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.
Thought balloons allow readers to be privy to the inner lives of the characters. It allows characters to have depth, because how they see themselves and their actions aren’t always consistent with what is depicted on the page. You get to see their inner struggle, their blind spots, their self-deception. It’s a shame they went out of style.
I don’t miss them. I prefer the “show, don’t tell” approach to storytelling, and there’s something to be said for allowing the reader to work out what might be going in a character’s mind for themselves.
And you can do everything you mentioned without putting a character’s thoughts on display. Thought balloons don’t “allow characters to have depth”. They just spell everything out.
Another characters whose powers often require explanation is Crystal. You’d think this wouldn’t be the case, since her powers are supposedly limited to control over the four elements of classical mythology- fire, water, earth and air. But it often is. This is partially because the writers often have her pull clever tricks with her powers that are difficult for the artists to clearly depict. (“We’re being attacked by robots. I’ll use my fire powers to cause their jets to flare and destroy them.””Tony Stark’s been injured. I’ll use my powers to lower his temperature and put him in suspended animation”.) But it’s also because too many writers have her do stuff that has nothing to do with fire, water, earth or air. We’ve seen her use her powers to direct lightning into striking a villain. And on one occasion when Crystal was poisoned by an overdose of medicine, Wanda tells Crystal she can heal herself by using her control over the elements to banish the medicine. Too many writers think “elemental” means “Does Whatever the Plot Requires”.
I liked when Bendis used thought bubbles in Mighty Avengers to show nobody was saying what they were really thinking
Last month’s sales figures are finally out. Psylocke: Ninja came in 15th, Uncanny X-Men 22 came in 16th, X-Men 23 came in 20th, Rogue 1 came in 23rd, X-Men 24 came in 26th, Wolverine 14 came in 32nd, and Inglorious X-Force 1 came in 44th.
The X-Books did relatively well this month. I was particularly concerned that Wolverine was damaged by Age of Revelation but it came in 32nd. (The last issue before Age of Revelation came in 38th.)
The one book that seems to have done badly is Inglorious X-Force 1. It came in 44th and it’s a first issue. It doesn’t have very far to fall before it reaches cancellation levels.
(in non X-Book news, Williamson’s Iron Man 1 came in 14th. That’s amazing, especially since it came out the 4th week.)
Also, X-Men of Apocalypse 2 came in 52nd. I guess Loeb’s lateness killed whatever momentum this series had.
The X-Men will be appearing in Infernal Hulk. The idea is that the Eldest will take control of mutants. I’m not liking this idea. The Eldest can take control of other monsters because it’s an Eldritch Abomination. Mutants aren’t monsters, no matter what bigots might believe. It shouldn’t be able to take control of mutants in the same way that it can control actual monsters.
I think Immortal Thor used thought bubbles really well recently-ish