The X-Axis – 10 June 2026
X-MEN #31. (Annotations here.) This is the first part of a new arc, as the X-Men’s Science Team – in other words, the supporting cast plus Kid Omega – investigate a weird gravitational anomaly in Canada, where chunks of mountain are floating around. In other words, we’re picking up on Schwartzchild, who was kicked off the 3K ship back in issue #24 and has apparently been lying unconscious in a ditch ever since. Given that Schwartzchild ends up as an X-Man in “Age of Revelation”, presumably we’re heading towards a face turn here, if the other 3K victims in the cast will tolerate having him around. While the floating chunks of rock make sure that there’s something to look at here, the bottom line is that this is a character issue for the supporting cast – the only villain is Schwartzchild, and he’s out cold. I like the idea of Beast trying to establish a non-combatant wing of the X-Men, particularly as he’s trying to set himself up in opposition to his counterpart from 3K, and it’s good to see the likes of Ben and Xorn get some development. A solid start to the new arc.
WOLVERINE #21. (Annotations here.) Sort of a downtime issue, with Nightcrawler dragging Wolverine to Waikiki for some relaxation. There’s a random fight with Titania and the Absorbing Man, who happen to be passing, and that’s pretty much it in terms of the issue’s plot. More broadly, it seems we’re doing a storyline where Wolverine’s healing factor isn’t working, and it’s hitting the broader theme of Wolverine bringing trouble with him which is sort of his own fault for rising to the bait. But all this feels quite familiar, and it’s a middling issue in terms of plot. Julius Ohta’s art is the strong spot here – he does give us a nice sense of Wolverine starting to relax, and then getting into self-pity at the end. And his fight scenes are pretty energetic. Overall, it’s fine.
BISHOP #1. By Saladin Ahmed, Mario Santoro, Federico Blee & Travis Lanham. Another month, another miniseries. This time it’s Bishop, a character who hasn’t done much in the post-Krakoa era, in part because of Tom Brevoort’s understandable preference to steer clear of characters with convoluted back stories in the early stages of the relaunch. This issue leans heavily into his back story – it’s a time travel story involving his younger sister Shard, apparently meeting him at a point before her death – and so a fair chunk of it is unavoidably devoted to recapping bits of back story. She’s a character who’s barely been used in years, and using her at least provides a plot reason to explain all this back story. Of course, it also means Bishop’s now dwelling on a character he’s barely mentioned in an age, just in time for her to show up, but that’s comics for you. Not bad as a set-up issue, and Santoro really is quite good at doing younger versions of the characters in flashback.
Looks like X-Men United got the chop. To quote Wendy Williams: “Clap if you care.”
In other X-new this week, Wolverine and Rogue appear in X-Men Armageddon. The idea is that General Ross has taken over Latveria and is using a Moria engine, excuse me, a “What If Machine” that Doom invented to predict his enemies’ actions so he can conquer countries like Symarkia. The United Nations has forbidden the Avengers from intervening but they’re going to do so anyway and Rogue wants the X-Men to stay out because if it goes badly it will be blamed on mutants. Wolverine is going with the Avengers and he’s bringing David Colton, who is now more powerful than Carol Danvers but still unstable- I’m sure this won’t backfire at all.
Of course, Spider-Man wants to stay behind and the other heroes don’t discourage him. Of course- it’s hard to imagine how Peter’s spider-sense will be useful against a device that can predict the future. (In Peter’s defense, Tony seems to figure out how Ross is dong it but it’s not clear if he tells Peter. Still. you’d think he’d say something when Peter decides to stay home.)
Bleeding Cool’s Weekly Bestseller List is out. Avengers: Armageddon came in 2nd. X-Men 31 came in 10th. Wolverine 21 and Bishop 1 didn’t make the list.
I still say that X-Men and Wolverine being beaten by a Black Cat issue is just embarrassing.
(BTW, Daredevil 3 came in 4th with more than twice the sales of X-Men. It’s still early but Stephanie Phillips’s Daredevil seems to be showing signs of being the best-selling run of Daredevil in years. It’s especially odd considering how badly she botched Phoenix.)
@Diana- Yeah, Amazon is listing X-Men United 5 as 5 of 10. Although I’ve heard some people question how definitive that is.
I thought Armageddon #1 was pretty good. It’s a fairly standard Avengers event setup, but that doesn’t have to be a bad thing – people play the hits because it’s what fans like. Interesting to see Namor fitting in with the heroes with no mention of all the awful things he’s done since the last time he was in the Avengers (Avengers West Coast doesn’t count), but I guess they’re giving him a pass since Captain America has been his friend for decades.
I’ve enjoyed the Colten plot in Captain America, but I don’t love the cape. I thought his uniform was fine as a non-flag-colored, more modern version of the classic.
@Michael: I haven’t read X-Men Armageddon, but it sounds like the same machine Doom was using in the Fantastic Four chapters of One World Under Doom.
It does, but that story was very much reusing Sinister’s Moira Engine from “Sins of Sinister”. I thought how strange it was that Marvel was allowing a writer to reuse the exact same concept with a different character and story. Someone like Johnny Storm even pointed out that Sinister was cheating like playing a video game, something that was even explicitly pointed out in the Sinister story about him using stage saves like in a video game. It really ruined that story for me that I saw Gillen use it with the X-Men like only one year earlier.
@John: Not saying that _this_ counts (far from it), but Namor was also with Black Widow, Eddie Brock Carnage, Winter Soldier, X-23 and Clea as the most recent Thunderbolts team – even if the book was shamelessly named “New Avengers”.
@Chris V: I beg to differ about the use of prediction machines. If time travel has been available from several independent sources for decades in the MU, it is logical enough that so can timeline peeking. Particularly since it is similar to a skill that Reed Richards claim to have and that was an important part of the explanation for Civil War.
@Michael: Is it odd that Phoenix is a harder character to write effectively than Daredevil? I will grant that this volume of Daredevil has been turning out far better than expected while Phoenix was really underwhelming and seems to have suffered from – at least – lack of editorial support.
@John: I also enjoyed Avengers Armageddon 1. The story and stakes were clear, the art was good, and the character beats landed for me. It’s definitely a meat-and-potatoes event comic (so far), but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
X-Men 31 is the kind of X-comic I want more of: an oddball assemblage of off-beat characters go on a mission and highjinks ensue. The X-universe is broad enough to include characters of any type in a story. Sticking to a paramilitary team of badasses isn’t always interesting. I’m not a huge fan of Tony Daniel’s art, but it was fine. I hope we get more of Xorn, given his dialogue with Ben. The Xorns haven’t been well-developed, not counting the Morrison Xorn/Magneto character.
@Michael: Claremont wrote the defining run of X-Men, but his other projects are largely hit-or-miss. Steve Gerber wrote at least two of the most celebrated comics of the Bronze Age, but his Captain America wasn’t good. Ann Nocenti’s Daredevil is amazing, but her Catwonan is pretty rough. Stephanie Phillips didn’t write a good Phoenix comic? Well, her Daredevil has been quite enjoyable so far. No comic book writer has a perfect record.
To be fair, Gerber only wrote four issues of Captain America, and the worst part of those stories was an unnecessary ret-con forced upon Gerber by Roy Thomas. If Gerber had an actual run on Captain America without editorial interference, I’m sure Gerber could have turned in something worth reading on Cap similar to the play that Matt Murdoch attends in that Gerber Marvel Two-in-One issue.
@Chris V- Roy Thomas stopped being editor of Captain America with issue 220. Gerber started writing with issue 221. Thomas started the retcon but Gerber finished it. And the problems with Gerber’s retcon were entirely Gerber’s. First, Gerber decided to depict Steve as deciding to become Captain America because of his brother’s death at Peral Harbor. But Steve had always been depicted as becoming Captain America prior to Pearl Harbor, especially in Roy Thomas’s issues. Second, Gerber seemed to be imposing the issues of the 60s on Steve’s background. Gerber established that Steve’s from a middle class background with a father in the State Department who hated that Steve didn’t like girls and was a “socailist., pacifist”. Now let’s ignore the fact that Lee and Kirby implied that Steve grew up poor- when the Red Skulll tells him how he grew up poor, Steve says that his past isn’t pretty either. Making Steve a pacifist who only decided to fight because HIS brother was killed instead of someone who joined up out of sympathy for the Nazi’s victims or society obligation is just a bad idea.
There’s been a lot written about whether or not Gerber was having deadline problems at this point in his life- if he was, that might partially explain why these issues were subpar.
OK, I was mistaken about Thomas being the editor. Still, Thomas created an unneeded ret-con while he was on Cap and that got forced upon Gerber. All I’m saying is that Gerber isn’t the writer that you force a deep-dive on
continuity snd expect it to work well. I’m sure it wasn’t Gerber’s plan to try to piece together Steve Rogers’ boyhood, and if editorial forced that upon Gerber, it was the editor’s fault that what Steve managed to come up with was a mess. I wouldn’t judge Gerber’s Cap on four issues with one of the major stories to be wrap up Thomas’ continuity dredging.
Even with those drawbacks, there was still some potentially interesting moments even on Gerber’s Cap, like his dream about being a boy in the classroom, showing potential for better had his run continued and not been bogged down with Thomas’ leftover plot points.
If Stephanie Phillips turns out to be a good fit for Daredevil, I will surprisedly accept that she finally found a good story/character/editor/whatever and admit that she’s not all underwhelming. But so far, I can’t say I’ve actually loved anything she’s done for Marvel or DC. So far from what I’ve seen, the DD run hasn’t been too bad — even if we get a “Spider-Man teaches Daredevil how to control his superhuman senses” sequence a month after we got “Daredevil teaches Spider-Man how to control his spider-sense” sequence in Amazing.
I like David Colton in Armageddon but I don’t understand why his “I’m not the Sentry/Hyperion/Superman” outfit is all in Super-Adaptoid green instead of patriotic red white and blue, or military camo green, or something else.
Not surprised that X-Men Unlimited seems destined for a quick pruning. Especially when they’re going for a Shadow King story. Makes sense. Do an astral plane/telepathic setting, get the Shadow King.
@Michael: At the end of all of this, I’ll just be happy if all Ross wanted to see what would have happened if he’d invented a finglonger.
If Bleeding Cool is accurate and X-Men United ends with issue 10, I wonder if Brevoort is going to use that as an opportunity to realign the X-titles (again) because DNX and Avengers Armageddon should both be over.
Also, I keep catching myself typing DMX when referencing DNX. X-Men gonna give it to you! 🙂
I know nothing about DNX except that the name makes me think of a push-bike.
In other news, I’m quite enjoying Magik and Colossus. Maybe the key to getting mutant team book characters to work in their own title is to have them team up with someone familiar, so they can bounce off each other. Duo titles rather than solo titles.
Si, The previous volume of magic was an uncredited Moonstar co-lead, X-23 is Laura and Gabby. Storm and Phoenix have not had someone to bounce off and have been more a drag. This applies to other Books as well I would prefer more Quicksilver or the Vision in Wanda books.
The Hulk needs a Rick (Charlie in this current run). Ironman needs Johnny Walker (and I don’t mean US Agent)
@Alastair: Why Quicksilver or Vision instead of Wiccan? Or is he permanently off in space with Hulkling?
Taibek I would like wiccan to and hulking to spend time apart to develop their characters past their often one note relationship. I would like to see them in a couple of separate team books.
But Wiccan is a bit too close to Wanda in power and attitude and I grew up on the other 2 being her most important relationships.
Let’s have a moment of silence for X-Men United okay that was enough.
Armageddon is a book that probably hits harder the fewer comics one has read. I admire the thrift in making an event out of nothing but used bits from other stories, which is as close to becoming invested in the story as I expect to get.
Hearing Phillips’ Daredevil is doing so well is a bit of a surprise. Not because it’s bad, it’s perfectly fine…but so far I don’t see it as more than that.
DNX makes me think of DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) and that would imply DNX stands for “Do Not (buy) X-books”.
I can definitely see Daredevil being an easier character to write a solo book for than Phoenix. Matt Murdock has been a solo character for pretty much all of his creation (excepting that time when the book was “Daredevil and Black Widow” and the other times I am sure people will correct me on). Phoenix was part of teams (that her power level rendered superfluous) and a duo in the Scott and Jean minis. Sure, she had the Bizarre Adventures issue where she fought Attuma solo and also some Classic X-men backup strips, but those are the only ones coming to mind in the nearly 60 years she’s been a character. Add on to it that the series involves her being cosmic and puts her away from any characters that could be recognizable supporting cast, and this goes further away from what people are used to seeing her as.
There may have also been certain things that Stephanie Phillips had been told she needed to do as Phoenix was supposed to be the launchpad for the new Marvel cosmic books, but that didn’t happen. And the other cosmic books had possibly less of an impact than Phoenix.
We all have different tastes, and every writer has different strengths, but Stephanie Phillips work has bewn fairly decent or decently fair EXCEPT while under Brevoort. This doesn’t mean that he is to blane, but the diffetence to me is jaw dropping. I get the sense that writers are not having clear understanding of when and where tie ins will happen which is beyond simply being overly optamistic about how long they can keep sales up.
I am looking forward to what Eve Ewing does next, but X-Men United felt like a premise designed by committee, and didn’t work even in theory, let alone to her strengths. I am glad to see it gone.
@Sam
DNX as DNR is exactly what I see as well.
Wolverine #21 – As Wolverine solos are generally not my thing, it is not a fair reflection of the writer that I am luke warm on the series. This issue was fun, and worked as a palate cleansing bit of fresh air. It didn’t read as a fill in often does, it was just simple done well.
Ayodele had an interview with AIPT today.
He explained that one of the reasons why Storm: Earth’s Mightiest Mutant 5 ended the way it did was because he didn’t know if there was going to be a number 6 when he was writing it. If only there was someone at Marvel whose job it was to supply him with that information. And maybe they could also edit the books.
Armor and Maggot both survived.
Akujin WAS based on Spiral.
Ayodele wanted to bring the Never Queen into the book and have her be disappointed at Eternity’s actions just as Wanda was disappointed at Ororo’s.
Oblivion was supposed to return to fight Storm. And possibly Storm would willingly agree to be his host.
Ayodele explained that he was brought in to turn Storm into a solo hero like Spider-Man or Daredevil or Thor. That’s why he gave her a headquarters, a supporting cast, a rogues gallery, and a Gandalf. This is unintentionally hilarious.
For starters, Marvel solo heroes generally don’t have headquarters like the Fortress of Solitude or the Bat Cave. There’s no Fortress of Lawyering or the Spider Cave. The exception is Dr. Strange’s Sanctum Sanctorum and that serves a purpose. Storm’s ostentatious headquarters just look bizarre.
He also list Galacta as part of Storm’s rogues gallery, which is hilarious since she only appeared in a couple of panels.
He claims Jaden and Maggott are Storm’s supporting cast. Jaden only appeared in 4 issues- I had to Google to make sure I was thinking of the right character. And Maggot just turned into a mess that will probably be ignored.
He also describes Gateway as one of Storm’s Gandalfs. Again, Gateway hardly appeared in the series.
Peter Parker-struggling student working as a photographer to help his aunt keep their house.
Matt Murdoch-lawyer with a best friend, Foggy, and a girlfriend, Karen Page.
Ororo-Travels the omniverse and argues with Eternity.
Thor is a bit different since he is literally a god and spends his time in Asgard with other mythological beings in current continuity.
But:Donald Blake-physician needing a walking stick who worried about dating his nurse, Jane.
Somehow this doesn’t work. One of these examples doesn’t seem relatable.
Sorry, but I just can’t find any way to take Ayodele’s claim that he wanted to write Storm at all seriously – as a solo hero or in any other form.
He clearly wanted to tell some sort of mythological tale with a certain form of deities, and convinced himself that Ororo could be made into a suitable vehicle for that tale – apparently because of something in the “Lifedeath” stories and Xtreme X-Men that he interpreted as a “previously extant link to Eternity”.
By my most charitable view, those are some very unusual and exotic interpretations of who and what Eternity, Ororo and mutancy itself are. He may not fully realize it, but what he wrote is not at all a superhero book, but a (very) high fantasy story that clashes badly with the characters that he forced into it. Storm isn’t even the worst victim; Eternity is distorted beyond any recognition, well outside of its role in the MU.
It may even be that the story is meritorious. But I just can’t give it a try when I am so distracted by the grave mismatches between concepts and actual characters. He would be better off creating his own, non-shared universe and characters. I am at a loss on trying to guess why he does not realize that.
Is there any particular reason why everyone is trying to “go cosmic” with Marvel stories these days? It is really becoming ludicrous. I have still to digest Knull, the G.O.D.S. were essentially aborted before they could take form, and apparently Ayodele feels that Marvel has not quite saturated its cosmic pantheons enough yet somehow.
MacKay also had an interview with AIPT today.
DNX WAS originally supposed to be a crossover between the X-Men and the Avengers. But then MacKay got fired off the Avengers, so it became a crossover between the X-Men and the Fantastic Four. This sounds like a bad idea. A crossover where the X-Men and the Avengers team up to fight the Chairman would have worked because the Chairman has personal connections to most of the Avengers. The Chairman doesn’t have the same relationships with most of the Fantastic Four. It’s not like Johnny Storm was Hank’s best friend.
The only books that will tie into DNX are Fantastic Four and MacKay’s X-Men. Which is annoying, because it means that characters like Bobby, Warren and Logan won’t get to interact with the Chairman.
Doug will be playing a minor role in DNX.
Magneto has a “message from the future written in his very blood”. I guess that means that the warning that Future Beast sent back into the past is responsible for Magneto’s condition.
There’s a surprise guest that people have been asking for appearing in DNX. I guess that means Jean is appearing.
@Chris V -“One of these examples doesn’t seem relatable.” I know. Newspapers just don’t exist in that way anymore. Everyone having cell phone cameras makes his job unbelievable except as a historic period piece.
@Luis Dantas – I think Ayodele makes sense if one views superheroes in an anime genre. Storm as Goku or Sailor Moon just isn’t my cup of tea. I agree that whatever he is writing, it doesn’t resemble anything else in the MU. Not even a matter of continuity mistakes, simply doing doing his own thing with some of the names swapped for Marvel characters. He was certainly given the benefit of fantastic art. The choices (except maybe Akujin?) were not miscommunication with the artist, but deliberate choices. ” I am at a loss on trying to guess why he does not realize that.” – YES! Exactly.
@Sean Whitmore – “…out of nothing but used bits from other stories…” Armageddon was a terrible remit, summarized to everything I don’t want to read. And yet… Chip Zdarsky can write. It was really good. Also not invested, but that is a talent.
@Woodswalked -Stop trying to type with a phone, whatever is trying to be said, it becomes lost with all the typos. “bewn” “blane” “diffetence” “optamistic”
@Wooswalked- The reason many people were pessimistic when Stephanie Philips was announced on Phoenix was because of her work on the Rogue & Gambit series. Gambit comes off as a buffoon, Gambit uncharacteristically endangers an innocent woman to escape from the Black Panther and Rogue enslaving a nonwhite man in the ending is treated like a good thing. It’s possible her problem is with the X-Books in general and not just Brevoort.
There will be a new Gambit limited series this September by Steve Orlando called Gambit:Gone featuring the X-Men of Apocalypse Gambit interacting with the 616 Gambit. It will be spinning out of Loeb’s X-Men of Apocalypse series.
“Gambit: Gone featuring the X-Men of Apocalypse Gambit interacting with the 616 Gambit”
Because the fans demanded it!
@ThomH
What fans ?! LOL
I mean Gambit does have fans of course , which is why he hasn’t been killed off yet despite the widespread perception that a lot of Marvel writers and editors apparently personally hating him for various reasons (most notoriously the infamous Mark Millar which is why MM never personally wrote him into the OG Ultimate XMen back in the day) , but 616 Gambit and AoA Gambit are more or less the exact same character , same personality and everything else , except the former married Rogue (despite nearly losing her to Magneto during Mike Carey’s run) , while the latter is permanently pining for a Rogue who he did lose to Magneto (in fairness , while 616 Magneto is the greyest of grey anti-heroes / anti-villains who more often than not looks like a noticeably middle-aged (30’s onwards) man at the youngest , even after he supposedly got restored to his physical prime , AoA Magneto is the whitest of White hats who for some reason Marvel never bothered to explain , has always looked like he has eternal youth , since he has always been portrayed as being physically the same age as most of the rest of the AoA XMen who are in their 20’s
616 Remy has dragon wings
If there’s a Gambit fan out there pulling strings, it’s got to be Jim Lee.
I still keep thinking about how he somehow shoehorned Gambit into his Superman/Spider-Man story.
Like others here, I am convinced that Ayodele wanted to tell a very specific story that would have worked far better as an independent comic, or tied into a much smaller shared universe, than a Marvel property. And inexplicably, Marvel let him do this under the misguided belief it would catapult Storm into the A-list of female heroes, despite how ill a fit it was. And of course editorial incompetence led to this run being so abruptly and abysmally truncated.
I wish Ayodele the best but really hope he launches a creator-owned book through Image or hooks up with Ghost Machine or Mad Cave or something else which can properly utilize his talents and not force him to slam square pegs into asterisk holes.
Honestly, this just reinforced my belief that virtually none of the X-Men are really suited to hold down solo titles because the whole question behind solo titles is “What do they do on their day off/time away from the team” and with so many of them created to be part of a team… this is why the most consistently successful solo title holders are ones like Wolverine, Cable, Gambit, Deadpool and Bishop who either have “too much free time on their hands” or “elements linking them to the wider Marvel universe” baked into them. (Nate Grey got 75 issues or whatever because he wasn’t part of the X-Men in any way that mattered.)
Everyone else is more suited for “mini that takes them on an adventure before they return to the mansion.”
Giving Storm in particular a fancy flying headquarters, a superhuman supporting cast, and a cosmic mandate was trying way too hard for a character better suited for, I dunno, exploring her complicated ties to both America and Africa, her youth as an orphan pickpocket and young adulthood as a naked weather goddess, and her ties to climatology.
Frankly, apart from those listed above, the X-Men I’d most expect to hold down their own title would include Banshee (mutant spy/police procedurals based on his background), Cecilia Reyes (medical drama treating uniquely mutant emergencies… make her part of a first responder unit, or else mutant ER?) and Dazzler (if we go back to her soap opera/popstar days and maybe do pop culture commentary?)
I agree that Ayodele’s ideas seemed like a poor fit for the book, but I don’t think it was just a case of him trying to jam his own ideas into corporate IP. I believe he’s admitted that he’s a powerscaler, and those fans just love it when their favorite characters accumulate ridiculous feats that they can use to win internet arguments about who could beat Goku. It doesn’t make much sense to me, but so it goes.
The power scaling explanation makes me like the series less actually
@The Other Michael- And that was one of the major problems with Brevoort’s strewardships of the X-books. He decided that in addition to a Wolverine series. there would be a Storm series, a Phoenix series, a Kwannon series, a Magik series, a Laura series, and an Akirhiro series. It he’d just gone with Magik it probably would have worked but Storm, Phoenix and Kwannon aren’t suited to solo series and Laura and Akihiro don’t work as solo series when Logan is alive.
I don’t think that Cecelia Reyes would work as a medical drama though. It’s not easy to make characters work as doctors in the Marvel Universe- when Thor was a doctor, it was at best used as an excuse to encounter a new villain. And Thor’s stint as a doctor was done away with during Simonson’s run.
I think the Cullen Bunn Magneto series from a while back managed to last a decent stretch for the era and was fairly well-received, though that goes back to the point of the X-characters who can successfully carry solo books being the ones who actually seem like they’d regularly be having notable adventures independent of the X-Men.
It’s probably a part of why Magik was the best-received of the last wave of new solo experiments, she’s got connections to the mystical side of the Marvel universe that would feel more at home in a Dr Strange book than the X-Men.
I still think Storm, Phoenix, and Kwannon solo books could be good with the right setups, myself.
I think that the main drawback of the X-characters at the current time is that they have become too huge and unwieldy and acquired far too many ties to a larger shared universe that clashes with their reasons for being. It is no coincidence that we often end up with years-long events with the core concept of the X-Men either insulating themselves in some way, taking part of some form of integration and diplomacy efforts, or entering into significant conflict with other parts of the MU.
Editorial gets blamed a lot for that, but I don’t think there are comfortable, easy answers to this situation.
Mainly because apparently fandom itself is very fractured and can’t agree on what would be a good way forward. Every new take unavoidably involves choosing some number of ongoings and limited series to publish and promote, usually while discontinuing others. That number varies a lot depending on promotional events and other factors, but it is very rarely below four and sometimes reaches about eight.
The Krakoa Era IMO is the editorial equivalent of a binge party gone too far. It just had far too many books, particularly at its trailing end. It made many readers forget much about the actual demands and limitations of the reality of mainstream comics. We are now living through the hangover period.
I think that, again, the most illustrative cases are Storm and Wolverine.
Wolverine has for decades been happily been promoted as being all things for all people at all times, so there is no clear direction for him to follow and no clear reason for readers to trust his stories to provide what they expect. He is the comics equivalent of a veteran internet influencer who is very famous for being famous.
Storm is a far more exotic case. She _has_ been all things for all people at some time or another, but the X-Offices just won’t allow that to actually have any consequences. By rights, going by her actual published history, she ought to be almost as well-connected as Spider-Man and something of a premium supporting cast character. Come to think of it, she ought to have been front and center in some of the more diplomacy-oriented storylines.
But the status quo treatment has been even more inconsistent than Wolverine’s, and she suffers from that far worse because she is more ambitious as a character concept.
At this point we probably have about a half dozen sharply different takes on Storm as a character, and their struggle for dominance is not allowed to become a storyline (as it should). It is usually not even acknowledged clearly on panel.
Heck, by this point the best way forward may even be to reveal that Mister Sinister made a bunch of Storm clones for the lulz of it, taught each to think of herself in a certain specific way, and released them to the wider world so that the larger superhero community would have to deal with the awkward consequences. So the Black Panther Storm is not often the same character that Al Ewing made think of herself as an actual god of some sort, and definitely not whoever Ayodele has been writing about for the last two years. I assume some of the Claremont retroactive continuity series have their own version of Storm as well. We did not have a proper Avengers Storm IMO, but we might as well introduce one now.
The Krakoan Era was the one period of X-history which truly justified having a sprawling line-up of books, as the mutants now had an entirely new society to explore. The problem was that a lot of those books feel very far from the stated aim. They reads too closely as mutant stories Marvel could have published pre-Krakoa, with a very slight twist. X-Corp should have been one of the most important titles to flesh out Krakoa and how it is changing modern society, but instead it was given to Tini Howard, letting her do whatever she wanted, and getting cancelled within six issues.
Still, at least the Krakoa-era wasn’t attempting to publish 18 X-comics at once with basically no direction or purpose to over half the books. “From the Ashes” can only be described as sad and desperate. That was certainly not a correct decision. It was decided that the X-Men comics were very popular and the fans were ready to start buying a lot of random X-books again, but the reality was that the market was happy with about four monthly X-books. The launch of Krakoa was so new and different that it could sustain eight books. Not over ten books, but eight.
I think Cecilia Reyes in a Marvel medical series could work, actually. Have Night Nurse as a contrasting character, give her a supporting cast, lean into the unusual medical conditions and cases possible in the Marvel Universe. Sometime Doctor Strange consults or scrubs in. This might be my refusal to accept Brandon Seifert’s Witch Doctor is gone.
I like cosmic Marvel titles, when executed well. Maybe Marvel just needs to clone Abnett and Lanning.
All of the what-about-this character speculation is moot because there is limited editorial direction for the X-books and what direction there is is usually harmful.
You know, I’d actually like to see a Colossus solo book – or at worst a buddy series with him and Nightcrawler – that gets the character back to his roots. Put him up against some low-rent supervillains and explore the tension between his status as a warrior and his desire to be an artist.
@Luis: That’s also why I think the school is a self-defeating concept at this point. Every few years they introduce another half dozen new X-characters, maybe one or two stick around, and the rest get dredged up as needed.
I mean, when was the last time anyone did anything with Pixie? Or Velocidad? Or Escapade? The end result is more bloat and more aimlessness as these discarded characters start to pile up.
Escapade appeared regularly in the Marvel Unlimited version of Avengers Academy until its cancellation recently… but of course Marvel’s digital-only offerings exist in a weird state where hardly anyone notices or supports them most of the time.
Valocidad and the rest of the Lights, however, are especially tragic for how they’ve been shoved under the rug except to pull out during crowd scenes. Except for Idie, of course. For whatever reason she’s the one chosen out of that batch to be creators’ favorite.
I think maybe the phenomenon of one or two of every batch of new students catching on might be by design or at least acceptable
Create a whole bunch of new characters and see which ones catch on, 20 years later you’ve got a decent chunk of relatively fresh popular characters
Which is kind of how comics have always worked really
Escapade had a longish run in Avengers Academy, Pixie was a supporting character in Way of X, and Velocidad – like so many others – was killed off in Rosenberg’s Uncanny right before Krakoa. He only had one scene, though. Maybe two.