The X-Axis – w/c 22 December 2025
X-MEN: AGE OF REVELATION INFINITY COMIC #8. By Alex Paknadel, Edoardo Audino, KJ Díaz & Clayton Cowles. Well, it’s an issue of the Punisher taking Glob Herman under his wing, ultimately leading to him going off on his own to seek revenge. The idea here is that the Punisher isn’t even trying to groom a successor, and thinks he’s just helping the poor kid to defend himself. That kind of works for Glob. It’s kind of weird for the Punisher, who’s apparently given up on vigilante homicide after the X-virus affected his hands, and has retired into a life of general niceness. I don’t really buy the Punisher reacting like that, as opposed to immediately setting about finding another way of pursuing his obsessional agenda – his one dimensionality is the point of him. But viewed as a Glob story, there’s a certain charm to it, and the story kind of requires the Punisher to present himself as a sympathetic figure to Glob. Perhaps it needs to be a bit more of an act for Glob’s sake.
EXPATRIATE X-MEN #3. (Annotations here.) So here we are, at the tail end of the “Age of Revelation” crossover, with just next week’s Finale one-shot to go. And this issue is… a bit of a mess, to be honest. There’s a lot of double-crossing going on and it doesn’t really come together. As near as I can tell, the plot is that the X-Men on the Flotilla thought that they were being hired by Mystique to take this Lyrebird guy to the Darkchild for reasons unknown, in exchange for unspecified intelligence. In fact, Lyrebird was tricking the X-Men into going to Darkchild’s territory as part of a deal with her. But Darkchild never explains why she wanted them, and ultimately just lets them go… and Lyrebird actually did want to go there all along, because and Illyana have a daughter from before she became Darkchild. Conceived at what point on the timeline? Oh god, don’t ask. Oh, and Melée had a side deal with 3K to get their technology into Limbo, for… reasons. And 3K didn’t want Lyrebird to wind up with Darkchild for… reasons? I mean, I think the idea is that Lyrebird was also working with 3K, but in that case, what was up with Melée and Lyrebird last issue? And then the payoff seems to be that everyone learns the lesson that they shouldn’t have got involved in these convoluted machinations, which would be a weird message for an X-Men story to begin with… except the next thing they do is announce that they’re spontaneously going to Philadelphia to appear in Finale, for no apparent reason.
So it’s a mess. It looks nice enough, to be sure, but whatever point it was actually trying to make gets completely lost in a welter of confusion. The Lyrebird/Magik thing comes completely out of nowhere and seems disconnected to anything around it; it might make some sense if it’s setting up a plot point for 2026, but Eve Ewing isn’t the regular writer for Magik, so that seems unlikely. All very weird.
CLOAK OR DAGGER #3. By Justina Ireland, Lonrezo Tammetta, Edoardo Audino, Andrew Dalhouse & Joe Caramagna. This is one of the lower-key successes of “Age of Revelation”. I’m not quite sure that Fenris make sense in this villain role, except by virtue of the thematic link of being another duo who are weakened when they’re apart. But that doesn’t hugely matter, because Fenris are really just there to provide the opposition. Where this book scores is simply on the relationship between the two leads and having more or less get a happy ending and a family in an otherwise dystopian future. Things aren’t so bad for Cloak and Dagger! Sure, they can’t be together for long periods, but they can work around that, they’re doing okay, and they get to be proper superheroes – which Tammetta’s art fits well. Cloak just getting to be a dad is sweet, too. From their personal standpoint, this isn’t such a bad timeline. I mean, up to the point where Revelation is planning to turn the world into Ego the Living Planet, but that’s in another book. It’s rather weird to do happy ending stories in the midst of an event like “Age of Revelation” but it’s nice that we’re getting some.
UNDEADPOOL #3. By Tim Seeley, Carlos Magno, GURU-eFX & Joe Sabino. Guest starring the Exceptional cast, although their main role here is simply to refuse to deal with Deadpool on the grounds that he’s a self-centred mercenary who didn’t even manage to kill Revelation when he was paid to. Fearless turns out to be a traitor, and Deadpool dies heroically in stopping her. That’s basically it. It’s a very nice looking book, and it does a decent job of going for the 70s horror vibe, with Deadpool finally earning his release from quasi-zombie status. I’m not sure it delivers what people are normally looking for in a Deadpool story, being quite a downbeat and sombre affair at the end of the day, but it does at least strike a clear tone and maintain it.
X-VENGERS #3. By Jason Loo, Sergio Dávila, Aure Jimenez, Rain Beredo & Joe Sabino. The Avengers have been given just three hours to avert a war between Revelation and the remains of the USA by providing that President Sam Wilson wasn’t responsible for the attack on the Revelation Territories. And that turns out to be pretty much false peril, because instead of a race against the clock, it just turns out to be MODOK. There’s a reasonable idea in here somewhere, of a battered and beleaguered Avengers team clinging on to their former dignity, but once you’ve made that point, it doesn’t really have a great deal to do with the actual plot of MODOK’s biological weapons. It’s entirely serviceable both as writing and art – nobody seems to have given Dávila any reference for what techno-organics look like, which is unfortunate, but otherwise it looks solidly traditional. Still, it winds up as a rather generic superhero plot instead of really digging into the premise.
@wwwk5d- It should be noted that the fans wouldn’t just buy any X-title out of a sense of completism. The Maverick series turned out to be a flop. (What was Marvel thinking when they approved a Maverick series? There’s dozens of more popular X-characters who don’t have their own series.)
Nate Grey’s series did outsell Gambit, Bishop and X-Men: the Hidden Years. Now Hidden Years suffered from being a continuity implant- they usually don’t sell well. And Bishop’s series suffered from the decision to have him trapped in the far future fighting Fitzroy. The two of them weren’t interacting with the rest of the Marvel Universe and that hurt sales and by the time they realized that and had Bishop return to the present-day Marvel Universe it was too late.
But still, Nate Grey must have been relatively popular if his book sold as well as it did. Especially since the writer for the majority of his series was Terry Kavanagh who was one of the most unpopular writers in the industry at the time. (He suggested the Clone Saga AND he suggested the Crossing AND his run on Moon Knight turned into such a convoluted mess that Marvel decided to kill Marc off and keep him dead for four years.)
I don’t understand it. If X-Man was that popular, why would Marvel never even attempt to give the character another chance after his series was cancelled? Marvel kept trying to bring Cable back after his first series was cancelled, and the fans showed that Cable’s popularity was gone after the ‘90s (although his team-up book with Deadpool had legs). With X-Man, Marvel brought him back with some team books, and Nate Grey showing up in those books obviously didn’t help sales. Then, the biggest use of him after his first series was the Age of X-Man, which was a flop, but Marvel only tried the event because they really didn’t care about what X-books they were publishing at that point as they were killing time until Hickman. So, if he was that popular, why not attempt to bring X-Man back over and over, like Cable?
Are we sure Kavanagh didn’t have something in his contract saying he got to write any comics of his choosing and Marvel couldn’t cancel it? Because X-Man was really terrible until Ellis revamped it.
Maybe readers were just confused by the title? They kept buying “X-Men” and wondering why some creepy, whiny version of Cable was the only X-Men character who they kept using in the book.
I’ve always thought that shooting fire would be one of the worst super powers to have. It’s so easy to hurt, cripple, and kill people in horrible ways. The property damage and risk to nearby buildings would be very high. I can’t see a super-hero who uses fire being embraced by the public.
One of the most shocking yet realistic scenes in a mainstream superhero comic, at least to me, was the Human Torch accidentally burning Storm in FF vs. X-Men. A firebolt goes astray, and an innocent person is hurt. Claremont’s description of burning flesh adds to the horror.
I can see why Magma’s powers were difficult to write for. Her personality wasn’t particularly interesting, so I get why she was written out.
@Moo: I don’t know if Jericho was ever particularly popular, or just a character Marv Wolfman liked writing. He spent most of the years following Wolfman’s departure from Titans either off-panel or as a villain. I still think possession is a boring power.
@Mike Loughlin- Well, there was no Internet then, but the fan mail seemed to indicate that Jericho had a strong following. Danny Chase, on the other hand…
Anyway, I wasn’t trying to convince you that possession isn’t a boring power. If that’s how you feel about it, then so you do. I was just referencing Jericho to point out that the power itself isn’t a non-starter.
Wolfman is the one who made him a villain, by the way. And then he killed him off. So, it’s not like he was a pet character.
““Nate Grey’s series lasted 75 issues, so I’d say he was relatively popular.”
I wonder how much of that was people buying out of a sense of completism, given how even at the time many people thought it was a lackluster title. Other than a small vocal fandom, not that many people seemed sad when the title was canceled.”
Guilty as charged. I think I bought the title out of completionism, really don’t remember much of it these days, and didn’t miss it afterwards. Though the Warren Ellis “he’s a shaman now” approach was interesting.
Thom H: I care. I care also.
“I’ve always thought that shooting fire would be one of the worst super powers to have. It’s so easy to hurt, cripple, and kill people in horrible ways. The property damage and risk to nearby buildings would be very high. I can’t see a super-hero who uses fire being embraced by the public.”
Remember, that was part of Rusty’s origin story: he accidentally burned a woman when his powers manifested, and it got him in a lot of trouble. And there was a Spider-Man story about some college students making up a villain called the Blaze where the moral message was “people get burned.”
Magma could totally have had subtlety and control. She burned a tunnel under the Massachusetts Academy which instantly cooled, much to her teammates’ surprise back in 16-17. Like Rictor, she also has seismic powers, but she just never demonstrated non-potentially-destructive abilities, which can be problematic if you wanna be a hero. Maybe if she used her powers to prevent more earthquakes…
I always liked Magma because of her really cool original visual.
Let’s not forget that the risk of fire powers is what gave us H.E.R.B.I.E
@Si – What gave us H.E.R.B.I.E was that the rights to the Human Torch were tied up by Universal Studio for a film that never got made. The whole “We’re afraid children will set themselves on fire” story was bullshit.
I was expecting a reference to the FF story where the little kid sets himself on fire to be like Johnny. (I think that’s how it went.)
Yes, it was from the John Byrne run (#285).
Unbelievably, Tom DeFalco decided to plagiarize that Byrne story in the 1990s by having another kid light himself on fire to be like his hero. The less said about the second time the better.
Byrne’s story wasn’t good either. Stern’s “The Kid Who Collects Spider-Man” from Amazing Spider-Man #248 was still relatively recent (published less than a couple of years earlier) and I think the critical success of that story prompted Byrne to try produce a hit human interest story of his own.
I couldn’t take it seriously. Mostly, I remember laughing at the stupidity of the kid.
No, the Byrne one wasn’t his best work, but if you think doing that story once was humourous, just imagine a writer deciding to do the same story again (nevermind DeFalco), and trying to convince you it was supposed to be taken seriously. The first time was ham-fisted, the second is one of those “I can’t believe Marvel is publishing this” moments. The only way I could conceivably imagine reusing that plot is to play it as a comedy.
Johnny: Not again!
Well, maybe Magma could get a story like that. A child fan who idolizes Magma attempts to emulate her by leaping into a volcano.
Actually, nah. I guess that wouldn’t be believable.
Not the part about the kid jumping into a volcano. I mean the part about Magma having a fan.
Hey! The Other Michael and I are right here.
@Chris V- The sales figures at Comichron seem to indicate X-Man was selling relatively well. Unless Kavanagh had blackmail material on people at Comichron there’s no way he could have faked that.
It’s possible it was selling relatively well because people liked the idea of a young Cable. Marvel did try experimenting with the idea of a young Cable later on before giving up.
I don’t understand why X-Man outsold books like Gambit and Deadpool either. But then again it’s weird how some books have a long run and the later attempts to recapture the magic failed. Defenders was a very long running series at 152 issues but all the later attempts to create a Defenders series have been flops. Silver Surfer had a long run in there 80s and 90s and later attempts at a Silver Surfer series have mostly flopped, although Slott’s two series lasted a total of 29 issues. The 80s and 90s What If lasted 114 issues but since then Marvel’s What If projects have mostly been one-shots. Master of Kung Fu and Power Man/ Power Man and Iron Fist both had runs lasting over 100 issues but later runs have been relatively short lived. (How did they last so long anyway? From what I’ve heard sales were horrible at various points.) Over at DC Warlord lasted 133 issues but the various attempts to revive it have flopped. (Yes, I know- Warlord always sold poorly compared to most Marvel books. It was just lucky that most DC books were selling worse than it during its lIfetime. It was the proverbial one eyed man in the land of the blind.)
“Nate Grey must have been relatively popular if his book sold as well as it did”
Howard Mackie’s X-Factor sold well, as did his Mutant X. Would either be classified as popular?
But you are right, Sugarman was also a popular AOA character as well.
@Chris V- It wasn’t DeFalco who wrote the second story, it was a fill-in story by Danny Fingeroth. Fill-ins often aren’t high quality. Although to be fair, in Fingeroth’s story it was teenage nihilists with a suicide pact.
@Moo- Byrne’s story might also have been inspired by a scene from the Spider-Man story where Peter first meets Moonstone, which was written by Roger Stern and Bill Mantlo. In that story a kid tries to climb down the side of a building using bedsheets, the bedsheets snap because they can’t hold his weight and Spider-Man saves him. The kid then explains he was trying to imitate Spider-Man and Spider-Man says don’t do that. The difference is that in Stern’s and Mantlo’s story the kid’s mistake was thinking that the bedsheets would hold his weight- they initially do but snap at the worst possible moment. That’s a mistake a normal kid could believably make.
At least Mackie’s similarly terrible X-Factor got cancelled after less than thirty issues, and part of that run was during the mid-‘90s period where Marvel treated the X-titles like you had to read every book in the line to pick up on all the mysterious hints to all the different mysteries leading into Onslaught. Yes, it was cancelled to make way for Mackie’s even worse Mutant X. X-Man lasting twenty-five issues might be understandable. That’s the proper amount of time for fans getting sick of a character who tried to recreate his mother to be his love interest.
If you add up issues of Mackie’s X-Factor and Mutant X it lasted almost as long as X-Man too. Meanwhile, the ongoing Gambit series lasted only 25 issues. I begin to despair.
“Byrne’s story might also have been inspired by a scene from the Spider-Man story where Peter first meets Moonstone, which was written by Roger Stern and Bill Mantlo.”
Yeah, that seems unlikely. That’s a pretty obscure reference.