The X-Axis – w/c 19 May 2025
ASTONISHING X-MEN INFINITY COMIC #22. By Tim Seeley, Edoardo Audino, KJ Díaz & Clayton Cowles. We’re still in the influencer storyline, although it tacks in a strange direction with this issue. At first we’re still doing stuff about Mondo’s attempts to be a pacifist influencer – and Audino really does make the guy look likeable – but then we tack into what seems to be some sort of origin story for Zero, as a rickety 1950s proto-AI. That’s certainly not what I was expecting here. Seeley also develops his attempt to take Wildside from merely a memorable Liefeld design into a viable lead villain, with some success. His revived extremism is based on claiming that he’s been to the far future with Zero and seen a world where mutants had wiped out humans – therefore, it’s fine for mutants to get rid of humanity because it’s happening anyway and they might as well get it over with. In other words, he’s seen the future and it validates giving up on coexistence. But his revived MLF is now the “Mutant Salvation Front” and he seems to have got a bit messianic. Does any of this tie to the influencer theme? Um… tenuously? I suppose in terms of the radicalisation and propaganda theme, maybe, but the link between Wildside’s schemes and the influencers isn’t terribly clear. Still, there’s a lot of neat details in here.
EXCEPTIONAL X-MEN #9. (Annotations here.) Well, it’s taken us nine issues, but we actually have a fight with a villain. And instead of throwing the kids into the fire, the teachers deal with him while the kids try not to mess it all up. It’s more realistic but… after this long a wait, you kind of want the kids to take the reins more? Then again, their frustration at being left to pointlessly train while the plot goes on somewhere else is nicely conveyed in a montage sequence, and since Emma collapses at the end of the isuse, maybe this is heading towards the kids having to step up and deal with it themselves.
This has always been a character-driven book, and fight scenes with Mr Sinister aren’t really something that plays to its strengths. Aside from the fact that his resistance to telepathy is all over the place from page to page, it’s a dubious call to have Emma just freeze him right off the bat – he never actually seems like that much of a threat here. But the character work is strong and the panels of Alejandro’s “affective core” with his family and friends are genuinely sweet.
WEAPON X-MEN #4. By Joe Casey, ChrisCross, Mark Morales, Yen Nitro & Clayton Cowles. It’s hard to get excited about an ongoing series cancelled with issue #5, and boldly embarking on its second story anyway. Casey seems to be trying to re-establish Cable in a Hell’s Kitchen safehouse as in his previous Cable run – and of course, if this book had survived, this would have been Cable’s home title. The main story here involves someone taking Red Ronin on a rampage and the team stopping it, all to get revenge for his brother, who was… in a Red Ronin story involving the Avengers in 1980? That’s more the sort of continuity reference you use to handwave motivation away. And having the team talking about how they’re here to stay is obviously a bit hollow. If you like Red Ronin, then hey, ChrisCross draws a good Red Ronin. But the book still hasn’t made a convincing case for why we need it to exist, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to. The cover strap – “Wolverine! Deadpool! Cable!” – remains telling, seeming to think that this is a hook in itself in a world where Deadpool / Wolverine also exists.
SPIDER-MAN & WOLVERINE #1. By Marc Guggenheim, Kaare Andrews, Brian Reber & Travis Lanham. Now look, the world does not need two monthly Wolverine Team-Up titles. As a commission, this would reek of desperation if it wasn’t for the presence of Kaare Andrews on art, who’s a far bigger name than you’d expect to find here. And he’s the selling point, even if he’s in Todd McFarlane territory at times.
What works well is the hallucinatory sequence of the two heroes reliving one another’s greatest hits. The plot is secondary, but it tries to find a sensible link between the characters by leveraging the spy past of Peter’s parents. I’ve never liked that idea – the whole point of Peter Parker is that he’s the boy next door until he gets his powers, and he shouldn’t have that sort of hidden ties to Marvel Universe weirdness. But it’s been established for years, so I guess that ship has long since sailed. The plot involves a supposedly incendiary file with the details of “every double agent in the world” which… what? Not every double agent working for a particular organisation? All of them in the world? Who assembled that? How? It’s an irritating bit of overreach, because what it’s actually trying to get to is the idea that Logan was involved in the deaths of Peter’s parents back in his black ops phase (which is when he was working for Romulus, so I guess there’s nothing fundamentally problematic with the idea).
I suppose if you must do a Spider-Man / Wolverine book then there are worse hooks, and it’s mainly an art showcase anyway… but I can’t get past the feeling that books like this are a case of “Well, we tried some interesting ideas and they failed, so sod it, have a Wolverine team-up comic. In fact, go on – have three.”
Somewhere, Moira XI is whispering in Wildside’s ear, “Mutants always win.”
I don’t think that is a direction that anyone should be revisiting so close to the Krakoa era.
On the one hand, we were just there for four years, and Marvel wanted Krakoa gone. On the other hand, if this is a reference to Cable’s future, it’s pointing out the flaws behind the Moira X premise. Everyone has seen a future where the “mutants win”, and Cable went back in time to prevent it from happening.
It’s not something which needs be flagged less than a year after Krakoa’s erasure.
Re: Spider-Man & Wolverine 1
Wolverine claims to have worked for the Red Skull. This is probably the Communist Red Skull, since that one was the one responsible for the death of Peter’s parents.
Why is Shay so skeptical when Peter says his parents were secret agents who died in the line of duty? Yes, Peter doesn’t correct her when she assumes it’s a joke. But she works at Ravencroft- she should be used to bizarre origin stories by now.
Note that Shay doesn’t recognize Logan in civilian clothes- Guggenheim seems to be in the camp that assumes most civilians in the Marvel Universe can’t recognize Logan out of costume.
Omega Red is one of the villains in this issue- so he seems to be back to being a true villain. (I don’t think Paknadel intended that Infinity Comics story where Arkady slaughters his friend’s killers as a full-on return to villainy but some writers and editors seem to be interpreting it that way.)
I guess he escaped from Graymalkin at some point when Scurvy was recovering from his battle with Xavier.
I didn’t like that Mysterio’s gas was able to make Peter and Logan experience each other’s memories. Mysterio is not a telepath or a sorcerer and hallucinogenic gas shouldn’t cause Peter and Logan to experience events they had no knowledge of.
Wolverine was first established to have known Peter’s parents in Untold Tales of Spider-Man -1 in 1997.
Re: Weapon X-Men 4:
ONE shouldn’t be guarding giant robots- their remit is mutants. Casey tries to justify it by saying that they’ve been assigned to perform security for other agencies but it still feels contrived.
So first Stryfe escapes because of ONE’s poor security and now Red Ronin is stolen because ONE didn’t run a background check. Two stories in five months caused by ONE’s poor security seems a bit excessive.
I’m not liking how Casey had Thunderbird find someone who could travel in time. I like that Cable wasn’t dumb enough to leave a Time Machine where Thunderbird (or Deadpool) could get his hands on it. But instead Thunderbird is able to get into Cable’s computers, tap into the Alaskan X-Men’s systems and locate Trevor Fitzroy. Thunderbird has never been shown to be an expert with computers before. How did he know Cable’s systems were linked with the Alaskan X-Men’s? How did he know the Alaskan X-Men had mutant-detecting equipment? If the Alaskan X-Men knew where Fizroy was, why wasn’t one of the teams going after him?
In other news, the August solicits are out:
The Shadow King will be the villain in the Wolverines & Deadpools series.
The real Gabby will finally be appearing in Laura Kinney: Wolverine.
The cover of Storm #11 is unintentionally hilarious. I hope Storm riding a hippo into battle actually happens in the issue.
In other news, Gail Simone has said that Monet will be appearing in Uncanny X-Men later. She said that a lot of her plans were delayed (presumably because of X-Manhunt.)
Thank god for Astonishing X-Men and the Infinity Comics format.
The world didn’t ask for a Mondo/Wildside/Zero comic, but the world is better for it.
I decided years ago to ignore any and all mentions of Peter’s parents being secret agents and to substitute in references to them being pharmacists. They used to fill Wolverine’s prescriptions. Why would Wolverine need prescriptions? Because even a healing factor can’t cure allergies.
Since allergies are basically an immune system overreaction, has anyone ever done a story where a healing factor manifests as a massively aggressive allergic reaction?
That would be terrible…like Stevens-Johnson Syndrome? If anyone is unfamiliar with the disorder, do not look it up unless you want to lose all faith in this life.
Being bitten by a radioactive spider equals radiation poising. Being exposed to gamma rays equals getting metastatic cancer. In our world, an overreactive immune system leads to conditions like lupus.
Did Warren Ellis decide to deconstruct Wolverine or Deadpool in Ruins? Wolverine suffering from terrible, untreatable Crohn’s disease or something?
Secrets of the X-Men: Wolverine’s surly demeanor and berserker rage are caused by him last having a solid bowel movement in the 19th century.
(I have Crohn’s myself; I’ll write the mini-series. Representation matters.)
Oh lord, Ruins. Ellis at his most nihlistic.
Logan appears briefly to show off his weird bone deformities (instead of claws) and that’s about it.
Mainly, everyone in Ruins has cancer or is destroyed by their powers. Or both.
Man, Ruins wrecked me when I was about 17. That Therese Neilson art really elevated it to something sublime, even though in hindsight it practically seems like a parody. Neilson seemed to think I should be horrified while Ellis was trying to make me laugh.
There’s a wonderful bit in, I think, Zdarsky’s Spectacular Spider-Man, where Peter tries to explain to Johnny Storm who Theresa is, and Johnny goes into a whole bit about “Look at me, I’m Spider-Man, the everyman hero with problems you can relate to!”
Just realised I should add some context for people who don’t know: Theresa Parker is probably Peter’s long-lost sister who was born while Richard and Mary were actually undercover and adopted, and maybe a sleeper agent who was programmed to believe that.
Bleeding Cool’s Bestseller list for this week is out. Spider-Man and Wolverine came it at number 4, right behind Amazing Spider-Man. Exceptional X-Men and Weapon X-Men didn’t make the top 10.
“ONE shouldn’t be guarding giant robots- their remit is mutants”
I would have thought that they would be uniquely placed to deal with giant robots, given that they, um, operate giant robots.
I’m a little surprised that they haven’t been tied to Red Ronin before this, to be honest.
I might keep up with Spidey/Wolverine. They found a good hook (it’s ridiculous, but that’s for the best with this style and team-up). Andrews’ art reminds me of my favorite Wolverine stories: Wells/Madueira’s Savage Wolverine three-parter and Guggenheim’s own Civil War arc with Ramos. Impossibly cariactured Wolverine is the best one.
This was probably my least favorite issue of Exceptional. The book is always slow and deliberate, but that pace services the real-life take on these teen characters. This doesn’t have much emotional to grab onto besides that stand-out waiting around montage that Paul mentioned. This is the one issue that feels like filler in a book that consistently also offered something distinct from issue to issue. Having followed X books for a long time, I’m honestly shocked it took so long for Ewing/Carnero to get to one of those.
Peter David passed away yesterday. RIP PAD.
Re: the Wolverines and Deadpools limited series- a couple of tidbits from AIPT’s X-Men Mondays- Lady Bullseye will be one of the villains and Gabby’s presence will be felt somehow.
I remember Peter David so fondly
When Morrison said on the pod Sunday that there would be a big announcement this week, I wasn’t surprised it involved Batman but was not expecting Deadpool. That said, given we were talking about meta fiction and the appear of The Writer in Animal Man and the character might be coming back, it involving a fourth wall breaking character makes sense.