The X-Axis – 11 March 2026
X-MEN UNITED #1. (Annotations here.) Well. I liked Exceptional X-Men, even if it did have a languid approach to pacing, and even if it did have a rather handwavy approach to the plot making sense. This is obviously the successor to that book, and continues to give prominence to the Exceptional cast, but it’s an odd series. The premise is to set up a school and (perhaps more significantly in the grand scheme of things) a meeting place where the disparate parts of the X-books can interact. But it’s not exactly a school because it’s training grown adults too. And because it has to be the successor to Exceptional, those characters can’t just fade into the background and instead have to be given a senior role… which might make sense if everyone else was a rookie, but seems downright weird when you’re using long running background characters like Dryad and Wolf Cub. Exceptional ran for thirteen issues! Wolf Cub’s a nonentity, but he’s still been around for over twenty years!
The concept of Graymatter Lane doesn’t come across either. It shouldn’t be that hard just to explain directly whether people are physically travelling to this space or whether it’s some sort of psychic conference call. It shouldn’t take me multiple readings to figure out something that basic about the core premise. It seems to be a physical space, but other dialogue doesn’t really fit with that answer, so… how hard would it have been to spend a few panels just explaining the premise directly? It’s needlessly confusing. And the art doesn’t really take advantage of the visual showcase opportunities either. It’s fine but it’s nothing exceptional. If this is some sort of psychic dreamscape then it ought to be possible to go nuts, and this doesn’t.
Then there’s the fact that the plot hinges on Cyclops being inexplicably a massive asshole for no discernible reason, which doesn’t convince in the slightest. The best parts are the bits with the Exceptional cast that get to play to Eve Ewing’s character-driven strengths, but there’s no getting away from the fact that as a first issue, this misfires badly. It’s a dilution of what Exceptional did well, not a development, unfortunately.
STORM: EARTH’S MIGHTIEST MUTANT #2. (Annotations here.) Surprisingly linear, by the standards of this book. It’s still awfully choppy, though. There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the story that Ayodele is doing here, though. Storm has imprisoned Akujin’s master because he was threatening the Earth and she refuses to kill him. Akujin threatens chaos and destruction unless her master is released. Scarlet Witch, as Sorcerer Supreme, argues for just giving in, but Storm won’t have it. Meanwhile, Death is planning to invade Earth with her own forces, presumably because Oblivion’s destruction at the end of the last volume has driven her mad. It’s not obviously a Storm story, but at least there’s a dilemma in here for Storm about whether to stick to her principles if it risks the deaths of others. But… that’s almost brushed aside, and Storm never really seems to regard it as a dilemma at all. I’m kind of left to agree with the Scarlet Witch: why is any of this worth it? The story never explains, but if that’s not the character hook for this story, what is? I like the art, I kind of admire the sprawling ambition of the whole thing, I even kind of like Akujin and her sisters with their mundane meeting room. There are good things in here, but they’re not cohering.
MAGIK & COLOSSUS #2. By Ashley Allen, Germán Peralta, Arthur Hesli & Ariana Maher. This is the best X-book of the week, which admittedly isn’t a particularly high bar- but it would have cleared it in plenty of tougher weeks. Magik and Colossus’ sibling relationship is remarkably underexplored, all things considered, but Allen finds an angle to make it work. Sure, we’re doing a tour of Russia with monsters from Russian mythology, but more to the point, we have Peter being simultaneously overprotective and self-loathing. He blames himself for failing to protect Illyana from Belasco in the past, but he also sees her as someone who’s overcome far greater trials than the ones he failed at. But all that is relatively underplayed, with Peter doing his best to keep the show on the road. The lack of real connection between the two becomes the point, instead of pretending that there’s been a strong off-panel relationship all along, and the stilted conversation scene on the train is beautifully done. And from the look of it, part of the point of this story is to give Peter some opportunity to feel that he’s succeeded in protecting Illyana. There’s a nice little character story going on in here.
LOGAN:BLACK, WHITE & BLOOD #3. This anthology isn’t exactly making the greatest case for the flexibility of Wolverine as a character. What do you do in a Wolverine short? Might it by any chance be for him to cross paths with some assholes, possibly threatening a friend, and for him to then brutally despatch said assholes by the end of the story? Because that’s basically this issue’s Karla Pacheco / Pere Pérez story, and it’s basically the Marc Bernardin / Jan Bazaldua story too. And it was basically the prohibition-era story from the previous issue, come to think of it. Individually, if they were rounding out an annual or an anniversary issue, they’d be fine – they’re well drawn, they’re decently paced – but they aren’t really about anything. Phil Noto’s “Clinical Trial” story is better, if only because the set-up of a supposed medical trial that’s actually trying to brainwash people into becoming assassins is something different, but for the most part it’s a story that you could plug any hero into. You can make the case that Logan has a particular interest in mind-controlled weapons, and there’s kind of a gesture in that direction, but it doesn’t feel that important. Still, the story as a whole has some commitment to it. The rest is by the numbers.
“It’s fine but it’s nothing exceptional.”
I get it.
I’ve recently reread Gillen’s run (both runs) and now I’m rereading the original Claremont stories, and I’ve just always, always, always hated Magik. She’s barely a character. She is always defined by other characters she’s interacting with. She has no particular agency or motivations, just the means to solve problems that other characters can’t. It’s been 45 years and nobody has figured out what to do with her yet.
Illyana was fine back when she was in the New Mutants and her deal was “mutant teleporter with a side gig as demon sorceress worried about losing her soul” but then Inferno happened, turned her back into a child, and then she died. End of her story. For about 14 years before they found a way to resurrect her.
Since then, she’s felt more one note because her primary trait is “demon sorceress ruler of Limbo” with her magical aspects played up significantly. What does she -want- beyond the X-Men and running around with her ridiculously big sword? Who knows. I’m just glad we’re actually getting some serious Illyana and Piotr interaction and development at long last. Lord knows they need it, especially with Piotr always having been almost pathetically devoted to his little sister for so much of their time together.
I like her in the Midnight Suns game. It’s almost like she’s cosplaying cartoon Teen Titans Raven but with a Natasha Fatale accent.
The sales figures for last month are out. Deadpool 1 came in 13th, Cyclops 1 came in 20th, Wolverine: Weapons of Armageddon came in 22nd, Uncanny X-Men 23 came in 23rd, Magik & Colossus 1 came in 24th, X-Men 25 came in 29th, Uncanny X-Men 24 came in 33rd, Storm: Earth’s Mightiest Mutant 1 came in 35th, Generation X-23 1 came in 38th, Wolverine 15 came in 45th, Wolverine 16 came in 60th, Rogue 2 came in 61st, Psylocke: Ninja 2 came in 65th and Inglorious X-Force 2 came in 91st.
Storm did better than I expected. It even placed higher in the charts that Rogue Storm 1 during Age of Revelation but that’s no surprising since nobody liked Age of Revelation. Still, I doubt there will be another Storm limited series.
Generation X-23 came in relatively low for a debut issue- it was beaten by the Storm limited series. I don’t think it will last more than 10 issues. The debut issue was nothing special.
Wolverine is doing horribly- I’m surprised it fell so low as 45th and 60th. Ahmed is killing Wolverine- Marvel has to be looking for a new writer. Ahmed really has an incredible talent for driving readers away from a series. First, he tanked Ms. Marvel’s series so badly Kamala never got an ongoing again. Then, when he took over Daredevil, sales fell so low it was cancelled in 25 issues. Now, he’s driving Wolverine’s sales Lowe than anyone thought possible. If Ahmed was put on Batman or Spider-Man they would probably be cancelled within two years.
inglorious X-Force continues to live up to its name. Yes, it came out in the last week but so did Rogue and Psylocke:Ninja and they came in 61st and 65th while Inglorious X-Force came in 91st. It’s probably not going to last more than 10 issues.
I wonder what’s going to happen to Kamala. She received a major role in two X-books- NYX and Inglorious X-Force- and both of those series flopped. A large portion of the fandom hates her in the mutant books. But she can’t seem to keep an ongoing series. The Champions seem done as a team. And her presence in Spider-Man is associated with the worst Spider-Man run since Howard Mackie, so she’s not going back there. But when she was briefly killed off, the fan response was overwhelmingly negative.
Oh, X-Force…Who could ever have predicted it ending up doing so badly?
The mini-series aren’t doing too badly. Too bad that mini-series are only getting five issues. It won’t be long before the X-line is down to X-Men, Uncanny, Wolverine, and Deadpool (we’ll see about X-Men United, but the reactions here don’t look promising). Will Brevoort declare Deadpool as a new success for “Shadows of Tomorrow”? I’d say this experimenting has shown that the current market can only sustain four or five ongoing X-books (not a surprise).
I don’t doubt your data and I suppose you are having reasonable readings out of it, but I sincerely wonder what the sales figures and volume and run durations really mean as of today. I have to assume that most readers that are not very casual or detached have turned towards services such as Marvel Unlimited and DC Universe infinite for most of their comics reading.
Frankly, it is slightly surprising that Marvel and DC even publish so many supposedly ongoing monthly “floppies”. At about five dollars each, it takes a considerable degree of commitment in both time and money for readers to actually acquire them, as well as for the publishers to make and distribute them. And what is the unsuspecting non-regular reader supposed to do when faced with either a small random offering of very few books, mostly with issue numbers at 10 or below and little indication of whether there is any chance for making a jumping-in out of them? Pay five dollars just to have the ability to make a jump of faith and find out that he is expected to pay a few dozen more before answers become somewhat clearer?
As a marketing strategy, that would be very self-defeating.
Marvel and DC depend on monthly publishing to make as much profit as they do currently. Comic shops can be depended on to over-order copies of each title (a. because they are a business who want to try to have enough copies for customers, and b. the advent of variant covers mean that comic shops are even more likely to over-order for the purpose of getting rare variant covers they can sell at a major profit). So, a comic store may order 50 copies of Uncanny X-Men, even though they only sell 40 copies. That’s ten extra copies of Uncanny X-Men that Marvel is selling to a retailer.
If Marvel went to subscription service only, the company may alienate some of their customers who refuse to read the comic without being able to own a physical copy, but moreso, it would cut into Marvel and DC’s bottom line. They would only be able to sell the exact amount of comics being read (this would also eliminate the speculator consumers, which is still something that exists in the comic book world). They’d no longer be able to stick comic stores with 10, 20, 30 extra copies of a title that the store over-ordered. If Marvel and DC are suddenly reporting that they are selling thousands less comics, the corporate overlords that own Marvel and DC may begin to wonder about the future of their comic book subsidiaries. This is why the publishing aspect of the comic industry is still very important in the age of digital sales.
When I worked in a shop in the late 90s, we got too good with hitting our exact sales numbers that we were often left with hardly anything left at the end of the week except the big titles. So, our boss told us we needed to start ordering a few extra copies of stuff so we had stuff on the wall for the rest of the month and a couple copies for back issues.
I’m not sure comparing physical sales to online “sales” entirely makes sense (which doesn’t mean a corporate overlord wouldn’t do so, of course).
If I check my mail-order subscriptions at Forbidden Planet and decide there are a dozen comics I’m just not enjoying and want to quit, that’s money the comic book companies were getting every month and now aren’t.
If I invested in a tablet which could actually load Marvel Unlimited and subscribed to that service, I’m paying the same subscription fee whether I read one comic a month or a hundred, right? It’s less “selling thousands less comics” and more that the comic book as a unit of sale has ceased being a meaningful thing. I think.
@Chris V- I’m not sure Deadpool will continue to do so well. Wade’s series have a habit of starting out well and losing steam pretty quickly. And the current “Wade is depressed because Ellie has mysteriously disappeared” direction is divisive among fans. And Ben Percy wrote the Wolverine/ Deadpool series which started out well and was cancelled within 10 issues, so he might not do much better with Deadpool.
I know sales figures are hard to find these days. But in New York City, Cy lops 1 was sold out at all the Midtown Co.ics locations. They rarely sell out and especially for number ones. Is there unexpected demand for Scott? Or do they order more of Rogues and Magiks in tight costumes? Not sure, but I ho0e it means a newly successful title!
@Josie: to me, Magik’s original motivation was clear: she wants to avoid becoming corrupted by evil/Limbo and turning into the Darkchild. The conflicts arise because she has a distinct evil half and is tied to Limbo. Also, she can be mean and distant (whether it’s her dark half, her personality, or as a result of trauma). Her story ends with Limbo.
Post- resurrection Illyana is different. I don’t dislike her, but she spends a lot of time in “badass” mode with little else going for her. Sometimes, as in the Ayala/Reis New Mutants, she gets a spotlight centered around her trauma. I haven’t read her solo series, so maybe there’s more there?
@Rich Larson: the lack of centralized sales figures makes it hard to tell what sells and what doesn’t. The guy who owns the LCS I frequent used to work for a different company. He told that there are comics that sell well for him that don’t sell much in a town 30 minutes away, and vice versa. I wonder if titles that don’t set the sales charts on fire but continue to be published (e.g. Poison Ivy) are doing well online or at stores that don’t report sales figures.
@Josie,
Ackychually, Marvel already has: Sexual Fan-Service LOL after all , why do you think Editorial suddenly put her back in the Chris Bachalo costume ? Since most other Marvel classic fan-favorites (such as She-Hulk and Electra and Tigra and Mockingbird and Moondragon and Maddie Pryor and Emma Frost and Psylocke) now show much less of their skin in their current costumes than in their most popular costumes (and others are either no longer part of Marvel’s stable such as Red Sonja or have been forgotten altogether such as Namora and Namorita and Shanna and AoA-Blink) they obviously had to compensate somehow , so Magik is picking up the slack from her fellow femme fatales
Bleeding Cool’s Weekly Bestseller List is out. X-Men United 1 came in 2nd. Magik and Storm didn’t make the list at all.
I’m surprised X-Men United did so well considering how it was trashed online. I guess hate-buying is a thing? Or maybe the second issue will decline.
It’s too bad Magik didn’t make the list. If this series does badly, she might not get another one. I guess we’ll have to wait to see the monthly figures to see how well or poorly she did.
@Rich Larson- Cyclops’s first issue did well. The real question is how much of a drop will there be with the second issue. Many series have a great first issue and then sales collapse with the second issue,
Michael-X-Men United makes it sound like an important title. Most fans put books on their pull-list long before the shipping date. There are probably a minority of fans who wait to see what online reaction is to a comic before they decide if they plan to buy it. If sales are going to drop off, it is usually around issue #3 of a book. Fans often still give the second issue a chance because, well, maybe it was just a bad first issue, or they forget to tell their store to take the book off their pull-list. While there is always a drop off between issues #1 and #2, of course, for multiple reasons, it’s issue #3 which usually tells retailers which customers plan to continue buying a certain title.
Daibhid C-It’s true that comparing the two isn’t entirely comparing apples to apples. Marvel still has to keep track of whom is reading what titles though. If 60% of subscribers are reading Uncanny X-Men, that’s an important title. If 5% of subscribers are reading Ms. Marvel Team-Up (hypothetical), then that book is getting cancelled. After all, Marvel still has to pay their creators. So, they can’t look at the Marvel line as a cohesive whole as Marvel (the company) only has so much in operating costs. If you looked at Marvel Comics as a cohesive whole on a subscription service, you might say, “Marvel can put out a thousand comics because subscribers are paying one lump sum to read as many books as they want.”, but that runs into the problem of where do you get the money to pay all these creators and show a tidy profit.
Back in the 90s, there were a half dozen stores in our area. And all had different niches, so the store that specialized in adult stuff barely sold suphero books whereas our main store where I worked, in a college town, had good superhero numbers but also was strong with Vertigo and indie books.
Chris V> Marvel and DC depend on monthly publishing to make as much profit as they do currently. Comic shops can be depended on to over-order copies of each title (a. because they are a business who want to try to have enough copies for customers, and b. the advent of variant covers mean that comic shops are even more likely to over-order for the purpose of getting rare variant covers they can sell at a major profit). So, a comic store may order 50 copies of Uncanny X-Men, even though they only sell 40 copies. That’s ten extra copies of Uncanny X-Men that Marvel is selling to a retailer.
Those numbers probably don’t work for anyone. If you’re not selling 20% of your copies, you’re probably doing badly overall – whether that individual comic is technically a loss or not, you have overheads beyond that. Not every comic is going to have a variant you can successfully flip for $50 on ebay/Whatnot/etc.
Also, while we don’t have particularly accurate sales figures any more… back when we did, most comics sold 30k or less. There were c. 3000 comic shops. And that average of <=10 per store doesn't account for the big mail order places like DCBS, Midtown, etc; which are certainly well above the average per-store order for pretty much everything. It far from impossible that the median order for every X-Book, even the ones selling more than 30k, is <=10 per shop.
I am disappointed that you didn’t review Meals to Astonish.
The title page of Magik and Colossus #2 calls this issue “Sisyphean”. Any idea what that has to do with the contents of the story?
The basic plot points of this story are fine. And using creatures from Russian mythology is unique. But I just don’t care for the way Ashley Allen writes dialogue. To me it just sounds like endless bicker-bicker-bicker, every page. Was the same way in Magik, especially between the title character and Dani.