The X-Axis – 15 July 2026
X-MEN #34. (Annotations here.) Another quiet week, then. Next week will be busier, with five books coming out. In the meantime, we have the final part of “Anomaly”, a three-parter which in one sense is all about Schwarzchild, but more as a plot point than a character. He’s unconscious for pretty much the entire thing. The real meat of this issue is Ben Liu having the chance to kill Schwarzchild and being kind-of sort-of talked out of it by Quire. As so often in this book, we’re getting appeals to pure pragmatism rather than moral principle, and that seems like it’s going to come back to bite us; it’s set up as a story where Ben gets to make the right choice, and then loops back to tell us that he really hasn’t. But MacKay also makes good use of Quentin Quire, who’s perhaps the last person you’d want to be giving pep talks about moral responsibility to anyone. Still, there’s a low-key appeal to seeing him stepping into that role in the absence of any authority figures to wind up. Visually, it’s not the most exciting issue – that’s kind of a consequence of the decision to make Schwarzchild’s mindscape a blank slate, I guess. The silent page of Ben’s decision intercut with flashbacks to his experiments stands out as an exception. At any rate, it’s good to see this arc limited to three issues – it feels tighter than the five issue arc that seem to be the standard, even if in this case it may be dictated by the scheduling need to get it finished before DNX starts.
INGLORIOUS X-FORCE #7. (Annotations here.) She’s not technically in the team, but once again this is really Domino’s issue, with Tim Seeley and Michael Sta Maria riffing entertainingly on the idea that, against sufficiently dimwitted opponents, her luck powers will take care of her without her even noticing. It’s all very satisfying and creatively done. The rest of the issue sees Cyclops and Kid Omega drop by at X-Force’s headquarters, in order to gently probe what the hell Cable is up to. It’s a nice enough idea, though Kid Omega feels out of character here to me – he’s a brat, but this more malicious take on the character feels a good few years out of date to me. As for the imprisoned Mutant Liberation Front members, most of them don’t get much to do in this story, but as a group they’re growing on me. They’re quite nicely pitched as a bunch of amateurs who are further out of their depth than they realise, but not so inept as to be a joke. It allows Resonant to be quietly established as the one who has a better grasp on what’s happening. Now, admittedly, I’m not sure about the wisdom of bringing in the wackier elements from Seeley’s Shatterstar mini. But then again, this is the least grimdark incarnation of X-Force in many a year, and while I doubt it’s getting past issue #10, I’m having fun.
How many times has Cable had to question whether his actions with an xforce would meet the approval of his father? We had a similar visit-from-dad during one of the runs post-Utopia, one in Cable and Deadpool during the era when Cable was all-powerful, and probably the best one where Cyclops wrote Cable a letter reminding him that he loves and trusts him, while Cable is raising Hope in the future.
That’s all to say that I wish we had done more there on that plot instead of wasting time with Ms Marvel and the MLF. The relationship between Cable and his parents has always been a good read, and I’d hope we would spend more time on it after Scott and Jean had a chance to raise a teenage version of their son on Krakoa.
Wolverine appears in this week’s Avengers: Armageddon 2.
It turns out that Wolverine’s decision to violate his principles in Weapon of Armageddon and save Colton’s life by exposing him to the Origin Box against his will was intended to be the wrong one. Colton attacks Ross in the middle of a major Symarkian city, destroying the city and killing dozens. And it’s strongly implied that the Origin Box gave Colton the powers of the Sentry.
So now the public blames the heroes who went into Symarkia for the devastation, since they went into Symarkia against the wishes of the United Nations. I wonder if this will affect Wolverine’s presence in Uncanny X-Men. So far the Louisiana X-Men have been portrayed as having good publicity. But the public seems to have turned against all the heroes who went into Symarkia. Plus, the whole mess in Symarkia was Wolverine’s fault, even though the public doesn’t know that yet. First, he exposed Colton to the Origin Box against his will without knowing what it does instead of letting him die like he wanted to.Then he insisted the heroes bring Colton., the unstable ex-soldier with incredible powes, along with them when they went into Symarkia.
(And yes, I know, Doom’s machine showed that Ross would have won if Colton hsdn’t intervened but I’m not sure how much we should trust Doom’s machine, since it was unable to predict Colton’s presence.)
Darkstar is back in her usual “reluctant agent of the Russian government” role in this series. The sociopath from X-Factor seems to have been forgotten about. I wonder if this will be explained in Queen in Black since Darkstar will be appearing in that crossover.
Just what we need, back to the militarized superheroes with the public turning against the superheroes. Can we please move on? Civil War was the worst thing to ever happen to Marvel, not the template for the presentation of the Marvel Universe moving forward.