The X-Axis – w/c 8 May 2023
FREE COMIC BOOK DAY 2023: AVENGERS / X-MEN #1. This came out last weekend, but as in previous years, Marvel have already put it on Marvel Unlimited. After all, it’s relevant to the plot. Well, kind of. As we’ve come to expect, it’s basically three teaser stories. “Prescribed Burn” by Gerry Duggan, Joshua Cassara and Marte Gracia is a flash forward to this year’s Hellfire Gala, and a mystery figure from Orchis attacking the Treehouse and stealing the Captain Krakoa costume. That leads directly into “Controlled Demolition” – Duggan again, Javier Garrón and Morry Hollowell – in which “Captain Krakoa” starts making trouble in Washington, and a bunch of Iron Man-themed Sentinels make their debut (which builds on a storyline from Duggan’s Iron Man). It’s… you know, it’s basically a trailer and we know the key plot points will all be repeated when the actual story comes out. But you can’t really say much more than that about it. If I’m being honest, I’m a lot more interested in the general “Fall of X” storyline than I am in more specific things like the return of Uncanny Avengers, a book which always felt like an awkward exercise in corporate synergy to me. But we’ll see how it goes. Rounding it out is literally a few pages of G.O.D.S. by Jonathan Hickman, Valerio Schiti and Marte Gracia, which truly is just a trailer fragment.
X-MEN: RED #11. (Annotations here.) This is a very talky issue – Storm and Craig Marshall go on a date for five pages, and then for the main event Storm talks with Professor X for ten straight pages. There’s a B-plot, and it’s mainly talking. And it’s all great, of course, because Al Ewing is consistently great at finding insightful little angles on his characters, and leveraging continuity to make it serve those character moments in a way that feels organic. Stefano Caselli and Jacopo Camagni deserve credit too for making it visual – the current Professor X design naturally obscures most of his face and there’s something quite effective about having him lose his composure anyway. The double page montage is also a really good way of representing memory fragments, particularly in the way that the panels are taken out of context, broken up, and so forth. And, yes, there are some flashback panels thrown in just to break up the talking heads, but that’s what you do. Clearly, this dovetails somewhat with the Storm spotlight issue in Immortal X-Men, in which she recognises the need to take steps to guard against the state of the Quiet Council, and confidently marches off in completely the wrong direction. This issue is a lot more ambiguous about her decisions – she’s clearly right in most of her criticisms of Professor X, but turning her back on him feels like it’s heading towards another case of Storm managing to position herself in the wrong place at the wrong time.
WOLVERINE #33. (Annotations here.) I still don’t really understand why we’re getting this storyline in Wolverine rather than in X-Force, which would seem to be its more natural home. But now that we’ve finally got to this point, I’m quite enjoying it. Beast treating even other Beasts as disposable is a nice idea, and while a bunch of identical Beasts sitting around a table calling one another by the same name is plainly silly, it’s the good sort of silly. I’m less keen on the more sentimental stuff with Jeff and his daughter, but the basic storyline here is endearingly over the top. There’s also a back-up strip written by Gene Luen Yang, which is a team-up with Sister Dagger from his recent Shang-Chi run. Marvel seem to have commissioned a bunch of these random team-up back-ups lately, for no terribly clear reason, but if they’re basically freebies then I’m all for a bit of cross-promotion. Seems a bit odd to do it with a cancelled book, mind you. It’s a standard odd couple team-up, but fine for an eight pager.
X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #86. By Steve Orlando, Emilio Laiso & Rachelle Rosenberg. This is the first part of a new arc – or rather, the first part of the latest chunk of X-Men Green, the book about Nature Girl’s eco-terrorist splinter group that claims to be the X-Men and embarrasses the hell out of Krakoa. We’re apparently before Sins of Sinister here, if you’re wondering – Nightcrawler’s still around. Steve Orlando being Steve Orlando, what’s left of X-Men Green is a truly bizarre combination: Nature Girl herself, the Armageddon Man from John Francis Moore’s X-Force, and Spider-Girl. No, not that Spider-Girl. No, not that one either. This is the genetically engineered mutant/spider girl from Avenging Spider-Man #16 – but an incredibly obscure mutant makes sense here, since her role is to be taken under Nature Girl’s wing and quickly figure out that she may have hitched her wagon to a lunatic. I’m surprised that the X-books have wound up going in this direction with Nature Girl, who you’d expect them to be a lot more sympathetic to… but honestly, I find this direction a lot more interesting, precisely because it’s unexpected. I wasn’t sold on Orlando’s Marauders but his X-Men Unlimited stories have worked a lot bettter for me. Good art in this issue, as well – there’s a lot of personality here, and making the arrival of Eye-Boy look cool is quite an achievement.
ROGUE & GAMBIT #3. By Stephanie Phillips, Carlos Gómez & David Curiel. Rogue is still trying to carry out her mission from Destiny and find the bad guys who kidnapped Manifold. Gambit is… helping? He winds up sending her on her way alone, but then his whole thing in this series seems to be to feign stupidity and get underestimated because he’s actually a few steps ahead. So I assume this is something along the same lines, and his scepticism of Destiny’s motivations turns out to be reasonable. It’s light, it’s bright, and it’s nice to see a bit of on-panel chemistry between the two leads when they’ve been in separate books for so long. It feels a bit throwaway but that’s not always a bad thing.
CAPTAIN MARVEL #49. By Kelly Thompson, Sergio Dávila, Sean Parsons, Roberto Poggi & Ceci de la Cruz. This is the final part of Captain Marvel‘s Brood arc and, ostensibly, the point where the Brood arc from X-Men ties in. And… er, yeah, that doesn’t happen. I mean, Cyclops’s X-Men do show up in this issue and they duly help to fight the Brood, but the plot doesn’t need them in the slightest. The stuff about Broo losing control of the Brood thanks to Nightmare, and even the core theme from the X-Men issues about the morality of exterminating the Brood, are just not relevant here at all. What you do get is a perfectly decent Captain Marvel story, paying off the plot from the last few issues, which has two main plot points it wants to hit. First, it wants to kill off the new Binary and make that a big deal. And second, it wants to give Rogue – who was in the Captain Marvel issues – a chance to use her powers to save Carol when her energy is getting out of control, so that she can symbolically redeem herself for wiping Carol’s mind back in the 80s. Those bits mostly work – though the plot is really handwavy about how Carol fails the Brood’s scheme, in a way that’s less than satisfactory. But neither the X-Men nor the Captain Marvel arc benefitted from being linked to the other – X-Men‘s arc ends by feeding into a finale that doesn’t want it, and Captain Marvel‘s arc is cluttered with X-characters who are surplus to requirements. This arc needed Rogue, but it didn’t need anyone else.
If only it was a freebie bit of cross-promotion – Wolverine was a whole extra dollar this week for those, what, five extra pages?
I’m not liking that Scott died because he turned his back on a foe with unknown capabilities after Scott hit him with his optic blasts. We’ve seen people get hit by his optic blasts before and still keep fighting- everyone from Nightcrawler to Harry Leland. Scott died because he ignored basic common sense. And yes, I know he’s been having problems in his relationship with Jean and I could see that distracting him in a Danger Room training session but not an actual fight where the villain could murder people in Washington if he escapes.
The idea for Fall of X seems to be that Orchis somehow prevents Scott from being resurrected and Maddie and Alex have to find a way to either bring Scott back or take care of things in his absence and that sounds like an interesting plot. But they could have found a less stupid way to kill Scott.
Aside from that, who does everyone think Captain Krakoa is? We know that Scott doesn’t recognize him on sight, he’s a good physical fighter and he speaks like he’s not a mutant. One possibility is Vargas- he can pull off incredible physical feats without being a mutant- like Captain Krakoa, he claims to be just a man. I don’t think Scott has ever met him. Some people have suggested US Agent but you’d think Scott would recognize his voice. Another possibility is William Burnisde, the 1950’s Captain America.He’s gotten involved with hate groups before. And he has a personal obsession with Steve, which could be why the Orchis goons ambushed Steve. The counterargument is that Burnside looks like Cap unmasked but when we last saw him, Steve arranged for Burnside to get a new identity, which could include plastic surgery.
My money’s on Nuke for Captain Krakoa. Buff guy with a crew cut. Superhumanly strong and tough when he’s in the drugs, which is why he could beat Scott. Fanatically loyal to the US and willing to do grossly unethical black ops missions, even in civilian areas. Not a mutant, probably hates them. Not a public figure and likely not easily recognizable without the face paint. Don’t think he’s ever met Scott before. And Duggan’s brought in Typhoid Mary and Kingpin so hey, why not a third Daredevil character?
I liked Uncanny Avengers the first time when it was Caps Kooky Quartet.
IN R&G #3, what exactly is that silver disk that Gambit finds? It seems to somehow give Rogue Caliban’s mutant-tracking powers so that she can immediately (as in, pageturn) locate Manifold?
This is the third time now that Orchis has managed to kill Cyclops.
Twice begins to look like carelessness…
“I liked Uncanny Avengers the first time when it was Caps Kooky Quartet.”
*insert I UNDERSTOOD THAT REFERENCE gif*
Although the X-Men are mostly dead weight in the Captain Marvel story arc, I’m glad Kwannon gets to do some classic superheroing as ‘one of the X-Men’.
And the next sentence was supposed to be: ‘because she got kind of lost in the shuffle after Hellions ended’, but then I remembered about Orlando’s Marauders.
Usually I’d find it weird I forgot a character was in the cast of a recent book I’ve read to completion, but, well. That run was a mess.
@Mark Coale
I get where you’re coming from (half the team was ex-X-villains, after all!), but I think CKK was more like Thunderbolts after they were exposed, since it was three-quarters supervillains and a “classic” hero. [Not coincidental Hawkeye was used for that role in Tbolts, after all]
Uncanny Avengers is a fascinating concept. I fear that Editorial (or above) just will not allow it to have the natural consequences.
Each time the Unit Division reforms it amounts to a very public project of goodwill and cooperation between mutant and non-mutant heroes (and I have just now realized that this coming relaunch of Uncanny Avengers is probably what the “Unity” mentioned in timelines of early Immortal X-Men issues refers to).
If there is a good time to make such a proposal, the Fall of X aftermath is probably such a time. The natural measure to take after the collapse of a public and ambitious project of mutant benevolent apartheid is indeed to build a public display of mutual respect and cooperation.
There are downsides and drawbacks. The very existence of the Unity Division creates conflicts and factions even among the mutants that it is meant to protect and integrate. It also reinforces the perception that there is a significant and perhaps inherent difference on how ethical and trustworthy a hero should be perceived depending on the origin of his or her powers, illogical as that is without the proper social and political contexts.
That makes for good story material. But it won’t have the logical plot results. The X-Men will not be dissolved in order to discourage the perception of apartheid. The Avengers will not lose any significant amount of motivation or political prestige. Captain America will not be pressured into giving up the shield due to his failure to solve the social tensions.
On a meta level, the X-books will not be confined to its own separate continuity. They were not when Krakoa arose, which would be the perfect moment for such a measure. For better or worse, it won’t happen at a time when Uncanny Avengers is once again an ongoing. Still on the meta level, that it is Duggan writing that book instead of Rick Remender or, say, Al Ewing, Si Spurrier or Kieron Gillen shows that the X-Offices are now aiming to a return to accessibility and familiarity of plots. They want readers to feel better invited to jump in instead of challenged to follow on. The one clear reason why the current “X-Men” ongoing exists and is written by Duggan is because there is a need for an accessible entry book with a familiar set-up and not too many tons of continuity and presumption of familiarity with current events.
I think there is still an evil Captain America running around from the Secret Empire event, so that could be a candidate for Captain Krakoa.
Captain Krakoa is Hodge, immortal, talked in military terms when with the right, hates the X-men. Uses bad publicity as a weapon to undermine his foes.
HYDRA Cap is dead, killed by Selene during Coates’ Captain America run. Melted him.
Plus Cyclops would have recognized him as Steve, but when Scott looks at Captain Krakoa, he asks “Who are you?”
Alistair> Captain Krakoa is Hodge, immortal, talked in military terms when with the right, hates the X-men. Uses bad publicity as a weapon to undermine his foes.
And you think Cyclops wouldn’t recognise the guy he worked with in X-Factor? This is the guy who Gillen made a joke early in IXM about him having protocols for EVERYTHING, such as “dealing with kaiju who you can’t afford to kill”.
I think Cyclops interacted with Nuke briefly in the very very start of Wolverine Origins, but otherwise nothing.
I think the biggest problem with Marauders was that the cast was just too big and there was too many threads; Orlando’s work on Scarlet Witch has been much more enjoyable, and with a cast of two to three characters, X-Men Green has a lot more to ground itself in.
The Sister Dagger story appeared in Wolverine as a part of Marvel’s Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month activities. They have back-ups stories this month in Daredevil, Doctor Strange and Ghost Rider as well by AAPI creators featuring AAPI characters.
I was pleasantly surprised to see the ethics surrounding Sentient Suit Caliban pop up again in R&G #3 since we recently deliberated on that very topic just a couple of months ago over in the X-Force annotations.
So, three things confirmed:
1. There was no consent (obvious)
2. There WAS an off-panel apology issued to the real Caliban
3. Forge’s feels guilty about murdering Sentient Suit Caliban
@Pseu42: I assumed the disc held schematics on Sentient Suit Caliban, but that’s just a knee-jerk reaction. Really interested to see where this goes.
Yeah, but schematics alone would be useless to Rogue. Though she could absorb Forge’s power to make it, but that would take time.
Also, it would be immoral and wrong.
Meanwhile, let’s pour one out for Binary, introduced, confused and emotionless in a ‘cream Vision era’ kind of way, then killed off within a year. It’s so bizarre, I wonder whether there was some big editorial swerve, still at least Carol has got her big butch Kree half-sister who is also kind of confused but not emotionless.
I had honestly forgotten that Rogue and Gambit was a comic, which was probably due to the other comics in the line seeming to forget that they were even a couple.
Binary made it to 15 months. But I expect her to come back to life in #50 – #49 ends with Carol stating she’s hoping for a miracle from the miracle soil of the miracle planet.
Also she was far from emotionless. Her first focus issue takes time to have her be sad over a kitten’s death and all that.
If anything, I found her to be too similar to Singularity from A-Force, who even made a couple small appearances in this run.
As for Rogue and Gambit – it was a plot point in that they’re married but star in different books back when Rogue was in X-Men and Remy in Excalibur / Knights of X. Since then Gambit simply has not been used, has he? Until the Brood story arc in Cap Marvel and the R&G mini.
What’s weird for me is that writers other than Duggan keep using Rogue as if she was still on the main X-Men team – she seems to be at the Treehouse constantly.
Maybe because she hasn’t been assigned to another book after being… well, not voted out, exactly. After stepping down?
Barely being used in Excalibur and X-Men, Rogue has not been served well by the Krakoa era. I actually think she’d do better in an Uncanny Avengers book than most other X-characters. She could get a chance to be a lead character, or at least a co-lead.
Why was Cyclops taken out so easily? Because he was in a Gerry Duggan comic, and that was the simplest way to do it.
Orchis: “Yes, we’re in, we have power and clout and have some of the public on our side. Let’s set up something to frame the mutants for terror attacks with a stolen mutant suit.. oh and while we’re at it, let’s also try to kill Captain America with operatives in our own gear shouting our name.”
No, no, see, it was foolproof. The only one who heard them was Cap, and obviously he’d be dead at the end of the assassination attempt. Sorry, the assassination, since obviously it would have succeeded. Foolproof!
Good point. The captions even point out how successful assassinating Cap always is! Not like Cyclops. That man is just impossible to kill.