The X-Axis – 4 March 2026
X-MEN #26. (Annotations here.) Part 1 of “Danger Room”, which seems to be basically O*N*E sending Beyond after the X-Men. Which isn’t all that interesting as a high concept, but Jed MacKay adds more to it by picking up the thread of Psylocke and Greycrow’s relationship now that Psylocke has been cancelled, and gives us a lovely little subplot of Glob Herman and his fruit stall. The splash page of the sun setting over Merle is beautiful, and much more effective than actually showing the gunman firing on Glob. (It also leaves open the question of whether he missed, though it’d feel a bit anticlimactic if he did.) But Netho Diaz really does do some nice stallholding scenes. For whatever reason, Kid Omega doesn’t go on any of these missions – is this going to be the “Quentin, Ben and Jennifer save the day” arc? I’m still not especially interested in putting the X-Men against the Beyond Corporation, certainly the Amazing Spider-Man version where they’re basically just an evil conglomerate with some weirder than usual technology, but there are a lot of other things here adding to that.
WOLVERINE #17. (Annotations here.) More of the New Morlocks, and this feels a little bit as if we’re marking time until the Adamantine get here. The New Morlocks finally show up in enough numbers to feel like some sort of community, which really should have happened a couple of issues back, but the actual plot here is some sort of insect parasite attacking one of the kids because… well, because he was passing, I guess? I suppose it might play into something later, but it’s not presented that way, and just feels like an arbitrary event to spin things out. I don’t really get the point.
X-MEN ANNUAL #1. By Ryan Stegman, Steve Skroce, Sanford Greene, Arthur Hesli & Clayton Cowles. I have no idea why this is billed as an X-Men Annual, because it features the cast of Uncanny X-Men plus random guest star Phoenix. But there’s already an Uncanny X-Men Annual this year which is picking up the Dark Artery storyline so… yeah, X-Men Annual, apparently.
Anyhow, this is fun. The plot is basic – the Creationist has the power to manifest anything he can visualise, but has no actual creativity, and quit the X-Men’s old school after giving up. Now he wants revenge on the X-Men for failing him, and he’s kidnapped a couple of actual artists (well, Ryan Stegman and Sanford Greene) to come up with things for him to manifest. It’s straightforward but it’s basically an excuse to have fun with meta warping ideas, and have the X-Men fighting incomplete sketches, because that’s as far as the artists have managed to get in the time available. Having Skroce on the “real world” and Stegman and Greene on the sketches blends surprisingly well, and Skroce still does a great Wolverine in particular. I enjoyed it.
MOONSTAR #1. By Ashley Allen, Edoardo Audino, Arthur Hesli & Clayton Cowles. The Magik ongoing series seemed to be doing pretty well so it seemed an odd call not to continue it after “Age of Revelation”. In practice, though, it’s been replaced by two books both written by Ashley Allen: the Magik & Colossus miniseries, and this Moonstar miniseries picking up on the Society of the Eternal Dawn storyline. Still seems weird to me not to commit to one of them being a Magik ongoing, but this book is absolutely a continuation of Allen’s storylines from there.
Dani is deciding what to do after the collapse of the Society, on top of which nobody seems to remember Asgard any more (because of the current Thor storyline), which means other people don’t remember her being a Valkyrie either. So she’s gone home, giving us an extremely rare appearance by her parents, who haven’t appeared in decades, but get a nicely believable relationship with her here. Naturally, the remaining Exemplars show up looking for Dani’s help in dealing with a Norse magical artefact. There’s some really beautiful art in here – Brightwind hasn’t looked this good in years – and having Dani take the load of the Society storyline feels like it makes sense.
The X-Men need to find some better villains for this new era. This reminds me of the first Roy Thomas run on X-Men, when it seemed as if he wished he was writing any Marvel title other than X-Men with his villain selections. Thematically, an evil corporation and the Marvel monsters have very little resonance with the mutant titles. MacKay’s 3K is a better fit, but then again, so was the similarly long and meandering Factor Three storyline amidst of Thomas’ run. It just the X-Men books the feeling of purposelessness, much the same as the feeling of Thomas.
Re: X-Men Annual 1:
There were some complaints online that the Uncanny team is essentially getting two annuals this year and the Adjectiveless team is getting none.
This is just my pet peeve but I cannot stand it when writers suddenly introduce former students of the Xavier Academy we never met before. I hated it when Morrison introduced dozens of nameless students because I knew that writers would eventually use that as an excuse to pull Remember the New Guy. This was a decent story but still…
Re:Moonstar 1- A nitpick, but it just doesn’t seem right that Dani’s psychic arrows and illusions should work against zombies. I realize that Allen justifies it by having Dani state that they’re “connected to a mortal source” but it just doesn’t seem like it should work.
I’ll be really impressed if Beyond is going after the X-Men simply because someone in the cast needs a toothbrush.
In other news this week, the Avengers team that Storm was a member of disbanded. The preview of next week’s X-Men United 1 shows Storm as an instructor at Graymatter Lane, so it looks like Storm will be appearing in that book from now on. Arguably Storm should have been a teacher in Exceptional X-Men from the beginning, if Brevoort didn’t want her taking orders from Scott or Rogue, instead of banishing her to the Avengers.
Some miscellaneous X-news this week:
Feral will apparently be appearing in Inglorious X-Force.
Bishop will be getting his own limited series. Unfortunately, Ahmed will be the writer.
“Feral will apparently be appearing in Inglorious X-Force.”
Guess she has nine lives because I thought she died in the last X-Factor series.
Maybe that means Rusty Collins too could live to die another day. That poor bastard has spent more time in comic book limbo than not. Rusty is the perfect name for him, really.
“He died again? In his first fight after coming from the dead?”
“Well, he was a little Rusty.”
The annual was fine, but I’m not sure why it involved the Uncanny cast instead of the Alaska team. Maybe because the Uncanny crew continuously get overshadowed in their own book and because they haven’t figured out yet how to have a scene with Cyclops and Phoenix that doesn’t involve her solving all his problems.
@Chirs V- I think part of the problem is that a lot of the X-villains like Apocalypse got redemption arcs on Krakoa. And Sabretooth is dead.
MacKay at least seems to be trying to elevate some of the minor X-villains like Trevor Fitzroy, Sugar Man and Crimson Commando into major antagonists. I’m not sure if it will work long term.
It’s really Simone’s run that seems to be going out of its way not to include established X-villains. All of the major threats the team has faced so far are her original creations like Warden Ellis, Sarah Gaunt and Shuvaharak. It can’t be stressed how unusual this is for a flagship X-book. For example, Scott Lobdell was criticized for using too many 90’s villains like the Upstarts during his run on Uncanny X-Men but his run featured classic X-Men villains like Magneto, Apocalypse and Sabretooth. Simone seems to be relying on her own creations.
And it’s not like there weren’t ways to work the X-Men’s more established villains into the story. The current plot features Gambit slowly turning into a predator who feeds on other human beings. Another writer would have Selene or Emplate show up, since they understand exactly what that’s like. But so far there’s no trace of them. Much of the plot of Uncanny is about Rogue growing into her role as a leader. Another writer would have Mystique or Destiny show up and offer “advice”. But so far, their only interaction with Rogue had been in her limited series.
At least Simone seems to be listening to the complaints- she’s promised two classic X-villains will show up in Uncanny.
I do like what Simone is doing with Uncanny X-Men. I like the new kids and I like the old team. I don’t like how Uncanny X-Men feels like knock-off Dr. Strange. At the same time, I don’t know if trying to be more traditionally X-Men is a good thing for the book. I don’t like the direction sometimes, but I respect Simone for trying to be more unique with it. I kinda hope the classic X-Men villains thing is a joke. Like here is Ogre and El Tigre in the background of a shot. I do think my problems with Uncanny would be resolved if Simone could pull everything together.
@Taibak If that’s how the story ends up going, then it’ll be just like Shakespeare, but with lots more punching. 😀
@Moo,
Both Feral and Thorn appeared in the background of the HellFire Vigil in Central Park.
Also , No-Prize: Rusty , for all we know , could actually be the angry-looking white-haired pyrokine follower of DarkStar, who suddenly appeared beside Leynia only AFTER Rusty was already killed in Russia .
Remember , there IS another Omega-level healer X-gene mutant on Earth-616 other than Elixir , who can likewise fully resurrect the physically deceased , and what a cosmic coincidence , she is a Russian teenage girl who has history with the X-people .
https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Magdalena_(Earth-616)
Jdsm-Darko Macan realized having a character like that was too convenient and got rid of her healing power. It was revealed that she was giving up some of her life force each time she healed, and she died while Cable was visiting her. Cable used his powers to restart her heart, but she revealed that her powers now worked in the opposite. She could now take a part of another’s life force to extend her own life. She decided this was also a gift as she could help people in pain die quicker.
Also, as I recommend Macan’s Soldier X as often as possible, that series was so good the brief time it lasted (the tail-end of Cable vol. 1 included). It was the only time I found Cable to be an interesting character.
I like the way Stegman used Jean in the annual, cutting through the fighting to get to the emotional core of the matter. That’s a great way to portray Phoenix consciousness. You could power Jean down but retain that aspect and add her to an Earth-bound X-team. They could use a spooky psychic parent figure now that Xavier’s gone.
Wolverine has a lot of casual relationships with his coworkers: Storm, Domino, Jean & Scott, now Silver Sable. Somewhere in the multiverse, there’s a team comprised entirely of his children from these team-ups.
“Omega-level”. They never should have started with that stupid classification. Everybody’s Omega-level now, aren’t they? Except for the Crap mutants with useless abilities. It’s either Omega or Crap, it seems.
Where’s the middle rung? Where’s the Lambda-level mutants? Or the Mu-level mutants? That’s a series right there. The Mu-Mutants.
@ Chris V.
Nice shout out for Soldier X. I actually loved the David Tischman / Darko Macan / Igor Kordey stuff. That was peak Cable, as far as I’m concerned.
According to Brevoort. Jemas insisted they relaunch Cable as Soldier X in order to avoid paying Liefeld royalties. Brevoort seemed to think the title could have been more successful if it was actually called Cable.
@Michael- Jemas apparently did change the name of those books for that very reason. This was true. But it’s also true that Jemas was an idiot. Liefeld hadn’t been paid royalties in years because even under their original names, those books didn’t make enough money for his royalties to kick in. So Jemas changing the titles didn’t hurt Liefeld. It just hurt the sales on the books.
https://www.cbr.com/comic-book-urban-legends-revealed-5/
Bleeding Cool’s Weekly Bestseller List is out. X-Men 26 came in 8th. X-Men Annual 1 came in 9th. Wolverine and Moonstar didn’t make the list at all.
ANOTHER issue of Wolverine fails to make the top 10.
It’s not surprise that Moonstar didn’t make the top 10. Dani has her fans but she’s not THAT popular a character.
Interestingly, X-Men only sold about half as many issues as Amazing Spider-Man 23. Amazing Spider-Man 23 is the long awaited issue where Peter finds out MJ is Venom, so it probably sold more than usual. But it’s possible X-Men sold less than usual.
The X-Men Annual was fun, and looked great. The Steve Skroce art, with some fun art jamming from Stegman and Greene, was enough to justify the purchase.
I bought Moonstar 1 because I like the character. It wasn’t bad, but I hadn’t read the Magik series so I had no connection to the events of that book. I think the writer has a good handle on the title character, so I’ll probably buy issue 2. The supporting characters and villain, however, didn’t pique my interest. The art had its moments, too.
I liked the first issue of Moonstar enough to stick with it for now. I haven’t read that many comics with Moonstar, so I don’t have any huge connection to the character, but Allen got me interested.
Since Dani remembers being a Valkyrie and remembers Asgard, does Beta Ray Bill remember too? People are saying he’s a founding Avengers and he’s standing there going, “No? That’s not accurate at all.” If not, where does he think he got Stormbreaker from? Zeus? Found it in a crater in Oklahoma?
@CalvinPitt- The general rule seems to be that Asgardians on Earth remember Asgard. In Dani’s case, she presumably remembers because of her link with Brightwind. (Blake remembers Asgard because Odin created him and even though he’s evil now, he still works a piece of Odin’s will, even though he doesn’t realize it.)
None of this applies to Bill. However, he did remember that Stormbreaker was Asgardian when he appeared in Storm. Maybe we’ll get more details when he appears in Queen in Black.
I sort of like how Uncanny is leaning into the “Uncanny” part with this focus on monsters and magic.
Yes, you can argue that none of that is very “X-Men” but it is certainly ticking the “Uncanny” box.
Moonstar #1 – I keep being surprised by Ashley Allen. Her books aren’t stellar, but they are decent fun. And she gets the fundamentals right. Very often I put down a, say for example, a Wolverine book that maybe was a decent read, but when I ask myself ‘why was this a Wolverine story’ there’s no answer other than ‘because Wolverine was the lead character’.
So here we have a decent story that’s solidly set in the present status quo – it picks up the secondary plot thread from the Magik book, it takes the ‘Asgard is forgotten’ remit that sits very awkwardly in many other titles and turns it into an advantage. Why is this a Moonstar story? Because it picks up what she was doing in ‘Magik’ and it leverages her weird Asgard connection and it sounds extremely basic when I put it like that, but there’s tons of stories in which the writers didn’t bother to jump through that low hoop.
CalvinPitt> Since Dani remembers being a Valkyrie and remembers Asgard, does Beta Ray Bill remember too? People are saying he’s a founding Avengers and he’s standing there going, “No? That’s not accurate at all.” If not, where does he think he got Stormbreaker from? Zeus? Found it in a crater in Oklahoma?
Where does he even have Stormbreaker from *now*? It was destroyed in the Cates run, and it was still gone throughout his appearances in Immortal Thor.
Brevoort really needs to learn to keep his mouth shut. Yes, he stopped doing his Substack. But he recently gave an interview where he complained that X-Men fans were not united, said that he was much more comfortable editing the Avengers books than the X-books, repeated his claim that he prefers angry fans to indifferent ones, said that variant covers are now “part of the economics” of comics and at one point questioned whether Rich Johnston is Rich Johnston. The reaction of the internet was predictable.