The X-Axis – 25 March 2026
UNCANNY X-MEN #25. (Annotations here.) This is the final part of “Where Monsters Dwell” and… um. Look, I like this book, and I like the creators, and I like the Outliers, but this arc is a misfire. To be fair, part of my problem with it is that the premise is pretty much that the Legion of Monsters are cool, and therefore a story where the X-Men fight the Legion of Monsters will be cool. And I disagree – I think the Legion of Monsters are boring and there’s really nothing here to change my mind. After all, they spend practically the whole arc hypnotised, so they’re not even really functional characters in it. But there are other problems too. The western strand seems to be implying that there’s more to Marcus than he lets on, but it doesn’t pay off coherently – the Rawhide Kid stuff falls away entirely and it winds up as just a pep talk to encourage the Outliers to be heroes. And issue #25 feels like it’s far, far too deep into the series for them to be learning that – doesn’t Ransom already want to be an X-Man? Some of the Gambit addiction subplot lands, and most of the issue is drawn by David Marquez, so it’s obviously going to look good, but mostly this feels like a forced attempt to shoehorn in some characters that the creators find a lot more interesting than I do.
INGLORIOUS X-FORCE #3. (Annotations here.) You certainly can’t accuse this book of dragging out its main storyline. The basic plot is that Cable has gathered this team together supposedly in order to protect Ms Marvel, but mainly in order to find out which of the team goes on to kill her in an alternate future. He only has three suspects, and by the end of issue #3 we’ve already eliminated two of them. We’ve already down Hellverine, and now this is Boom-Boom’s story. It’s partly a homage to Nextwave, but with part of the angle being that Boom-Boom doesn’t remember it fondly at all. After all, once you start incorporating Nextwave into the regular Marvel Universe, you run into the problem that it’s no longer a wacky comedy book in a wacky comedy world, but some sort of deranged collapse of rationality. Al Ewing did something similar with Spectrum’s reaction in Captain America and the Mighty Avengers, playing it as a sort of cosmic horror in which normal characters found themselves made into jokes, but doing it with Boom-Boom adds the fact that she’s the one you might expect to take it in her stride. To be honest, any attempt to get Nextwave elements to function in the regular Marvel Universe has problems – once you start grounding them in any sort of reality they kind of stop being funny, and this story feels like it’s trying to have its cake and eat it on that front. But Michael Sta. Maria’s art kind of pulls it off, and smooths over those competing elements. It kind of works, though I’m not sure how.
GENERATION X-23 #2. (Annotations here.) At the other end of the pacing spectrum, here’s an issue that consists entirely of Laura and Gabby introducing themselves to the characters they met at the end of the previous issue. Given the nature of the story, though, that’s probably the right call – there’s nothing we should be cutting away to just yet, and we’ve got a bunch of characters needing to be introduced. And since they all have versions of the same name, it’s all the more important to make them distinctive both visually and in personality terms. On re-reading, there’s more going on here than first meets the eye in terms of setting up the second-tier newbies, and in terms of how far their spokesman X-Infinite actually does reflect what the rest of the group are thinking. Jody Houser and Jacopo Camagni establish everyone well, and set up some questions about what Infinite is actually up to. It’s a strong book, but I do worry about whether it’ll get the time it needs to make this work.
WOLVERINE: WEAPONS OF ARMAGEDDON #2. By Chip Zdarsky, Luca Maresca, Jesus Aburtov & Joe Sabino. In theory, this miniseries is part of a crossover that has something to do with Origin Boxes, but in practice the Boxes have only received a passing mention. Instead, this is pretty much a straight Wolverine story, going back to the old standards of Wolverine trying to stop other people from being turned into weapons in the same that he was. We’ve seen this many times, and what makes this one distinctive is mostly the choice of characters. David Colton is the retconned-in 9/11 Captain America from Zdarsky’s current Captain America run, and fits sensibly in this story – there may be wider reasons for wanting to up his profile, but we’ll see. And thanks to Wolverine: Origins, Nuke now serves as a recognisable character where Wolverine himself was responsible for what happened, back before his face turn. Nuke is normally a completely one-note character, but for once, this story has him more interested in getting revenge on Wolverine, for entirely understandable reasons. Maresca draws him as a big imposing lug, but the scene with him squaring off against the bear plays him up as a Wolverine analogue, which is a very different way of using the character. Despite the crossover branding, this actually seems to be just a well executed Wolverine story, and more consistent than the ongoing title.
ROGUE #3. By Erica Schultz, Luigi Zagaria, Espen Grunetjern & Ariana Maher. Issue #2 was shaky, but this seems to be getting back on track. I’m not quite sure when the Constrictor became a rich guy funding other villains – the footnote points us to She-Hulk #9, which was when he sued Hercules, but I thought that status quo had long since been dropped. It didn’t show up when he was in Wolverine not so long ago, and a bit of quick searching tells me there’s a story where he lost most of the money in a poker game, but whatever. I don’t actually mind it as an approach to the character – it gives him a distinctive angle as an ascended henchman, and Zagaria gives him a smug confidence that’s very effective. The actual story here – in which Rogue tries to figure out what happened in her memory gaps – seems to be heading towards “she copied Sabretooth’s powers during a mission and went briefly nuts”. I can’t say I’m especially invested in that side of things. But the mechanics of this issue are rather good fun.
PSYLOCKE: NINJA #3. By Tim Seeley, Nico Leon, Dono Sánchez-Almara & Ariana Maher. This is an unusual approach to a continuity implant miniseries – Uncanny X-Men #256-258 have happened since the last issue, and so Betsy is now free of Hand control and hanging around in Madripoor with Logan and Jubilee. Fortunately, Logan is packed off to deal with stories in his solo book, and so we get a Psylocke / Jubilee story. For some reason, despite the immediate continuity being quite well researched, the wider continuity is really quite shaky. The idea of Logan trying to pack Psylocke off to the X-Men to recover doesn’t make any sense, because the team doesn’t exist at this point. But none of that especially matters. What Seeley is actually doing is writing a couple of encounters with Elektra into the margins of this period of continuity, after all. It also means he has to address the elephant in the room, which is that Psylocke’s body swap was reversed for very good reason. The story has a reasonable go at it, both by making her adjustment to her new body more traumatic, and through a rather unsubtle exchange with an English Tourist Who Symbolises Colonialism. What it doesn’t do is make Jubilee a vehicle for voicing any of these points, even though she resented Psylocke’s presence even in the original stories… but as Seeley points out, Claremont already attributed that to a combination of legitimate distrust and of Psylocke’s presence disrupting Jubilee’s sidekick relationshipw ith Wolverine, so giving her a third objection risks cluttering the whole thing. At any rate, maybe there’s something to be said for trying to smooth over this part of continuity from a more modern standpoint – while it’s potentially ignorable as part of Betsy’s back story at this point, it isn’t ignorable as part of Kwannon’s. If you’re going down that line, this actually does it quite well, though I’m yet to be convinced that the story needs Elektra.
With most other writers I’d assume the glaringly obvious solution would be a red herring… but when Erica Schultz is involved, what one sees tends to be what one gets. Oh well.
Re: Rogue 3:
“I’m not quite sure when the Constrictor became a rich guy funding other villains – the footnote points us to She-Hulk #9, which was when he sued Hercules, but I thought that status quo had long since been dropped. It didn’t show up when he was in Wolverine not so long ago, and a bit of quick searching tells me there’s a story where he lost most of the money in a poker game, but whatever. I don’t actually mind it as an approach to the character – it gives him a distinctive angle as an ascended henchman, and Zagaria gives him a smug confidence that’s very effective. ”
Hercues won his money back in Thing 8 in a poker game. It’s annoying because it was a plot point in Spencer’s Captain America that when Cosntrictor was dying, Diamondback had to first turn to stripping and then to crime to pay for his medical bills. And this issue doesn’t explain how he survived his “death” in that storyline. This series makes the Spencer storyline completely nonsensical.
The Constrictor in Wolverine was apparently supposed to be his son, who assumed the mantle after his father died.
That raises another problem- Constrictor claims that when he was associated with the Serpent Society, he charged 60 percent. But the original Constrictor was never a member of the Serpent Society- they offered him membership and he refused and squealed on them to Captain America. It was his son who was associated with the Serpent Society.
And if all that Constrictor knew was that Rogue absorbed Sabretooth’s powers and knocked him out, then why didn’t he just tell her that?
Bleeding Cool’s Weekly Bestseller List is out. None of the X-books made the list. This is just embarrassing.
Uncanny X-Men is one of the flagships of the line. There’s no excuse for it not making the top 10. Iron Man, Punisher and Fantastic Four all outsold it. As we’ve discussed before, part of the problem might be that Age of Revelation hurt the line long term. But it seems like a lot of people just don’t like Gail Simone’s writing and this story in particular. Gail doesn’t seem to actually want to write the traditional X-Men with their traditional villains. The story required an evil sorceress but instead of using Selene, Gail dug up a one-shot villainess who fought Werewolf By Night and turned her into a major sorceress.
Generation X-23 probably won’t last more than 10 issues. Maybe they shouldn’t have started things off so slowly.
Inglorious X-Force continues to do poorly. I’m not sure if the problem is that any X-Force without Wolverine won’t last long nowadays or that Kamala draws the sales of any X-book she appears in down or both or neither.
The minis doing poorly is to be expected. But the fact that Weapons of Armageddon is selling so poorly might be an indication that there’s no much enthusiasm for Armageddon.
Overall, the line seems like it’s a mess. X-Men and Uncanny are both doing arcs that seem like filler. And the next X-Men event was supposed to be revealed in the Free Comic Book day issue in May but so far, we haven’t heard anything about it. Taken together. it seems like Marvel is trying to figure out what to do about the X-Men.
In other news, Claremont will be writing a five-issue limited series featuring Gambit called Gambit: Wanted in July. It takes place shortly after Remy has joined the X-Men and it involves Bullseye being hired to kill Remy.
There’s another minor bit of continuity mix-up in Psylocke – Betsy refers to her previous connection with Jubilee, that there was little of it back when they had time for ladies shopping trips.
Except there was zero connection back in the Outback, Jubilee hitches a portal with the x-ladies coming back from a shopping trip and then lives in the base like a, well, mall rat. She observed the X-Men, but didn’t approach anyone before helping Logan get off from the cross.
One World Under Doom just ended. A lot of readers found it disappointing and overlong. So, let’s move on to the next crossover. No wonder fans are turning out to another crossover.
Wolverine probably wouldn’t help X-Force since the Wolverine comic is struggling.
There was another X-Force comic recently, and it got cancelled after ten issues. It might not be a good time to launch another X-Force, especially when it shipped as just another X-title comic amidst a glut of X-titles.
Notice that DC seems to realize that if every “Next Level” series shipped at once, titles would have a harder time finding their audience. Instead, they are staggering the release dates.
Marvel is solely concerned about putting out a certain number of books each month, and worried about having to cancel so many books. They’d rather see all the X-books shoved out within a month of each other, even if it means having to cancel most of the new ongoings with issue #10.
Well, there are plenty of crossovers coming up. They can just do another line-wide relaunch in a few months after “Armageddon” or the next X-events with a brand new X-Force #1.
I like the Outliers, except maybe Deathdream, who seems more like a cartoon character than a functional person. I get that people are annoyed that their favourite characters are largely in the background, though.
I don’t know about this Nextwave thing. The original series seemed in the same vein as Hickman’s comedy books, seldom rising above just cruelly mocking the characters. I guess it was popular, but popular enough to fold into the mainstream and revisit so many years later? I really don’t get it.
NextWave was hilarious. It was written by arch-cynic, Warren Ellis, though; the writer of Ruins…what do you expect? It was something different for Marvel when Marvel still took chances outside constant crossovers, relaunches, and more X-books. Ellis’ use of Machine Man was strangely touching and compelling, and the Devil Dinosaur thing was inspired. I can easily see why certain Marvel creators look back upon it fondly. It only works because it was Ellis allowed to be crazy. Trying to shoehorn it into the Marvel Universe, much like other examples of this from Marvel (like Kirby’s Eternals) misses the point and doesn’t do the original any favours.
I regret the era of goofy comics that NextWave was responsible for kicking off. It was an era of more and more memeable out-of-context panels, which immediately became diminishing returns as soon as NextWave ended. Or even before.
Back then, I was absolutely mining comics for the memes, and I remember that they impressed my friends less and less with every passing month.
And the thing about Warren Ellis comics was that he always positioned his heroes as the future and his villains as relics of the past, who would inevitably lose. Ellis might have been the most end-of-history writer of them all, which is really out of date in retrospect.
Well, he got the relics of the past part correct, at least.
I just wish there was more diversity in “mainstream” (i.e. superhero) comics. It seems like Marvel settles on one style and runs it into the ground. Mix it up a bit more.
That is something Ellis was good at, even when the villains were the protagonists of whatever story he was telling, they still lost to and were sadder than the heroes they were supposedly much cooler than. It was often subtle, but usually there. Tiny deliberate gaps in the cynicism, letting the light in.