The X-Axis – 15 July 2012
Yes, it’s a day late. Mind you, if I’m being perfectly honest, it’s not the most exciting week of stories anyway…
AvX: Versus #4 – You can just about see why somebody might have thought an “all fight scene” spin-off book would be a good idea. In theory, if you’re creative enough, it gives artists an opportunity to go nuts and have fun for a few pages. Frankly, very few of the stories in this book – if “story” is even the right word – have come close to delivering on that. This issue has one of the better attempts, with Kaare Andrews showing up for ten pages of Thor versus a Phoenix-powered Emma Frost. (She wins, as if you need told.) It’s pretty much content-free, but it’s nicely over the top, and hell, it’s Kaare Andrews, who could probably make ten visually interesting pages out of paint drying.
The lead story is another matter. It’s Rick Remender and Brandon Peterson doing Daredevil versus Psylocke. And what you get there is an adequate trudge through the remit. Remender is clearly hunting for ways to make this interesting, but struggling to find many. He tries to play up the idea that both characters have a connection with the Hand, but he can’t really do anything much with it. There’s a theoretically nice idea about Psylocke using flocks of birds to obscure Daredevil’s radar sense, but visually, these things are being done much better in Daredevil’s own book, which actually has a plot. And of course the pay-off is the umpteenth “one of the X-Men realises that gee, maybe they’re the bad guys in this” – which just flags up the problem that the crossover as a whole has never given them any adequate reason for failing to spot the point anyway.
Oh, and if you’re wondering why neither telepath manages to win the fight in the first panel, both stories end up giving the same answer to that one – it’s because telepathic contact with the opponent freaks them out. Now, sure, fine, you’ve got to engineer an excuse with these things. But the same one in both stories? Weak. And that’s the problem with this book – it could work, in theory, if you had cartoonists doing something truly wild with the pages, but for the most part it just comes across as lost and confused.
New Avengers #28 – This week’s crossover issue from the other franchise is basically filler. The entire plot is Hawkeye, Spider-Woman and Luke Cage held prisoner on Utopia and failing to escape. It’s completely skippable so far as the overall story is concerned, but to be fair, it’s not a bad issue on its own terms. It’s pretty well paced, the escape scenes make sense. It’s going for a sense that the Avengers are fighting on even though it’s become utterly futile, and I think it carries that off. The Phoenix Five costumes don’t look at all at home in Mike Deodato’s style, but that’s not really his fault.
In theory the ending is horrifically gimmicky – it’s all a VR simulation – but I think the story gets away with it; the final page loops back to the opening panels, and Bendis manages to sell it as endless torment rather than just “it was all a dream”.
New Mutants #45 – This series is ending with issue #50 as part of the Marvel NOW! promotion – um, is it really compulsory to write it with the capital letters and the punctuation mark? Oh well, it’s your company. At any rate, we’re getting another reshuffle and it’s not a huge surprise to see that some of the lower-selling books are on their way out. The “Fear the Future” three-parter, of which this is the middle chapter, appears to be trying to draw together some dangling threads from earlier storylines, which at least suggests that writers Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning have had enough notice to aim for some degree of resolution here.
Basically, two New Mutants from the future – Cannonball and Karma – have come back in time to try and change history, but they’re initially unwilling to explain exactly why, because we all know what happens when time travellers do something silly like that. Eventually Sam relents and gives them kind of an explanation, hinting at what would have happened to the team in the future (on the whole, it doesn’t look too bad for once). It seems this is building to a fight with the future version of Cypher, which I guess is meant to pay off his rather odd behaviour since his return. The slightly underwhelming storyline about the rock band with a Cthulhu demon in their van also rears its head again here.
It’s basically an issue of shuffling elements into place. Moderately interesting in terms of the direction, not particularly memorable as an issue in its own right.
Uncanny X-Force #27 – This storyline is looking like a bit of a dud, unfortunately. It’s one of those stories where a bunch of villains have teamed up to go after the heroes for no particularly explicit reason beyond revenge and so forth. But who is the mystery villain behind the new Brotherhood?
Well, it’s Daken.
Which… makes sense, kind of, but god, that’s a story I have literally zero interest in seeing. Sure, he kind of worked at the tail end of his solo book, but that’s in part because it actually played off his limitations as a character and his failure to properly connect. Daken in this role is an utterly boring proposition. I can’t remember the last time I read a reveal in a story and had the reaction I did here – a sinking wave of ennui, and the sense of my interest in the whole series ebbing away. Yes, with Daken, we have a character who is literally the exact opposite of exciting. He should have the word “Meh” tattooed on his forehead.
Wolverine and the X-Men #13 – This is an AvX tie-in issue, but it’s a smart use of the crossover – which is to say, it uses it as a handy background for what’s actually a character issue focussing on Warbird. It turns out that Jason Aaron’s done a rather good slow build with this character, using her background role in the early issues to establish her persona so that it actually means something when we get her back story in this issue.
The idea is essentially that Warbird used to be a basically nice, creative little girl who only pretended to be a violent honourable warrior type in order to get into the Shi’ar cadets, but she’s been doing it for so long now that she’s lost sight of her own identity. Warbird’s been a bit of a one-note character up to now, and this cleverly inverts that by establishing that it’s a one-note persona. The reveal works very well; for all the book’s lunatic tendencies and unapologetic exaggeration, which are still present and correct in this story, the character beat still hits home.
In a less prominent way, Kid Gladiator gets a similar treatment. He’s been a one-note clown thus far, but when his father Gladiator shows up and gets into trouble against the Phoenix Five, he’s genuinely upset. It works all the better for being played in a relatively understated way. Artist Nick Bradshaw does a fantastic job on this issue, selling both aspects of the story perfectly. His Watchmen pastiche on the first page is lovely stuff.
If there’s a criticism here – and there is – it’s that by giving Warbird quite such a miserable childhood and horrific cadet career, Aaron necessarily makes the Shi’ar into truly appalling thugs. With a story like this, you can’t help wonder why the X-Men would ever put up with these awful, awful people. I suppose you could make a case that that problem’s always been there – they’re an imperial race, after all – but it’s been relatively muted, perhaps because their excesses have always come across as genre convention. Here, they’re unequivocally a bunch of fascist lunatics (and I’m not sure they’ve ever been presented as quite this violent before), and the X-Men’s tolerance of them starts to look decidedly odd. Perhaps that’s the direction, but it feels a little strange here.
Good god, i love your reviews. They’re like a public service.
Agree that Uncanny X-Force is starting to lose me. The first issues up through the Dark Angel Saga were amazing and left me eagerly wanting more, but since then, plot-wise it’s been doing circles. The Otherworld story was a mess (though a better artist may have helped) and I can’t see a long-going plot being built. Maybe it’s just because it’s waiting for all the AvX stuff to finish first. But the plot is indeed lacking – I was hoping there would be a better reason for guys like Mystique and Skinless Man and AoA Blob to team up, but it seems little more than “ok let’s team up FOR REVENGE!” Daken showing up, for me, as someone who never read his comic, did inspire a “oh, it’s Daken. Isn’t he dead? Meh.”
Nice try on Aaron’s part, but I still have zero use for Warbird. Klingons with boundary issues skeeve me out.
The X-men’s partnership with the Shi’ar has always been pretty problematic, in that, y’know, they’re warmongering alien conquerors seemingly no better in principle than the Kree or the Skrulls except for the fact that they haven’t tried to invade Earth yet (unless I’m forgetting something). I’m sure that makes them less objectionable than, say, the Brood or the Badoon from Earth’s point of view, but from the perspective of any number of species who HAVE been invaded and conquered by the Shi’ar, I doubt they see much of a difference.
Did the whole End of Greys thing get handwaved off, BTW? You’d figure that would be enough to get the X-Men to tell the Shi’ar Empire to stuff it.
“it’s because telepathic contact with the opponent freaks them out.”
With all the opponents Psylocke has faced over the years…Daredevil freaks her out? Bitch, please. The writers do seem to be bending over backwards to not letting the X-men win as much as they should be…
As for Warbird…nice try, but she still does nothing for me. Another character who will probably be forgotten once Aaron leaves the title. Then again, Armor seems to have outlasted Whedon, so who knows?
I’ll miss New Mutants. Nostalgia aside, it’s been a fun title overall.
To be honest, I don’t recall the X-Men ever spending much time with anyone from the Shi’ar Empire other than the royal family and the Imperial Guard. I believe we saw the homeworld in that Scott Lobdell Phalanx vs. Shi’ar story from the 1990’s, and again in Brubaker’s story in Uncanny #475-486, but in both cases, we never really met the commonfolk.
Perhaps the Shi’ar have always been something of a tyrannical, war-driven society that have just deceived the X-Men into being on their side (largely because of the whole Phoenix thing)?
Or have I overlooked some stories where we are actually shown that they’re a benevolent people?
Right now I’m more interested in the thoughts behind Uncanny X-Force than the story itself. I think there is something interesting going on as Remender chooses which characters to write about (and in conjunction his friend Jason Aaron). He’s doing a lot to fix or improve or replace characters he wants:
Blob got depowered in M-Day and vanished, so here’s AOA Blob.
Daken got depowered at the end of his series but he’s back now with his powers.
Iceman has years of being told he has potential, AOA Iceman uses his powers in new ways, is killed, Wolverine tells Iceman to step up and now he uses his powers in the same way.
Omega Red is dead so we get three new clones of him.
Shadow King is (in) Amahl Farouk’s (body) again.
To his credit I appreciate that Remender and Aaron both seem interested in following up Grant Morrison’s ideas: The World and now E.V.A. becoming EVA.
I don’t necessarily think these are bad changes and when the stories work the characters work. So I hope this story works. As a whole I’m not excited by this Brotherhood. These are the first comics I’ve ever bought with Daken in them (I’ve avoided most X-books and crossovers for a few years).
And the Omega Red clones seem too similar to the Final Horsemen Famine (Jeb Lee) and Death (Sanjar Javeed) whose powers (“bioauditory cancer” and “transmit a spectrum of terminal diseases” respectively) always seemed too similar. They’ve got no personalities together or individually.
But I’ll continue reading and hope it gets to something. Meanwhile I hope that Secret Avengers becomes what it should be but I’m not holding my breath.
X-Men Unlimited #5 from 1994 had the X-Men (Xavier, Storm, Forge and Jubilee) dealing with Operation: Galactic Storm. They got involved with Kree living in slums and terrorism. So that’s something. But the only repercussions I remember was that Xavier and Lilandra might break up.
I always took it that the Shi’ar have a history of being tyrannical imperialists, but that Lilandra was a reformer working towards a kinder, gentler Shi’ar Empire. And so allying with Lilandra made dealing with the Shi’ar palatable. Whereas the X-Men have always fought against reactionary elements within the Shi’ar — D’ken, Deathbird, Vulcan — who preferred the more bloodthirsty traditional ways.
The Shi’ar Death Commandos (or any other undesirable element of the Imperium), then, can always be dismissed as agents of some reactionary element. Good, progressive Shi’ar like Lilandra would never countenance such barbarism.
The X-Men have only been allied to the Shi’ar since Lilandra took control, for most of their history, they’ve been allied to the anti-Imperium Starjammers. Depending on her age, Warbird’s history either took place under D’Ken’s original reign or Deathbird’s.
There was also that one issue of Classic X-men where Xavier is with Lilandra on the homeworld, and she’s busy with meetings, and he’s bored, so she has him hang out all day with the plumber.
Wait, [i]Daken[/i] is supposed to be the big mastermind in X-Force ? I somehow got the impression that he was just another glorified henchman (like Mystique or Farouk) and that the real Big Bad was still lurking in shadows somewhere. Because yeah, Daken in this role is just underwhelming.
I just found the end of New Avengers horrifically gimmicky. The rest of the issue would’ve had to be something special ro justify it.
I kind of like that with the Shiar, D’Ken would be in charge and they’d all be “hooray! lets kill everyone and throw them in the moat!”, then Lilandra took over and they instantly switched to “hooray, lets build orphanages!”, then Deathbird took over and they switched back to “kill!”, then Lilandra came back and they were automatically “love!”, and so-on. The only person in the whole universe (other than challengers to the throne itself) who seemed to go “hang on, this guy’s not the rightful ruler” was that one cyborg guy in the Starjammers who didn’t look much like a Shiar anyway. It kind of shows a people who are fanatically loyal to the throne, but have utter disregard for who is actually in that throne. It may be an accidental trait, but it is nicely alien.
To be fair, the writers generally have worked on making the Shi’ar ever more unpleasant over the last years, given how they just flat-out murdered the whole Grey family. But with this issue it is difficult to countenance how the kind of cruelty shown to us could be anything but completely endemic to the whole society.
Totally agree about Daken. Apparently Marvel has not understood yet how apathetic fans in general are to him… he isn’t even worth loathing.
It would probably a nice case study to compare how X-23 suceeded and how Daken has failed, given how they are both Wolverine “clones” ( not literally in the case of Daken ).
Wardbirds childhood reminded me of big barda on apokolips.
I hate to keep beating the same drum (actually I don’t but it’s polite to pretend I do) but it was awful nice of the X-Men to make Hawkeye a new uniform before throwing him in VR hell after Emma burned his old one off.
Fun fact: “Daken” means “roofs” in Dutch and Africaans, and “stamping” in Hausa, a language spoken in parts of Africa. That is, I believe, the most interesting thing about Daken.
@Si: The Shi’ar are bird people. As the head bird turns, so turns the flock. It almost makes sense (if you ignore the fact that there’s no reason the same orders of animals would exist on alien worlds as on Earth).
@wwk5d: How can you think Warbird will be forgotten? I fully expect her to join Cerise, Lifeguard, and a revived Deathcry in forming a team of awesome Shi’ar women that no one will ever ignore entirely once their creator stops writing them. They’ll get their own book called “Birds of … wait, what were we talking about? Oh well, if it was important it’ll come to me.” It’ll be one of the cornerstones of Marvel NOW!
I did not read the new Uncanny yet and it is Daken? NO NO NO! I’ve written how when Rob Williams took over his series it suddenly became great and the best way Daken’s story worked was leaving him dead. This is just awful news for me, the one guy who loved Daken’s series for that short glorious moment it was really good. Sigh.
I have to say, Warbird’s description of her birth is the most gloriously over the top monologue I’ve read in a Marvel comic book since Ellis did that extended Norman Osborn rant in Thunderbolts.
*sigh* I miss Cerise. She did the whole “bad-ass alien warrior dealing with culture shock and massive cleavage” too, but she was a lot more fun (until Davis left and Marvel decided to purge the book of all that was good and wonderful, anyway…).
You know, I’d much rather see Cerise, Kylun, Micromax, and Feron interact with the modern Marvel U than teenage Scott, Jean, Hank, Bobby, and Warren. And they wouldn’t need a confusing time travel story to do it.
One more in favor of the return of Cerise and the other second-string Excalibur members. I sense a groundswell in the offing!
Count me for the return of Cerise and the other second-string Excaliber members as well. And since Marvel is all about ignoring past continuity, can we ignore what Lobdell did to Cerise and go with whatever story Alan Davis was planning for her?
JD: I suppose it’s still possible – Daken is the one who calls up Wolverine and gloats, but he doesn’t say anything specific so maybe there is a bigger bad still hidden. I certainly hope so.
Something else I’d like explained – what was up with the random Gateway cameo? Wasn’t he killed along with all the other teleporters in Second Coming? And why the heck is he even needed here – he literally shows up (to teleport Psylocke and EVA to the X-Force base, completely unnecessary) and then immediately gets killed. Uh, okay?
AvX pretty much keeps me hooked with just the action and the premise. The story itself blatantly ignores continuity in several respects and even contradicts itself between issues. A perfectly good example of NOT having rotating writers like with “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” and instead having one writer go double like in “Spider-Man: Big Time.” Criticism aside, I feel like New Avengers and Wolverine and the X-Men have the most interesting tie-in reads of the bunch, even if they’re sometimes unnecessary to the wider plot of either AvX or their own series.
The thing about the Shi’ar is that while they never tried to conquer Earth per se, they didn’t really seem to care that they were accidentally destroying it during OPERATION: GALACTIC STORM. But the X-Men weren’t involved in that, so I guess they can claim plausible deniability about their bird friends.
Also: yet another issue with the Shi’ar where the question of the X-Men – and Professor X’s – reaction to Lilandra’s death is not addressed. Seriously, she died, what, four years ago, real time? Havok and Polaris are even back from space, you’d think they would have mentioned at some point that Darkhawk killed the love of his life during an interstellar war.
WTH. So much for the team that is meant to tie up loose ends of the X-Men.
Here’s hoping Marvel is going to launch a proper mutie kids title akin to the likes of Academy X.
@ZZZ – Obviously what Marvel needed were the underdeveloped, least interesting versions of some of their most over-exposed characters for this project. After all, the less established characterization there is to much up, the better a choice Bendis is for the project!
(And there’s my allowance of cheap shots for the day.)
“Here’s hoping Marvel is going to launch a proper mutie kids title akin to the likes of Academy X.”
Yep, so we can have, what, the fifth cancelled “young x-team” book this decade? I really wish they would just stop with that idea already. The original New Mutants only worked in the 80’s because it was the first spinoff in the franchise at a time when fans were craving such a thing.
Err… the original New Mutants worked in the 80s because it was a good comic. I’d say that through issue 38 or so (when Bill Sienkiewicz left), it was a toss up each month whether the Uncanny X-Men or the New Mutants would be the better comic. Niether may have matched the very best issues of the X-men, but they were both better than at least 90% of the X-books put out since.
And both the concept of a X-men kid’s team and that particular early New Mutants team have lead to some nice comics runs since. There’s nothing at all wrong with either concept.
@Matt C. – Gateway was not killed in Second Coming…he was killed off panel way back in Mike Carey’s “Blinded by the Light” in then-adjectiveless X-Men during the lead up to Messiah CompleX along with Vargas and The Witness.
So, of course, he was brought back with ZERO explanation by Rick Remender only to die again….just like AOA Gambit. Horribly lazy writing, honestly.
Gateway returned in Jonathon Hickman’s Secret Warriors, I believe there was an implied connection between Gateway and the aboriginal “dreamtime” that restored him. Can’t remember.
As to Lifeguard… her status as half shi’ar makes no sense at all. Her mutant power was to adapt to any situation and provide a physical solution. They got stuck in a situation where they were held captive by Shi’ar from ANOTHER DIMENSION, and she suddenly assumes the form of one to help them escape. Then she’s suddenly a half breed raised on earth, except no Shi’ar ever appeared in that form. The alternate reality Shi’ar had not sacrificed their wings, something Deathbird talked about, as she hadn’t either. Anyhow they looked totally different than the Shi’ar Lifeguard would have been related to. Uh… sorry, I can’t believe I just typed that, but it’s always bugged me.
Since Gateway can teleport through demensions, it’s safe to assume that he can return anytime a writer wants, simply as a visitor from another demension. Added bonus that he doesn’t talk so there’s no lengthy explanations about where exactly he’s from. Hell, they’ve been doing the same thing for years with Cable and Strife being time travelers (and I’m not a big Thor fan but I’m pretty sure he comes back from the dead these days just because he’s a god).
@Sol
“There’s nothing at all wrong with either concept.”
Except they don’t sell anymore. A young X-Men book is practically a guaranteed cancel these days. Then again, we’re not even going to have Uncanny X-Men anymore so it probably doesn’t even matter. I do feel for you, though; New Mutants (the current version) at least had some substance and some interesting happenings. The fact that it’s getting squashed to make way for the likes of Uncanny Avengers is pretty appalling.
Well, Remender has used Gateway several times in Uncanny X-Force before this point, so him reappearing in that comic isn’t out of the question. Also, having read the previous stories mentioned where he was killed, I don’t remember that specific fact at all (which is to say I wasn’t bothered).
Also, with the current story arc, if Daken is the “mastermind” behind it all, then I have absolutely no idea where this is going because there are still like 8 issues left to go in it. Remender said in an interview that a lot of this story arc is based around Wolverine living with the decisions he’s made and them coming back to haunt him (which echos that story where Magneot had him hunt down that Nazi).
I believe it’s AoA Gateway that Remender has been using in Uncanny X-Force.
Out of interest, does anybody actually know what Alan Davis planned to do with Kylun, Cerise, Feron and Micromax? I guess their background/characters had been fairly firmly established, but where would he go with them? I think their personalities rounded out the older Excalibur cast, had promise as interesting leads into other parts of the Marvel universe, and also made the book more distinct from the rest of the X-books. I guess that’s why they all got promptly shelved.
… And yep, always loved that “everything you ever wanted to know about Phoenix but were afraid to ask” issue. Was a nice summary. Should be required reading!
Also suspect Warbird, Kid Gladiator, etc will disappear once Aaron leaves writing Wolverine and the X-Men, but he has done very well in juggling a large cast and giving everyone a nice beat or two each issue. I do wish he hadn’t been so derailed by AvX… the anarchy of the book reminds me of classic Excalibur. It’s very refreshing.
No clue what Davis had planned, but it certainly wouldn’t have been anywhere near as bad as the crap fest that followed until Ellis came on the title.
I always thought it was funny that their reasoning for jettisoning Kylun, Cerise, Feron and Micromax from Excaliber was that they wanted to bring the title more in line with the rest of X-books and get rid of certain elements from the title that weren’t related to the X-titles.
So of course it made sense that in order to write Cerise out of the title, they’d give her a back story tying her to the Shi’ar Empire. And it made even more sense to remove Rachel from the title, what with her ties to Scot, Jean, the Phoenix Force, and being a former X-men herself.
And the less said about Britanic, the better.
I’m all for the “second-string” Excalibur characters, but I just think of them as the “Davis” Excalibur members.
@DanL: Emphasis on ‘proper’ mutie kids title, mate. Marvel only needs the proper creative team. Personally, CWeir and NdFillipis were the ones who’d pulled me into the Marvel universe, through their 2003 NM Vol.2 run.
I disagree with you when you say it wouldn’t sell anymore. Yes, the crossovers and creative team differences ruined the concept for the past decade, but I think there is still a gap/market for this type of series.
Why else create a whole bunch of new characters in the first place?
‘Avengers Academy’ seems to be doing pretty well, but since I refuse to read anything with X-23 in it, I haven’t really picked that up.
PS: Words cannot describe how little I care for the Shi’ar and their shananigance with the X-Men.
There won’t be a new junior book for quite a while. Marvel has crippled itself with precedent. Readers a) don’t believe that the title will last, and b) don’t believe the characters will matter either way. So they won’t buy it even if it came from the creative team of W. Shakespeare and L.D. Vinci*.
There are too many X-characters now. When New Mutants hit the scene, they were six more X-Men to add to the list of a dozen or so. They popped up more regularly than Iceman or even Angel in the comic; in short, they mattered. Ironically, we probably see more of certain third-generation X-kids now than of the New Mutants or Generation X, but they’re still fighting for relevance against, what, 40? 50? core X-group characters. And the Five Lights as well now. There’s way too much noise to get the signal through. And there’ll only ever be more noise, not less, because every character is a potential sales bonanza for the movies, and every character is some reader’s favourite.
*his middle name is Da
The DeFillipes/Weir and Kyle/Yost young mutant books actually did OK.
Young X-Men had no direction, had almost none of the younger cast that anyone cared about, was badly written and a blatant time-killer, the art was inconsistent at best, and the new writer carried on with the little-beloved Kyle/Yost tendency to throw kid characters on the carrion heap. It didn’t tank because it was a kid X-Men book, it tanked because it was bad book executed badly.
Generation Hope had some marks against it (including one of the most banal supporting cast introductions in the history of the X-Franchise), but I think the main reason it was met with such apathy was because, with the exception of the latter half of Carey’s Legacy run, writer after writer had shown that they considered the kid characters who’d already had a few years of development put into them were good for nothing more than wallpaper, canon fodder, or a quick splash of angst. How was anyone supposed to get excited about another crop of newbies given that?
I think if Marvel tried a school book along the lines of X-Dudes: East Coast in the wake of AvX, it’d probably get a lot more interest than either of the above did. Likable characters, lots of potential for adventure (light-hearted and otherwise), and you’d still get the Legacy-type staff cameos.
@Si: “There are too many X-characters now.”
Yep. And this, folks, is why Decimation was a terrible idea with no forward thinking beyond “we’ll have the mutants camp at the mansion and put some Sentinels on the lawn for a while.” I know some of these characters were created before Decimation, but the fact is, the number of X-Titles and cast members in them have completely exploded since that awful storyline that was supposed to solve the “problem” of there being too many mutants. Well, great, because now it feels like more mutants than there ever were because they’re all gathered in the same damn place. 16 Million on Genosha didn’t matter much because we hardly ever saw them and they were nameless. Now we’ve got several dozen all fighting for space in these books. Face it, the only ones who really lost their powers when it was all said and done were the ones we never met.
That is a really great point that I didn’t give a lot of thought to before.
Re: UNCANNY X-FORCE 27. I know exactly the feeling Paul describes for the Daken reveal. Had it too. That final page is like some sort of dark punchline to my hopes for a return to form for this title.
Andy Walsh> I believe it’s AoA Gateway that Remender has been using in Uncanny X-Force.
AoA Gateway was a chatterbox back in Weapon X.
I always thought the Sh’iar were supposed to be significantly nicer than the Kree or the Skrull. It’s just… that’s not really a huge compliment