The X-Axis – 16 June 2025
ASTONISHING X-MEN INFINITY COMIC #25. By Alex Paknadel, Phillip Sevy, Michael Bartolo & Clayton Cowles. Start of a new arc, and this is still a Generation X reunion book. This time, Paige and Angelo investigate Mursay, an island in the Orkneys supposedly offering itself to mutants as a new home. Naturally the place is hugely suspicious. And hey, Mursay is actually a fairly reasonable name for a fictitious island in the Orkneys! Obviously it’s a lost opportunity to set a story on Muckle Skerry or Papa Westray, but sure, the smaller Orkney islands are a reasonable enough place to do this sort of story. The first chapter doesn’t really set up much beyond “obvious trap”, but it does that well enough, so no complaints.
X-MEN #18. (Annotations here.) End of the arc, and five issues feels like it was too long. Particularly as we still don’t get to find out that much about the individual 3K X-Men, despite them having such a big role. We have fill-in art from Emilio Laiso on the last chapter too, which is perfectly fine but lacking a little in distinctiveness. There are plenty of good ideas in here – the Beast being approached by 3K because everyone knows he’ll turn into a villain in the end, Ben Liu’s slightly-too-aggressive approach to doing the right thing, and the twin being talked down. The bit where she softens on being given a name is very effective, and the parallels with Cassandra’s own back story are left nicely understated. But… it’s still basically a five-issue action sequence which is more of a step in a larger story than a complete story of itself.
WOLVERINE #10. (Annotations here.) If you’re going to do an issue of Wolverine making his way through the haunted house on his way to find Sabretooth, then it’s really all about the vibes. And the book more or less gets away with it. I don’t know why the house is sitting there in ruins with furniture still in place, but Javier Pina’s art sells the mood well enough, and the brief lapse into actual ghosts feels suitably different. I’m genuinely confused by the last page, though – I think we’re supposed to take it that Sabretooth is somehow giant now, but something about it doesn’t get the scale across, and it registers more as a perspective issue. In story terms, well, not much happens. I like the idea that Logan is capable of being fooled by convincing scents because he’s used to relying on them for authenticity, but the whole thing feels a bit slow.
PSYLOCKE #8. (Annotations here.) Judging from the solicitations, this seems to be cancelled with issue #10, which is a shame – while it’s far from flawless, it was basically successful in getting Kwannon to work as a solo lead. Fortunately, it looks like the book is getting to the point of all the flashbacks to Kwannon’s childhood training with Mitsuki, and so it should be on course to wrap up in a satisfying way. Exactly what’s happening here is a bit confusing, but that’s at least partly intentional. Some of it isn’t, though: the cliffhanger expects you to recognise the symbol on Hayashi’s door as the same one that was burned into Psylocke’s wrist last issue, which was only shown obliquely in that issue, and doesn’t get shown again in this one, despite two scenes of people talking about it. Still, both Alyssa Wong and Moisés Hidalgo are convincing me of Kwannon and Mitsuki’s childhood bond, which is the heart of the story, and so it can get away with a lot.
WEAPON X-MEN #5. By Joe Casey, ChrisCross, Mark Morales, Yen Nitro & Clayton Cowles. Final issue, so it’s time for the obligatory scramble to the finish line. Or rather, it resolves the Thunderbird subplot: he wants to go back in time to his death and take his own place so that he can go down in history as a hero after all. He gets talked out of it. It’s not a bad idea, but it’s kind of rushed here. As for the actual point of the team, Casey waves the white flag and just has Cable tell us that they’re supposed to face some unspecified upcoming threat. Oh well! Pretty as it is, this book never made a convincing case for its own existence.
EMMA FROST: THE WHITE QUEEN #1. By Amy Chu, Andrea Di Vito, Antonio Fabela & Ariana Maher. Continuity implant miniseries set back when Emma was in the Hellfire Club’s Inner Circle. I can’t help suspecting this got commissioned mainly so they could do the costume on the covers. I suppose in theory there’s a story to be done, revisiting this period in the light of Emma’s extensive retooling in later years, and trying to square it off with the later character. In practice… well, Emma is visiting the Argentinian branch of the Hellfire Club as an honoured guest and the big event goes badly wrong when the X-Men crash in to rescue a local mutant. Emma thinks someone’s manoeuvring against her. Fair enough, I guess – internal feuding within the Hellfire Club is probably the best way to make her the relative hero here – and the classic 80s X-Men line-up feel nicely familiar. But it doesn’t feel like a book we particularly needed.
Re: Weapon X-men 5:
I’m not liking the retcon that Wade is the reason why the Doomsmith didn’t go off.
The annoying thing is that this issue established that there’s some reason that Cable can’t time travel and Fitzroy knows about it- which will probably never be mentioned again, especially since Cable has no problem time traveling in Phoenix.
I still think that the problem with bringing John back is he makes Jimmy redundant.
Re: Emma Frost: the White Queen 1:
There are issues with when this series takes plaice. A note on the recap page claims that this takes place circa Uncanny X-Men 138 but that’s impossible since Storm is surprised to find out that Emma is alive in Uncanny 151- she thought that Emma died in the explosion in X-Men 131. And this issue Storm sees Emma. This issue probably takes place in between Uncanny 152 and Uncanny 169, when Emma goes into a coma.
The one problem with that is that Emma says they need a new Black Rook since Von Roehm died. But the Von Roehm we know died in Uncanny X-Men 209. It’s possible this Von Roehm was his father.
I think we’re supposed to wonder if the traitor is Tessa- this might be an attempt to retcon her into actually helping the X-Men when she was supposedly a spy.
The September solicits are out:
X-Men 22 wil feature Doug coming to Scott’s X-Men asking for help from his pursuers. So I guess that means that Doug isn’t the Chairman? This will lead into October’s crossover.
But a Foreshadowing cover for Giant-Size X-Men 2 shows Doug, Warlock and Bei with Mystique and Destiny. So who knows what’s going on?
Magik will be shipping twice in September, presumably to end the plot before the Doug crossover.
In addition to Psylocke not appearing in October. Hellverine’s solicitations also reads like a final issue.
Overall, Breevort’s tenure as X-Editor seems like it’s been a failure so far. 4 team books- X-Factor, X-Force, NYX and Weapon X-Men have all been cancelled. And now Psylocke has been cancelled and probably so has Hellverine.
It’s been rumored that the line is going to be revamped when the October crossover hits. Hopefully there will be some improvements. (Like Stephanie Philips off Phoenix.)
Bleeding Cools’ top 10 list is out. The only X-Book this week to make the top 10 is Emma Frost: the White Queen 1 at number 10.
This is just embarrassing. Yes, this was a busy week. But not only did X-Men and Wolverine get beaten by a continuity implant miniseries featuring Emma but every X-book got beaten by It’s Jeff 1.
So two crossovers within a span of a little more than a year? That doesn’t sound good.
Show me the title that’s better than It’s Jeff. 🙂
Nah, but seriously… these continuity implant series always have issues with actually fitting into continuity. But then again, only the hardcore weirdoes like us care if a random Emma Frost storyline fits into a 40 year old span of issues.
(I gave up caring about strict continuity for these things after that Magneto mini from not too long ago.)
I don’t know if Breevort’s tenure is so much one of failure as it is “throw shit at the wall, see what sticks, cancel at 5/10, give Stephanie Phillips and Ben Percy everything they want.”
Okay, I think maybe the problem is he’s commissioning stuff and not committing to it. X-Force, X-Factor, Psylocke, Weapon X-Men, NYX — all had decent concepts and proven, competent (if not superstar) writers attached, but something fell flat across the line.
You’re right. I do blame the editor, because really, there’s no good reason why all of these series should have failed on a conceptual level. I doubt it was strictly based on sales.
The next event is probably going to be the return to the school. The line will have been culled down to Uncanny, X-Men, Wolverine, Storm, and Magik (I guess Exceptional will still be around until after this crossover, when it’ll probably be cancelled). It’ll be easy to put all the still-standing mutants back into the school setting (Wolverine is already a member of the Uncanny cast, Magik is already a member of the X-Men team). Lots of young mutants to train in the school from the three X-Men books.
I predicted that the current market couldn’t support more than five or six X-titles, and that only five of the ongoing FTA titles would be left after a year of publication.
I predict one more wave of solo titles, based on hit characters who have inexplicably never gotten their own solo, either ongoing or mini. (Honestly, that actually narrows it down a lot when you consider how many have actually gotten a shot over the years…)
COLOSSUS – The strongest artist alive.
BANSHEE – He’s an Irish cop with a scream.
ANGEL – Mark Russell loves billionaire satires, let’s give him another chance.
plus…
THUNDERBIRDS (James, John, -and- Neal! Thunderbirds are go! Wait, legal says what?)
HAVOK & POLARIS – It’s a romantic drama!
MEET THE GUTHRIES – an anthology book featuring stories covering the entire family. Sam, Paige, Josh, Melody…
I want to read the Banshee series written by Declan Shalvey. Somehow, I imagine that series would get 25 issues at Image, if it was a creator owned book with the same premise. At Marvel? Five issues, tops.
Should Hellverine end with #10, I wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest, though I think the September solicitation is somewhat ambiguous. Same goes for Laura Kinney: Wolverine.
On the other hand, I’m quite concerned about Magik #10’s “To the bitter end” line. I hope Michael is right and it refers only to the present plot line before the Doug event; if there’s one current X-book which really deserves to go on, it’s this.
I hope they actually call it The Doug Event.
…Wasn’t the Howlett estate turned into a mall a few years ago? If so, HOW THE ACTUAL HELL is it back?
@Aaron : Paul mentioned the continuity glitch in annotations for issue #9, but it actually predates the current arc ; the Howlett estate turned up surprisingly non-malled a couple years ago.
When new characters are introduced in relatively important positions in continuity series (I am thinking of Emma’s telepath, Brazilian Ju Jitsu protege here, though I guess that Astrid Bloom would qualify as well), it is hard to believe that they make it out alive/in one piece. Had a character like Empath been used instead, we would have known that the sidekick/assistant makes it out alive. Alas, poor Noor, you’re living your resurrected best life in the White Hot Room.
Based off of the first issue, I will go so far as to say that Emma is responsible for bad stuff (maybe to get the Hellions approved for the Massachusetts Academy?), and she frames Noor for it all. We are intended to think it’s the guy who asks Emma if she’s reading his mind, but I am figuring that we’re due for a classic “ha, you didn’t see that twist coming!”
Since it’s set in the 1980s, it’s nice to see 1980s Grace Jones in the series, albeit under a different name.
Also, is it a continuity error in the reference to Victor Da Costa? Was that intended to be Emmanuel Da Costa (aka Roberto’s father)? Did we ever actually see Emmanuel Da Costa do anything evil as a member of the Inner Circle, or did Sebastian Shaw and Emma Frost basically do it to troll Sunspot? My post-Claremont New Mutants is shaky, and I know he gets poisoned by Gideon in the end.
For the issue of the Howlett estate no longer being a mall, you see, its association with Logan has given it a healing factor, so, given enough time, it reverts back to its original form.
Weapon X-Men seems like it was DOA. Part of the fault lies with Marvel not doing squat to promote it, leaving Casey to his own device ; part of it was Casey’s insistance to use this not so clever team name.
What baffles me most is the cast : Wolverine in one of his ten monthly appearances, Deadpool at his most annoying, Cable hovering in the background because of some mysterious menace we’ll never see… Chamber’s only contribution was to insist twice an issue in a strong Cockney accent that he didn’t want to be here. As for Thunderbird, he just walked back on the not unconsiderable character development he got in his solo one-shot and in the webcomics during the Krakoa era.
And for the love of me, I cannot even remember whether there was a named female character in the space of five issues (Past Storm doesn’t count, as she is just going through the motions of a decades-old story). Who was this supposed to appeal to ?
@Sam- The whole “Sunspot’s father has joined the Hellfire Club” storyline was weird. In New Mutants 8-12. Emmanuel Da Costa tries to seize the riches of Nova Roma with Shaw’s help and Roberto and his mother are nearly killed. At the end of that storyline, Emmanuel decides to join the Hellfire Club after realizing that he’s lost any chance to reconcile with Roberto. In issue 22-23. he actually joins the Hellfire Club. And then we see almost nothing of him until Gideon kills him- just one panel in Uncanny X-Men 272 when he replies no comment to a reporter’s question about Roberto and Genosha.
The whole plot wound up going nowhere. Part of the reason might be that Roberto having a father in the Hellfire Club lost any point after Storm and Magneto allied with the Hellfire Club in issue 52. And part of the problem was that the plot seemed to exist largely to set up the possibility that Roberto might become a well-meaning villain., Of course, that also wound up going nowhere., since every time a writer pulled the trigger on Roberto becoming a well-meaning villain (Reignfire, joining Selene to save his girlfriend’;s soul) the next writer undid it.
@gackthegack- Rogue appeared briefly at the end of issue 3.
I wonder if Victor Da Costa could be an uncle of Roberto Da Costa, and that in this mini we could introduce the kinship between Roberto and Valentin Correa (Ransom), explaining why a Brazilian guy has an Argentine cousin (the fact that the story here takes place in Buenos Aires had given me hope…)
“the possibility that Roberto might become a well-meaning villain. […] wound up going nowhere.”
I feel like Al Ewing eventually paid that off by pivoting Sunspot into basically a hero version of Sebastian Shaw: someone with a slugfest powerset who prefers to solve his problems with manipulation and/or throwing money at it (offering a paradoxical wager to Isca the Undefeated, buying off an AIM faction and turning them into Avengers Idea Mechanics).
@The Other Michael: I think Colossus has had a miniseries before; wasn’t that where it was established that he was, in fact, descended from Russia’s Greatest Love Machine, and it wasn’t just that the writers only knew a couple of Russian surnames?
Yes, Colossus had a mini-series titled Bloodlines, written by David Hine. It was pretty terrible.
He also had the serial in MCP, written by Nocenti, which was loads better. The chapters were all collected in a prestige one-shot though.
Havok had a serial in MCP, if you want to count a serialized story. Probably not since Colossus’ MCP serial was able to be collected in only one book.
Angel also had a mini-series in the mid-2000s, which recounted his origin story. I guess that might count, even though it’s a continuity insert.
Plus, there was the Peter Milligan written one-shot from
the 1990s, inexplicably published in B&W. Marvel seemed to be bizarrely attempting to appeal to Vertigo fans on a surface level, but the story read like a Marvel Fanfare left-over plot, and Milligan was obviously phoning it in for a payday.
In terms of Evil Bobby, there was also whatever the hell Reignfire was about.
MasterMahan-While it wasn’t the original plan, Reignfire was revealed to not be Sunspot. Instead, it was a formless alien entity in which Gideon implanted Roberto’s DNA. Reignfire was able to mentally control Roberto at times, explaining away any actions by Sunspot which would have seemed to show he was actually Reignfire.
Regarding Sunspot’s father, that’s how Claremont worked, right? He’d put in some story beat about Emmanuel joining the Hellfire club, or a Brood flying shark crashing to Earth, or what have you. Then years later he might spin a story out of it and it would be epic and seem to be his plan all along. Or it just goes nowhere at all. Or is explained away in a single panel when the comic has moved on too far for the plot point to matter.
Though the never-made Mutant Wars event would probably have done something with him.
“Yes, Colossus had a mini-series titled Bloodlines, written by David Hine. It was pretty terrible.”
I recalled the MCP serial and for the sake of my… speculations, I decided to ignore stuff like that because MCP covered a lot of ground. I totally forgot, or never registered, that he had an actual mini.
Given that Chamber had a mini, Jubilee a short-lived ongoing, Beast headlined that series where he first turned furry -and- had a mini with Dazzler, Havok co-starred in a mini with Wolverine… it was pretty hard finding significant X-characters who hadn’t already been given a solo of some manner.
Cecilia Reyes? Marrow? Maggot? Hmmm. Well, Maggot’s in Storm right now so… Xorn? Stacy X?
I don’t think the line has felt this bad and off since Inhumanity.
Aipt had an interview with Tom Breevort today:
https://aiptcomics.com/2025/06/23/x-men-monday-300-anniversary-spectacular/
AIPT: It’s been about one year since the “From the Ashes” era began, with the upcoming X-Men: Hellfire Vigil one-shot seemingly designed to close out the first year and set up what comes next. In recent months, you’ve seen passionate fans rally behind solo series like Phoenix and Storm, and then you’ve seen series like X-Force and X-Factor end sooner than preferred. So, how do you feel as the Conductor of X heading into year two, and do you think you have a stronger grasp on the X-Men universe and X-Fandom?
TOM: Well, generally speaking, I’m feeling fine. I think we had a decent first year. I always understood from the beginning — and I told at least the editors in my group about this — that we were going to try a whole bunch of different things, and not all of them were going to work equally well. That’s just the nature of the beast and a fairly competitive marketplace. But having done that, I’m probably not going to do much differently next year. We’re going to try a bunch of other stuff, and hopefully — percentage-wise — more of that will be to more people’s liking.
Even X-Factor — probably one of the more divisive books we did — has a pool of fans that really liked the fact that it was a completely different flavor and had a completely separate point of view on the whole mutant experience. So I don’t look at any of this as a downside or a failure. You look around, and books cycle through all the time in this market. Not everything you do is going to run forever. I know that very well, having relaunched Avengers like eight times over the years.
AIPT: So, I’m fascinated by your grand unifying theory for Scott Summers and Jean Grey’s relationship, which you first mentioned in X-Men Monday #250. First, how much more was there to your original theory than appeared on the page? And, second, why was it so important for you to dedicate page time to strengthening and explaining their bond?
TOM: Well, in terms of the length and breadth of the theory, let me just spiral back a little bit. This is a thing that’s been bouncing around in the back of my head since the ‘80s. This isn’t even from an editorial standpoint — this is me as a reader, because I was around when the lead-up to the original X-Factor came out, and that entire cycle of stories horrified me in how it sort of deliberately mischaracterized the characters to get them into a position that, editorially, those guys wanted them to be in.
You know, I’ve had to force characters to follow certain paths over the years in different places, so I understand that sometimes there’s a need that is greater than that. But it wasn’t handled especially well, and there was never an explanation for it that I could make sense of in my own head.
And really, it wasn’t until 20 years later when Grant Morrison did the end of their New X-Men run and came out and said, “Oh yeah, Jean’s still the Phoenix. All that stuff about cocoons and bodies in the river — that’s nonsense.” That was the thing that kind of gave me the last piece of it. I could rationalize to myself.
And I don’t want to get too deep into this, because this is more about, if you want to make this canon, this is a story that gets told at some point. But going back to the Chris Claremont and John Byrne story, if Jean as the Phoenix, not even entirely understanding how her powers worked, what she was, and how this worked, essentially fused herself and Scott’s essence together as sort of a way of providing an anchor for herself so she didn’t drown in the power of the Phoenix and lose herself in this cosmic splendor. I can rationalize, at least to myself, the idea that Jean comes back, and even though she’s claiming to be just the real Jean Grey with no connection to any of this stuff, she isn’t really.
And suddenly, it’s like a chain pulls on Scott Summers and he has to go, even if he can’t rationalize it to himself. And even if it doesn’t really make any sense. He has a newborn child and a wife here, and he’s going to go run off, hang out, and play Ghostbusters with his old school friends. That’s pretty much the first five or six issues of that X-Factor run. But I at least have an explanation that I can turn to and go, “There’s more going on here than was apparent at the time.”
It speaks to sort of the ineffable connection between those characters. It also sort of starts to inform, at least for me, all of their interactions with their other paramours and would-be paramours over the years and why, ultimately, it always kind of resets back to the two of them. Because, ever since that issue of Uncanny X-Men, they’re literally inseparable — not just figuratively inseparable.
So, if we’d had more than five pages, we might have been able to go a little more chapter and verse into how these various events played out over the years, and what it means physically and spiritually. But working with the amount of territory we had, just to get it on the page and establish it, I feel like it’s important. At least, it was important to me, and I get to decide what’s in a five-page story. So I get to do that every once in a while.
That sort of original sin of Scott Summers, though it’s been 40 years, he kind of has never climbed out of that pit. Nobody’s found a way to make that work and make sense and be not necessarily, you know, good or acceptable, but understandable, so you can move on past it. I’d like to get to that point. And inevitably, other creators will come along, whether it’s during my time or after my time, and pick at this, play with it, add to it, reverse it, or turn it inside out, because that’s what we do. But at least getting it there and getting it to happen makes me feel better. And sometimes, that’s all the motivation I need.
AIPT: in Giant-Size Dark Phoenix #1, the Phoenix Force “jumps” from Phoenix to Legion, leaving “Jean Grey” behind. But since Jean was actually the Phoenix from Uncanny X-Men #101-137, the Phoenix jumping into Legion should leave nothing behind. Elsewhere in your newsletter, (#165 #166), you said the Phoenix backstory was “suspect,” and implied the Phoenix “wasn’t being forthcoming” about the cocoon in Jamaica Bay. Even if you were just kidding around, what do you want readers of the current era of X-Books to think about who/what Jean was in “The Dark Phoenix Saga” and the subsequent Kurt Busiek/John Byrne retcon?
TOM: mean, I think during “The Dark Phoenix Saga,” Jean was Jean, Jean was the Phoenix, and the Phoenix was Jean. I tend to take those issues more as written than a lot of the back-flipping, backstory, revising, and re-revising that went on over the years. Part of that is I was the reader when those books came out. I bought them on the stands monthly, dropping my 40 cents for each one, and I read them. So, as texts, they sort of loom large in X-Men canon, and I tend to want to default to them more than the back-flips that Chris himself and later creators tried to do.
And given the sort of state of play that exists now, pretty much ever since Grant’s run, the Phoenix was Jean, and Jean’s always been the Phoenix. So whatever that was — whatever motivated the Phoenix to go, “We’re going to get up now out of the Hudson River and pretend that we’re just a normal human being with telekinetic powers and none of that stuff counted. And that was all some other thing. But clearly, that’s not the case, because 20 years later, we’re going to get the stories where clearly we’re not.” So I find all of that stuff suspect.
See? This is an example of comic books cannibalizing themselves. This is why I feel comic books cannot attract new readers anymore. Besides the fact that comics are now $5 an issue, so they are well beyond the ability of young readers to afford (the typical new audience comics relied on until the early-2000s).
You have editors who are middle aged and grew up reading certain comics who are now obsessed with the minutiae of what they read as a kid, instead of wanting to move on and create. Brevoort also seems to yearn so much for a return to the 1990s, and while I have many problems with most of the Big Two books from that decade, one thing I will admit is that they were usually not stuck in the past. The editors were actively attempting to draw in a young, male audience (for good or for bad), and there was no hand-wringing over something Scott Summers did a decade beforehand, which had been mostly satisfactorily wrapped up by Claremont and Simonson (regardless of how I and many others may feel about the resolution).
There were no new readers coming on to X-Men concerned about Scott’s actions from a marriage that the new readers probably didn’t even know about. They were fine watching Betsy attempt to seduce Scott while he was engaged to Jean (horrible story though). Grant Morrison then put a period on the entire Jean/Scott relationship. Sure, that may have ended up being ignored, but it showed how far everyone had progressed from the time of “Inferno”. It shows that readers and/or writers were not stuck obsessing over Scott’s actions during X-Factor. It’s best to ignore it and move on, especially forty years later.
There’s no reason to once again dredge up the Jean/Scott relationship and try to absolve Scott by saying the Phoenix made him do it. Yes, us long time readers still see Scott as a jerk, but we’ve been following Marvel for over thirty or forty years now. Writing stories solely of interest to this core group of readers is not how to grow the business. It’s actually losing older fans at this point, as there are some of these core Marvel fans (not all, obviously) who get bored seeing the same plots rehashed over and over again. “Jean and Scott. Jean and the Phoenix. Scott and Jean and the Phoenix…”
@Michael, nah , Johnny doesnt make Jimmy redundant , his being alive actually allows his younger* brother’s character development to finally fully evolve beyond the stereotypical “angry young man” which most male poc x-characters pre-2000’s ultimately got trapped into remaining, which to be fair, Nicieza and Loeb started in the mid-1990’s (remember when Locus referred to Jimmy as “pridewalker” instead of “warpath”, and then he finally ditched the stereotypical “Apache Brave” theme post-AoA) , continued by Moore and Ellis in the late 1990’s, only to be regressed by Kyle and Yost (and arguably by Brubaker) in the mid-to-late 2000’s. He only started to go back to being non-angry, or at least less angry. in the 2010’s under Pak and Rosenburg. Actually , Jummy should more or less retire as an active superhero at this point , he’s character arc is done. Its now Johnny’s turn to finally begin at last his aborted journey.
* technically , Johnny should now be the younger brother , since he died and was resurrected in his late teens to early 20’s (Jimmy was in his tweens/early 20’s when he died) while Jimmy should now be the older brother, since like the rest of his New Mutants/Hellions generation) are already in arguably their mid to late 20’s, chronologically at least (assuming they were all resurrected in younger bodies in Krakoa).
@Si , actually Reignfire was expressly stated to be a fellow X-gene mutant whose powers since either childhood or birth caused him to become living liquid symbiote-style until he found the perfect host in Sunspot (ala Malice ane and Polaris) , my own headcanon to No-Prize this serendipitous genetic compatibility is that Reignfire is secretly Sunspot’s older half-brother on his father’s side , Emmanuel da Costa’s son born-out-of-wedlock to a fellow Brazilian in the years before he met and married Sunspot’s USAmerican mother (in Sunspot’s origin, they looked happily married enough to still he monogamous with each other and then even later in New Mutants , whej they were now estranged due to his ambitions, she never complained that he was engaged in adulterous affairs)
It was bad enough that Hickman just ignored the Scott-Emma relationship and went back to the Scott-Logan-Jean triangle but now Breevort is doing a ‘Quesada on Spidey’s marriage’ and thinks forty year old stories need to be explicated?
I’m at the point where I’m not only not reading any of the continuity implant books or individual character titles I’m not even reading the first issues to see if I’d like them, because I can safely assume I won’t. On the main few I’m only just post x-manhunt so I’m about half a year behind and, when I find some freetime and think ‘what shall I do now’ I’m increasingly finding other things to do rather than ‘read comics’.
Wait, wasn’t Brevoort the one who said he’s not interested in publishing ‘comics about comics’? That is, books which sole purpose is to explain continuity minutiae?
Anyway, it’s funny to think that a relationship with Emma Frost was healthier for Cyclops.
Colleen Wing was so lucky to dodge that bullet.
The problem with Jean is Phoenix and Phoenix is Jean is that it just kind of ignores all the other characters that have been Phoenix, going from Rachel before Morrison to all of the characters that have been part of the Phoenix Force after Morrison (Phoenix 5, Echo, Quentin Quire, etc.). I’m not going to make any claims about the quality of any of those stories, but Breevort plugging his ears and shouting “Jean is Phoenix and Phoenix is Jean!” doesn’t do anything to convince me to agree with him.
I think the idea is that Jean and Phoenix are one and the same, sometimes in synch and sometimes opposed. That doesn’t mean they can’t possess other people, just that those other people aren’t essentially entwined like Jean/Phoenix are.
The problem with that explanation, in my opinion, is that it doesn’t address the root of the Phoenix issue, namely: she/it can do any old random thing and we just have to accept it. There’s no overarching purpose to her/its motivation. (Morrison tried, but of course their explanation was ignored.)
Basically, all “Phoenix is Jean and Jean is Phoenix” does is give Jean a cover for when people ask, “Why did you/Phoenix do that?” She can just reply, “Because things are complicated and mysterious. Even I don’t understand all of the impulses of the Phoenix.”
The Dark Phoenix Saga also meant a lot to me as a young comics reader. I remember explaining it to my 2nd grade teacher, for example. And Jean is still one of my favorite X-characters. All of that to say: even as a fan, I understand that the solution to the Phoenix is to give it a good, long rest. Stop trying to explain it; it’s all just going to get undone anyway, like a Marvel version of Crisis on Infinite Earths.
The Phoenix as anything other than a codename for Jean needs to just go away forever. Do a story where, I don’t know, the Phoenix Force is dying it’s natural death before it’s due to be reborn in the next cosmos or something. Then you’ve just got powerful telekinetic Jean as Phoenix instead of Space God Do Anything Jean Is Phoenix Is Jean.
I really, really don’t know what to make of an editor whose public retrospective on the past year ammounts to “yeah things failed we’ll try more and maybe they won’t”.
I just don’t get it. Is it comics becoming absolutely niche and self-referential, so no story can be taken as even remotely close to indispensible?
Are they just a way to test out intellectual property for video games, toys, and/or more profitable movie and TV adaptations?
I know asking why an X-Men comic exists at all is an impossible question: it exists because it exists, and it gets published because it gets published. Maybe Jean is Phoenix is Jean is just metacommentary on this ongoing, self-consuming redundancy.
But why should we care about *any of this* when the line’s own editor acknowledges he doesn’t care in the slightest about ongoing cancellations – of for that matter, feedback from fans?
Just… What’s the point?
@Krzysiek Ceran: When it comes to reliability and truthfulness, Brevoort’s only a few notches above the Rotting Canteloupe-in-Chief. Taking anything he says at face value is pointless.
@Salome: I don’t think Brevoort’s lack of insight is indicative of anything broader than this one guy being incompetent – he has no idea why some books fail and some books don’t, he doesn’t have even a rudimentary understanding of either the X-Men’s target demographic or their *actual* demographic, and so the only answer he can give when readers ask him questions like that is “Buy more comics”
The creative teams on the solo X-titles are mostly artists and writers without huge followings. I get using solo X-comics and spin-off team books as testing grounds. The approach hasn’t been hugely successful- Magik and Storm seem to be the only hits- but I’m not against the idea in theory.
I don’t know how many readers know or care about Brevoort’s attitude/ public responses, either. For me, I’m less inclined to pick up a new X-book because of how he comes off in interviews.
@Trevor: That was the idea at the end of Avengers vs. X-Men, or, in the words of Hope Summers: “No more Phoenix!” (#12)
From my point of view, it would have been a good finish.
Also, Alan Davis attempted to shut it all down by revealing that it “borrowed” the life energy of unborn kids to stay active as anything but a diffuse, non-sentient cosmic force.
“I hope you agree we’re doing Emma justice in these pages” is one of those end-issue editorial comments that make me kind of sigh. You just want to tell a story in which your favorite version comes to light, but you really don’t do the extra effort to give the book a purpose for being. Pryde of the X-Men wasn’t the best source material for Emma.
Wild to me that they dropped “Scalphunter” for everyone’s favourite ex-Marauder to the point that he’s Greycrow even in flashbacks but they continue to keep Warpath for Jimmy