The X-Axis – 13 May 2026
UNCANNY X-MEN #28. (Annotations here.) Well, I was correct in my assumption that all the weird New Mutants stuff was something to do with Inmate X. I’ve seen some people who were underwhelmed with the real of who Inmate X is, but it works well enough for me. Quite aside from the fact that this storyline looks suspiciously like it was derailed in order to free up Professor X for that Exiles book that seemingly isn’t going to happen, I’d rather have a new character created for this role than try to shoehorn someone like Proteus or Jamie Braddock in. And there’s been at least some set up for the idea that Corinna’s brother was going to be significant down the line. So sure, I can go with that. And it also means that the Greymalkin plot is coming to a head, which is a relief, because it’s tended to be a distraction from the book’s other features. I like the relatively understated nature of the weirdness in the scenarios, as well, which seems more effective than just reaching for the sledgehammer. Vecchio sticks to a relatively clean look with oddity creeping in on the edges, and that works. On the other hand, it’s not at all clear at this point what the two New Mutants scenarios have to do with the Greymalkin plot, so the big question for this arc is whether it all comes together and becomes more than just strangeness.
WOLVERINE #20. (Annotations here.) So this is the end of the Adamantine arc that started back in issue #1. It also parks the New Morlocks / Silver Sable arc, but that one is left sufficiently unresolved that I assume the plan is to come back to it down the line. As for the Adamantine, though… Well, it looks good. Martín Cóccolo gives the Adamantine a nicely mythic feel, and his designs for the alternate Wolverines are quite fun. He’s certainly elevating the book. As for the story, though, the Adamantine arc just doesn’t work. In theory, you’d think there’d be something interesting in the idea of the “real” mythical metal taking offence at its Marvel Universe imitation, but ultimately the Adamantine just turns out to be a raving warrior spirit that wants to fight stuff. Much of the final issue depends on you being willing to accept that things have to play out in a particular way in order for the Adamantine to be defeated, and that the creature who could shatter Wolverine’s claws last issue becomes vulnerable to them once Wolverine’s shown sufficient fighting spirit. But this isn’t interesting. I just don’t see any wider resonance to any of this, and it winds up as a story in which things happen because the plot demands that they happen – both in the normal sense and in-universe. It’s clearly aiming for some sort of grand, epic scale, but doesn’t achieve it, and I have no real idea of what it was even going for beyond the surface level. A bit of a disaster for such a long-running storyline.
MAGIK & COLOSSUS #4. By Ashley Allen, Germán Peralta, Arthur Hesli & Ariana Maher. The ostensible plot here is very much secondary to the book taking its time over Illyana and Piotr’s sibling relationship, but it’s all the better for that, because its the characters who are the real point of interest. We do, finally, establish that there’s a sibling thing going on on the bad guys’ side as well, which explains why the main story is more than just a villain of the week. There’s a slightly odd bit where the story sets up a “quest to retrieve the parts of the bad guy’s soul” routine that would normally fill a whole arc, only for it to be derailed within pages – it feels almost like something that was intended to get another six issues, though that seems unlikely. But it’s the character work that really makes this book, both in writing and art; the idea that Colossus has yet to come to terms with his trauma in the way that Illyana has both makes a good starting point for rebuilding him, and provides a renewed anchor for their relationship. At the same time, Illyana’s patience with his self-pity understandably has its limits, particularly when he keeps trying to drag the conversation in an “if only we had been normal” direction that she would rather not think about. Colossus badly needed some direction, and he’s getting it here.
Re: Magik And Colossus 4- It’s kind of funny that this is the SECOND fake Baba Yaga Peter and Illyana have encountered. I realize that this avoids conflict with the Wiccan series. But are Peter and Illyana ever going to meet the real Baba Yaga?
I’m glad the Inmate X reveal worked better for you than me. This is a case where I wish creators would just shut up about upcoming stories. Gail running around online talking about this story is going to feature some classic X-villains (I guess Sauron and the Sentinels in the alt-U Outliers segment?) AND reveal who Inmate X is immediately creates a link between the two, and she has to know that is going to happen. So then revealing that Inmate X is some rando new character she (very) briefly setup via a couple random asides in earlier issues just feels like a troll (see also: I’m going to have a purple-hued witch named Agatha be behind this mytical threat, but not THAT Agatha). Which is very much in keeping with Gail’s “Cyclops has heat vision” online persona, but her writing is never worse than when that sensibility creeps into her stories.
Meanwhile Vecchio’s works is utter gorgeously and absolutely carrying the story.
Bleeding Cool’s Weekly Bestseller List is out. Uncanny X-Men 28 came in 9th. Wolverine 20 and Magik and Colossus 4 didn’t make the list.
(Notably, Slott’s Spectacular SpIder-Man Brand New Day 1 came in 8th.)
Some more info in how the lesser books sold last month. Rogue 4 came in 59th. Psylocke 4 came in 69th. Storm came in 76th. Inglorious X-Force came in 81st. Overall it seems like Brevoort can’t get anything to sell except Uncanny, Adjectivelss and Wolverine (and we’ll see how United does down the line). Brevoort seems to have abandoned the idea of increasing the number of solo X-books (although we’ll see what will happen with Magik.) And he seems to be abandoning the idea of team books aside from the 3 X-Men books as well.
@Austin Gorton- Gail has claimed that the use of Agatha Timly was supposed to be a tribute to Gerry Conway, who created her and was dying at the time. I’m not sure if I believe her. It’s possible that she thought that people who were paying attention to Agatha’s current status quo would realize that she was under a Magically Binding Oath to obey the Vishanti. Unfortunately. a lot of people were unaware that Agatha had to obey the Vsihanti.
Simone doesn’t want to write about the X-Men, and when she does decide to dabble in the X-mythos in some manner (Greymalkin), it’s to base her plot on that X-Men movie she once saw.
@Michael who was the other fake baba yaga?
Uncanny X-Men #231-A demon from Limbo took on the form of Baba Yaga from Illyana’s memories to torment her.
One things I always appreciate about Paul’s annotations and reviews is that he tends to give the books the benefit of the doubt, rather than assuming a malicious intent on the part of the creators or publisher.
So, does Logan have bone claws on one hand and adamantium claws on the other now? That seems like a pointless bit of business, and I’d be surprised if the other books are consistent about it.
Maybe he’ll start using the bone claws on regular enemies and the adamantium on monsters, like when Geralt switches swords in The Witcher.
A question for Paul: do you get the sense that this whole Inmate X thing might’ve been an Onslaught situation (in other words, that Simone and editorial didn’t necessarily know who it was when it was first introduced)? It seems quite odd to me that Ellis’ brother has Proteus’ *exact* power set…
@TimXP
Even better would be if Wolverine’s bone claws now also manifested his apparent-secondary mutation (from 2018 when he was officially resurrected by one-shot Summer-event villainess Persephone [not the Olympian goddess]) of hot claws , since maybe his natural skeleton of bones conduct heat better than his artificial coating of metal LOL
@Tim XP- His claws haven’t healed yet. According to the solicits, Wolverine will start experiencing problems with his healing factor in future issues.
Ed Brisson did the bone claws in one hand, metal in the other look a few years back with Old Man Logan. OML lost his arm, it grew back without adamantium, so that was his deal for the last year or so before his final death.
Or maybe the heat of his ‘hot claws’ causes his bone claws to shrink, leading to the obvious analogies and unkind comments from Marrow or someone.
In Marvel news, Dan Buckley has announced he will be stepping down in 2027 as Disney has replaced him (Buckley will stay for another year to lead the transition). CB Cebulski will remain his position, now answering to Buckley’s replacement.
Just in time for Marvel to actually outright copy DC’s Absolute Universe. No, the Midnight Universe is not the reinvention of Marvel’s horror characters (as CBR originally speculated, wrongly). While that sounded underwhelming, it also sounds more impressive than the actual content.
Remember when What If? got hardcore in the late-‘90s trying to drum up sales? Well, now it’s apparently Marvel’s best hope, rather than a C-list title about to be cancelled.
You wanted Jonathan Hickman to return to the X-Men? Marvel was listening. You get the Midnight X-Men, featuring the X-Men versus vampires. It worked great the last time Marvel tried it, right? Right?
Also…more Spider-Man and Benjamin Percy messes up the FF. The Midnight FF does sound vaguely like Warren Ellis’ Planetary, but I’m sure Percy will turn in something terrible instead.
Gail Simone has an interview on AIPT today. She explained that it was supposed to be deliberate that Corina Ellis was unqualified to run the Graymalkin Prison. I guess that Ellis came off as a lackluster villain because she was supposed to be one. But the problem is that it just makes the X-Men look incompetent that they couldn’t handle this idiot and let her hold their friends prisoner for so long. To be fair, Gail suggests that the X-Men had some sort of plan but it’s hard to justify them letting her keep their friends prisoner for months.
I also think that Gail didn’t anticipate the current concerns about ICE. Gail said that Corina is terrible but Oscar is much, much worse. Unfortunately, many readers came to see Graymalkin as a stand-in for ICE. I don’t think she meant to suggest that ICE is horrible but criminal illegal aliens are far, far worse.
Which is another problem with Marvel wanting fans to think of mutants as a metaphor for real-world minorities and continually having anti-mutant villains who are motivated by their abuse at the hands of mutants. Because every homophobe obviously had a LGBTQ+ sibling who abused them leading to their deciding that all gay people are a threat to society (or replace with racial minority or immigrant). That’s exactly how it works in the real world and is in no way offensive.
@Michael Unfortunately. a lot of people were unaware that Agatha had to obey the Vsihanti.
Ha! I consider myself fairly well-read and I totally missed that.
To be fair, Gail suggests that the X-Men had some sort of plan but it’s hard to justify them letting her keep their friends prisoner for months.
At this point, I’m really hoping it turns out Monet and the rest of the Trustees are willingly working undercover on the orders of Scott or someone (and Rogue’s group was in on it) in order to keep tabs on Inmate X/Ellis, be on hand to prevent a threat/something. Basically, some twist that at least tries to justify all the various X-teams just letting their friends languish in a bigot’s prison while they oversee plans for a New Orleans-based X-Men Disneyworld.
@Austin Gorton: That would be the logical choice, but, to be fair, I can think of very few characters who’d be less willing to spent months undercover as a prisoner than Monet St. Croix.
Monet did say the only reason she was willing to be a prisoner was because she promised Ellis’ brother that she’d protect her…from him, I guess.
@Chris V- It’s mentioned in the previews for issue 29 that Oscar was different when he was on medication. My guess is that the Krakoan drugs kept him nonviolent but once they were lost the only way to keep him under control was Scurvy’s power. which had the obvious drawback that Scurvy’s power killed him the more he used it.
*StevenKaye
Would that the XBooks’ writing still did humorous cast banter like that, but that USA sitcom-style writing (which was indeed entertaining back in the day) seems to have mostly died out in 2026 in The Big 2 comics with the decline in the popularity of said USA traditional-style sitcoms tsk tsk tsk
@Michael,
That’s a most plausible No-Prize (for better or for worse, The Big 2 fans have much more often than not always been too smart for genuinely unexpected surprises), but if Oscar is indeed essentially Proteus 2.0, then he is an Omega-level mutant just like Proteus, then the obvious question is why didnt the Quiet Council (or at least Charles and Erik/Max)
already take direct action to keep him stable, such as keep him on Krakoa, maybe as an understudy to Proteus himself, as replacement on The Five ? Wasn’t the top problem with The Five that they lacked possible viable replacements* for all of their roster?
*1)Hope Summers had both Synch and Mimic, but they were imperfectly not quite to her level, since they weren’t Phoenix Force-hosts (and Calvin had self-esteem/confidence-issues because of his bipolar condition),
2)Tempus arguably had Tempo (as it was retconned in Steve Orlando’s Marauders that she secretly hid her true Omega-adjacent power level because of trauma over what happened to her one-time-MLF-teammate/maybe-ex-bf Sumo [a Japanese analogue of the Blob who was killed by Cable in his 1990’s Blood and Metal limited series] was due to her manipulation of timelines)
3)Elixir had nobody to be his substitute yet, because while there were already other healers (Triage, Magdalena from the 2000s Soldier X series) who also had the same power level to be able to self-resurrect themselves, none of them had his absolute mastery over life and death (except maybe Arrako’s own “External” White Sword, who of course would never migrate to Krakoa to be part of The Five)
4) Proteus had nobody to be his substitute yet either, because while there were other Omega-level reality warpers (Jim Jaspers, Jaime Braddock, Franklin Richards [now retconned in North’s FF to indeed be a X-gene mutant again]) none of them had his own unique brand of psychic-based reality manipulation, as well as none of them residing on Krakoa (at least not full-time)
5) GoldBalls/Egg had nobody to be his substitute yet too
Funnily enough, the first option who immediately comes to mind as a potential substitute for Egg is: 1993 character find debuting in the Pizza Hut X-Men mini comic, BEACON!
(I’m not sure what it says about me that this is who immediately comes to mind, but so be it.)
He was a (high school? college?) football player with the ability to generate ectoplasmic orbs. They might have drained energy upon physical contact. Or not. For some reason he catches the eye of Mr. Sinister.
Beacon sadly did not make the cut for Generation X or appear anywhere else to my knowledge. These mini comics have never been referenced or otherwise established as canonical; still, there’s nothing that necessarily disqualifies them from such. They were written by Scott Lobdell, for what it’s worth.
Wasn’t one of the aborted HoxPox projects a dedicated limited series for The Five? That would’ve been such a good opportunity to do some world-building and character introspection. These were dimensions in which the era was frustratingly lacking, with so many major characters simply shrugging their shoulders and going, “This is how we live now.”
Hickman wrote that Egg didn’t need a replacement because he could create a stockpile of eggs in reserve, and if Egg died, they’d move his resurrection to the head of the line.
High school football player? Catches the eye of Mr. Sinister? I don’t think there really needs to be any questions.
I wonder what the thought process was that led to a character who could manifest solid gold balls, to Hickman saying “they’re Wolverine eggs”.
My headcanon is the objects just have to be organic, and they could have been hatching Wolverines out of pumpkins if they wanted.
Hickman taking a recent character with a goofy power and adding a reveal that they had a Purpose is the bit that seems straightforward to me.
@Cyke68: To the best of my knowledge, there was no project specifically dedicated to the Five, but Leah Williams had planned to give them more of a spotlight in later arcs of X-Factor.
Just saw that Inglorious X-Force is at least going to issue #7, so we may get another X-book that makes it to at least #10, wowza!
@Michael: The illegal aliens who are murderers are far worse.
The Krakoan drugs were only for homo sapiens, so that can’t be it.
So, is Magneto, as a mutant, worse than Al-Qaeda terrorists? The Jewish people who had been guilty of murder were just as bad as the Nazis, yes? How do “illegal alien” murderers compare to American citizen murderers? Where are the equivalencies here? Do you have a ranking system? Osama Bin Laden-Muslim, foreigner, absolute worst. Timothy McVeigh-white, American, not the absolute worst.
@ChrisV,
Well, I’d like to believe that the regular posters on this X-fandom (and Daredevil fandom) forum can at least collectively agree that the current USA Administration of You-Know-Who is The Worst Ever tsk tsk tsk