The X-Axis – 11 February 2026
Last week, five books. Next week, five books (including both X-Men titles and two Wolverine books). This week… well, Marvel would say two, but I don’t count Deadpool as an X-book for the same reason that I don’t count Alpha Flight. He’s his own thing, and there’s no reason to think that’s changing. So, no, I still don’t count Deadpool.
So.
CYCLOPS #1. By Alex Paknadel, Rogê Antônio, Fer Sifuentes-Sujo & Joe Caramagna. Always nice to see Alex Paknadel getting an outing beyond the Infinity Comics. Antônio did a few issues of Hellions back in the Krakoan era, and he worked on the previous Deadpool run. I like his work – it’s shiny and dynamic but also makes things like the Reavers’ assembly lab suitably bleak. And he gives Scott an impassive self-control that contrasts with everyone else.
There are good reasons why we don’t get many Cyclops solo stories – his defining characteristic is team leadership, and by definition a solo story takes him away from that. But it can work occasionally, as something that forces the character out of his comfort zone.
So what have we got here? Well, after a brief intro to remind us that Scott sees himself as running a team of soldiers, we get Scott meeting up with Dr Hanover – the nice one from Sinister’s orphanage – to see the orphanage site finally being cleared. Hanover still doesn’t know that there was anything behind the orphanage, but does see it as an abusive regime that she didn’t do enough to stop. The more interesting idea here is that while Scott believes that Sinister fails to break his spirit, Hanover thinks that it absolutely did, and that he started off much less repressed. That’s actually an angle worth exploring, as is the idea that Scott has just blithely written off this presumably formative period of his life as a minor piece of continuity that doesn’t come up very often.
Quite what this has to do with the rest of the story – which sees Scott being shot out of the sky by some overenthusiastic new Reavers, forcing Pierce to try his bunch of rookie cyborgs against Scott – is less obvious. Paknadel seems to be repositioning Pierce into more of a U-Men figure, who want to harness mutants for parts rather than kill them. And I guess that makes more sense for his cyborg gimmick, particularly given the sort of allies he’s had in the past. I suppose the idea is we’re going to get Pierce as the leader, and Scott as the lone wolf. But how that ties in with the orphanage material, it’s hard to say. Still, it’s a pretty strong first issue, all told.
> This week… well, Marvel would say two, but I don’t count Deadpool as an X-book
They might even say THREE! (The last issue if Momoko’s Ultimate X-Men)
At least Marvel doesn’t have to worry about the Cyclops book being lost amid the new launches and ending up getting cancelled. Wait, what? It’s a mini? Oh, nevermind.
I’m not liking the opening scene. The idea is that AIM has a weapon that only works on mutants. So Scott orders Illyana to stay away and sends Juggernaut, who’s not a mutant, after AIM. But Illyana charges in, followed by Quentin, and predictably the two of them get in trouble so Scott can rescue them. The “someone gets in trouble by disobeying orders” plot only works if the reason for the orders isn’t obvious. Illyana is not a complete idiot. If a weapon only works on mutants, she shouldn’t need Scott to explain why she should stay back and let Juggernaut handle it.
“Hanover still doesn’t know that there was anything behind the orphanage,”
That’s odd. Toward the end of Classic X-Men 42, Robyn Hanover suddenly awakes to find Sinister confronting her. On the next page, we see that Hanover is dressed more conservatively and is colder towards Scott. Now, it’s not clear what happened to her. Claremont seemed to say in an interview that Sinister put her in suspended animation and replaced her with a clone. But an alternate reading is that she was under some sort of mind control. She seems to have aged normally, so if she was in suspended animation she didn’t stay in there for very long. But it’s odd that she doesn’t seem to remember meeting Sinister. (She does say that everyone who spent time at the orphanage has gaps. But still.) Paknadel doesn’t seem to have read Classic X-Men 42 very well. Especially since in that story Robyn was only able to find out the barest of details about Alex but in this issue she seems to no the lengths Scott went to protect him.
Speaking of which, I’m not sure how I feel about the “11-year old Scott set a fire while trying to protect Alex from Sinister” retcon. Paknadel has said that he sees Scott and Wolverine having more in common than they care to admit.
I’m not buying the way Scott’s visor shattered. The idea is that his visor was damaged in a fall. But any impact strong enough to damage his visor should be enough to kill or cripple Scott. (Yes, I know he was concussed but still.) I realize that different writers have different opinions about how durable ruby quartz is- Louise Simonson had Cameron Hodge trap Scott and Hank in a room made of ruby quartz and Hank was unable to break out. That struck me as a bit too much- ruby quartz is immune to Scott’s powers, not everybody’s. But Scott’s visor is incredibly durable.
Speaking of which, I didn’t like the way the artist depicted the visor shattering. It made it look like Scott’s eye beams were destroying everything around him, including things BEHIND him, which isn’t the way it’s supposed to work.
“Quite what this has to do with the rest of the story – which sees Scott being shot out of the sky by some overenthusiastic new Reavers, forcing Pierce to try his bunch of rookie cyborgs against Scott – is less obvious. ”
My guess is that Scott finds himself resorting to increasingly ruthless methods to protect the girl from Pierce, just like he set the orphanage on fire to protect Alex.
Regarding Deadpool, it DOES have the Shadows of Tomorrow banner on it, so maybe it should count as an X-Book. Without spoiling anything, there’s one aspect of the story that I imagine will be very controversial.
“there’s one aspect of the story that I imagine will be very controversial.”
Benjamin Percy?
BTW, the next arc for Jed MacKay’s X-Men is called Danger Room. I’ve seen readers speculating on the internet that one of the villains behind it is Maxine Danger. If this is true, I’m seriously wondering about MacKay’s writing process. Did he come up with the title first, go looking for a villain with Danger in his or her name and spend hours looking for a villain with Room in his name before finally giving up?