The X-Axis – 6 May 2026
X-MEN #29. (Annotations here.) Part 4 of “Danger Room”, and naturally it’s the turning point where the X-Men start fighting back. On the whole, I prefer this book when it’s doing shorter stories – this arc has most in common with the 3K attack on the Factory in issues #14-18, which also felt like it dragged on a bit. Five issues for what in plot terms is an extended fight seems a bit much. But there’s still plenty to like in here – Jed MacKay picks up the Psylocke/Greycrow relationship well, and Netho Diaz does a lovely splash page of the laser being bent around the Marauder. Quentin and Idie screwing up the X-Men’s relationship with the town because they can’t resist walking into a trap even when it’s been pointed out to them is a nice bit too. But I’m not sure Beyond themselves are interesting enough to merit five issues of this.
STORM: EARTH’S MIGHTIEST MUTANT #4. (Annotations here.) Well, this is as berserk as ever. But for the life of me I don’t see how this is going to get to any sort of satisfying resolution with one issue to go. The actual invasion of Earth hasn’t happened yet, and much of the issue is devoted to Bogey negotiating with Hela to even try to be in a position to make the invasion happen. I’m also completely lost about who she’s supposed to be working for – wasn’t the plot that she was trying to free Susanoo? Isn’t he a thunder god? So why is she now saying that her people are older than the gods? Meanwhile, Storm seems to have been dragged away from the main storyline entirely by a weird meta subplot – or to be fair, perhaps that’s the point, and the whole idea is to find a solution that bodyswerves the apparent plot even happening. But… is that interesting? Is it a Storm story, really? Ostensibly the big event in this issue is meant to be the appearance of Storm’s daughter, but as it turns out to be just another alternate reality character who barely interacts with Storm before sending her home, I’m genuinely baffled as to why Ayodele thinks this is a big deal – at least in the story as published, as opposed to however many issues this was meant to take in his original pitch. It does have some very good art, and it would be no bad thing if more Marvel books swung for the fences like this, but it’s ultimately a bit of a mess.
CYCLOPS #4. By Alex Paknadel, Rogê Antônio, Fer Sifuentes-Sujo & Joe Caramagna. Well, it’s the issue where Cyclops gets to take out the Reavers with his eyes shut, in preparation for fighting Pierce himself next issue. If I’m being honest, this is also a bit longer than it needs to be – five issues seems to be Marvel’s current standard for a miniseries, and it feels like four issues would have done the job perfectly well. But no matter, because you buy this book to see Cyclops do his hyper-competent thing, and that’s absolutely what you get. By modern standards, it’s using the space to decompress a bit. There is a nice idea in here that Cyclops is maybe a little bit more like Wolverine than he likes to let on, and that he takes as much pleasure in decimating the bad guys in his own ways, even if he rationalises it to himself as professional pride in a necessary job. The Reavers get a bit of personality as bozos who are regretting their life choices, and Pierce treating them as the latest in an endless stream of cannon fodder works for me – sure, he wasn’t so cavalier about most of the Australian Reavers, but they were basically competent professionals in a way that these freaks certainly aren’t. And there was a hint of this sort of thing even there. Five issues still feels a bit long to me, but it’ll read well as a collection.
JUBILEE: DEADLY REUNION #1. By Gene Luen Yang, Michael YG, Yen Nitro & Joe Caramagna. This is a Marvel Voices one-shot, but it’s Jubilee, so it counts as an X-book for our purposes. Still, it’s also meant to be commemorating Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, so naturally it has to lean into that. That means we get a story about Jubilee’s family. Her immediate family were killed off before she even debuted, but there’s always the cyborg aunt that Robert Kirkman created for her solo series. I never much liked that character – I don’t think it helps Jubilee’s character to make her part of a wider family of oddballs and for most purposes it was a wise choice to sweep Aunt Hope under the carpet. But given the remit it makes sense to use her here, and besides, Yang’s main focus is on a rather more measured character, Jubilee’s cousin Eason, who’s an agent of the Hong Kong authorities. Hope is missing, so we get a pretty solid odd-couple story of Jubilee being dragged into helping this guy, and feeling uncomfortable about the trail leading her into Chinese places that she no longer feels connected to, even though she feels she should. Michael YG’s art is rather pretty – his Jubilee seems a bit tall to me, but he draws good kids, which a lot of artists seem to struggle with. One of the better Marvel Voices books I’ve seen in a while – it would have made a perfectly respectable Uncanny annual.
I think Chris V’s reasoning for Xuan makes more sense that what Ayala came up with, especially with Forge right there to make an equally convincing counterargument.
I can’t believe that every disabled person would elect to stay that way if given the choice. But I’m not in the disabled community, so what do I know?
Also, I completely forgot how Xuan lost her leg in the first place. I thought it was in Limbo, but losing it to Hodge is even worse.
Poor Xuan. First the Shadow King and then losing her leg. She’s the member of the team who always loses control of her body, I guess. Sort of perfect given her powers, but so traumatic.
I’m not saying it was thought about, but Angel makes sense – when he got his metal wings back in Kyle&Yost’s X-Force, the reasoning was that Apocalypse didn’t simply graft metal wings onto his back. He re-wrote his DNA to grow the technoorganic wings. So when he got the feathered ones back in the… late 90s? They were still technoorganic, masquarading as organic.
Would that still apply after his arc in Uncanny X-Force, though?
In any case, both X-Corp and the most recent X-Factor show (in IMO contradictory ways) that current Warren considers the metal wings a weapon in his arsenal and freely chooses to invoke them when he wants to. X-Corp had him changing forms quite freely, apparently by simply wishing to.
Come to think of it- Sinister’s current plan in Inglorious X-Force hinges on Warren still having the Death Seed in him. But he’s died and been resurrected by the Five since then. Did the Five somehow put the Death Seed back in him when they resurrected him?
The Ultimates 3 was an absolute disaster for the Ultimate line. Just so many bad decisions which doomed it.
I’d dropped off Ultimate X-Men and FF around 2005-06 but loved and stuck with Ultimates and Spider-Man. Ultimates 3 and Ultimatum just killed my interest in that line.
I came back with the first of that Millar Ultimate Avengers (which wasn’t as good as his earlier stuff) and the Hickman book but dropped that very quickly too.
@ThomH
My No-Prize Theory head canon is that both Xuan’s left leg and Forge’s right leg * are at this point in time actually techno-organic just like Cable’s own left arm
* I appreciate the serendipity that Forge and Karma complement and contract each other thematically : they’re demographic opposites , he’s an older male Native American , she’s a younger female Asian American migrant , they have both cyborgs legs on opposite sides of their bodies , but they’re both X-gene mutants , they’re both POC , maybe they’re both somewhat BI-curious (either Hickman or Percy or both tried to do it to Forge in the Krakoan Era when he was arguably homoerotically flirting with Henry, and despite Karma being supposedly a self-proclaimed “pure” lesbian , she was Warren’s girlfriend* in the OG AoA) , and they both have their origins intimately connected * to the 20th Century USA vs Vietnam War (they’re both survivors , he’s a veteran , she’s a refugee)
*then again he is canonically the type of WASP prettyboy who is physically attractive to everybody, and Xuan also apparently has a fetish for angels , since her most recent girlfriend was a Galuda, an angel-type mutant from the Philippines
** even if the sliding timescale retcons it to Mark Waid’s Sian-Cong Civil War , they’d still both connected to the same SouthEast Asia international conflict
Ultimatum was bad but as guy who loves meta text I have to give it points for doing a story where Magneto literally breaks the Ultimate universe with a hammer.
By the way, ya’ll got Midnight way wrong. Apparently it’s a horror vesion of Fantastic Four, Spider-Man and X-Men.
X-Men vs. vampires, because it worked so well last time.
Yeah, the Midnight X-Men will feature mutants vs. vampires and be written by … John Hickman. Nobody thought this was how Hickman might return to the X-Men.
The Midnight Spider-Man will be written by Phillip Kennedy Johnson and will feature a Peter Parker transformed into a spider hybrid by Oscorp. (What is it about Johnson and monstrous versions of Spider-Man?. The Infernal Hulk Free Comic Book Day story also featured a monstrous version of Spider-Man.)
The Fantastic Four will be written by Percy.
So it looks like this is Marvel’s equivalent of the Absolute line.
I guess this is why the Ultimate line was cancelled early- no one wanted to have two alternate universes featuring Spider-Man and X-Men running at the same time.
I still feel like the perception that this is MArvel’s Absolute line is coming more from Bleeding Cool and fan chatter than Marvel itself. This feels more like Marvel having books out for Halloween like they’ve always done.
I can confidently say that the Midnight line as described holds very little interest for me.
I’m already weary of Kennedy’s take on the Hulk, and just as tired of Percy’s approach to material, so if we can just cordon them off in their own world, all the better.
The only one which sounds tempting is Hickman’s X-Men but he can be a little… uneven at times and only time will tell if this is one of his good ideas or bad ideas. (My overall impression of Hickman is that his writing is emotionally dry much of the time–reserved, lacking zest, kind of intellectually detached. How will this play to X-Vampires? Who knows.)
These are all creators who Marvel has chosen to support and promote, so hopefully this will be successful and will attract an appropriate audience, even if it’s not me.
Maybe, just maybe, once these three series launch, Marvel will take some actual chances with the concept.
Daredevil, only even more literal and tied into demons and the arcane.
Iron Man, only exploring the conflict of man vs machine when you don’t know where the boundaries are anymore.
Power Pack, but with alien horror instead of child wish fulfillment.
Eh, I’m not a horror person. But someone has gotta have new and interesting ideas.
I didn’t realise I wanted a picture of Alex Power with a little seahorse alien bursting from his chest, but here we are.
Ryan North did a great Iron Man horror story along those lines with his Darkhold: Iron Man book back in 2021 or so. I’d love to see him revisit that idea, or something like it.
I’m disabled and I would absolutely choose not to be if it’s an option. Shit sucks.
OTOH, Marvel has done pretty poorly with disability representation and depiction in the past, so I want them to do better. Part of that is not just curing people willy nilly (Xavier is the big one ofc) as while the decision is relatable the character no longer is, because that’s not an option IRL
Jubilee and Wolverine will be starring in a five issue limited series called the Tomb of Apocalypse starting in August. It seems like Jubilee will be the center of the series. The idea is that a device from Mars lands near Haven House as part of a scheme by Apocalypse. Rictor and Shatterstar will appear.
Also in August, X-Men 35-36 will be the prelude to DNX. It turns out Magneto’s mysterious illness has a connection to the X-Virus and the Chairman needs Magneto to complete his version of the X-Virus.
@Rei,
Well , neither is resurrection , but the popular mainstays already have a revolving-door to the afterlife , so much more often than not , the general audience doesn’t prioritize the “relatability” of disability , in fact arguably , making a character willfully choose to remain handicapped as the it status quo (unless they were already from birth or from their formative youth) makes them un-relatable , as psychologically and sociologically , the average human anywhere and anywhen would NOT and never miss the chance and opportunity to return and to revert to be fully-abled if such was their original condition before whatever befell caused them to become otherwise (I.e, in DC, Barbara Gordon choosing to stay as a wheelchair-bound invalid in a universe where both science and sorcery is advanced enough that people can literally come back from being physically dead was just too stupid [unless she developed mental dysphoria] to suspend disbelief that their own editorial ended it a decade and a half ago beginning with The New 52 and continuing in all their Earth-One incarnations since then)