The X-Axis – w/c 21 April 2025
X-MEN #15. (Annotations here.) No Infinity Comic this week – the pattern seems to be that we skip a week between arcs. So instead, we’re straight into this middle chapter of the twin storyline. And it’s very much a middle chapter, with Quentin still missing and a lot of running around as we keep the evil twin busy. Its new giant monster body is a little comical, but at the end of the day it’s there to be manipulated by 3K, and the real point of this story is to start bringing them into the foreground. It does that well enough, and Ryan Stegman does a nice cuddly monster full of teeth. I don’t think the final page cliffhanger, with the appearance of the rival X-Men, quite works, since we’ve not seen these guys in costume before and it takes a moment to figure out that they’re meant to be the 3K guys from issue #1. Plus, to be honest, my first thought was that the one with dialogue was meant to be Ben Liu until I realised that the hair colour was wrong. They’re nice designs, though, and seem to play to Stegman’s strengths by being a little off-kilter, particularly the floating guy in the containment suit.
X-FORCE #10. (Annotations here.) Oh lord. This is a premature cancellation, and with issue #9 being derailed by a crossover, it’s unavoidably a desperate scramble to tie things up by the end. And not a particularly successful one. Moses Magnum isn’t the sort of character you can just bring in as the main villain in the final act, and besides, nothing in his history makes him remotely suitable for his role in the plot here. Zanda is a similarly baffling reveal, unlikely to mean anything to most readers. And Tank turns out to be Colossus, but there’s no time to even gesture at explaining why. Nor is there space to make most of the team members anything more than generic. You can see the broad shape of where the book was meant to be going, but the bottom line is that it’s a puzzle box series that messed up the landing – not entirely through its own fault, but it was taking its sweet time getting to the point anyway. If you’re been reading the series up to this point, you might as well get the last chapter, but there’s no reason for anyone else to spend time on it. Fabian Nicieza and Edgar Salazar contribute a ten-page back-up strip which is basically an opportunity to reflect on the main versions of X-Force down the ages, at least from Cable’s point of view, and does the job well enough for a legacy anniversary issue.
MAGIK #4. (Annotations here.) All J Scott Campbell’s covers for this series have been eye-rollingly bad, but this one really is abysmal. I mean, you can’t blame him for the costume, but god, this one is going through the motions of selling the premise of the issue while making it very clear what the artist’s real area of concern is. Fortunately he’s only doing covers for the first five issues, after which we’re getting Pablo Villalobos, whose solicited covers are a massive step up. Still, it bears no resemblance whatsoever to the actual contents of the book, which continues to hold up rather well. Okay, there’s something a bit confusing about the idea that the mental barriers against Darkchild have been removed but Magik is still holding her back… um, mentally. I mean, I think I get what they’re going for, but it is a little odd. At any rate, the heart of this issue is bringing in Dani Moonstar as a guest star and having Illyana be simultaneously relieved by the support from her old friend and defensive about what she’s been doing to date – there’s maybe an interesting contrast here between Illyana as a character who always wants to seem in control, and takes it to a slightly over the top degree, while Dani has that sort of assurance for real. I was very sceptical about this book at first, particularly with it going back to the Darkchild well, but what Ashley Allen and Germán Peralta are doing in the interiors is effective and surprisingly understated.
DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE #4. By Benjamin Percy, Joshua Cassara, Guru-eFX and Joe Sabino. I’m not doing annotations for this book, partly because there are too many ongoing titles to do them all, partly because it’s not the sort of book where annotations make sense, but mostly because I’m just not very interested in it. The combination of these two characters has been overdone and it was never a strength of Percy’s X-Force run in the first place. There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with this series, and I quite like the attempt to reposition Stryfe as someone who’s trying to bring about a disaster now in order to avert an even more disastrous timeline in the future – that fits with him being an inverted version of Cable but has the advantage of giving him a relatively coherent motivation. But it feels like a fairly slight plot padded out with action scenes, and maybe that’s the way to go with a Deadpool / Wolverine book if you have to have one. The book’s real problem is that it never actually makes a case for why a Deadpool / Wolverine comic is a good idea in the first place – if you don’t find their rapport entertaining (and I don’t, honestly), there’s really no point in the exercise.
SABRETOOTH: THE DEAD DON’T TALK #5. By Frank Tieri, Michael Sta. Maria, Rachelle Rosenberg & Joe Sabino. I’m not sure this final issue sticks the landing in terms of plot – the final showdown between Creed and the crocodile guy feels too abrupt and has odd ideas about a hell-themed fairground ride being full of actual fire. On the other hand, it does get to the point of Creed rejecting his role as Sinister’s lackey but also rejecting a life as a conventional criminal, and striking out to do his own savage thing, and that part does feel right. Besides, this book’s strength isn’t so much the plot as the vibe, and Sta. Maria has done a stellar job selling a sort of proto Marvel Universe New York. This turned out a lot better than I was expecting, and the art actually does merit giving it a look on Unlimited.
Not reading this comic, based on the cover, I would imagine the Magik comic to be a sarcastic ‘90s feminist story showing the different facets of womanhood reacting to a male checking out her breasts.
One thing about Deadpool/Wolverine 3 made no sense whatsoever from a continuity standpoint. The idea seems to be that Stryfe went back to the past, encountered Deadpool and Wolverine (who he describes as mercenaries) but was captured by the original Nick Fury, who captured him. Not knowing who Stryfe was, Nick placed him in suspended animation Let’s ignore the part about Wolverine being a mercenary (which would suggest it takes place before Giant-Size X-Men 1.) Deadpool’s backstory is this- Deadpool learned he had cancer, and was recruited into the Weapon X program where he met Garrison Kane, who had lost his arms and legs because Cable refused to trade info to Stryfe for Kane’s life. Weapon X gave Kane bionic parts and Wade his healing factor and the rest is history.
So if Wade already had his healing factor at this point, it would be after Stryfe had already travelled to the past and met people like Domino. It’s possible Kane was too traumatized to tell anyone how he lost his limbs but still, it’s surprising Nick didn’t know who Stryfe was. And even if he didn’t, he would certainly have found out later. Didn’t he wonder why there were two Strife’s running around?
The ending of Sabretooth: the Dead Don’t Talk made it seem like the only purpose of this story was to set up the Crocodilian as a villain in the future. Does anyone think we’ll ever see him again?
The solicits for July are out:
Sabretooth is back in the pages of Wolverine. Unless it’s some kind of takeout.
Bishop will be guest-starring in Storm.
Bleeding Cool’s Bestseller list is out. X-Men 15 came in at 8 and Magik 4 came in at 9. Magik seems to be dropping a bit. But they both did pretty well considering how much competition there was this week.
Deapool/ Wolverine 3 didn’t make the list at all. Which didn’t surprise anyone.
In other news, the backup story in Giant-Size X-Men 1 will introduce a new female mutant who Xavier tried to recruit for the new X-Men but refused his offer. And she will be appearing in an X-title later this year. And according to Gail Simone, it’s not Mutina, the mutant serial killer.
Mutina?! WE’RE DOOMED!
Magik does not seem to be dropping at all in my view, it’s almost selling as much as X-Men itself according to last week’s numbers.
> In other news, the backup story in Giant-Size X-Men 1 will introduce a new female mutant who Xavier tried to recruit for the new X-Men but refused his offer. And she will be appearing in an X-title later this year. And according to Gail Simone, it’s not Mutina, the mutant serial killer.
Seems like a lost opportunity.
Would have been a reason to care.
JCG> Magik does not seem to be dropping at all in my view, it’s almost selling as much as X-Men itself according to last week’s numbers.
I mean, it’s probably dropping (standard attrition’n’all), but that doesn’t mean it isn’t selling astonishingly well for a Magik series of all things.
Michael> In other news, the backup story in Giant-Size X-Men 1 will introduce a new female mutant who Xavier tried to recruit for the new X-Men but refused his offer. And she will be appearing in an X-title later this year. And according to Gail Simone, it’s not Mutina, the mutant serial killer.
Well, hellava coinkydink they apparently made it through M-Day with powers intact, yet never came up in that period, unless they were resurrected on Krakoa…
@SanityorMadness- The writers kept changing their minds about how many mutants made it through M-Day. Some writers made it seem like there were only a couple hundred left. OTOH, some writers stated that nearly a million mutants were depowered or died on M-Day and that represented 90% of the mutant population. If that was the case, nearly a hundred thousand mutants kept their powers and it would make sense that we never met most of them.
@Michael: The higher numbers (like 10% of a million) tended to be earlier. By Endangered Species, they were doubling down on the tiny, 200-ish sort of numbers.
Early Krakoa was meant to be c. 100k, but that was after some repowering events (notably mothervine in X-Men Blue, where Beak was remutanted, which was meant to be a wide-scale thing), a whole lot of new mutants in the aftermath of AvX, and the Five starting work/
On an X-related subject, in this week’s Emperor Doom, Maddie reveals that Doom didn’t actually control the world leaders. He just used his Sorcerer Supreme powers to “be in many places at once– to accomplish in a single night what would’ve been the work of years, maybe decades” and then convinced the world leaders to submit to his rule. This was foreshadowed in last week’s X-Factor where Doom was seeking a computer that would enable him to control the world’s populace. Many people wondered why he would need it if he already has the world leaders under his control. The answer is that they’re not under his control.
Am I the only one that thinks this is ridiculous? Many of these leaders would be too prideful to submit to Doom’s will. Besides there are 193 members of the United Nations. We’re told that every nation in the world submitted to Doom’s will. You can’t get 193 people to all agree to do something without some form of coercion.
Michael> Am I the only one that thinks this is ridiculous? Many of these leaders would be too prideful to submit to Doom’s will. Besides there are 193 members of the United Nations. We’re told that every nation in the world submitted to Doom’s will. You can’t get 193 people to all agree to do something without some form of coercion.
Being “negotiated at” for years “in a single night” isn’t a form of coercion?
“Our government is under the control of Orchis now?”
“No. That was last month. They were going to save us from the mutants. It was a conspiracy by robots or something. Now, our government is being controlled by Emperor Doom.”
“That super-villain?”
“Yeah, but now he’s going to make our country great again…or something.”
“Well, that sounds ok.”
Stop, Marvel. Just stop.
I would assume Doom appealed to greed or vanity to gain their submission. As long as they can cash in (however they define it), I don’t think most “world leaders” would care otherwise.
It’s Deadpool & Wolverine #4, not 3.
“but it was taking its sweet time getting to the point anyway” – compared to Exceptional it was going at breakneck speed.
So it is. I’ll fix that.
Doom would have to influence all the District Court judges to take over the US.
I don’t have a problem with Doom conquering the world overnight, he’s been established as easily capable of doing that sort of thing since at least the 1970s, handicapped only by hubris and jealousy.
But Varnae, Orchis, Knulla, plant guys, Bad Steve Rogers, Ultron, and all the rest? Not so much.
According to the late Henry Peter Gyrich in Avengers: The Initiative , there were supposedly around 300 x-gene mutants still powered on Earth (616) after the Decimation , 198 was just the officially catalogued number* by the U.S.A Federal Government , and Mutant X/Typhoid Mary was the 199th .
* I used to help edit the Decimation entry on Wikipedia during that period , and the running number of canonically powered x-gene mutants , who were established characters to Earth-616 (not from alternate timelines or possible futures) who appeared in present-day stories on-page during that period was well over 200 already . This explains all the nameless background NPC’s on Utopia , especially in the crowdscenes in Mike Carey’s X-Men Legacy
I think the Crocodilian might make an interesting Moon Knight villain. Jed McKay could probably get more out of Marmaduke’s pulpy backstory than Tieri did. I hope we haven’t seen the last of Nikolai Vanko, either. He could make for a fun steampunk villain.