has been taking a tour of the Marvel Universe- from Wakanda to the Well of All Things to the Nexus of Realities.
“What is it with the From the Ashes titles featuring non-X villains?”
I’m not really feeling this current crop of books, but I do appreciate that they didn’t have the Krakoan truce fall apart immediately and reset all the villains into default mode. I’m sure there will be more recidivism eventually, but I do like the opportunity to rethink some of these characters being extended.
Some stuff from Breevort’s blog:
Madelyne Pryor will be seen a bit during One World Under Doom. Which makes sense. considering Doom’s plan to subjugate all countries to Latveria and his mommy issues.
Rogue will NOT punch Scott in X-Men 8- that’s just the cover.
NYX 6 will be a “bit of a sidereal crossover with DAZZLER #4, but each part of it is designed to be read as a stand-alone story on its own”.
And finally. apparently there was controversy about Uncanny X-Men 6’a letters page:
Rack:Hello Mr. Brevoort! I’d like to talk about a letter you responded to in this week’s Uncanny X-Men that I would really appreciate some added perspective on.
I don’t really have a way to sugarcoat this — I find it unsettling and frustrating that you would choose to print a letter that is mischaracterizing and mispositioning so much of the greater plot of the previous era of stories, and I find it more frustrating still that you’d choose to give it your stamp of approval as it shoves many of your colleagues that I admire under the bus. A letter, mind you, that draws an implied philosophical connection from Krakoan attitudes to Trump’s MAGA hate group.
TOM: Well, clearly, Rack, you weren’t the only reader who felt this way. We got similar comments from Rhys P, Luka, Andrew Albrecht and others. To be honest, I was a little bit surprised when these responses began to come in—enough so that I went and dug out the letters page in question just to see what I had printed that was causing such controversy.
Look, I’m sorry that you and the others were upset by this, Rack. And you’re right to feel however you like about it. But looking at both the missive above and its answer, I honestly feel like the idea that this is somehow a refutation or mischaracterization of the entire Krakoa era or that it throws any other creators under a bus to be a bit of an overreaction. You can certainly disagree with the sentiment that writer James A.V.C. is putting forward here, but speaking for myself, I don’t think that he’s being disingenuous. I’ve heard this point of view expressed by any number of other readers since taking over the line. And making the leap to it equating Krakoan attitudes (and presumably the attitudes of that period’s fans) to MAGA or whatever strikes me as a bit of a leap. Still, I do appreciate you and the others coming forward in such a reasonable manner (as opposed to some of the people on social media, who’ve been a bit more outspoken and outraged.) My agreement at the end was intended as being much more about the letter’s concluding half, the idea that the X-Men are there to speak to any reader who may feel marginalized in any fashion, and accepting of all. That includes every reader for whom Krakoa and its era was the greatest thing ever as well as those who didn’t like it and fell away from reading it. I don’t think there’s a thing wrong with having loved those stories. But I also don’t think that there’s a thing wrong with having criticisms about them either.
@Luis: To be fair, Venom isn’t that bad of a character. After all, the Evil Version of Our Beloved Hero is a valid trope. I think the bigger problem is that Venom has been way overexposed and he should *never* have been written as a hero.