The X-Axis – w/c 17 February 2025
ASTONISHING X-MEN INFINITY COMIC #11. By Tim Seeley, Edoardo Audino, KJ Díaz & Clayton Cowles. So we have an absolutely ridiculous number of X-books out this week. Perhaps they’re trying to get through stuff before One World Under Doom gets fully under way. Maybe they needed to get some things done before the “X-Manhunt” crossover. Or maybe they knew they were announcing a bunch of cancellations this week and thought that if they put out ten X-books in a single week then the news would come as a blessed relief.
Look: I had no problem with the end of the Krakoan era. With the number of titles set there, I think there was a decent argument to be made that it had run its course, or at least that it was time to quit while they were ahead. And frankly, the post-Hickman back end of the Krakoan era was seriously patchy. Still, whatever came after it was always going to struggle to have the same impact. I think Tom Brevoort took a basically sensible approach in the circumstances by not even trying to compete on the “high concept” front and just going for a broad range of mostly standalone titles instead. I’m largely sympathetic to what the current office is trying to do, and there are some genuinely good books in the line. But we’ve got ten X-books this week and I’d struggle to recommend more than two, maybe three. That’s not a good hit rate.
Astonishing #11 isn’t the problem. It’s inessential, but it’s a perfectly serviceable Cap/Juggernaut team-up story with some rather nice art. The plot is rudimentary but Seeley writes a good rapport between Captain America and Juggernaut now that we’ve got on to them co-operating. I’m not so sure about Black Tom’s post-Krakoan direction being that he’s got plant powers and gone mad – it’s perfectly logical in terms of where he was left by Benjamin Percy’s run on X-Force but it also feels like the least interesting thing you could do with him. Seeley wants it to be a story about how Cain’s attempts to reform are sabotaged by his ties to Black Tom but it feels far too late in the day to pull off that angle.
UNCANNY X-MEN #10. (Annotations here.) Sticking with the positive, the core X-Men titles have generally been good. Uncanny X-Men is perilously close to not actually being an X-Men comic, but an Outliers comic with the X-Men’s name on it. But the Outliers themselves are interesting, and one thing that’s been a genuine positive of the current era is getting the mutants a bit more grounded in the real world – something that hadn’t really been a focal point since the 1980s. Okay, the art on this issue is a little rough around the edges at times, and Graymalkin still seem too obvious as villains, but the focus is on the new characters and that’s making it work. Granted, by issue #10 we should probably have a clearer idea of what the kids actually do (though Deathdream’s spooky, so he gets away with being vague) and it seems bizarre that nobody’s sat down with them so far to ask basic questions like “so how did you meet and why did you come here”. But… the book gets away with all that because the characters are engaging and the book’s homely vibe is a pleasure.
EXCEPTIONAL X-MEN #6. (Annotations here.) Exceptional may be my favourite of the current line, even if its approach of doing almost entirely character-driven stories with virtually zero action content feels at a minimum commercially bold. To be fair, it looks like we’re getting to an actual villain imminently (in just the second trade paperback!). But again, it’s the characters that make this work. It may be a little odd to shift gears to mutants as a visible minority in mainstream America, but it opens up new approaches for the X-books. My gut tells me the book has made a commercial mistake by not getting the point quicker, but as a reader I’m glad that it’s taking its time.
X-FORCE #8. (Annotations here.) The first of the imminently cancelled books. X-Force has just two more issues to go, and one of them is an “X-Manhunt” tie-in, so brace yourself for an abrupt wrap-up. X-Force is what you might call a respectable failure. The art has been good, and the core story concept had potential: Forge has so much faith in his mutant ability to come up with answers that he never stops to ask whether he’s being manipulated into asking the wrong question. At least, that seems to be part of the core idea; there’s something else going on about prompting Forge to reconnect with his magical side too. But this story is tricky to pull off in practice, because it results in a comic where the heroes run around from mission to mission for no real reason beyond the fact that Forge’s powers tell them to. That’s the starting point of the story, and it’s resulted in practice in a book that just feels like one arbitrary set piece after another. I can imagine X-Force looking good as a pitch; it hasn’t quite worked on the page.
NYX #8. By Jackson Lanzing, Collin Kelly, Francesco Mortarino, Raúl Angulo & Joe Sabino. This is also being axed with issue #10, and it too is getting saddled with an “X-Manhunt” tie-in for issue #9. I wonder when these cancellations were decided on. On the whole, NYX has been patchy, but leaning towards good. It’s another book that’s tried to ground the mutants in the real world again, with a fair degree of success – it’s rather dispiriting to see that it’s being replaced by a Ms Marvel gimmick miniseries, which doesn’t play to its strengths. Where it’s generally struggled is with bigger social ideas and naively optimistic ideas about activism. This issue is really neither of those – instead, it’s Laura breaking Julian Keller out of jail because she can’t believe he really turned evil. It’s not a bad character piece, but some of its rehabbing of Julian feels like backpedalling that doesn’t really work with the story we had in the previous issues. The main point of Julian’s role in Empath’s scheme was that his terrorist attacks were a cover for killing members of the city government in order that they could be replaced by Empath’s pawns. But now we’re told that Julian couldn’t bring himself to actually kill them so he… carried out a string of terrorist attacks anyway but instead quietly abducted the people he was meant to kill and kept them prisoner somewhere, where they’ve presumably been starving to death since he was arrested in issue #5? And these guys were all still declared dead even though there were no bodies? How did people even know they’d been on the trains? How triggerhappy are the presumption of death laws in Marvel New York? This makes so little sense that I can’t help feeling it’s been retrofitted to try and rehab Julian in a way that wasn’t originally planned.
X-FACTOR #8. By Mark Russell, Bob Quinn, Jesus Aburtov & Joe Caramagna. This hasn’t officially been cancelled with issue #10, but the solicitation seems awfully discouraging, the available sales data isn’t great, and ten issues does seem to be the standard Marvel order for a new ongoing. And nobody’s taken the opportunity to deny that it’s the last issue, either. And… well, it isn’t very good. Like X-Force, though, it’s easy to see how it got commissioned – on paper, Mark Russell doing a JLI-ish satirical book about the US government team feels like it ought to work. In practice it’s turned out to be a misfiring tone clash, with comedy elements that undercut the more serious storylines without actually being funny. I wouldn’t have predicted that going in, and even though I don’t think it’s worked, I think it was more than reasonable to take a punt on it.
This issue is ostensibly a One World Under Doom tie-in, though that seems suspiciously nailed-on to an unrelated idea. The actual idea is an AI-run city state in the ruins of Genosha – the issue does itself no favours by seeming to be unaware that Genosha was still a desolate ruin when we last saw it in 2023, but okay, I’ll buy that this place was raced into existence with nanotech or something. And I can see what Russell is going for here; it’s one of those cryptobro dreams of building a libertarian citystate, with Genosha as the site because it’s cheap, it’s available and the people behind the project are totally insensitive. But all the story really has to say about how the city works is that the population are under mind control as part of the terms of service, which is kind of a one-note gag, and doesn’t really develop the concept beyond that. There’s a version of this story which works. In fact, this issue has fewer tone problems than average for the series. But it isn’t coming together.
MYSTIQUE #5. By Declan Shalvey, Matt Hollingsworth & Clayton Cowles. Final issue of the miniseries. This is the “maybe three” – I simply haven’t had time to go back and reread the whole miniseries yet and see whether it ties together in a satisfying way with hindsight. With that caveat, on a first reading, I found this to be less than the sum of its parts; it’s got some clever ideas about re-establishing the idea that Mystique could be anyone, but inevitably that’s a story where someone else is the protagonist, and that’s where I think the book runs into trouble – even though I rather liked its take on Nick Fury Jr as a frustrated super spy working within budget cuts, and he’s a character I’ve never really had much interest in before. But the resolution of the story for Mystique herself didn’t feel to me like it emerged much from anything that had happened up to that point. Still, I do want to go back and re-read it, because I have a nagging feeling it’s the sort of book that will make a lot more sense in a single sitting rather than being spread over several months.
LAURA KINNEY: WOLVERINE #3. By Erica Schultz, Giada Belviso, Rachelle Rosenberg & Cory Petit. Three issues in, this series feels competent but redundant. It’s doing fairly standard X-Men beats. It’s told well enough, both in art and pacing. It just doesn’t feel like it has any particular ideas about Laura; there’s no sense of the book being about anything beyond filling the space. I suppose using first Elektra and (in the next issue) Winter Soldier as the guest stars has some tie to the theme of Laura having been a brainwashed weapon in the past, but that hasn’t really come to the fore, and besides, Psylocke is already doing the same theme (with more success). If you just want a Laura Kinney solo series, then this is a Laura Kinney solo series, and it isn’t offensively bad or anything. It’s just… there. And in a ten-book week that’s not really going to cut it.
STORM #5. By Murewa Ayodele, Lucas Werneck, Alex Guimarães & Travis Lanham. I absolutely get why Marvel are trying a Storm solo – sure, it’s never worked before, but she does have a devoted fanbase these days. And indeed, from what limited information we have, the sales seem to be rather good. ICV2’s sales data is wonky these days because it gets heavily skewed by the week of the month in which a book is released, but for what it’s worth, they had Storm #4 at number 25. That’s pretty good!
It does nothing for me, though. This issue is ostensibly a One World Under Doom tie-in, presumably because Doom is in it, though it’s just a continuation of last issue’s story and there’s nothing to suggest that OWUD is actually underway. Storm has died and been resurrected as a champion of Eternity, I guess. It’s got lovely art and if you’re into the bare fact of Storm being presented as a cosmic player then it’s got that… but it’s just meaningless cosmic woo, isn’t it? Normally with books I don’t like, I can at least see what they’re going for. With Storm, I’m just entirely at cross-purposes with the whole thing. I don’t understand what this book is trying to do at all.
WEAPON X-MEN #1. By Joe Casey, ChrisCross, Mark Morales, Yen Nitro & Clayton Cowles. Apparently this is an ongoing title, despite being listed on Amazon as a miniseries. It’s ostensibly a One Nation Under Doom tie-in, though this seems to boil down to “it involves Latveria so we might as well put the banner on it”. It’s basically a Cable/Deadpool/Wolverine team-up book, with Chamber and Thunderbird thrown in for good measure. While it’s nice to see ChrisCross getting work, the world does not need a second Deadpool/Wolverine team-up book, and nothing in this issue even starts to make a case for why the comic exists at all. From the promotion I was expecting something vaguely over the top but it isn’t, really. It’s not awful or anything, it’s just… Yet More. And releasing a book like that in a week like this is hardly showing it in the best light – it feels like the epitome of a week of glut.
Paul> WEAPON X-MEN #1…. [is] ostensibly a One Nation Under Doom tie-in, though this seems to boil down to “it involves Latveria so we might as well put the banner on it”.
And Casey’s been going round saying exactly that – it’s a red skies crossover, because he didn’t even know they were going to slap a 1WUD banner on it.
NYX 8:
Jackson Lanzing made it sound like this was the plan for Julian from the beginning:
https://bleedingcool.com/comics/marvel-comics-cancels-x-force-nyx-and-probably-x-factor-with-10/
“To every fan of Julian who spent the last eight months wondering if we knew what the hell we were doing thank you for sticking with us and for those who didn’t, I hope you read as you read issue 8. ”
But it seems like they found out they were cancelled and were told to put the toys back in the box. It’s notable that Sophie’s telepathy was completely on the fritz in issues 5-6 and it seems to have mostly gotten better by this issue, even though Sophie notes her telepathy is still “messy”.
The Storm book has been one long rollercoaster for me: I started out annoyed by how blatantly Ayodele was writing Ororo as being “too good/too powerful” for the X-Men. Then #3 and #4 came around, and I *loved* her dynamic with the Uncanny team and Doom. And then #5 was 22 pages of incoherent cosmic nonsense, and I promptly dropped the book.
Somewhere along the line the X-Office apparently decided that Storm was a literal goddess, and now we’re just… rolling with that, I guess? Not a direction I’m at all compelled to follow.
X-Factor 7:
This really isn’t consistent with One World Under Doom. In One World Under Doom 1, the governments of the world are under Doom’s control by the time he makes his speech. In this issue, the speech is treated as notice that the governments are surrendering to Doom by midnight.
One other weird thing about GIgosha- the majority of the Gensohans Cassandra killed were brought back to life at the end of the Krakoan Era. Where did they go?
A lot of people didn’t like Warren making fun of Cecilia’s boyfriend being murdered.
The quality of all of the Brevoort books are on an issue by issue basis. Exceptional is the only one that is worthwhile every time. Which isn’t unusual, but there are just so many books that it gets rough when weaker issues come out at once.
I’m not sure where I am with the titles at the moment. I’ll keep up with Adjectiveless. I’ve loved parts of X-Factor and Storm enough to keep up for a bit. But even the minis (Sentinels and Mystique) felt inconsistent. So it isn’t surprising that Wolverine, Phoenix, Psylocke, Uncanny, NYX, etc. will be good to dull.
I maintain we are still better than we were in the end of Krakoa. The art is uniformly fantastic, the books have their own individual feel, and quite a few of them feel topical. But 2/3 of these titles would have made it feel like it had better quality control.
Mystique 5:
It was too obvious that Nick Fury Sr. was Mystique.
I didn’t like the idea that Mystique did all this just to delete any information about her and her loved ones from the intelligence agencies’ databases. Aside from the question of whether there are paper records. what good does that do if everyone at the agencies know that Rogue is her daughter and Rogue is operation publicly as a hero?
Also, Mystique claims that Fury’s career will be over once everyone realizes that Mystique deleted information from SHIELD’s databases while she was disguised as Fury? Why? Wouldn’t the career of whoever’s in charge of security at SHIELD be over?
I think one of the points of this issue is to explain why Destiny never warned Mystique not to do dumb things like abandon Grayson causing him to turn into a revenge-crazed madman.
Another point of this series seems to be to explain why Mystique can’t duplicate the powers of the people she impersonates. The answer is- if she tries to do it with the help of people like Cortez, there will be horrible consequences. I guess that was necessary after Spurrier had Dr. Nemesis say that she should be able to duplicate powers in theory.
It’s kind of weird how this series had Cortez claim that he was trying to change and use his powers to help people and he winds up in SHIELD custody anyway.
Michael One other weird thing about GIgosha- the majority of the Gensohans Cassandra killed were brought back to life at the end of the Krakoan Era. Where did they go?
Right back to the White Hot Room with Krakoa when it left Earth.
Really, the bizarre thing is that characters like Cypher and Black Tom, who are shown to be really missing their bonds with Krakoa, DIDN’T go to the WHR.
Laura Kinney: Wolverine 3:
So basically Luke Cage ignored Laura’s warning and then blamed her when the bad guys blew up a protest. He’s being written as an Obstructive Bureaucrat. I was worried that the writers would trash Luke whenever Mayor Adams did something they didn’t like and we seem to be at that point.
Weapon X-Men 1:
“Apparently this is an ongoing title, despite being listed on Amazon as a miniseries.”
Breevort and Casey both felt the need to explain on their blogs that it was an ongoing.
Casey was proud of the Weapon X-Men name and he was angry that it was used for a miniseries last year. That’s why he has Deadpool talk about what a great name it is.
This is the second time Deadpool has unknowingly betrayed his friends to a fascist- the first was Secret Empire. It’s getting to be a pattern.
Casey has said that one of the purposes of Weapon X-Men is to revitalize Strucker as a villain. Ever since Secret Warriors has ended, no one has known what to do with Strucker- whenever the writers needed a villain in charge of Hydra, it was usually Zemo. And I guess it makes sense to do it here, since Wolverine has fought Strucker before.
I think this book and Deadpool And Wolverine are redundant. Do we really need TWO books where Deadpool And Wolverine team up?
Paul’s review of Laura Kinney Wolverine pretty well summed up my reaction. There’s nothing about it I really dislike, but there’s nothing about it that impresses me, either. I feel like there’s potential to dig deeper into the character, but I may be fooling myself.
I’m on the fence about whether it’s worth giving it another issue, as someone with no particular interest in Winter Soldier, I’m sorry “The Revolution”.
Is Juggernaut still linked to Cytorrak? In the Juggernaut series in 2020, the point was made that Juggernaut was no longer linked to Cytorrak but he now gets his power from his armor. Supposedly Kid Juggernaut is Cytorrak’s new avatar. But in this week’s Amazing Spider-Man 68, Peter asks Cytorrak’s daughter why Cain is immune to the Blight and she replies that Cain “is my father’s presence here on Earth”.
Bleeding Cool’s Bestseller List for this week is in and it doesn’t look good for the X-Books. Only three books made it to the top 10- Uncanny X-Men, Weapon X-Men and Storm. And Weapon X-Men came in at number 8- that’s not good for a first issue. Embarrassingly, it was beaten by Doom Academy 1- the first issue of a tie-in limited series featuring the Strange Academy kids. And Storm came in at number 10.
I think the problem with this week’s sales and the reason why so many X-books are struggling in sales is oversaturation. The market simply can’t support 15 X-books! There’s just too much duplication-the market simply can’t support a Wolverine book and a Laura book and an Akihiro book at the same time. No wonder three of the books were cancelled.
Of course, some of the books had other problems. Extraordinary X-Men took too long to get to the point- it shouldn’t take six issues for the characters to encounter their first real villain. Eve Ewing was trained as a sociology professor, not as a comic book writer, so that’s perhaps understandable. But Breevort has been an editor for THREE DECADES- he should know better how to launch a new series.
Right now, the entire line seems to be flopping, with the exception of X-Men, Uncanny X-Men, Wolverine, Magik and Storm. And the main culprit is Breevort.
@SanityOrMadness- It was said that 15 million were resurrected. Even if only 6% decided to stay on Earth, that’s still 1 million.
As for why Black Tom and Cypher decided to stay on Earth, that’s simple. Black Tom didn’t want to leave Cain and Siryn and Cypher didn’t want to leave Warlock and the other New Mutants.
Maybe they’ll just relaunch X-Force as Exiles (with a new writer) because that’s seemingly where the book was heading. It was starting to remind me of Claremont’s Exiles with the inclusion of Betsy and Sage.
Michael> It was said that 15 million were resurrected. Even if only 6% decided to stay on Earth, that’s still 1 million.
I’m thinking more like 0.06% than 6% would have chosen Earth. Supposedly, White Hot Krakoa was a paradise after the time jump. And they’ve all lived through crossovers and being cannon fodder.
I think there is a bit of over-reaction happening. It has been made fairly clear that this is indeed a period of excess of X-books, and deliberately so. The purpose is to gauge interest in various forms of mutant books for a while and find out what is most promising going forward.
That is probably a bit unpleasant for many people for various reasons. But such periods are all but unavoidable if X-Books are to remain as a viable and ongoing franchise. Having one on the aftermath of such a wild deviation from the established premises as the Krakoa era was a given.
I was amused in Weapon X-Men, that Cable stated Chamber was “lying low”, when they found him in a public bar, making zero attempt to hide his very visible and uniquely identifiable mutation.
The Mystique series seemed like it was primarily designed, beyond “she can be anyone,” to take her and Destiny off the board for an indefinite period of time. We all know Mystique will get better sooner or later. Hell, she could get better next week. But at least it’s a plausible way to write her out for the moment.
I’m not going to shed a tear for this version of X-Factor. Mark Russell can be good or he can be bad, but he’s got a rather distinct style no matter what, and I don’t think this played to his strengths. He should have been doing something more like the Milligan X-Force/X-Statix out on the fringes, but that then raises the question of why not just have more Milligan continuing what he was already doing? The satirical government ops/corporation stooges/media-friendly approach was just… inconsistent.
Weapon X-Men feels like another mini that doesn’t realize it’ll be cancelled in 10 issues, Joe Casey or not. Not unless it has a stronger reason to exist. And lampshading “Thunderbird, why are you in your original costume” is silly because it’s obvious he’s in it because that’s what the artist wanted to draw, not his new look. 🙂
I’m down for three core titles each trying a different aspect of the X-Men: strikeforce (Cyclops’ team), family (Rogue’s team), school (Kitty’s team), but they need to make sure those identities are distinct enough to justify the difference.
As for solo titles… too many. I like what Storm is doing, though giving her a cosmic upgrade is NOT the direction I’d have gone, not when Jean Grey is ALSO flirting with the primordial powers of the cosmos. I feel like instead of ongoings, we should have more set minis which tell one strong story. If they do well enough, sure, do another. But “ongoing unless it’s cancelled at issue 10, time to wrap it up” does no one any favors. Writers need to -know- how long they have, not gamble on editorial whim.
My impression is that the various solo titles are a sort of attempt to ‘plant’ a mutant series in another Marvel ‘family’: so Storm is a series that ties itself to cosmogonic concepts approaching Thor and the short GODS, Phoenix is a cosmic series that brings back Captain Marvel and Guardians of the Galaxy, Laura Kinney: Wolverine moves in the Marvel Knights sphere, Magik explores atmospheres close to Midnight Sons, and so on… (Psylocke seems for now to be the most strictly mutant series). It makes sense to give certain characters a direction beyond what happens in the X-Men series, it’s kind of the Avengers formula.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see Nightcrawler in a spider costume again soon…
For what it’s worth, Casey explained in an interview that Thunderbird was in Latveria because he wanted to go back in time and alter history so that he never died. Basically, he’s aware that James became the hero and he basically was the idiot who got himself killed in a plane crash and he wants to alter history so that he can become a hero too. Cable wants to stop him because if he alters history so that Scott and Maddie don’t have sex, then there’s no Cable.
“I was worried that the writers would trash Luke whenever Mayor Adams did something they didn’t like and we seem to be at that point.”
Well, if it’s any consolation, the odds of him still being mayor after November seem mighty low.
(But of course, half of Marvel’s current books will probably be canceled/relaunched by then, so it may be moot.)
” I’m not so sure about Black Tom’s post-Krakoan direction being that he’s got plant powers and gone mad – it’s perfectly logical in terms of where he was left by Benjamin Percy’s run on X-Force but it also feels like the least interesting thing you could do with him.”
Yes. It’s rarely a good idea to go “what if we did a Chuck Austen plotline again.”
Luis Dantas says: That is probably a bit unpleasant for many people for various reasons. But such periods are all but unavoidable if X-Books are to remain as a viable and ongoing franchise. Having one on the aftermath of such a wild deviation from the established premises as the Krakoa era was a given.
Oddly we are still in a ‘wild deviation from the established premises’. We have no Professor X, no school, only a couple of books paying lip-service to ‘training the next generation’ and a load of titles that could have been set on, or with, a still functioning Krakoa.
@Michael I’m skeptical it’s even worth revitalizing Strucker. Zemo the Neo-Nazi with daddy issues is more relevant (unfortunately), and if you need a Third Reich holdover, Red Skull and Armin Zola are more distinct.
I also noticed X-Factor seemed to have forgotten the existence of time zones. Midnight in the US isn’t the same as midnight off the coast of Africa.
@Loz
Fair enough. We are far from the expected default status quo. But the variety and expectations are very different from the Krakoa period. This is a time of experimentation and gauging, while Krakoa was going wild with a fairly all-encompassing (and self-limiting) premise.
Drew, do you think this will means Luke will go along with being publicly blackmailed by Zemo in order to stay in power?
To be fair, Professor X has been dead/missing for large chunks of the X-Men’s history, and they run a school only about half the time.
Given how many times their home base has changed over the past 20 years, it’s possible that many of the current books could have happened in a number of places, Krakoa or otherwise.
This iteration of the X-Men seems pretty well within the limits of what we might call their status quo: hated and feared by humans, identifying and training new mutants, acting as superhero strike forces. The only new aspect seems to be how scattered and disorganized they are.
All the work done by Fabian to rehabilitate Zemo as much as possible that was undone in an instant by Brubaker.
@Mark Coale: And, oddly, his motivations were replaced largely by a general grudge against superheroes for…reasons? There’s some lip service to their hypocrisy and defense of the status quo, but I genuinely don’t know what Zemo actually *wants* these days.
I like Brubaker’s Captain America, but in retrospect Bucky-Cap ended up doing little more than being haunted by the ghosts of his past whenever he wasn’t fighting the Red Skull, with the result that the plots got samey.
Bucky-Cap encounters someone with ties to a past era who has a grudge against him, the villain not only physically but also psychologically grinds away at him, one or more of Bucky-Cap’s allies help him investigate the baddie and the ally plays a decisive role in ending the baddie’s scheme.
Judging from preview images released today, the villain of Kamala’s Giant-Size issues is Legion. That sounds like a good idea. I’m sure that a Muslim hero fighting an Israeli villain won’t cause any controversy.
It is annoying that they’re using Kamala for a time travel story with Legion when there are other characters who would be more suited to a time travel story- Bishop, Illyana, Cable and Rachel.And those characters would be more suited to a Legion story- Bishop and Illyana have had dealings with Legion before and Cable and Rachel are the children of Scott, who Legion is probably jealous of because he feels that Xavier considers Scott his “real” son.
@Omar- Lately, Zemo’s been depicted as a generic supremacist. In Non-Stop Spider-Man and Savage Spider-Man, he claims the purpose of Hydra is to eliminate the weak. In One World Under Doom 1, he says that Doom is unfit to rule the world because his ancestors could not create a country of their own and Carol describes him as a Nazi. This is largely because he’s being used as a stand-in for Strucker in those stories.
I think Fabian’s attempt to rehabilitate Zemo was doomed to fail. He’s the son of a Nazi who turned a black man into a rat monster and ruined the life of a gay man (Arnie Roth). There’s no way that he could be presented as rehabilitated, especially with current concerns.
@Michael: Though J.M. DeMatteis, the same guy who wrote the stories in which Zemo did those terrible things, also wrote a semi-redemption scene in Captain America v.1 #301.
he realizes that his blind hatred has caused him to align with real evils like the Red Skull, and that he’s “brought down too many innocents” in the pursuit fo his vengeance.
Then Mother Superior (Sinthea Schmidt) mind-zaps him, and the next time he turns up he’s right back where he was in his earliest DeMatteis appearances. DeMatteis also writes him as irredeemably evil in Zemo’s 1990s Spectacular Spider-Man appearances.
While the idea that anyone can be redeemed is often a theme of DeMatteis, it was Michael Carlin who wrote Captain America #301. DeMatteis quit on Cap after issue #300 when Marvel editorial vetoed DeMatteis’ “redemption” of Steve Rogers story. Rogers was going to renounce war and violence, retiring as Captain America after his final battle with Red Skull, only to be assassinated. So, if DeMatteis planned to give Zemo that redemption moment is questionable.
Which may explain why DeMatteis chose to write Zemo as evil in a later story,
@Chris V- The scene Omar described was in Captain America 299, which was written by DeMatteis.
Michael’s right; I got my issue numbers mixed up.
My sense is that the #299 scene makes thematic sense for the story DeMatteis hoped to tell. Helmut Zemo’s near-redemption and death would have worked as foreshadowing.
It’d also fit DeMatteis’s tendency to show characters struggling with their relationships to their parents. In this arc, Helmut is written as someone trapped in childhood, wanting both to live up to his childish image of his lost father and paradoxically, to get approval from a substitute father in the Red Skull. He even wears his father’s costume rather than his own.
His moment with Mother Superior is a moment of maturation, albeit not total maturation. (He still doesn’t quite renounce his grudge against Captain America, for instance.)
And then he’s killed by a literal child in an adult body, whois enraged that Helmut won’t stay stuck like her and who can only see him as a bad sibling, rejecting daddy.
DeMatteis did this a lot. In his earlier Zemo arc, Primus is similarly childlike, masquerades as his creator/father figure, and eventually realizes he needs to break from both that identity and his irrational grudges.
DeMatteis’s co-creation Vermin and his takes on Doctor Faustus and Harry Osborn are all driven by their ties to abusive parents. His co-creation Professor Power is an inversion, a toxic father driven by guilt that he destroyed his son.
This kind of psychoanalytic stuff is all over DeMatteis’s superhero work.
*Drew, do you think this will means Luke will go along with being publicly blackmailed by Zemo in order to stay in power?*
“Today, Mayor Cage announced that Hydra will henceforth be given access to all public science laboratories in the city. When asked for comment, the mayor said, ‘It’s past time we accepted that Baron Zemo and the Masters of Evil are not our enemies, and I embrace this new spirit of cooperation. I urge all New Yorkers to do the same… or else. Hail Hydra!”