The X-Axis – w/c 21 July 2025
ASTONISHING X-MEN INFINITY COMIC #30. By Alex Paknadel, Phillip Sevy, Michael Bartolo & Clayton Cowles. Somewhere in here, there ought to be an interesting story about the embittered humans whose supply of anti-dementia drugs was cut off with the fall of Krakoa, but this really isn’t it. The plot requires the islanders to blame mutants for their own downfall, which could work, but feels like it would need a lot more scaffolding than it gets here. Instead, we end up jumping from that mildly promising starting point to a rather by-the-numbers affair in which people who hate mutants hunt mutants, and it just doesn’t feel as if this is heading anywhere much.
UNCANNY X-MEN #18. (Annotations here.) Ah, an optimistic issue. We were probably overdue for one. This is the New Orleans Friendship Fest, as promised a couple of issues ago – and it’s basically a fair. The X-Men show up, are pleasantly surprised by the reception, and if they don’t entirely head off the attempts to disrupt it, they don’t get the blame either. I do like the direction of the X-Men building bridges with the human world; one thing I never liked about Krakoa was how far it isolated the X-books from reality. So going back to something fairly low key like this seems like a good idea. Of course you can make the case that this isn’t all that unprecedented – we did something similar with San Francisco in the pre-Utopia era – but that was a good while ago, and in a book which has been running for sixty years, you have to allow some latitude on that kind of thing or you limit yourself too much. Luciano Vecchio does good work on the opening Mutina subplot, too.
PHOENIX #13. (Annotations here.) And, in fact…
WOLVERINE #11. (Annotations here.) So that’s two issues in a single week doing more or less the same story: long lost relative returns, it’s not real, lead character is blinded to the anomalies by the emotional impact. I mean, Wolverine also has an angle that he’s prone to manipulation by sensory illusions but… that’s more plot mechanics than something the story is about. It’s very similar territory for two books in the line to be doing at once. Neither of them is exactly working, either. Both have effectively wound up devoting most of an issue to something they then have to turn round and disavow – Phoenix can at least make the argument that Sara thinks she’s real, and her back story explains what she believes, but Wolverine basically spends a whole issue on an illusory fight scene, right on the heels of what was presumably a whole issue of haunted house illusions, and it doesn’t feel like we’re getting enough out of that to justify it. Perhaps it’s a case of pacing for the trade, but in 2025 it feels awkward.
STORM #10. (Annotations here.) The first part of “Thunder War”, which the book has been building to for a while – though it seems like it may now be accelerating it somewhat in order to get through it before the crossover. By this book’s feverish standards, issue #10 is actually fairly coherent, in as much as it does seem to be drawing some threads together, but by god it’s hard work – and it really does read like the mindset is simply that the more powerful you make Storm, the more awesome she is. That may well be what the hardcore Storm fans want in a Storm book, and if so, fair enough. Marvel’s cosmic stuff has never done much for me, so even if this was working perfectly it probably still wouldn’t be for me. It can still muster some excellent art. You couldn’t accuse it of sticking to the obvious path. But it feels like one baffling decision after another, issue after issue.
PSYLOCKE #9. (Annotations here.) This seems to be the penultimate issue, but the resolution of Mitsuki’s storyline doesn’t seem too rushed. After all the build up of Mitsuki as Kwannon’s saintly childhood friend, I rather like the angle that Mitsuki turns out to be not just alive, but far more vengeful against their old mentor than Kwannon ever was – the reality doesn’t live up to Kwannon’s memory. And while there’s a definite hint that something isn’t quite right with her, at least if you go back and check against previous issues, I think it’s a much more interesting direction to go with than just bringing her back to get revenge on the Hand. Nice art, too – the bleached-out possession Psylocke is a great look.
EMMA FROST: WHITE QUEEN #2. By Amy Chu, Andrea Di Vito, Antonio Fabela & Ariana Maher. The problem that a lot of these continuity implant minis face is the unspoken question of “Yes, but why?” I can imagine a reason to go back to Emma as a villain, because there’s maybe some work to be done in terms of squaring off that part of her history with post-90s Emma into a single character. I’m not sure this book is really doing that, though, so much as focussing on intra-Hellfire rivalry – something that allows Emma to duck doing anything especially villainous, but in doing so loses a lot of the potential in writing a story at this point in her life. Still, as a story about Hellfire politicking and a mystery about who the traitor is, it’s decently paced and makes an effort to flesh out the inner working of the Hellfire Club, albeit in ways that sometimes feel arbitrary. Di Vito does a good Emma, and also sets up the globetrotting settings nicely. It’s a perfectly fine comic, but is that enough?
“…and it really does read like the mindset is simply that the more powerful you make Storm, the more awesome she is.”
It seems like a great many writers who’ve tackled the character approach Storm with a similar mindset. It’s as though they believe any attempt to depict her as remotely relatable would be doing the character a disservice.
“…a story about Hellfire politicking”
I initially read that as “potlicking” and thought it was a story about Hellfire Club members drinking out of toilets.
Bleeding Cool’s Bestseller list is out. Uncanny X-Men 17 came in at number 7 and the rest didn’t make the list. It’s a busy week but it’s not a good sign that Wolverine 11 didn’t make the list. (It’s also not a good sign that Storm didn’t make the list.)
I know that Wolverine’s problem is partially ovexposure but now I’m wondering if part of the problem is Ahmed. His run on Magnificent Ms. Marvel drove away so many readers that Kamala never got another ongoing again and his Daredevil run had Matt spend a year and a half fighting his sins which could have been done in half the time- the sales have been low recently and it’s ending with issue 25. In retrospect, he doesn’t seem like the kind of writer you’d put on one of Marvel’s biggest titles.
Big news from SDCC- Strange will not be returning to being the Sorcerer Supreme of Earth after Doom is defeated. In December, there will be a contest to determine the new Sorcerer Supreme and the candidates include Illyana, Maddie, Storm and, um, Gambit. (I guess having the Left Eye of Agamotto enables you to compete even if you wouldn’t normally qualify. Although I wonder if Sadurang knew this and lied about the whole cannibalism thing to get Remy to give the Eye back,) I wonder if one of the mutant candidates will become the Sorcerer Supreme.
There was also cosmic news from SDCC. There will be an ongoing Exiles series coming out in the winter of 2026. There will be a new Nova series coming out in November and MacKay will be writing it. I wonder if that means he’ll have to quit one of his current books.
Also, Stephanie Phillips will be writing a new She-Hulk series coming out in November that takes place on the planet Sakaar. Because giving Stephanie Philips a book with a major Marvel heroine taking place in outer space away from her normal supporting cast worked out so well the last time! My sympathies to She-Hulk fans. I wonder if this means she’s leaving Phoenix though?
On Joe Casey’s blog, we finally got an explanation of what happened with Weapon X-Men. When Joe Casey submitted his proposal for Weapon X-Men, he intended it to be an ongoing series. But he didn’t explicitly specify that. Apparently, someone in Marvel’s P&L department thought that it was supposed to be a limited series. So it was approved as a five-issue limited series, even though Casey intended the project to be an ongoing series. So Casey and Breevort tried to prevent the “(of 5)” from getting out publicly but they weren’t entirely successful and some outlets described it as a 5 issue limited series. That was why Weapon X-Men was variously described as an ongoing and a 5-issue limited series.
I honestly can’t believe this happened. I’ve never heard of a writer agreeing to do a series thinking’s it an ongoing and corporate thinking it’s going to be a limited series. How incompetent is Breevort? I know that Casey said he never specified it was an ongoing but as editor it’s Breevort’s job to make sure that the writer and the higher-ups are on the same page. As it is we got a series that never stood a chance of becoming an ongoing and just gave Wolverine and Deadpool more overexposure which hurt the sales of their actual ongoing books.
Re: Phoenix and Wolverine having the same plot the same week- the problem is that sometimes asking one of the writers to change their plot at a late stage can cause other problems. The most infamous example is Avengers 200. In the original plot, the father of Carol Danvers’s child was supposed to be the Supreme Intelligence. But there was a What If with a similar plot , so Shooter ordered Michelinie, who was writing Avengers, to find another father. The results are history. After that mess, I could see why Marvel is wary about changing stories because they’re too similar.
In other news this week, Belasco appears in Iron Man this week, and he’s said to be operating from Limbo. But a few pages later, he talks about “the many realms of Limbo”. So is this Illyana’s and Maddie’s Limbo, or another dimension called Limbo?
That story is bizarre, though. Belasco’s scheme causes the death of hundreds of Latverians, including Latverian children. You’s think Illyana would be angry about that for obvious reasons. Plus the story features Belasco leaving with an enthralled Druid and the Black Widow promising to free him- you’d think she’d ask Illyana for help, because Illyana knows Belasco best. I mean, this series clearly ended early because of poor sales, so this issue was rushed, but stilll…
Do they throw beads at this New Orleans Friendship Fest?
If Illyana was there, she’d make a killing, based on certain Magik covers.
>> “…a story about Hellfire politicking”
> I initially read that as “potlicking” and thought it was a story about Hellfire Club members drinking out of toilets.
Now I’m thinking of the Hellfire Club Potluck. Everyone expects Emma to bring plates. She then comes in with the best dessert, arguing that mind controlling a famous chef counts as her making it.
@Michael: Tom Brevoort didn’t do his job as an editor? *Our* Tom?! That simply can’t be!
(The explanation’s a bit fishy, because the practical outcome of Buckley and Yoshida-san’s policy is that *all* new books are technically 10-issue minis unless they sell well enough to be extended).
I admit I also read it as “Hellfire potlucking”.
To further solidify her undercover status, Tessa doesn’t bring a dish to pass.
Shaw: I had suspected Tessa may have been a spy for Xavier, but after seeing this truly evil action, I know I can trust Tessa explicitly.
Okay, well, if we both read it wrong in two different ways (“potlicking” and “potlucking”) then I don’t think “politicking” should be allowed to be a real word anymore. It’s obviously too hard on the eyes.
Considering he’s Orson Welles, I assume Leland brings a dish made with frozen peas to the Hellfire potluck.
Avengers Academy had a Marvel Voices: Disability arc the last couple weeks, featuring Rogue helping some disabled mutant kids. It interested me because it’s the first mutant comic in a while that explicitly draws the parallel between mutation and disability.
I realize we’ve jettisoned Morrison’s version of Jean for Phoenix 6.0, but remember when she “burned away” lies to reveal the truth? She could really have used that power recently. Again.
Everyone has their own perspective, I suppose.
I don’t see Phoenix’s current storyline as similar to Wolverine’s; I see it as similar and, in fact, incompatible with Storm’s. Or I would, if I recognized what is going in Storm as an actual storyline.
Probably because I see the presence of people who logically should not be there (arguably also the case in Psylocke, btw) as a mechanism instead of a plot. Phoenix’s is about dealing with her power levels and her emotions; Wolverine’s is about his violent nature, his coping mechanisms, and how they can be turned against him (arguably also how they impact on his values, but that _is_ his book, so I doubt they will go there).
But have we considered the story possibilities of a Hellfire Club potlatch?