The X-Axis – w/c 28 April 2025
ASTONISHING X-MEN INFINITY COMIC #19. By Tim Seeley, Edoardo Audino, KJ Díaz & Clayton Cowles. It’s a fairly quiet week for the X-books, with one ongoing title, a couple of minis, and this. Yes, I know the FCBD book is out at the weekend, but we’ll cover that when it reaches Unlimited. This is the first part of “I Have Seen Tomorrow”, and the book continues to alternate between its two creative teams. This time, however, Tim Seeley takes up the baton of Alex Paknadel’s Generation X reunion, and starts setting up a storyline about an influencer platforming anti-mutant types in a “just asking questions” way. For whatever reason, Seeley’s take on these characters clicks a little better for me – he writes more convincing banter, I think – and Audino’s art is a bit more dynamic too. But it also pulls off a nice cliffhanger that I didn’t see coming. Good start.
NYX #10. (Annotations here.) And that’s another cancelled title. Still, never mind, I’m sure they’ll announce another Wolverine team-up book to replace it. Have we tried Wolverine / Wolverine yet? We do have a spare!
NYX was an interesting idea that worked for the most part, but had some glaring flaws. It basically wanted to be about a mutant community existing within the real world, which seems like a good idea and relatively untapped. But it also tended towards slightly trite plot resolutions that didn’t quite fit the vibe of that, with things like Empath being defeated by a day’s vigorous campaigning. Understandably, this final issue doesn’t even try to pick up all the various plot threads that had been put in place – we still have no idea what a character like Sobunar is doing living in a sewer, and there clearly hasn’t been time to do much with Kiden Nixon. Who knows, maybe Laura Kinney: Wolverine will pick her up. The final issue focusses on resolving the Mojo/Local storyline, and while it’s something of a power-of-love ending with fuzzy plot mechanics, I think the book more or less gets away with it, because it’s trying to do something about the power of the authentic city culture. Quite how Mojo maps onto the opposite of that isn’t altogether obvious, admittedly, and that’s the weakness.
As for Kamala fretting about her dual identity, as people pointed out in the annotations comments thread, this feels like it’s going back over old territory – I liked the idea of Kamala as the one NYX character with a superhero style dual identity, because she’s an import from a more traditional superhero book. I’m not quite sure about this as a direction to set up the upcoming one-shots (which seem terribly gimmicky anyway). But for all that, this works nicely enough as a final issue, with a neat reprise of the New York montage from the start of the series – it succeeds in enough of what it tries for me to miss it.
WEAPON X-MEN #3. By Joe Casey, ChrisCross, Mark Morales, Yen Nitro & Clayton Cowles. Okay, I said one ongoing title. Apparently this was meant to be an ongoing title, even though Amazon had it listed as a miniseries from the off but… since it was dead on arrival and is cancelled with issue #5, let’s just treat it as a mini. Except… this issue is obviously meant to be the end of the first arc, with the impromptu team-up characters agreeing to hang around for further X-Force-style missions. The book itself is a harmless enough romp, perfectly competent and with ChrisCross’ art being easy on the eye. But it just feels so unnecessary – it’s really not at all clear to me what this book was meant to bring to the line. Maybe if they’d called it X-Force they’d have gotten away with it, but that name was taken… and come to think of it, Weapon X-Men would have made more sense as a title for that book, wouldn’t it? I mean, slightly?
ROGUE: THE SAVAGE LAND #4. By Tim Seeley, Von Randal, Rachelle Rosenberg & Joe Caramagna. Another book for the “perfectly fine” pile – though to be fair, it’s a Savage Land story and I’ve never found the Savage Land all that interesting. There’s only so many dinosaur stories you can do. This one is more interested in the conflict between the tribes, though, and while it’s basically plugging a continuity gap, there are a couple of interesting moments in here, such as Magneto’s instinct to treat the more advanced Fall People as superior to the Man-Apes. I’m not sure it’s particularly a Rogue story, though – it just happens to be playing on an untold story from her history.
WOLVERINE & KITTY PRYDE #1. By Chris Claremont, Damian Couceiro, Carlos Lopez & Ariana Maher. This is another continuity implant miniseries, taking place immediately after the 1984 Kitty Pryde & Wolverine miniseries. It’s the one where Kitty is possessed by Ogun and learns ninja skills. She’s also meant to forget them at the end, but then they just showed up again anyway – which is kind of the continuity gap that’s being plugged here. Kind of, because we move straight on to her being trained in these skills she doesn’t want. Claremont’s last miniseries, Wolverine: Deep Cut, was a bit of a trainwreck, so I’m happy to report that this is a big step up. It’s Claremont playing the hits, to be sure, but that’s the point, and there’s a bit more character heft to this one. He even has a stab at straightening out the history of Kitty’s father and Professor X. Admittedly, there’s a henchman called Kill, but you can’t have everything. Couceiro is a good pairing on art, precisely because he isn’t doing any sort of 80s homage but just being clear and expressive, which makes it feel like less of a period piece.
This i hardly the first time a Joe Casey series for Marvel ends just as it’s setting up an ongoing status quo, only to never get any follow-up anywhere else.
His Last Defenders created a brand-new team lineup in its finl issue or so after a lot of goofy tryout rosters. That roster was supposedly destined to do something big, but it never appeared again.
Vengeance, admittedly a miniseries written to make use of a bunch of supervillain portrait covers, created a “Teen Brigade” of underground, secret helpers of the superheroes. While America Chavez debuted there, the character was totally retooled into the version that’s gotten real attention, and almost nothing from that Teen Brigade never really came back anywhere else (other than some brief uses of the “Ultimate Nullifier” teen character).
There was also his revamp of Deathlok using the Jack Truman character Casey had introduced over in Cable, which was swiftly canceled at the end of its somewhat convoluted introductory arc. Truman was un-Deathloked pretty quickly, and he only ever pops up in other Joe Casey stories.
In this week’s Astonishing Avengers there is a flashback to Wonder Man where Beast teaches him some mental defenses, the Red Triangle but also a kind of dream alarm in Krakoan: exclaiming “King of dreams, came to save me!” in Italian, apparently sounds an alarm directed at Somnus.
So in the flashback it should be the “evil” Beast, since the present clone should never have known Somnus and developed a Krakoan dream rescue protocol.
Re:NYX- Schultz has said that Kiden will not be appearing in Laura Kiney: Wolverine.
Re Weapon X-Men 3- Weapon Exile has got to be the dumbest possible way to revamp Baron Strucker.
Re: Rogue the Savage Land 4- One thing made no sense. Rogue says that she knows how Wihteout’s powers work because she absorbed Colossus’s memories. But Rogue absorbed Colossus’s memories in Uncanny 247 and Colossus met Whiteout in Uncanny 249-250.
And in other X-news, in Doom’s Division 2, we learn that the reason. why Karma was working for Doom is because she was secretly infiltrating his team to help Gunfire.I’m shocked- a writer came up with a motivation for Karma’s behavior that doesn’t involve her siblings. 🙂
In other news, Kelley and Lanzing discussed NYX in a podcast:
Quentin was originally supposed to play the role that Empath played, not the role that Julian played, as some sources reported.
The Giant-Sized issues were planned before NYX was cancelled- Kamala would have been absent for the duration of Giant-Sized.
Cylcops was supposed to be the person who showed up in issue 7 and challenged the idea of NYX, not Synch.
One more thing- according to a preview image from Imperial ,Orbis Stellaris will be appearing.
I kind of feel sorry for Joe Kelly. So many interesting ideas and story setups which, as outlined, get dropped, forgotten, ignored, or retconned almost immediately. If I were him, I’d have given up on Marvel and mainstream comics as a lost cause. I mean maybe he enjoys the work and likes the paycheck but it’s gotta be frustrating.
My bad. Joe Casey. I get all the Joes mixed up. 🙂
It seemed like that was constantly happening with Warren Ellis at Marvel during the ‘90s.
Well, at least Joe Casey got to do some interesting things on Superman at DC.
Casey hasn’t worked for Marvel in thirteen years. He probably got a nice payday while it lasted, but I doubt he’ll stick around Marvel.
Casey hasn’t had the best luck with X-men. Cable was popular because of Ladronn, but the writing just hasn’t held up, sorry to say. On recent rereading, It’s not as good as I remembered.
Uncanny X-men is mostly remembered for Poptopia and Stacey X. He improved as he went, but never rose above bland.
Come to think of it, He also struck out on Hulk, which wasn’t entirely his fault. Poor soul had to be the first to follow Peter David.
@The new kid- Yeah. but he also had the Hulk knocked out by a SNAKE. And when readers pointed out how stupid it was, he blamed the artist.
@The New Kid: Even Casey isn’t particularly fond of his Uncanny X-Men run. He wrote an essay about it for the anthology “Unauthorized X-Men”. From memory, the gist is: He was offered the job because of the success of his X-Men: Children of the Atom series with Steve Rude. He didn’t really want to do it because he felt he’d already used all his ideas about the X-Men, but at that point in his career turning down an offer to write Uncanny X-Men seemed like madness, and he figured that inspiration would strike. It didn’t.
I haven’t read Joe Casey’s Cable in over twenty years, so I’m not sure how well it stands up, but I can still pretty safely guarantee that it would still be the second-best written issues of a Cable comic, after Darko Macan.
For whatever reason, Joe Casey is one of those widely acclaimed cape comics writers whose stuff just bounces off of me.
I think it’s something about his scripting style, which always feels sort of arch and elliptical to me in a way that seems like it’s obscuring a relatively straightforward plot. I like a lot of his ideas, just not the experience of reading his stories.
@Omar- you’re not the only one. He’s got an entry on the Fallen Creator page at TV Tropes. (It makes the case that his work declined when he started his run on Uncanny X-Men.)
Cyclops’s portrayal in today’s FCBD issue is horrible. Yes, he’s upset because both Alex and Jean have been taken by Krakoa. But still, Kelly and Lanzing seem to writing him as a stereotypical drill sergeant. Yes, there’s always been a drill sergeant element to his personality but he’s never been the kind of drill sergeant who insults people for no reason, at least not before he started dating Emma. He calls Thunderbird “a racist” and Storm “a refugee”- that’s just racist. He insults Nightcrawler for being “an outcast”- because he’s a nonhuman looking mutant. And he insults Colossus for being a farmer- since when is Scott classist? And how is Banshee a cad? He left his pregnant wife to go to work and she died. Is everyone whose pregnant wife died while they were at work a cad?
Omar-Casey’s WildCATs 3.0 is great. It’s what X-Corp during the Krakoa Age should have been.
I do like some of his other work (his Superman work was pretty fun, especially at the time, coming not too long after dreck like “The Death of Superman” stunt), but yeah, a lot of his comics seem like they read better as a description than what actually makes it on the page. He’s kind of like Grant Morrison with a 1/3 of the skill.
His Uncanny X-Men run was among the bottom of his comic work. His run did seem like it was starting to improve right at the tail end, with Warren’s corporation, and he ended up getting replaced by Austen, which actually made me miss Casey, but there’s too much junk between “Poptopia” and an unfinished end point to bother trying to make it through.
Michael-Wow, I guess they want to push that halfway “Scott as a villain” characterization from the Utopia era all the way.
Scott as a classist? He lived on the streets and got taken in by the grifter Jack O’Diamonds.
Scott calling Banshee a cad? After he abandoned his wife and kid for his childhood sweetheart? Hypocritical.
@Omar: Certainly a lot of Casey’s work for the direct market can be in that vein. On the other hand, he’s done plenty of work in animation with mass appeal so I suspect over time comics have become an outlet for his more eccentric ideas that wouldn’t fly in Ben 10.
@Chris V- The Cyclops in the FCBD issue is from circa Giant-Size X-Men 1. The idea is that Kamala has travelled back in time. But the problem is that Kelly and Lanzing have have no clue how to script Scott circa Giant Size X-Men 1.
I can never remember all of the Men of Action. I know Segle, Kelly and Casey but always forget Duncan Rouleau.
Yuck, that FCBD portrayal of Scott sounds horrible. I don’t know if the writers pitched that story or if the story was pitched to them and they took the job, but whatever the case, if you’re going to produce a story involving Scott Summers circa Giant-Size X-Men #1, what you’re supposed to do is look around for the nearest available Chris Claremont and hire him to script the plot.
They always seem to eff these throwback stories up in some respect. I recall a Joss Whedon backup story (I think it might’ve appeared in his Giant-Size final issue). Something to do with a Danger Room training session. I don’t even remember the plot. All I remember is that Wolverine was wearing a pink shirt that didn’t suit him in the slightest and that Sunfire was present for the training session. Well, Sunfire shouldn’t have been there. He walked out the door as soon they got back from the Krakoa mission. Even if you try to place that scene between the end of the Krakoa mission and the opening pages of X-Men #94, it still doesn’t work. Sunfire’s not going to bother participating in a training session with a team that he has no intention of joining.
Michael-Ah, that makes more sense. Krakoa from circa Giant-Size X-Men #1. I thought, “Surely Marvel didn’t bring Krakoa back already and have two prominent characters like Havok and Phoenix get taken by the Krakoans.”
In other news,Bleeding Cool’s bestseller list is out. Rogue: the Savage Land came in 4 this week and Wolverine and Kitty Pryde came in 5. NYX didn’t make the list at all. It’s weird how Rogue: the Savage Land is holding up relatively well for a continuity-implant miniseries.
Annoyingly, it looks like the two books doing unexpectedly well are Rogue: Savage Land and Magik – the two books with cheesecake covers.
How many of these continuity implant series have there been in recent years? There was X-Men Legends (is that the right title?) and…a Magneto one? Wolverine: Patch. Other Wolverines?
Typical House to Astonish commenter: “Those two books have pretty good stories, huh?”
Typical fanboy buying the Rogue and Magik comics: “What stories?”
C’est la vie.
Dave-Chris Claremont had a bunch of them. There was a Gambit mini, taking place shortly after Gambit’s introductory issue of Uncanny. Wolverine: Madripoor Nights (a sequel to the famous Jim Lee issue), and Deep Cuts (“Outback era”). Nocenti wrote a Storm mini taking place during the “mohawk era”.
Yes, Magneto by DeMatteis taking place during the school headmaster days was another one.
That’s what I can remember off the top of my head.
Breevort answers some questions on his blog:
YLIASTE: Was Doug/Revelation’s design changed because of backlash?
TOM: No, Yliaste. And in fact, Revelation’s design hasn’t really been changed at all.
MONTANA MOTT: I saw you were working on Imperial. A lot of the Wiccan & Hulkling fandom is wondering where they are as previews and such come out. I’ve also seen fans concerned they will be killed off during it. If you’re able to say, can we expect to see those two at all?
TOM: Yes, you’ll see Hulkling and Wiccan in IMPERIAL, Montana.
SKARR: Will we see Gabriel Summers and Sunspot playing a role in the Imperial event?
TOM: I don’t believe so, Skarr. Sorry.
Chris Claremont continuity implant books are basically a sub genre of their own now.
If he’s more comfortable building on his past own work whej he had more creative control over the line and it reflected his voice more, that’s perfectly fine by me.
After all of these years I’ve started to find a certain charm in Claremont’s endless list of generic terribly named hench-villains. Just like seemingly every major city has it’s own team of D-list Avengers knockoffs, it feels somewhat homely having your Kills and your Beastly Brutes and your Cudgels always cruising around in a generic white utility van looking for honest work menacing middle school kids.
Perhaps more importantly for this parish, Tom said no current plans for any new Handbooks.
Thanks, Chris. I’ve noted all those (and their approximate placements) for my epic Marvel read-through (currently moving into 1978).
@Michael: Classic Brevoort gaslighting – Revelation went from Yellow Apocalypse to Doug with lightning bolts on his face, but sure, the design hasn’t changed