The X-Axis – 26 August 2026
X-MEN #36. (Annotations here.) This is the conclusion of the two-part prologue to “DNX”. That seems to be a remarkably self-contained event, running through its own miniseries, X-Men and Fantastic Four. The inclusion of FF seems random, but I’m more than happy to see these things being kept tighter. “Age of Revelation” was a good X-Men storyline that suffered from being repurposed as a line-wide event, so if DNX is going to be a good X-Men storyline that stays that way, I’m all for it. The X-Men themselves are somewhat on the margins of this issue, which is more about the Chairman version of the Beast trying to win over Magneto (with predictable lack of success) and the 3K X-Men getting annoyed at being saddled with Joseph as their new field leader. Netho Diaz really does a great version of this Chairman Beast design, and I do enjoy the hints of the Chairman genuinely admiring Silver Age Magneto while backtracking to “never needed you anyway” when he gets rebuffed. Jed MacKay did something similar with him and Beast in the previous issue, and it’s being kept fairly subtle for now. I’m not all that bothered about the X-Virus, but I am intrigued to see where this is all going.
WOLVERINE #26. (Annotations here.) Oh, we’re going back to revisit the alternate timeline Wolverines from issue #20? I guess I can see that – it makes their introduction seem a bit less random with hindsight. But we’re going to their worlds to fight the Adamantine? Again? Already? Even if the Adamantine storyline had worked better, this feels far too soon to be going back there. Julius Ohta’s art does sell the settings rather well, and I do quite like Red Hare being a relatively cheerful Wolverine despite his supposed “savage champion” status, but I can’t say I’m particularly engaged by any of this.
TOMB OF APOCALYPSE #1. By Ashley Allen, Domenico Carbone, Fer Sifuentes-Sujo * Joe Sabino. Ah, it’s a Wolverine and Jubilee miniseries. A random thingy shows up at Haven House, and teleports Wolverine and Jubilee away to one of Apocalypse’s old tombs. Apocalypse just seems to want someone to defend it from mercenaries who are trying to raid the place, but he didn’t particularly these two in the first place. So for the moment, it’s less of an Apocalypse story – he only appears by video link – and more of a Jubilee story, with the main hook being that she feels she’s never escaped her status as the junior member of the team. That kind of feels like it’s more a meta thing than an in-universe thing – she’s been around since the 1980s, after all – but I guess I can see it. I’m less sure about the use of Apocalypse in this story, which seems to be defaulting to the idea that the X-Men don’t trust him and never did. That’s just not how Krakoa worked, and despite the best efforts to reset him to villain status at the end of that era, I simply don’t buy everyone behaving as if he’s Dr Doom. If that’s going to be a big part of this mini, then it’s going to have to work some to convince me. The art is decent enough, and I quite like its more subdued, slender take on Apocalypse.
X-MEN: OUTBACK #3. By Steve Orlando, Stephen Segovia, Roi Mercado, Alex Sinclair, Joe Sabino. Well, I’m still not convinced that this is a period of X-Men history that really needed more exploration – and the nature of the set-up, with the X-Men being hidden from the rest of the world at this point, doesn’t lend itself to untold stories either. Books like this leave me a bit antsy about Marvel’s overall health, anyway – it just doesn’t seem like a terribly good thing if a significant part of your publishing plan is to target people who have warm nostalgic feelings about comics that came out nearly 40 years ago. This issue, aside from the obligatory one page building up a Mojo story, we have random invaders from the Microverse, and a completely arbitrary connection with the Rasputin family. The story seems to have odd ideas that there’s a need to redeem the Rasputin family name – it’s not that uncommon a name – and as a story, it reads like something that would be more at home in Orlando’s Scarlet Witch book. There is something in the Piotr/Betsy relationship, which was a bit underdeveloped at the time, and Segovia does a great Colossus, but I’m not seeing the big picture for this mini.
GAMBIT: WANTED #2. By Chris Claremont, Robert Gill, Bryan Valenza & Ariana Maher. Well, this is certainly a Chris Claremont book – characters from his previous Gambit miniseries showing up without much in the way of context, and good old mind control. One of the things I liked about the first issue was that it had a worthwhile angle of Gambit being torn between joining the X-Men and leaving behind the people who depended on him in Louisiana. That isn’t really as present in this issue, which is much more fight-based. And why is Bullseye, of all people, just scattering bombs everywhere? He’s about precision aim, that’s his whole gimmick. Still, the art is very good and it does have momentum. Not bad.
WHAT IF…?: X-MEN #1. By Ashley Allen, Sumit Kumar, Sonia Oback & Clayton Cowles. What if Cassandra Nova killed Charles Xavier in the womb instead of it being the other way around? Well, Professor X is just out of the picture, so Cassandra sets up a school in order to try and exploit telepaths to bring more Mummudrai to Earth. There’s something to it, and some nice visual references to the original Cassandra Nova issues from New X-Men. And the basic idea that Cassandra overreaches when she tries to bring Jean and Emma into the fold makes sense. It’s got atmosphere. But it doesn’t really have an ending – it ends as if it’s promising Jean and Emma’s fight back in a future issue, which obviously isn’t going to happen. I get what it’s going for, I think – we all know how that bit of the story goes, since Cassandra versus Phoenix is only going to end one way, so we can leave it to the readers to fill in – but it doesn’t feel like it works on the page.
Modern writers seem to have completely forgotten the specifics of how What If stories are meant to work – a quick recap of the inciting event, an explanation of the thing that happens differently, and the domino effect leading to the very different circumstances. Allen had the first two, but skips over everything Cassandra would’ve done as the sole living Xavier (did she kill Cain and his father? Did Lilandra still come to Earth?). Most of the issue is just overlong expository monologuing that fails to really explore the inherent creepiness of the world. And that ending is a rush job if ever I saw one, which makes no sense for a one-shot.
Re: Tomb of Apolcalpyse 1:
When does this story take place? Jubilee refers to the Outliers as the New Mutants but Rogue and Remy go on a date and use the eye of Agamotto to teleport there. The Outliers get the New Mutants name in Uncanny X-Men 32 but Rogue and Remy leave a few pages later to find a cure for Gambit’s curse, which is caused by the Eye of Agamotto. Unless this takes place after Gambit is cured, and he keeps the Eye of Agamotto, but even then, he’s using it pretty casually for an artifact that recently caused him to almost turn into a cannibal.
Alternately, no one refers to the Outliers as the New Mutants in front of the Outliers, so maybe the X-Men had been planning to give the Outliers the New Mutants name for a while and this takes place before they told the Outliers in New Mutants 32.
“The inclusion of FF seems random”
Ryan North’s FF has sold within the top 50 (if not the top 40) for his entire run, which has now gone on more than 4 years. That’s the entire reason. The only other non-X titles you can say accomplished the same are Amazing Spider-Man, Black Cat, and Daredevil, and the latter two are within the past year. If someone was writing a Howard the Duck series that sold as consistently well as FF has, it might be crossing over instead. I agree it’s random, especially as Marvel bent over backwards to establish that Franklin was NOT a mutant back when Fox still owned the mutant film rights.
I suppose Beast needs to collaborate with Reed against the Chairman, and technically a few X-Men aided the FF during their “Invincible Woman” arc (Wolverine, Colossus, and Storm, even if the latter two are not on a squad currently). The X-Men and FF collaborated fine during One World Under Doom, so the teams are on good terms lately, I guess.
“I can’t say I’m particularly engaged by any of this.”
That is essentially Saladin Ahmed’s default reaction. He’s the Ted McGinley of comics. He’s not a horrible writer, if only because a horrible writer can still be memorable. It’s been over 20 years and people STILL remember Chuck Austen. Hardly anyone remembers what Ahmed did 10 months later. He killed Ms. Marvel, he (nearly) killed DD and he’s become the first writer to get Wolverine out of the top 50 for an extended period. I’m convinced if you put him on Detective Comics, he’d kill it within a year with perfectly forgettable generic stories. The methods of how he kills franchises vary, but it usually comes from running underwhelming stories too long.
Also, the X-MEN ’97 cartoon this season did a bum’s rush around the “bone claw Wolverine” era, including a full episode showcasing how desperate Logan was to get the metal back. I wouldn’t be shocked if Tom “The Hat” Brevoort took some time out of insulting fans online to send a memo.
“Books like this leave me a bit antsy about Marvel’s overall health, anyway – it just doesn’t seem like a terribly good thing if a significant part of your publishing plan is to target people who have warm nostalgic feelings about comics that came out nearly 40 years ago.”
Marvel’s comic book strategies have not been healthy for a long time. The current CEO firings and the move to the west coast were not happening in a vacuum. Disney cares more about media than comics, but DC cleaning their clocks with Absolute and Batman the last few quarters has been noticeable.
Midnight is a desperate imprint. The upcoming Star Wars/Marvel crossover was both inevitable and a sign of more desperation. In football terms it’s a “Hail Mary” pass from the 1 yard line. There has been a lot wrong with Marvel for a long, long time, and usually because the fish’s head has stunk from the top. The move to California may unwittingly help with that by getting some of the rotting fish (i.e. Brevoort) to retire or leave to be another publisher’s problem. I just hope Brevoort doesn’t move to Dynamite (which is located in New Jersey, so, relatively close commuting wise). They have Gargoyles there, and I’d like for him not to ruin that. I think Tom B. should work for television. Plenty of arrogant no talent hacks can earn a nice living there.
“ WHAT IF…?: X-MEN #1. By Ashley Allen, Sumit Kumar, Sonia Oback & Clayton Cowles. What if Cassandra Nova killed Charles Xavier in the womb instead of it being the other way around?”
I liked this story a lot more in the final issue of Jamie Delano’s Hellblazer when it was the “Golden Boy” who survived rather than John.
AMRG> Ryan North’s FF has sold within the top 50 (if not the top 40) for his entire run, which has now gone on more than 4 years. That’s the entire reason.
No, the reason is that Jed MacKay got fired from Avengers, and they subbed in the F4 because Brevoort edits that title and could mandate it.
AMRG> I agree it’s random, especially as Marvel bent over backwards to establish that Franklin was NOT a mutant back when Fox still owned the mutant film rights.
No, that was well after that whole imbroglio – they didn’t even restart an F4 book until Disney bought Fox.
What happened was that the F4 writer and editor (Dan Slott and… uh… Tom Brevoort) didn’t like Hickman’s plans for Franklin (hinted at in HoXPoX) and wanted him permanently removed from the X-Books’ orbit.
Re: X-Men Outback 3:
The idea that one of Peter’s relatives travelled to the Microverse and fathered a child is ridiculously contrived.
Yaga Dyara previously appeared in one page of Orlando’s Scarlet Witch. I guess Orlando wanted a chance to flush him out more.
Recently in Sorcerer Supreme., Orlando introduced a love interest for Wanda- a sorcerer from the Microverse called Turin Sud-Ba. I wonder if Turin Sud-Ba is also going to turn out to be a Rasputin also. Turin Sud-Ba claimed he’d only been to the world of Tryfa, featured in this story, once, while Grishka seemed to have been living there for years. But he could have gone to Tryfa in search of his relative Grishka. It would make sense if Orlando was using this miniseries to foreshadow developments in his own series.
Again, Orlando forgets that Rogue couldn’t absorb people’s powers at this point without knocking them out. She absorbed Wolverine’s powers last issue without knocking him out and she absorbed Havok’s powers this issue without knocking him out.
In other news, it looks like one of the villains in the upcoming Wolverine: Paradise mini will be Hammerhead.
X-Men Outback continues to be dull continuity insert material that doesn’t seem to impact anything that actually matters. Sadly, it’s about on par for Orlando, who gets work because he’s consistent but not essential. I want to like his stuff way more than I actually do.
Gambit: Wanted is dull continuity insert material that doesn’t seem to impact anything that actually matters. Sadly, it’s about on par for Claremont, who’s riding on a legacy reputation and not allowed near contemporary continuity. I’m glad he’s getting work, but it’s not exactly breaking new ground.
Tomb of Apocalypse baffles me because of the rampant hostility towards Apocalypse, who didn’t leave on the -worst- of terms and has done very little of offense since Krakoa. Heir of Apocalypse notwithstanding, of course. He’s hardly the big bad at this point after Krakoa spent years making him look like a vaguely reasonable mystic instead of a Darwinistic warlord.
What If continued this year’s crop of stories’ trend in being bizarre takes which don’t really play by traditional What If rules and, in several cases, feel very much like backdoor pilots for new AU series. (The Jessica Jones, Runaways, and Cassandra Nova in particular read like “want more? write in!”) Also, amused that we still got some fairly recognizable X-Men making appearances. I enjoyed the body horror but this really overused the image of Cassandra running her fingers through someone’s head.
I like the portrayal of Magneto as this tired old radical who’s seen his dream realized and crushed so many times, he’s basically out of f’s to give. With Xavier and Apocalypse both off-planet, he’s the last of his “generation” and has seen Xavier’s own students take up opposite sides of ideology and he’s not the revolutionary he once was. It’s an interesting and welcome role for him as the evolution of his character over the decades.
“Turin Sud-Ba” is an anagram of Rasbutin with a D and U left over. Depending on the rules you choose, an anagram can duplicate a letter, and B and D are vocalized versions of P and T. Sounds like Michael is on to something.