X-MEN UNITED #5. (Annotations here.) I have no idea how much weight you can really put on Amazon listing this as issue #5 of 10, but I can’t say it would surprise me, because the book isn’t working at all. The art’s decent enough in this issue – probably as good as we’ve had it so far – but the fundamental concept of Graymatter Lane just doesn’t work, and I’m not entirely convinced that even the people making the comic understand it. It’s taken five issues to clarify that this is in fact just a mental projection and that everyone’s body is meant to be asleep at home – but if that’s the case, how does any of this stuff about Rift teleporting people direct to places on Earth work? This isn’t nitpicking, this is really basic, rudimentary stuff that feels like nobody has thought it through properly. And now we’re doing a psychic projection inside a psychic projection? I can live with things like the new characters being given inexplicable seniority over the long-time students – it doesn’t make any logical sense but that’s just the nature of rotating casts, and at least there’s some sort of gesture towards a reason for Axo to have a role here. And sure, we’ve defined Ransom and Melée as potential alpha figures, so let them take control. Fine.

But the premise of this book requires us to either buy into Graymatter Lane as a cool idea, or accept its USP as the team-up book where characters from different parts of the franchise get to interact. Graymatter Lane is a confusing mess, so that leads the interaction angle. That could work, in an era where the X-books are individually siloed, but they aren’t really interacting in a convincing way. The likes of Cyclops feel off, and the whole thing feels very inconsequential. If the basic format of this book really boils down to “a bunch of random characters go on a mission that doesn’t matter” then that’s Secret Defenders and the X-books doesn’t need one of those.

MOONSTAR #4. By Ashley Allen, Edoardo Audino, Arthur Hesli & Clayton Cowles. Just the one X-book this week, but fortunately I completely missed Moonstar #4 when it came out last week. This is the penultimate chapter – and the Moonstar mini has thus slightly outlived Allen’s parent Magik series, even counting Magik & Colossus as a continuation of that. On a plot level it’s all fairly standard stuff: the villain wants Dani to choose between rescuing her parents and saving the world, and she decides to go for saving the world. Where Ashley Allen adds something to that is with the idea that Dani may be justifying this choice to herself by rationalising that it’s all going to be fine. And there’s the whole odd couple romance angle too. It’s a great looking book – Audino does some lovely zombie animals, and the flashback to Dani as a child makes her look wonderfully uptight. All good stuff, and I’m glad to see Allen is going to be doing more work for the X-books after this.