The X-Axis – 7 January 2026
So there is a new Infinity comic on Marvel Unlimited – the imaginatively named X-Men Infinity Comic – but it seems to take place in some sort of not-quite-616, not-quite-XTAS limbo, which means that it’s out of our remit here. For those interested, it’s by Steve Orlando and Alan Robinson, and it’s pretty much by the numbers. That just leaves us with…
X-MEN #23. (Annotations here.) “Age of Revelation” was always strongest when viewed as an X-Men storyline rather than as an event, and this is where we pick up on what was going on in the present day. Most of it is along the lines that you could have figured out: future Cyclops tries to kill Revelation, but the plan goes awry because his Beast wound up somewhere else. History quite clearly gets altered in some way, since Revelation doesn’t stay with the X-Men, but whether those changes are for the better, or whether Cyclops has just wound up giving him ideas, remains up in the air. It’s a pretty straightforward issue, but there are some subtleties going on with Hank and Doug’s reactions to all this that add to the interest. And I’m interested to see where we’re going with the subplot about Magneto’s status quo not matching the future characters’ memory – it feels like it may be an attempt to back out of the wider idea of resurrection leading to degeneration, but then again I doubt that was ever really the plan, given that we’re 23 issues into the run and Magneto remains the only character affected.
Tony Daniel seems to be joining the rotating art crew with this arc, and his debut issue is perfectly fine. There are a few strong images – I like the shadows with the light crackling around Cyclops’ visor, even if it doesn’t make much sense, and the closing splash page of Revelation and his crew traipsing off again through the snow is quite effective, particularly with Warlock’s hopeful naivety. All told, it’s a solid return to the main plot.
WOLVERINE #14. (Annotations here.) Silver Sable, is it? Sure, why not, I guess. She feels like someone Wolverine would get on with, at least, and it’s not like she’s been doing much else lately. What feels off is to have her single handedly guarding a new Morlock community in a Canadian ghost town – in terms of her usual status quo, this ought to be prohibitively expensive for anyone who isn’t insanely rich. In which case, why are they in a Morlock community? Whether that’s a plot point or simply Saladin Ahmed not quite getting the character remains to be seen, but there are enough indications of more going on with the Morlocks – Sable gets interrupted when she’s about to tell us about them – for me to give it the benefit of the doubt for now. We only get to see two actual Morlocks, with incomplete hints at their powers, but Cóccolo’s art gives them some immediate personality, and I’m not averse to adjusting the aesthetic from the 80s. He does a good Sable, too.
I’m a little more puzzled by the Department H material, with Agent Mehta – who’d been clearly established as the sensible one in the department, and was meant to be trying to keep on good terms with Wolverine – suddenly going all the way to “he’s too far gone, let’s call in Alpha Flight”. This seems absurdly quick in terms of the development of the subplot, even if there’s some truth in the point that he and Sable attack the Department H recon team before they’ve actually done anything wrong (and seem to recognise that they’ve achieved nothing beyond escalation). To be honest, the Mastermind arc didn’t do wonders for my confidence that stories in this book will come together in the end… but we’ll see how it pans out.
In this week’s Nova 3, Mysterium appears and Cammi bites a bar of it. I realize that this is supposed to be an allusion to the historical practice of testing gold by biting it. But that only works because gold is a soft metal. Mysterium is supposed to be a hard metal. If you tried to bite a titanium, you’d break your teeth. And that should have happened to Cammi.
Bleeding Cool’s Weekly Bestseller list is out. X-Men came in 8th. Wolverine didn’t make the list at all.
The good news is that MacKay’s X-Men seems to have recovered from any damage Age of Revelation did to it. It once again surpassed Ultimate X-Men.
The bad news is that Wolverine is doing horribly. We won’t know how bad until we see this month’s figures. The good news is that Ultimate Wolverine came in 6th, so it seems that the problem isn’t that people are getting tired of Wolverine. The problem is that people are getting tired of Ahmed’s writing.
The very next issue after an event selling well seems less “recovering from the damage” and more “not damaged”. I’ve never liked events in comics, but I think people wanted Age Of Doug to be a disaster, while signs point to it being fairly standard for this sort of thing. I know some people actually loved it.
By the way, the X-Men Infinity comic is a damn strange thing. I don’t know who it’s aimed at or what conceivable niche it’s meant to fill.
Si> I’ve never liked events in comics, but I think people wanted Age Of Doug to be a disaster, while signs point to it being fairly standard for this sort of thing. I know some people actually loved it.
We can argue about definitions of “disaster”, but I think what evidence there is in the public domain suggests that the AoR versions of titles sold less than their counterparts, where applicable (i.e., Amazing XM sold less than MacKay’s X-Men). That isn’t “standard” for events, or else they wouldn’t DO events.
Now, perhaps the sheer spamming of titles means the total sales across all X-books were greater, but that’s not a huge triumph – selling 100 copies of 10 books is usually much more profitable than 10 copies of 100 books. (Numbers chosen for simplicity rather than as a direct example)