The X-Axis – 15 April 2026
X-MEN UNITED #2. (Annotations here.) Erm. Right. Well. So… this is certainly a thing, isn’t it?
I liked Exceptional X-Men, but this is a mess. Exceptional‘s strength was always in the character work; a slow pace, a down-to-earth tone and a small cast suited it. X-Men United, with a sprawling cast, a high concept setting and some sort of X-Men Team-up remit, takes all the wrong things from that book. I described the first issue as a misfire which at least had some moments with the Exceptional cast. The closest this issue comes to that is a scene with Kitty and Magneto. The art is okay, to be fair, and does a reasonable job on talky scenes.
Beyond that, it’s pretty much a train wreck. Why can’t it explain the concept of Graymatter Lane? If people are travelling there physically then what’s all this stuff about how if you die in Graymatter Lane then you die in real life? Wouldn’t that be obvious? But if they’re only travelling there psychically, how do they exit to different locations? This is rudimentary and two issues in, the book still hasn’t explained its basic premise intelligibly. It gets worse, though: the resolution of last issue’s cliffhanger is “false peril”, Cyclops feels wildly out of character compared to his home book, and then that plot just goes away. Instead, we move on to a story about Captain America and a supporting player from Truth: Red, White and Black. It’s not exactly obvious why that’s an X-Men story in the first place, though there are some throwaway lines about hoping that Captain America learns something about mutants in the process. But it’s an utterly bizarre choice of story for issue #2, when the book has such a sprawling cast and hasn’t done a proper story with its own setting yet. If the idea is to sell the concept of a team-up book, it certainly doesn’t do that by picking X-23, Melée and Jitter out of a hat and getting them to stand interchangeably next to Captain America. This is going very badly.
INGLORIOUS X-FORCE #4. (Annotations here.) We’re on to Archangel’s spotlight story, which for some reason is a two-parter. This book has generally worked, and its bombardment of oddball references has been fun for the most part, but this is probably my least favourite issue to date. Partly, it has fill-in art from Philip Tan, and I don’t really care for his work. I find it a bit fiddly and overrendered, and prone to rather blank expressions. But also, this story is built on some awfully convoluted continuity about Archangel’s history with Death Seeds, which I’m not even sure it’s getting right, and I tend to think that when a story is making my head spin about things like that, it could maybe use a bit more explanation of what it thinks happened. More generally… is the Archangel / Death Seed stuff interesting? It was part of a very good X-Force run, to be sure, and I think ultimately Tim Seeley might be trying to use it to come up with some streamlined explanation for all of Warren’s various personalities over the years. That might be a useful thing to do, but right now it feels like it’s complicating matters more than simplifying them.
STORM: EARTH’S MIGHTIEST MUTANT #3. (Annotations here.) Murewa Ayodele’s Storm run has to be the single weirdest book Marvel publish, and it’s not even close. Storm casually going on a tour of the afterlife. A spaceman who turns out to be an alternate version of her mother. A trip to the Source Wall, of all things. Not much at all about the Susanoo storyline which has been the main plot of this miniseries, although in fairness, the Death plotline gets some overdue attention instead. I’m not sure I could say I actually enjoy reading it. But a part of me can’t help admiring its insane level of ambition and its dogged perversity. For better or worse, there really is nothing else like it in Marvel’s line. That’s something, right? It’s a pretty good issue for artist Federica Mancin too, with some nice surreal settings and an admittedly inexplicable page of Ororo drawn as a sort of shadow figure. As a story, it’s all very chaotic and confusing, but at least it feels like someone’s vision.
MAGIK & COLOSSUS #3. By Ashley Allen, Germán Peralta, Arthur Hesli & Ariana Maher. In plot terms, this is an issue of Magik being held prisoner in an arena and Colossus coming to her rescue. And it’s nice to give him a chance to clearly make a difference. But this whole miniseries is really about Piotr and Illyana’s relationship, drawing out the similarities and differences in the way that they’ve each responded to trauma throughout their lives. Sometimes it’s a bit obvious about that, but it can get away with that. Allen has the clearest idea in years about how to make Colossus work as a character, and German Peralta’s art leans into that – we’re going back somewhat to the original innocence of the character and asking how much of it is really left, with Colossus himself wondering whether it’s anything more now than a persona that he adopts from time to time. But childhood flashbacks make clear that Illyana always was more of a natural fighter than him, and that Piotr is a gentle soul who’s been forced into a role he never wanted. My main reservation about the book is how far all this actually ties in to the main plot about Koschei and Russian sorcerers – if this story is trying to say something about Russianness, it’s going over my head for now – but it’s very much worth your time if you have any interest in the main characters.
Oh dear. I hope Allen isn’t trying to make a statement about Russianness. Please, no. If people thought Tini Howard messed up trying to say something about Britishness, I can only imagine how well a Generation Z American could deal with the issue of Russia. Especially if the American author is going to try using Russian folklore for this purpose. Sometimes Russian mythology can just be for fun. Let’s keep it simple for these Big Two comical books.
One weird thing about Magik and Colossus 3- the Immortal reveals that he is Koschei the Deathless and Illyana has no reaction. I’m no expert on Russian mythology but isn’t Koschei a pretty famous myth? Maybe we’ll get into that next issue. But it’s just odd Illyana had no reaction. Then again, she has been fighting creatures from Russian mythology this entire miniseries.
Some spoilers for X-Men United 5. Lourdes Chantel will be appearing. It was unclear before this whether she was resurrected by the Five.
The solicits mention “a shadowy threat” and the cover features Amahl Farouk. So it looks like the Shadow King will one of the villains in this issue. I wonder if he’s taken over Farouk again or if Ewing simply ignored that story.
Also, Justina Laguardia, the mutant Xavier was retconned into trying to recruit in Ewing’s backup story in Giant-Size X-Men last year, will be appearing in X-Men United 5. It’s odd that they gave her a big introduction as a mutant who could have been one of the new X-Men if she wasn’t a jerk and then did nothing with her for over a year. Maybe she was supposed to appear in Exception X-Men but plans got delayed when the series was cancelled.
It is very famous, yes. I have no idea what the point of that would be; if Allen is thinking that Illyana was growing up in the USSR (which wouldn’t be accurate any longer anyway), there was a very popular film called Kashchey Bessmertny from the USSR. If her intent was that Illyana didn’t really grow up in Russia, the internet does exist.
In other news, DC expanded its lead over Marvel in market share. In the last quarter of 2025, DC was leading Marvel 32.6% to 29.6%. In the first quarter of 2026, DC was leading Marvel 34.7 % to 29.4 %. The trend is not in Marvel’s favor.
Cebluski and Brevoort really have screwed up Marvel badly. It’s true that DC was outselling Marvel in 1999 and 2000 but in that period Marvel DID dominate the top 10, the top 25, and the top 50. And the X-Men was the best-selling franchise in comics. That’s not the case now.
I also wonder how Darren Chan getting fired will affect the X-books’ output. Maybe there will be fewer books with only Brevoort and Basso as editors. I guess Basso will take over the books that are already being worked on, like X-Men Outback? Or will those projects be curtailed?
Cebulski was such a bizarre choice from the jump. Nothing about his career indicated he was particularly good as an editor, a writer, a manager, or an ethical (or savvy) businessperson. Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that the quality of the stories and editing have suffered so badly under his leadership.
Honestly, I always thought Quesada got the job of editor-in-chief with too little experience. Yes, I know that he edited the Marvel Knights line. But (a) he’d only been doing it for a couple of years and (b) the Marvel Knights line was impressive, yes, but it wasn’t that impressive. It succeeded in reviving Daredevil and that was a major achievement. (Although some of the issues were late and Mysterio’s death caused problems in the Spider-Man books because nobody bothered to tell the Spider-Man office until the last minute.) And it featured Priest’s hugely influential take on the Black Panther. (Which was also often one of the lowest-selling books Marvel produced.) But it also featured Angel Punisher, which people have been mocking for decades. He seemed like a promising editor who still had sone flaws to work out, which is why it’s shocking that he was promoted to editor-in-chief.
In terms of Russian stereotypes, don’t forget that Percy’s X-Force had evil Matryoshka dolls and a weaponized Russian novelist.
@Michael: Marvel Knights was a big success. Sure, Angel Punisher was bad. So what did Quesada & Palmiotti do once the mockery rolled in? They got Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon to revitalize the comic. The formerly-moribund series went on to have become one of Marvel’s best comics. Black Panther was a low-selling book for Marvel? Prior to the Priest run, it was a no-selling book. Inhumans was a book about characters no one cared about that went on to win an Eisner. Grant Morrison, Richard Corben, Greg Rucka, JG Jones, Brian Azzarello, David Mack, and more fan-favorite creators did work for Marvel under the MK banner.
It was no surprise to me that Quesada was made EIC. No one else had generated much excitement for the company and its comics, especially post-bankruptcy.
Should he have been? His tenure was marked by some of the highest highs and lowest lows Marvel has ever had, some of which were thanks to then-president Bill Jemas. Based on how the company turned around, I think he was ultimately the right choice.
Priest’s Black Panther also demonstrated that the MK imprint would be a place not just for Hollywood crossovers and the current top-tier comics creators, but somewhere comics lifers could do ambitious work and be supported for its quality even in the face of middling sales. If nothing else, MK minted Quesada as a creator-friendly editor with an eye for matching talent and project. CB Cebulski, by contrast, pretended to be an imaginary Japanese guy just to be able to publish some staggeringly mediocre comics.
I’ve read that CB Cebulski was given the position due to his having experience working with people in China (Marvel sent him to live in Shanghai for two years as part of his earlier position within the company). Which I’m sure was considered to be very important for Disney/Marvel at the time when Cebulski became editor-in-chief, but is probably not considered quite as indispensable as it was prior to 2025. My guess is that many people would probably be surprised that anyone would want “Akira Yoshida” anywhere near an East Asian country.
Hopefully for MST fans, Illyana and Peter will also meet Sadko/Sinbad. hashtag Rimsky-Korsakov.
Regarding Quesada- DeFalco, Harras and Alonzo all had far more experience than Quesada when they were chosen to be editor-in-chief. DeFalco had been Shooter’s second-in-command for years. He also edited the Spider-books for two and a half years, was the initial editor for GI Joe and edited the original Secret Wars. Harras had edited the X-Books for seven and a half years. He also edited GI Joe for two years when it was a major hit and was the editor who put PAD and Todd Macfarlane on the Hulk,. Alonzo edited the Spider-books for years. All of these men had extensive experience working on high-profile projects. (Which makes it even more odd that Cebluski was chosen to be editor-in-chief.)
You’re right that Welcome Back Frank led to the first Punisher ongoing series since 1997 and that was also a major accomplishment. (it’s amazing how Marvel managed to screw up the Punisher’s books since the Suicide Run crossover in 1993. All of his books got so bad they were eventually cancelled. And I get what Ostrander was going for with the Punisher Joins the Mob thing but it really didn’t work.)
I don’t think anyone is disputing that Harras’s turn as editor-in-chief had plenty of disasters. The Mackie-Byrne run on Amazing Spider-Man was, outside of some of the Clone Saga stories, arguably the worst run on the title before Zeb Wells. And many of the X-books were also lacking- Mackie’s X-Factor/ Mutant X for example. But there were also successes as well. Kurt Busiek’s run on Avengers was widely praised as the best since Roger Stern left and outsold Daredevil. Busiek’s Thunderbolts was also critically praised So was Joe Kelly’s Deadpool. Quesada’s supporters tend to exaggerate just how bad Marvel was doing at the time to make his accomplishments seem greater.
Coincidentally enough, Quesada is addressing his rise to EIC on his Substack currently. It sounds like he was purposely chosen as a relative newbie/outsider who would shake things up.
The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced Disney intends to hollow out Marvel and license their characters to another publisher. It was recently pointed out to me that Disney doesn’t even publish comics about their own characters. Mickey and the gang are currently licensed to Fantagraphics, if I’m not mistaken.
Fantagraphics is also publishing hardback collections of artists’ work at Marvel/Atlas: Steranko, BWS, Everett and Krigstein. Seems like a partnership that could be grown under the right conditions.
Bleeding Cool’s Weekly Bestseller List is out. X-Men United 2 came in 7th. Inglorious X-Force 4, Storm 3 and Magik and Colossus 3 didn’t make the list at all.
On the one hand, it’s a good thing that X-Men United came in 7th. On the other hand, it was beaten by the second issues of Batwoman and Deathstroke.
Inglorious X-Force continues to be a Dead Series Walking.
Watch the Ruscico Aleksandr Ptushko films, not the butchered for American release versions.
*climbs down off his soapbox*
I’m mildly curious if they will be encountering the Shadow King at a different time when he was still in Amahl Farouk’s body and when they’ll be encountering Lourdes Chantel.
Michael-I don’t think people exaggerate that Marvel was doing poorly under Harras. The fact was that Marvel had filed for bankruptcy. No one disputes that Marvel had begun to turn around by the late-‘90s, going with strong writers over the flash of the hot artists (who had all jumped ship first chance they got) and saving money by using editors as scripters during the early-‘90s. It was the higher-ups as Marvel who has seen the comic book market boom explode who were concerned about the reality that comics were bleeding readers who wanted to see the sales numbers going back up to where they had been prior to the market going bust. Of course, the majority of those sales were from speculators who expected that any comic book was going to be worth thousands of dollars in the future, and they had come to realize that this was outright stupidity. Without the speculators buying multiple copies of almost every comic, the sales from earlier in the ‘90s were never coming back. Marvel execs were desperate, so they wanted names who would shake up the industry. Jemas was an outsider who promised the Marvel higher-ups that he could make Marvel Comics “mainstream”, appealing them to casual readers instead of just us “comic book nerds”. Quesada was Jemas’ right-hand man who actually had experience in the industry (as pointed out, Quesada had a skill for pairing up quality talent, something Jemas probably had no idea about). It’s more about the perception that the higher-ups had about Marvel in the late-‘90s, and it did turn around business for Marvel, as even though those Boom Period numbers never came back, Marvel was able to overtake DC in market share again after Quesada took over.
Late ‘90s Marvel was a mess- the X- and Spider-books were in a serious downturn; Hulk, DD, Cap, & FF weren’t doing so hot; Punisher and Ghost Rider, two recent cash cows, were canceled; publishing initiatives and gimmicks like Marvel Tsunami (I might have the name wrong- the line w/ solo Mystique & Emma Frost comics) didn’t catch on… After the bankruptcy and failures, I get why Marvel went with outsiders.
Jemas and Quesada fumbled the ball after a few years, but the initial Ultimate books, Marvel Knights, New X-Men & X-Force/X-Statix, JMS on Spider-Man, the rise of Brian Michael Bendis, and more made Marvel’s output exciting and fresh at the time. I don’t think any of the other editors/EICs could have done what J&Q accomplished.
Too bad they couldn’t sustain the quality of the comics, and that they published some of the worst comics in Marvel’s history soon after.
Harras was also EIC during the period when Marvel was either verging on insolvent or actually in Chapter 11 bankruptcy – he had little choice but to focus on short term sales.
“what’s all this stuff about how if you die in Graymatter Lane then you die in real life? Wouldn’t that be obvious?”
Unless after multiple incidents they started figuring people weren’t properly deprogrammed from Krakoa yet.
@Chris V- To be clear, Marvel’s numbers in the late 90s weren’t just low compared to the boom period. In 1982, Amazing Spider-Man sold an average of 240,683 issues. In 2000, Amazing Spider-Man sold an average of 113,685 issues. Marvel really DID lose the majority of their early 80s readership and it never did come back.
Regarding DC overtaking Marvel in market share under Harras- WHY did this happen? As I understand it, under Harras Marvel was consistently outselling DC in the top 10, the top 25, and the top 50 but DC beat Marvel in market share. I thought the answer was that DC was simply selling more books per month- if Marvel put out 40 titles a month and DC put out 80 titles per month, then the average Marvel would have to sell twice as much as the average DC book for Marvel to beat DC But this website claims that it was due to DC’s “early and aggressive adoption of graphic novels and trade paperbacks.”:
https://www.comichron.com/vitalstatistics/marketsharesyearly.html
Again, I’m not disputing that things were bad during the Harras years. But since Marvel’s top titles were still outselling DC’s top titles, the problems were fixable. And again, Quesada did introduce projects like the original Ultimate Universe which sold well. And he did dramatically increase Marvel’s market share.
But, for example, we have Mark Millar claiming that the Avengers were considered a “dead franchise” before Ultimates. The Avengers often outsold Spider-Man, Batman and Superman. Were they all “dead franchises”?
“publishing initiatives and gimmicks like Marvel Tsunami (I might have the name wrong- the line w/ solo Mystique & Emma Frost comics) didn’t catch on”
Huh? Mystique and Emma got their solos in 2003.
Ok, I found this on Breevort’s blog about the sales in 1998 from 2021:
https://tombrevoort.com/2021/05/08/blah-blah-blog-the-year-that-was-1998/
“What’s interesting about looking at these figures from this vantage point is just how similar they are to the numbers of today. We’ve all heard tell that the marketplace has turned around, and that things are better now than they were in the late 90s. And that’s certainly true from a stability standpoint. But these sales figures mirror the sorts of units we’re doing today pretty accurately–in fact, they may be marginally better.
Of course, the big difference between now and then are the additional revenue streams that have opened up. When these numbers were catalogued, Marvel had virtually no collections program to speak of, whereas now TPBs and Hardcovers are a standard part of our publishing plan.”
So it looks like the major improvement Quesada made to help Marvel catch up to DC was to develop a good collection program.
@Mike Loughlin- “Cap, & FF weren’t doing so hot”
Late ’90s Cap was Mark Waid. It usually sold in the top 20. Late ’90s FF was Chris Claremont. It also usually sold in the top 20. I’m not disputing the FF series suffered from Claremont’s … tendencies. But both were doing much better, relatively speaking, than the late Gruenwald and late DeFalco runs in 1995.
@Michael: re Marvel Tsunami- oops, you’re right, for some reason my brain told me that was a late-‘90s initiative rather than early-‘00s. Substitute those books for Maverick, Slingers, and late-‘90s Alpha Flight in my rant.
Cap & FF dropped over 40,000+ copies ordered in a year. They were still top 20, but were falling. A lot of other titles were, sure, but some (JLA for example) held their numbers better than Cap & FF.
I was surprised to see Busiek’ & Perez’s Avengers outselling Smith’ & Quesada’s DD. Not because of quality- that Avengers run was really good- but because the MK DD series was such a “hot” book. Maybe the lateness and story issues in the latter series combined to take some of the bloom off that rose.
I got the feeling that when Quesda’s run was over, Brevoort felt it was his turn in the EiC chair. He had been with the company a long time, shepherded some big series (ie New Avengers in particular) and was well-known in the fan press.
Being passed over for Axel Alonso would have stung, but then having C.B. replace Alonso must have sent the message that Marvel had no interest in promoting Brevoort farther.
He’s always struck me as a kind of old-time fanboy who has become part of the machine he once loved, and now finds no joy in his work but doesn’t know how to do anything else. I appreciate that he will talk shop on his blog, and that he’s candid with fans, but his editorial voice seems to have gotten stuck on “well, actually …” explainer setting rather than trying to get fans excited, recruit unexpected talent or attract new audiences.
Actually Marvel editorial sorely lacks a Stan Lee kind of hype man. I thought both Quesada and Jemas were pretty good at this – even when you didn’t agree with them, you could see they were selling it as hard as they could. Guys like Alonso and even Jordan White could make a line of books sound like something interesting, even if the execution was off in the long run. That meta level of pr / storytelling is not something Marvel is doing well at the moment.
Brevoort isn’t the only Avengers editor to be passed over for promotion to Editor-In-Chief. The same thing happened to Mark Gruenwald. He was seen as the successor to Tom DeFalco for years but when DeFalco was fired, Marvel abolished the position of Editor-in-Chief for a year and instead installed 5 mini-Editors-in-Chief, including Gruenwald and Bob Harras. Then, a year later, Marvel went back to having one Editor-in-Chief, but it was Harras, not Gruenwald. To make matters worse. most of his books were taken away with him. He was one of the most experienced editors at Marvel and all he was left with was Silver Surfer, Journey into Mystery and Uncanny Origins. He passed away a few months later at the age of 43. It seems like the position of Avengers editor is cursed.
I didn’t know that about Gruenwald. Sad to hear that he passed away so young, apparently of a heart attack.
I’d love for someone to tell me something nice about Bob Harras, who seems to have a part in every unpleasant story I hear about Marvel in the 800s and 90s. I don’t love how the X-books changed while he was editor, but he must have done something right at some point? Or was he really not a great guy?
@Aro- Well it was Harras’s idea to give Erik Josten growing powers.
@Aro: I don’t know much about Harras, but he was the editor on X-Men from the late ‘&0s until his stint as EIC. The X-books sold like crazy during his time on them, regardless of quality. Gimmicks like Age of Apocalypse worked, spin-offs like Generation X were successful, artists like Joe Mad became big names, etc. I can see why Marvel went with him, even though I’m not a fan.