The X-Axis – 30 July 2025
Well, this is quiet. There’s no Infinite Comic this week, though they do take skip weeks sometimes. I notice they just axed Astonishing Spider-Man, which does make me wonder whether somebody’s starting to have doubts about how many subscriptions these things are selling, but we’ll see. Remarkably, that leaves us with a grand total of one X-book.
SPIDER-MAN & WOLVERINE #3. By Marc Guggenheim, Kaare Andrews, Brian Reber & Travis Lanham. Yeah, even if it’s the only book out, I can’t get worked up enough about Spider-Man & Wolverine to give it its own post. Well, except by default. This kind of is its own post. But you know what I mean.
The plot of this series is ostensibly something about a directory full of confidential information about SHIELD double agents, with Kraven and Omega Red also hunting it, and the title characters learning that Wolverine might have killed his parents back in the days when he was working for Romulus. For present purposes we’re doing the memory gaps thing again, so Wolverine can’t say for sure whether it’s true or not. That’s all perfectly serviceable as far as it goes.
But this issue randomly takes us off to the Savage Land, and sticks everyone in their old costumes, and then at the end of the issue we’re off to China and… boy, it’s pretty, but if ever a comic read as if it started by asking the artist for a wish list of what he’d like to draw, this would be it. Is “Kaare Andrews draws dinosaurs and Spider-Man’s black costume” really enough to carry a book? I mean… maybe? It’s a book that exists to be an art showcase, after all, and taking it on its own terms, maybe all it really needs is a story that’s on a sugar rush as much as the art is. If you’re looking for anything more than that, well, it’s not here to do that.
“…it’s pretty, but if ever a comic read as if it started by asking the artist for a wish list of what he’d like to draw, this would be it.”
Well, that’s not necessarily a terrible idea. That’s somewhat similar to how the Claremont/Cockrum X-Men run started out. With Claremont not coming into X-Men with any big ideas or a master plan of any sort and simply askng Cockrum what he’d like to draw.
Mystique and Destiny appear this week in Spider-Man vs. the Sinister Sixteen. There’s no real place in continuity for it to take place. since it features Mystique and Destiny. Strange as the Sorcerer Supreme. Peter and MJ together and Brock as Venom.
“Good evening, there is no news.” *Blog post padded out with 15 minutes of piano music*
@Michael: “There’s no real place in continuity for it to take place. since it features Mystique and Destiny. Strange as the Sorcerer Supreme. Peter and MJ together and Brock as Venom.”
I’m thinking that maybe there could be a window of opportunity for Spider-Man vs. The Sinister Sixteen. Just before Devil’s Reign, when Destiny has already been resurrected, Kingpin and Typhoid Mary are a couple and can walk around New York freely, Peter and Mary Jane are a couple (before Spencer’s final cycle, I’d say just before King’s Ransom), She-Hulk is back to normal and can go out with Thor (who has dug out an old costume for the occasion).
This is before Eddie Brock leaves for space as King in Black (or is it a “piece of consciousness” he left on Earth?).
Of course, we would need to understand why Peter has access to Tony Stark’s invitations, but basically, I think it could take place during that period, even though I haven’t examined all the characters tha
“…haven’t examined all the characters tha”
It’s cool. You can finish that up later. I can’t even count how many times I’ve passed out before finishing a post.
@Midnighter- Destiny was brought back in Inferno 1, which came out on September 29, 2021. Strange died in Death of Dr. Strange 1, which came out on September 22, 2021. I’m not sure if it’s possible to move Mystique’s resurrection before Strange’s death.
Nice of Marvel to provide a light week just as you get to the Frank Miller Daredevil run 🙂
More seriously, I think we all appreciate the time it takes to draft, edit, post, and respond, as well as the insight and wit of the posts.
As someone who likes the angle of Peter’s parents being super spies (and someone who enjoyed the Adam-Troy Castro Sinister Six novels that dealt with it in more detail), I was looking forward to the Wolverine/Spider-Man book. But the last two issues have been an utter waste of paper. Shame.
Skimming the Sinister Sixteen book was painful. JMS is not good at writing humorous dialog.
JMS is a very limited writer, period. He came onto Amazing Spider-Man as a hyped name so it sold well, but outside of weird (Spider-Totems) or upsetting (Peter and MJ can’t get a legal divorce, Gwen and Norman were lovers) stories, which shouldn’t ever have seen the light of day, there were no memorable JMS Spider-Man stories. Oh, I guess “crying Dr. Soon” might be memorable and might contradict the idea that JMS fails at writing humour (wait, that was supposed to be a serious moment?). Meanwhile, poor Paul Jenkins was toiling away with a master-class in writing Spider-Man comics with hardly any of the attention being given to overrated JMS.
@Chris V: In fairness, “Sins Past” was an editorial compromise from JMS’s story idea. He’s expressed disdain for the editorially mandated plot changes and support for Nick Spencer’s retconning it all away.
That said, I’m struck by how unmemorable most of his superhero comics are. The totem stuff from his Amazing Spider-Man is about all I can recall of that run, and even that was walked back by the end of it.
It’s remembered because Spider-Man having some kind of magical destiny or connection keeps being brought back in to later Spider-book event storylines.
But nothing else he did really stuck.
I find his Fantastic Four and Superman stuff pretty unmemorable. Ditto for miniseries The Twelve and Bullet Points. I’ve read that stuff, and I could barely tell you what happened in any of them or what themes were in them other than one or two gimmicky plot points.
Omar-I’m not explicitly blaming JMS for what happened with the Mephisto nonsense or Gwen, just that those end up being the two memorable moments from his highly-touted Amazing run, and they were memorable for all the wrong reasons.
Yes, for some reason, for a long time, I kept following JMS to the different comic books he wrote, and I have the same reaction as you. I blame Harlan Ellison. In the early-2000s, I was in a period where I was so in love with everything Ellison wrote (he’s still one of my favourite science fiction writers) that I believed that if Ellison was praising JMS, there must be something I was missing in his fiction.
I was recently reading his Thor run and it was pretty memorable imo. The only major complaint is that left during the run’s climax leading Gillen to wrap it up. Gillen later used elements from it in his Journey into Mystery run and Ewing used elements of it in Loki: Agent of Asgard and Immortal Thor.
“I was recently reading his Thor run and it was pretty memorable imo.”
I should hope that it’d be memorable given that you just said you read it recently. I think you need to wait it out until it hasn’t been so recent since you’ve read it before you can really put the memorable part to the test.
@Moo You’d think, but I read Cullen Bunn’s X-Men and I could barely remember what happened the day after I finished. Though that might mostly be because of Greg Land’s “artwork”. I read JMS’s Thor about two months ago.
@Maaku J – Fair enough. I mean, I… um…
Sorry, I forgot what it was we were talking about.
Oh, JMS’s Thor run. Come to think of it, I think I may have read it. Or at least part of it. I remember a comic that featured Thor kicking the shit out of Iron Man and then delivering a mic drop line about showing him the difference between a god of thunder and a man in a metal suit. Was that from the JMS run, or am I thinking about something else?
@Moo, yeah it’s JMS. That’s after Thor put Asgard above Broxton.
@MaakuJ – Ok, thanks. I remember that fight but not much of anything else, although that’s probably because I think that may have happened in his first issue and I may have only bought the first issue.
Memorable fight, though.
I genuinely forgot his Thor run, which i actually liked a lot and wish he’d gotten to finish on his own terms.
That was a standout for me among his Marvel books, and I think he’s one of the better writers for the character in recent memory. For one thing, he writes Thor as more reflective and rounded than a lot of writers.
Thor has done better than a lot of Marvel characters in the 2000s with having strong creators. Gillen’s brief run following on from JMS was top quality. Aaron wrote another definitive (following Lee/Kirby and Simonson), nearly-decade long epic. Currently, Ewing’s run is pretty good. I think the reason Ewing’s work on Thor hasn’t been getting the same praise as a lot of his other work is because the Aaron run is so recent in memory, so Thor wasn’t in need of the same deconstruction/reconstruction as the Hulk.
I wish the late Peter David had a run on Thor. I would’ve read that. I quite liked his take on the character when he had him turn up as a guest star in… I think it was Captain Marvel.
Re JMS: he’s been the writer for many super-hero comics, yet finished few of them. Superman, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man, Supreme Power- he’s off the books before his plots come to their resolutions, and other writers get assigned to close them out. It’s not always his fault, but it’s a pattern I noticed years ago. Maybe that’s why he keeps writing mini-series?
Anyway, I liked his run on ASM. As pointed out above, Paul Jenkins and Mark Buckingham were doing top-notch work on Peter Parker when JMS began his run and I don’t think anything he wrote compared to the Jenkins/Buckingham issues. Shortly after he started, however, Buckingham left and was replaced by Humberto Ramos. Jenkins’s writing wasn’t as sharp or warm after (it’s telling that the best issue of his Spectacular Spider-Man was the last, drawn by a returning Buckingham), and “The Other” happened, nobody’s finest hour… I think the dip in Jenkins’s work and Howard Mackie’s terrible ASM run elevated JMS’s work.
I remember some of JMS’s ASM, mostly because Peter became a teacher. I thought that was a good fit for the character. Aunt May found out his secret identity- that was a great issue. I also liked issue 500- Spider-Man reliving past battles- even though it’s nothing too deep.
I will defend the 911 issue, as it’s JR Jr processing his grief after the attacks. People mock Dr. Doom crying, and I get why, but- it’s not literal. If an artist going through a lot of pain wants to say that even the worst villains are moved to tears because of a tragedy, I won’t criticize that decision too harshly.
I stopped reading ASM before “The Other,” the Gwen Stacy retcon, and “One More Day.” Luckily, I missed the bulk of the dregs. Without those anchors, I think JMS was a decent Spider-Man writer.
If I remember correctly, Jenkins run on Spectacular had a lot of editorial interference. They were forcing him (not just Jenkins, of course) to start writing exclusively for the Trades (hence, two five-part story-arcs and a four-parter), telling him which villains to use at first (trying to boost sales). The initial Venom story-arc was to set up for Millar’s plans on Marvel Knights: Spider-Man. A Dr. Octopus story-arc to tie in to the second movie. Plus, he had a bunch of crossovers thrust on him while writing Spectacular (with a lot more editorial oversight, not able to rebel against the forced crossovers, like ‘Nuff Said Month or the Maximum Security arc in Peter Parker).
There are still some good Spider-Man stories:
The painted artwork Morbius story was above average.
The poker issue was very fun.
I enjoyed the Mindworm story.
Then, yes, the final Jenkins Spider-Man story was a classic.
Overall though, I wouldn’t recommend Spectacular like Peter Parker: Spider-Man.
While it’s true that JMS’s run on Spider-Man was marred by problems with editorial, his own ideas weren’t necessary better. The Stacy twins being Norman’s was the result of conflict with editorial but his own idea was that the twins were PETER’s children with Gwen who were aging rapidly as a result of Peter’s radioactive blood. That would have been a disaster.
And after One More Day was forced upon JMS by editorial, JMS felt that the best way to do it would be to establish that Norman never relapsed and became the Green Goblin and killed Gwen Stacy and seemed to die himself. This would have been a disaster and thrown not only Spider-Man’s continuity but the continuity of the wider Marvel Universe into confusion.
The weird thing about JMS’s Fantastic Four run being forgotten is that everyone ignored the major retcon he made because it caused obvious problems and then Slott did a similar retcon that caused similar problems. JMS established that the Fantastic Four gained their powers in the cosmic ray storm through Reed’s interaction with a cosmic entity, which was a unique event. As Omar pointed out, this made Reed deliberately responsible for turning Ben into the Thing. Plenty of readers pointed out this made no sense. The U-Foes, the Red Ghost and his Super-Apes and Sharon Ventura all got their powers through being exposed to cosmic rays, just like the FF. So everyone just ignored JMS’s retcon and eventually forgot about it.
And then Slott came along and claimed that the FF got their powers because the Overseer tried to kill them with cosmic rays. And then the readers asked again “So how did the others get their powers?”
Arguably the worst part of JMS’s Thor was its treatment of Jane Foster. Jane abandons her son to go chasing after Thor and when she finds out that he’s looking for Sif, she slaps him while he’s in his Donald Blake identity and can feel pain like a mortal. It just made Jane look like a bad mother and a creepy stalker.
I’ll still take the Real Ghostbusters cartoon over any of JMS’ comics work.
Of the JMS comics I’ve read, the best were Rising Stars and Midnight Nation. I haven’t reread either in years, so I don’t know how they hold up. At the time, however, I dug the way the superhumans in RS schemed and manipulated in their quest to claim power or prevent power from being consolidated. MN was a creepy spin on a ghost story (the lead character was out of phase with reality and had to learn how to exist adjacent to reality while being pursued by an evil force) with Gary Frank’s art being well-suited to the vibe. I thought JMS would be the next big thing, but his subsequent efforts would be hit or miss.
I decided to pass on his Spider-Man run after learning he intended to bring elements of mysticism into Spider-Man’s origins. Totems and what have you. That was a huge red flag for me.
At the time, he was kind of a “big name” hire, no? Not as big as maybe getting Kevin Smith, but still enough of genre name to be a selling point when he started his work on ASM.
I like JMS’ Amazing Spider-Man run pretty well, at least until Romita Jr. left the book. I don’t know if it was Deodato’s art or just the stories he got to draw, but it took a real nosedive for me at that point (in retrospect, should have dropped the book then. oh well, at least I bailed before One More Day.)
Some of that probably is that it looked good in comparison to Mackie’s work, but I didn’t mind the mystic aspect. It didn’t seem like JMS wrote it where it changed Peter Parker as a character (in terms of how he behaved) in some massive way, so it felt more like an excuse to have him fight more magically-inclined threats, which at least was a way to drop Spider-Man in the end of the pool he’s never felt entirely comfortable in.
He’s helped Dr. Strange a bunch of times, but he always seems more out of his depth than when dealing with super-science threats, so there was a certain novelty to making him deal with stuff he didn’t have much of a handle on.
I think the totem stuff is remembered poorly mostly because of “The Other,” which was just awful, contrived nonsense. Rather than coming up with a new villain, we just get Morlun back again, and a lot of dumb stuff happens to actually change Peter’s powers. Peter also goes through an experience that should probably affect his psyche and his worldview in some profound ways, what with dying and then resurrecting via a pseudo-mystical metamorphosis, but none of that really plays out, either. It was just a half-baked “event” storyline that seemed to be built around shock value and brand synergy.
The initial totem plotline in JMS’s ASM run wasn’t too bad, IMHO. It ended by effectively walking back a lot of the claims about Peter’s origin, since Ezekiel turns out to be unreliable.
The stuff about the long-established science-villains being wannabe totems struck me as a bit of a stretch to make it all seem more significant, but it could have been written off as more of Ezekiel’s manipulations and lies.
For me, Morlun and Shathra were alright as one-off baddies; they were something a little different, as you say. I do feel that the Shathra arc wasn’t as well-plotted as the Morlun arc, though, and neither of them struck me as workable recurring threats.
Morlun’s setup and personality are fun page-by-page, but don’t make much sense in terms of the underlying concept. And Shathra doesn’t have much of a personality to play off of. There’s a reason she wasn’t revived during all the Spider-Verse stuff.
More generally, the villains are probably the weak point of the JMS era. Aside from the totem characters, we get Temu versions of Doctor Octopus, the Shocker, and the Molten Man, and some one-off high-concept types like Shade, the astral plane guy, and Digger, the gangster zombie mishmash. JMS’s strongest points were always the Peter Parker stuff and the character interactions between Peter and his friends, family, and allies.
Beyond that, I get the sense that New Avengers and Civil War really screwed up whatever JMS was trying to do. It’s hard to read anything from there onwards except in terms of JMS doing his best amid a series of editorial mandates. His Spider-books experiences also explain why he dropped his Thor given that the Siege event was going to dictate a bunch of the plotting.
Bleeding Cool’s Bestseller list is out. Spider-Man vs. Wolverine came in at number 4. That’s better than I expected, considering that it came in at 62 in June’s sales figures.
@Omar – To be fair, I never read it, but what you’ve described as being “not too bad” sounds pretty bad to me. I suppose I might feel a swell of relief in that stuff being walked back by story’s end, but that just makes it a storyline spent teasing ideas I didn’t care for to begin with. I’d call that bad. No one’s ever asked me to make a bad sandwich before, but if someone were to say, “Hey, Moo. Let’s see you make a bad sandwich.”, I would probably put that story in it. Along with the Wolverine/Romulus stuff, and the Twilight films. And anchovies.
My critcism of JMS’s run on Spider-Man is this: for a long part of it he has John Romita Jr., the pre-emininent Marvel artist of the day, a guy who’s down to draw almost everything… and the only gives he gives him is the one thing he doesn’t want to draw: page after page after page of talking heads. Say what you want about Howard Mackie, but he knew how to cater the stories to his artist.
As for THOR, one weakness of the character of late is the character has had like, five different Ragnaroks over the last two decades. At least one of which was capped by an event which was supposed to break the cycle. I get that if you’re doing Norse gods it’s the obvious story to do, but at some point maybe don’t do it just for variety’s sake?
I’m not sure what you mean. Marvel has not repeated the idea of Ragnarok since the Michael Avon Oeming story-arc which put an end to the repeating cycles.
If you’re referring to the current Al Ewing Immortal Thor story-arc (which is still only one story which just occurred last month), that’s not a Ragnarok either. The Norse gods are all still alive, the fact that they existed and were deities has simply been forgotten by humanity. So, that’s a different story-arc, although it does share some similarities with the beginning of the JMS era Broxton plot, except inverted.
The JMS Broxton plot, by the way, was the fallout from the Michael Avon Oeming final Ragnarok. Those two arcs are all related as one ongoing story.
JMS recent cap run was one of his worst (still Have not read superman grounded though). It was a confused mess with duel narratives in the 40s and now with a whole new set up and supporting cast that went nowhere. In the end he seemed to abandon it to do a greatest hits 2 parter with Spidey and Thor in Brixton as if to say I know this was bad but remember you used to like in the 2000’s
Having given up on Babylon 5 after one season, I never really saw JMS as a big name.
I guess comics were such a small pond at the time anybody with screenwriting cred was a big deal then.
I remember how much he would boast about how B5 was all planned out. Not sure why that was supposed to make me like it more. I don’t care if you wing it or not, as long as it’s interesting.
There is a lot of rubbish in JMS’ Spidey run (mostly towards the end and mostly crossover related) but he also did some at least interesting stuff and some of his issues and stories are among my favourites.
The initial totem story is pretty good and ends well, acknowledging that it’s only part of the origin, and probably isn’t even the most important part, as Morlun discovers. I think that’s quite an elegant way to introduce a retcon.
JMS did much better New Avengers stories than Bendis was doing over on the main title, Not exactly difficult, but very welcome at the time.
Sending Pete back to school as a teacher was a good development, and I will defend until the stars go cold the mini-arc with May finding out and reacting to Spidey’s identity.
And the issue with MJ and Pete reconciling at the airport (guest starring Captain America and Doctor Doom!) is a brilliant, 10/10, issue.
JMS was the last time (for me) Peter Parker felt like he was an adult whose life was moving forward instead of a manchild screwup stuck in arrested development.
That’s true, but a lot of that is due to the (yes, editorially mandated) “One More Day” story-arc during the JMS run. Which was also the point of that story, to make Peter seem perpetually young and like the character as he was in the early-1980s again.
I make a point that Paul Jenkins was the last time I cared about a Spider-Man comic. Even though I wasn’t a fan of JMS’ Amazing Spider-Man, it doesn’t mean I enjoyed anything that followed any moreso, and the fact that Mackie was writing Amazing prior to JMS also means I wasn’t reading Amazing beforehand either. I find that, outside Jenkins, Spider-Man is a character who has suffered badly for many decades now. Not long before the stigma of “One More Day”, he had to struggle for years to overcome the “Clone Saga”.
The sales figures for July are out. Uncanny X-Men 17 came in at 12- a huge improvement from last month. Magik 7 came in at 23. Emma Frost:the White Queen 2 came in at 43. Wolverine 11 came in at 44.
The fact that Magik is still doing so well makes me think that its absence during Age of Revelation is temporary.
Wolverine didn’t even make the top 40 and was beaten by a continuity implant limited series featuring Emma. That’s not a good sign.
Storm, Laura Kinney,Phoenix, Spider-Man and Wolverine and Exceptional X-Men didn’t make the top 51. Again, not a good sign.
And the rankings for the rest of the tiles are out. Spider-Man and Wolverine 3 came in at 68, Exceptional X-Men 11 came in at 73, Deadpool/ Wolverine 7 came in at 77, Storm 10 came in at 78, Laura Kinney: Wolverine 8 came In at 83, Psylocke 9 came in at 84, and Phoenix 13 came in at 108.
Wow. What happened to Storm? It was bound to start dropping as all except three of the titles have been doing (X-Men, Uncanny, and Magik), but it has now dropped below Exceptional. If Storm riding a hippo on the cover doesn’t bounce those numbers back up, I’m afraid it’s hopeless. That is just a weird fall off. Was everyone waiting for a story-arc to end to jump?
These numbers are not very consistent from month to month. So should not try to read too much into them.
@JCG- There are some constants, though. Magik usually does well, for example. And Phoenix is usually near the bottom. (We’ve joked many times about how Stephanie Philips must have compromising photos of someone at Marvel to keep her job.)