The X-Axis – 22 April 2026
WOLVERINE #19. (Annotations here.) The Adamantine storyline, which has been going since issue #1, seems to be building to some sort of a conclusion. I certainly hope it is, because at this point it’s taxing my patience. When it started, I figured that Saladin Ahmed was doing something about how adamantium was a human imitation of the mythical adamantine, and perhaps some kind of Tower of Babel angle, which felt like it might work. But by this point we’re being told that the Adamantine is “the very idea of the Earth’s metal made alive and aware”, which has some sort of objection to “man’s creation, adamantium, which it calls false metal”. And, erm… what? What does any of that mean, and more importantly, what is any of it about?
What even is “the very idea of the Earth’s metal”? Metal as a naturally occurring phenomenon? Which is… what, ore? Meteorites? But it can’t be that, because the adamantine keeps going on about how it was used to forge weapons in the past – there’s meant to be some angle where this personification of weaponry has discovered from seeing Wolverine that a weapon can be self-animating. So the Adamantine is about war and weapons, then? But that’s not the same thing as metal. If the Adamantine is meant to personify “metal”, why is it so interested specifically in war? Why not farming tools and jewellery? And if it’s okay with metal as forged by humans, what’s its problem with adamantium? If the objection is simply that it’s a man-made metal, what makes adamantium different from steel? It just doesn’t hold together, either in terms of plot logic or in terms of theme. Again, what’s this story supposed to be about?
It does have some decent art, although the closing sequence with Wolverine’s claws is extremely confusing (and we’ve gone back and forth with bone claws enough in the past that breaking his claws barely registers as a big deal, at this point). This is losing me.
CYCLOPS #3. By Alex Paknadel, Rogê Antônio, Fer Sifuentes-Sujo & Joe Caramagna. Comfortably the best X-book of the week. There’s nothing particularly new about a story where Cyclops is on his own and has to get by without his visor and without a team to lead, but it’s a fun idea to do every few years. Once the miniseries has got over the initial plot contrivance of Scott simply stumbling onto the newest incarnation of the Reavers, it gets a lot of mileage out of pairing Scott with Mei, a mutant who was too young to make it to Krakoa and isn’t particularly impressed by Scott as a representative of the older generation who, as she sees it, managed to screw up paradise before she got her turn. The squabbling among the various Reavers gives them more dimensions than just being the usual anti-mutant lunatics, even if it does have the side effeect of making Blitz Tempo look practically reasonable (because she spends most of her time dealing with her deranged colleague). And Antônio’s art is bold and energetic. I like Paknadel’s take on Scott, as well – the rookie Reavers expect him to play by the superhero rules, and he simply doesn’t care about them any more. It’s just useful when people think he does.
ROGUE #4. By Erica Schultz, Jim Towe, Espen Grundetjern & Ariana Maher. This is kind of okay, and the art has a nice clean feel to it. Jim Towe does bring an unusual amount of grace to basic flying, as if it wasn’t just something we should take for granted. I appreciate that. The basic story, though, seems to be resolving to the fact that years ago, Rogue used her powers on Sabretooth, went made, and mutilated a guy called John Stelton. For whatever reason, her memories of the incident have been blocked out, and the unfortunate victim is understandably terrified of her. That’s fair enough but it feels like the story has had to really drag things out to get this to five issues, with a lot of busywork in terms of drip feeding the history, and (in this issue) a rather clumsy subplot about an initially sceptical reporter who gets won round. And “Rogue needs to atone for something she did in the Brotherhood” doesn’t feel like that productive an angle to explore, at the end of the day – wasn’t it a major focus of her character for years already, with Carol Danvers? You could argue that this is worse, since she scarred and mutilated John for life… but I think that’s difficult to pull off when Carol is so much more established as a character. Besides, where does it actually go, beyond having Rogue re-learn a lesson about having to atone for her past? It’s okay, but I’m not sold.
Re: Wolverine having lost his claws before- according to the solicits the problem will be that a villain steals Wolverine’s healing factor and he might not be able to regrow them. If that’s where Ahmed is going with this, then it would have worked better if Wolverine had noticed that his healing factor wasn’t working right this issue.
Re: Cyclops 3:
I’m not liking that the Red Triangle Protocol helps to protect against ordinary mental health problems like panic attacks as well as telepathy. It can’t be that effective considering all the mental health problems the X-Men have had over the years.
It’s ridiculous that Scott has “wound-sealant spray” in his belt but not an extra pair of glasses or an extra visor. I realize that Paknadel is thinking of the extended arc in X-Men 145-150 where Scott loses his glasses but that worked because Scott didn’t have any superhero stuff on his person. Here we have to accept that Scott had the foresight to include “wound-sealant spray” in his belt (which he’s never used before on panel) but lacked the foresight to include an extra pair of glasses.
I’m not sure if I buy the idea that Scott can’t use his power against the Reaver without bringing the mountain down and endangering Mei. It’s especially odd since the Reaver implies that this wouldn’t be a problem if Scott had his glasses. We’ve seen Scott exhibit considerable control when he takes off his glasses. In X-Factor 13, he takes off his glasses and uses his powers to destroy a lock without damaging the door and then asks if anyone is in the house. In Uncanny X-Men 144, he takes off his glasses and uses his powers to blast a pool ball without damaging the table. So why does Scott have more control when he takes off his glasses then when he loses his glasses and opens his eyes? Maybe the idea is that when he has his glasses on, he can view the surrounding environment and guesstimate how durable his target is but he can’t do that if he can’t see?
Re: Rogue 4- Am I the only one who was initially confused when the news helicopter following Rogue lost control and started to fall and Rogue apologized? I think the idea is that the helicopter was caught in Rogue’s backdraft but it wasn’t clear.
In other news, Leech, Marrow, Pyro and Erg will be appearing in Infernal Hulk 7 next month as well as all three teams of X-Men.
As I predicted, Schultz simply isn’t a skilled enough writer to have more than one layer in a twist. The whole “reveal” of Rogue’s storyline was literally the single most obvious conclusion anyone could’ve reached.
“This is losing me.”
This may be the hallmark quote of almost any reader of a Saladin Ahmed book. The guy has been a regular writer for Marvel for about 9 years now and this is only his second run of anything which has lasted beyond a year and a half. He was the last writer Ms. Marvel ever had as the star of an ongoing title and she has never had one since (most likely due to losing heaps of readers by resetting her family dynamic with an alien mind zap and then rerunning Spider-Man’s black costume saga, complete with a Venom proxy, Stormranger). His run on Daredevil got the book canned in under a year. And now his run on Wolverine was routinely outsold by Magik.
He may be the Ted McGinley of comics. Maybe not the worst person ever but is clearly a project killer. Miles Morales: Spider-Man is the only exception (his run ran over 40 issues, and so did the next volume), but a failure to kill a Spider-book is more a sign of brand strength. Uwe Boll couldn’t kill a Spider-book.
Knowing Marvel’s logic, Ahmed may be the one who writes Avengers once Avengers: Armageddon (or, One World Under Red Hulk) is done.
FYI, X-Books editor Darren Shan was among those axed during Disney’s new round of layoffs under their new CEO. And Tom Brevoort literally refers to himself as “Conductor of X” in the monthly editorial column. Nick “I Will Never Remarry The Parkers” Lowe also survived.
Oh, and I am sure it is just a coincidence that Wolverine is going thru another “bone claw/shattered claw” plot when, via teaser art and where the last season ended, this summer’s second season of X-Men ’97 is supposed to also adapt that subplot (complete with a Pirate Mask design). No corporate synergy here. No Droids in this car.
Ahmed got quite a bit of hype when he first started writing comics (Black Bolt, Exiles), and it seems that early hype stayed with him at Marvel without considering if he was still getting that critical acclaim after Miles Morales. He can write…his creator owned Abbott series is really quite good.
Man, was there anyone with fond nostalgia for the Noseless Dogverine era? That seemed like the “jumps the shark” moment for Wolverine.
I feel bad for wanting to like Saladin Ahmed’s work more than I actually do. I still place him above Benjamin Percy, Stephanie Phillips, and Matthew Rosenberg, but he’s kind of on the “adequately okay” level. I wouldn’t avoid him if he was doing something I like, but I wouldn’t necessarily pick anything up on his name alone.
This Wolverine run is spinning its wheels and I don’t know if “loses claws and healing factor” will do much to revive it. It depends on how Logan copes with these changes, I suppose.
The Rogue story still annoys me for how flippantly it violates Constrictor continuity. I know, I’m one of maybe five readers who care about that.
Ahmed’s Daredevil was cancelled after two years, not “in under a year.”
Though apparently in that two years, the series shed a ton of readers, so your point still stands, of course.
In regard to Ms Marvel, I didn’t like Ahmed’s take on the character at all, nor Spider-Man nor Wolverine, but I don’t think it’s fair to put her entire demise at his feet. Ms Marvel faced two major problems that I can see.
Willow Wilson was so good with the character, for so long, from the start, that it would be hard for anyone to follow. Yes she was in several team books, but I think they were at least in part carried by her solo success.
Secondly, part of Ms Marvel’s appeal was she a fangirl who got to meet all her heroes, be impressed by them, and impress them in turn, and that was something a comics fan could latch onto. But that also gave the character a use by date. Eventually she was going to become part of the establishment. Can a girl who was an Avenger and has teamed up with every A lister at least once still be convincingly impressed with other heroes?
It probably also didn’t help that she was an Inhuman and tied to Marvel’s misguided attempt to put Inhumans in place of mutants in the comics lore, however loosely.
Has Saladin Ahmed ever written anything that was from beginning to end actually good? His Daredevil run was the worst since Andrew Diggle. Maybe even DG Chichester. There has to be a reason he keeps getting work
Abbott.
Probably the same reason as Benjamin Percy keeps getting projects even though he can’t write. Ahmed won a Locus Award for his first published prose novel (a trilogy which never saw any further novels, which must be the reason he caught the attention of the comic industry). Percy got a lot of praise for his published novel with hyperbolic claims of his “literary horror fiction”, from reviewers who had obviously never read any horror fiction outside Stephen King. At least Ahmed can write. Has Percy ever written any comics worth reading?
Any guesses what the mcguffin metal is in Cyclops? In one early panel a small chunk of it is shown as giving off a great deal of light, and with a rainbow tinge. A deposit of Canadian vibranium perhaps?
Bleeding Cool’s Weekly Bestseller List is out. Cyclops 3 came in tenth. Wolverine 19, Rogue 4 and Deadpool 3 didn’t make the list.
Cyclops is doing incredibly well for a limited series.
Wolverine, on the other hand, is doing incredibly badly. It got beaten not only by a Cyclops miniseries but also by Hulk and Captain America. As we’ve discussed in this thread, it’s truly amazing how Ahmed is driving readers away from Wolverine.
The new Deadpool series seems to be a bust. Even starting to find out what happened to Ellie wasn’t enough to get readers back.
@Chris V- Percy’s comics have a mixed SALES record though. His Wolverine sold relatively well. His X-Force last the longest of any X-Force series since the original was cancelled, although it was sometimes low selling. His Punisher seems to be off to a good start. OTOH, his Deadpool/ Wolverine sold horribly. which raises the question of how he got the Deadpool series.
Ahmed on the other hand seems to drive readers away in droves ,which makes one wonder why the editors keep him on.
@Chris V: I’m thinking of it less in terms of “fond nostalgia” for Dogverine and more the possibility that ’97 might offer a better take on that storyline, the way it did with Genosha.
“He may be the Ted McGinley of comics. Maybe not the worst person ever but is clearly a project killer.”
Man, tell me you’re not watching “Shrinking” without telling me you’re not watching “Shrinking.” 😉
@Si- It should also be noted that Ms. Marvel’s sales were VERY low when Ahmed took over. Ms. Marvel 38 came in at 137th and Ms. Marvel 37 came in 146th. It’s likely Ms. Marvel would have been cancelled even if Wilson continued to write it.
I’ll never forgive Saladin Ahmed for ruining AoA Blink by suddenly randomly giving her a full makeover – physique , attitude , ethnicity – from her original state of an obnoxiously stereotypical loud fat 20th-century urban-ghetto African-American woman , which thus absolutely killed off and shut down her mostly-male fanbase tsk tsk tsk
Interesting post here w/r/t sales of Cyclops #3. (Short version: made the top 10 in sales for the week.)
https://bsky.app/profile/alexpaknadel.bsky.social/post/3mkgrdaaehc23
Either the wealth of Wikipedia editors just don’t care, or Ahmed’s six issues are no longer in canon: none of the events of his Exiles series are mention on Blink’s Wikipedia page.
(It’s probably the former – there’s a typo on the page no one’s bothered to fix either – but it strikes me as at least a *little* funny that there’s a non-zero chance the entirety of Blink fandom just noped those six issues out of existence.)
Ahmed wrote a twelve-issue run on Exiles. How could one forget Blink riding a magic carpet on the cover of issue #9?
That run of Exiles deserved better. It was fun, though I suppose cartoon Wolverine might have been a little hard for some readers to take. Sure, Spider-Ham is one thing but…
I’d forgotten all about it until you mentioned it.
@TheOtherMichael,
I apologize 🙁 , though in fairness , it wasnt all bad , in fact , it was even entertaining , but as an AoA Blink fan , it was most egregiously disrespectful , they suddenly replaced her out of left field with a Bizarro-world doppelganger LOL and the worst part was , as with 616-Iceman’s coming-out-of-the-closet as being all-gay all along (the worst thing Bendis ever did to Marvel) , you couldnt complain online at that time about this 180-degree revolting development , in the then-most popular forums (especially those wokescolds at CBR) , and not be cancelled by SJW’s as being “racist” and “misogynist” tsk tsk tsk
Blink’s creator, Scott Lobdell, was the one who revealed Blink as being a native of the Bahamas. Yes, there are white people living in the Bahamas, but it’s population is 90% Black. Lobdell said he named her “Ferguson” after a taxi driver he met while vacationing in the Bahamas. Sure, there was nothing about Blink’s original design that made her look Black, but that may be more on the artist. I think some fans are confused about her last name being Ferguson, but it’s one of the most common surnames in the Bahamas among Black people because the Ferguson name was one of the most prominent slave owners on the island. Many Black slaves took the surname of their former captors after gaining independence, hence a lot of Black Bahamians named Ferguson. Blink was simply coloured pink through her history. Her parents decided they should move to Florida due to concern that she wouldn’t be accepted for being pink by people in the Bahamas though. People in Florida are surely more accepting of weird skinned individuals, right? Hmm…Why would a pink girl be especially ostracized in the Bahamas? Could it because this pink-skinned girl was born to a Black (or maybe mixed race) family?
As far as Iceman, if you think that was the worst thing Bendis ever did to Marvel…
Really, Bobby should have been bi, not gay. It’d be a lot harder for fanboys to argue about if they just made Bobby bi (like every Chris Claremont female character).
@Chris V- What confused the issue was the Apocalypse/ Dracula series by Frank Tieri. In it in 1897 we meet a man named Slade who can teleport and a woman named Ferguson . Both are white and they’re strongly implied to be Blink’s ancestors.
I’ll admit, I forgot about the Bahamas backstory, and never knew about the Apocalypse/Dracula stuff. Even before the films, I had it headcanoned that Blink was of Asian-American decent. (Though that was probably in large part to Joe Mad’s artistic predilections.)
Blink was portrayed as Asian-American in The Gifted too.
And I still say that if Marvel was going to out any of the X-Men, it should have been Colossus.
@Michael,
Well , with Marvel Sliding Timescale , Blink is now currently surely a Gen-Y/Millennial (ironicallu , not Gen-X as she could have been in 1994, when she was introduced), born in the mid-late 1990’s and the 2006 Apocalypse vs Dracula mini-series (now 20 years old IRL) is set at the fixed time period of the 1897 , so assuming Blink was born in 1997* , making her now 29 in Marvel-616 , thats a full century for her bloodline to ethnically become Afro-Black Caribbean**, but her hairstyle (long and straight) , skin color (pale pink / purple) , body type (slim/slender) , facial features bone structure (especially her NOSE) , was of the “lightskin” biracial variety (to use a metaphor, “lots of cream/milk” rather than “pure coffee”) with heavy with exemplified by such celebrities as the Cosby Show’s Denise Huxtable (IRL actress Lisa Bonet), Halle Berry , and Katseye’s Manon. Saladin Ahmed’s Blink had short and curly hair , a plump body , much more darker pink/purple skin color , and facial features bone structure that , well , you know what I mean LOL . Now , I can No-Prize her change in appearance to a perm , weight gain , tanning beds , all of which females do in Marvel-616 (since its based on our RL) but her nose noe looking obviously stereotupically you-know-what instead of what is used to be just cannot be explained by anything except an actual RaceSwap , g*******t , in other words , Saladin Ahmed made AoA Blink the opposite gender reverse-version of Whitewash Jones KEK
* I based this theory on the fact that canonically the Generation X batch is younger than (in oder) 1) the age batch of Scott/Jean/Warren/Emma/Ororo/Kurt , 2) the age batch of Alex/Lorna/Bobby/Remy/Rogue/Betsy, 3) the age batch of the batch of Sam/Berto/Danii/Rahne/Kitty//Yana, and Jonathan Hickman formally said Scotty Summers was in hiis mid-30’s at the time of HOXPOX , so considering that the First Krakoan Age arguablu lasted 3.5 -4.years (taking into consideration the supposed six month gap from Last Days of the XMen to HOXPOX + the interim period in from HOXPOX to the first HellFire Gala , during which X of Swords happened , which was over a month at least + the supposed one year gaps in between the three HellFire Galas + the interim period from the third HellFire Gala to Uncanny Xmen 700 , during which the Fall of X happned , which was at least over a month + the supposed six month gap from Uncanny Xmen 700 to From the Ashes) + the supposed 1 year gap from the last Hellfire Gala to the Hellfire Vigil , then post-Krakow, Scotty must now be in his late 30s to early 40s right now , so is the rest of his age batch , which makes Alex’s age batch be mid 30s to late 30s , Sam’s age batch be early 30s to mid 30s , so Blink’s age batch [Generation X , and supposedly X-Statix as well] be in their late 20s to early 30s [making the OG Academy X age batch be in their mid 20s to late 20s, and Generation Hope age batch be in their early 20s to mid-20s]
** even in the said A vs D LS , it was expressly affirmed that Clan Akkaba were directly descended from (Ancient) Egyptians ethnically-speaking even though the then-leading branch of the Slades were 100% Euro-White British/English in physical appearance , so Blink’s own ancestors were already accustomed to raceswapping LOL
“Plump”? This is “plump”? https://artemusdada.blogspot.com/2018/04/exiles-1-2-saladin-ahmedjavier-rodriguez.html
I dunno, that kind of makes you sound like a, well, you know what I mean LOL.