The X-Axis – w/c 23 October 2023
Once again, we get a ridiculous overload of X-books this week, to be followed by just the one mainstream X-title next week. This doesn’t seem sensible to me, but what do I know? I’m just the reader.
X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #110. By Steve Foxe, Steve Orlando, Lynne Yoshii, Fer Sifuentes-Sujo & Travis Lanham. Basically just a fight scene, though it does serve the purpose of letting one of the X-Men do some serious damage to an Orchis operation. Now that the notion of a tour of Otherworld has been dropped and we’re simply onto a third-tier X-Man trying to save Redroot to help avenge his friends, it strikes me that there’s another problem here: Redroot is so wildly underdeveloped on the page that she barely qualifies as a character at all. So when the story tries to do the beat of Redroot feeling hope for the first time in ages… you know, let’s give her a personality first. Any personality. Because right now she’s a background Flower Fairy.
ALPHA FLIGHT #3. By Ed Brisson, Scott Godlewski, Matt Milla & Travis Lanham. It’s very much a week of middle chapters, this – which means the weight of books isn’t the only reason why some of these will be short. A lot of this is a fight scene with the Box Sentinels, which turn out to be nowhere near as good as their American counterparts. Slightly to my surprise, a scene is devoted to explaining away why we’ve had two Feedbacks wandering around, and while it reads very much like a continuity patch rather than a planned part of the story, I do appreciate the effort to smooth it over (particularly as Daken was in both stories). And Nemesis turns out to be… well, a character you’d always have expected to be in an Alpha Flight story, but I guess it does make sense for her to pick a random alternate identity to throw people off the scent. Still, it doesn’t land as quite the huge twist that the cliffhanger wants it to be – if anything, the bigger surprise is that Guardian didn’t already know who she was.
UNCANNY AVENGERS #3. By Gerry Duggan, Emilio Laiso, Morry Hollowell & Travis Lanham. Captain America holds a press conference to tell everyone to hug a mutant. In theory, this is fine – it’s precisely what Captain America ought to be doing, using his position to change the narrative and not just running around with a random Avengers team who might or might not even be publicly acknowledged. In practice, it’s a Care Bears scene in which Cap points out the bleeding obvious, and a bunch of characters in the crowd stare at him with joyful, inspired faces. I wonder if it’s the art overselling the scene, but then since nobody is actually scripted to do anything in response to Cap’s speech, I’m not sure how else Laiso was supposed to convey that it was landing. And besides, when a big part of the X-books’ direction is that Orchis are dominating the narrative, I don’t think “all people needed was to hear the truth from Cap” works. To be fair, Steve does have a next step in his counter-narrative, which is to wheel out the one human witness who can testify to what really happened at the Hellfire Gala. Unfortunately for him, that’s the Kingpin – which is a much more interesting angle in terms of changing the narrative. (Mind you, it does beg the question of why Orchis hasn’t had him killed by now… but I guess he can hire protection.)
DARK X-MEN #3. Annotations here. The Dark X-Men try to recruit Flourish, and don’t get anywhere with that at all. And Angel apparently gets killed, which nobody seems all that bothered about (though I’m pretty sure he’ll be back). I’m enjoying this book, though. It’s making good use of Feint as the rookie who’s managed to convince herself that all this is still within normal parameters of weirdness for the X-Men, and it’s a good call to keep her and Gambit around – and to a lesser degree Havok – to make sure that this is still some sort of recognisable X-Men team, even if the other half of the cast just seem to be amusing themselves, and Madelyne is somewhere in between. It does feel a bit episodic, given that this is only a miniseries – we’re obviously building to the two Goblin Queens fighting, but that feels a bit disconnected from Madelyne’s arc at this stage. But fun.
REALM OF X #3. Annotations here. Bruno Oliveira is not the solicited artist for this story, and his angular cartooning bears no resemblance to regular artist Diógenes Neves. It’s been a while since I’ve seen Marvel slot quite such a dissimilar fill-in artist into the middle of an arc. Oliveira mainly works for Marvel’s Infinity Comics – he drew the Runaways arc from Marvel’s Voices Infinity Comic which was quite similar but rather more polished. He also skipped the final issue of that arc, presumably because he’d been hauled across to draw this issue at the last minute. I’m very much in the minority here, but I actually like a lot of the art in this issue – yes, okay, there’s some terrible facial expressions and an inexplicable insistence on drawing people cross-eyed, even for a rush job issue, but there are also some strong layouts and a bit of dynamism which, frankly, this series could well use. Three issues in, the story itself is very much a case of: I see why this ought to be interesting in theory, but I’m not enthralled.
JEAN GREY #3. Annotations here. Continuing our series of de facto What If? stories about Jean Grey’s life – after a passing acknowledgement of Immortal X-Men – we get to “Inferno”. This is definitely the weakest issue so far, simply because it takes as its turning point a fairly minor plot beat which doesn’t really feel like it feeds through into anything very much. I honestly don’t quite follow the point that Louise Simonson was trying to make with this one.
UNCANNY SPIDER-MAN #2. Annotations here. After a brief exchange with Mystique, and a seemingly pointless scene with Dagger (I can only assume she’s being introduced so that she can be used later in the series), our main event here is Silver Sable trying to scout Nightcrawler for future capture, and being thwarted by unreliable Orchis agents, her own staff, and a bizarre compulsion to flirt with the elf. The first part is decent, but it’s the second part that’s really enjoyable here. The Spider-Man angle feels a bit random, but his rogue’s gallery are good fits for Nightcrawler anyway, so it doesn’t feel forced.
MS MARVEL: THE NEW MUTANT #3. By Iman Vellani, Sabir Pirzada, Carlos Gómez, Adam Gorham, Erick Arciniega & Joe Caramagna. We’re getting to the point where I look at some of these books and think: I’m sure I’ve read this but was it this week? Last week? Have I reviewed it already? Well, yes, it’s this week, but from an X-reader standpoint this title is very much getting lost in the shuffle. And I like Kamala. I think she’s a great character. The high concept of this story – villains try to infiltrate her mind and she’s defended by mash-up fanfic characters of her own creation – is absolutely a Ms Marvel idea. I can’t help feeling, though, that somebody started off with that idea and then retrofitted it to have something to do with Orchis. This is fine, but if it hadn’t been shoehorned into the X-books, it would be better.
X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST – DOOMSDAY #4. By Marc Guggenheim, Manuel García, Cam Smith, Yen Nitro & Clayton Cowls. What do you do for the final issue when your story is about how the Days of Future Past timeline came about? Um, you just do a cover of “Days of Future Past”, apparently. And you try to stick on a beat of hope at the end. I dunno. But “Days of Future Past” already existed, and the most valuable and interesting material in this mini was in the earlier issues that helped to sell the credibility of America’s steady decline. When you get to just repeating the original story, I guess maybe it works if you’re new to the story? But the power of the original story lies in the threat of it as a potential future, not in the presentation of it as a settled fact. Oh, and I’m not sure why there are Nimrods wandering around at this point in the timeline either, since they don’t show up until much later. Still, it’s basically alright, but it feels unnecessary. And putting this out alongside “Fall of X”, which was already going overboard on the miserable fascist villains, seems like a very questionable decision – this would have been better served as counterprogramming during the height of the Krakoan era, rather than as Yet More Misery.
PREDATOR VS WOLVERINE #2. By Benjamin Percy, Ken Lashley, Andrea Di Vito, Hayden Sherman, Juan Fernandez, Alex Gumarães & Cory Petit. So, yup, we’re doing “Wolverine has fought the Predator at every key point in his timeline”. It’s Wolverine’s greatest hits, plus Predator. I’m not sure about sticking redshirts into Team X so that the Predators have someone to kill but, hey, if you’re going to do this story – and it’s Predator vs Wolverine, for god’s sake, were you expecting Shakespeare? – it’s solidly done. Predators do at least work as Wolverine villains because the whole predator/prey motif works for him. The art on the Team X section is decent, but the closing Weapon X sequence actually looks pretty striking. It’s what you’d expect from the title, basically, but done rather better than you’d expect.
I didn’t like the explanation for the two Feedbacks. Yes, Department H has been shown to possess cloning technology in the past. And yes, Feedback worked as a biomedical researcher. But I’m still not buying that an ordinary biomedical researcher (as opposed to someone like Doom or Sinister or Wizard) could work the device on his own.
A lot of people didn’t like that Cap faked an emergency to get the team to the press conference. And why is Deadpool on a team that’s supposed to be good for public relations:
Reporter: Isn’t Deadpool an assassin?
Cap: Um, he’s not Hank Pym.
Deadpool: That’s right. Hank hit his wife. I attacked my ex-girlfried with a KNIFE.
Regarding Cap’s speech, it did seem like Duggan was trying a bit too hard to be “politically correct”. (Addicts?) But Duggan has said on his blog that one of the antagonists (presumably Captain Krakoa) will get a chance at a rebuttal.
Duggan said on his blog that some of us have correctly guessed the identity of Captain Krakoa, while others of us have fallen for the red herring he set up:
https://gerryduggan.substack.com/p/uncanny-avengers-coming-in-hot
The three most popular guesses for Captain Krakow’s identity have been Hydra Cap, William Burnside and Nuke. So who is the true identity and who is the red herring?
Personally, I think Nuke makes no sense. Destiny said Captain Krakow’s rank was truly earned and Nuke has never been a captain. Plus, Nuke is too unstable to lead a team and impersonate Scott. Captain Krakoa recognized Captain America’s moves in the first issue- that would make more sense for Hydra Cap or Burnside then Nuke., And if Captain Krakoa makes a rebuttal speech, let’s just say Nuke has never been known for his public speaking. If it was Hydra Cap or Burnside, then that would be fitting- one Steve responding to a speech by another speech.
At this point, I’m leaning toward Burnside. He’s from the 1950s and was trained as a historian, so he would be able to argue “Things really WERE better in the 1950s”.
As an aside, am I the only one that thinks it’s funny that the X-Men are split into groups during Fall of X and not communicating but Spider-Man runs into all of them? He met Kurt in Uncanny Spider-Man 1, Tony in the last issue of Iron Man, Maddie in this week’s Spider-Man and he’s meeting Iceman in the next issue of Astonishing Iceman. The X-Men really should use Peter as a messenger boy.
I thought the Feedback explanation (if unnecessary) worked quite well – it could easily have happened behind the scenes of Alpha Flight vol 2, when Department H were super-evil, treating the heroes as mind-controlled disposable objects and had cloning technology lying around. It’s not entirely implausible that Albert could have picked up how to run off a clone of himself after hanging around the technology for a little while.
Honestly, I’ve lost interest in Captain Krakoa by now – the whole plot doesn’t seem to have been presented very well. Or maybe it’s just this week being so full of middle issues!
Doomsday was just plain weird as a story. On one hand,it dutifully got us from point A to point B while setting up the exact scenario we needed for the original DoFP. On the other, it set up a new X-Men team for the “future” of that story. And it also did the work of explaining what happened to all the characters introduced in the past however many years, since the original had such a tight focus on then-extant ones.
I liked the idea of the other random being shoved into other camps, but making a team with Laura, Synch, and Bishop? Huh.
And are we all just ignoring the Excalibur story or how does that fit in now?
I just can’t say this was a necessary story.
Paul> Once again, we get a ridiculous overload of X-books this week, to be followed by just the one mainstream X-title next week. This doesn’t seem sensible to me, but what do I know? I’m just the reader.
Eh, bumping them a week would bump them into another calendar month. (And not so much this month, but last month or December would bump them into another quarter). I bet that’s why they’re dogpiling them all into this week, since they’re probably not ready in time to be pulled forward and spread out that way.
That must be also why Kurt is getting a one-shot between issues #4 and #5 of Uncanny Spider-Man.
I haven’t read the Alpha Flight volume where Feedback appears or the story where he dies, so it was a bit of a mystery to me why we stopped the action for pages of exposition about his appearance here. His position as a former teammate must have slipped past me at some point in the previous issues.
My theory is that an Alpha Flight revival is in the works and Brisson wants Feedback on the table for that. This whole AF mini seems like an attempt to rehabilitate the concept or at least its core characters. I wouldn’t be surprised if Marrina shows up at some point.
Along those lines, it is a bit weird that they get Aurora’s powers wrong not only in the art but also on the data page. Since when has she had concussive force blasts? Maybe I missed it during one of her multiple genetic realignments, but I don’t think that particular skill has been seen before.
And I really like the Nemesis reveal. Finally giving you-know-who an identity of her own. Well, another borrowed identity of her own, at least.
@Thom H- Yeah, but if Brisson wanted Feedback on the team, would he really give him a backstory where he left an innocent man to be tortured and killed in order to save his own skin? That’s usually the setup for a Redemption Equals Death moment.
With the all-too-obvious revelation regarding Nemesis’ current identity holder, I suppose part of this was the necessity to move past the awful baggage she accumulated during the last Alpha Flight series and bring her closer to factory specifications.
Especially if there’s any hope of putting together what appears to be a classic lineup once again… (who knows what Northstar and Aurora have planned post-Fall/Rise of X, if they’ll decide to rejoin AF or stick with the X-teams.) This really does have a trial balloon feel, and maybe we’ll get lucky and have a decent AF run for a bit.
Ed Brisson is, AFAIK, Canadian. This is already a good sign.
Brisson lives in Halifax.
Marvel currently has a few Canadians writing for them: Ryan North, Jed McKay, Chip Zdarksy.
“Ryan North, Jed McKay, Chip Zdarksy”
I never stopped and thought about it, but now that I do, those are the most Canadian names I can imagine.
That panel with Psylocke and Monet praising Cap at Uncanny Avengers is undescribably stupid. So out of character over a basic speech it does feel terribly misogynistic. I highly doubt it was meant as sarcasm from them – rather, it reads as some of the worst comic book bullshit I’ve seen this year.
@TheOtherMichael: I think the answer to ‘are we just ignoring the Excalibur story?’ is always going to be ‘yes’, I’m afraid.
Miyamoris said: That panel with Psylocke and Monet praising Cap at Uncanny Avengers is undescribably stupid. So out of character over a basic speech it does feel terribly misogynistic. I highly doubt it was meant as sarcasm from them – rather, it reads as some of the worst comic book bullshit I’ve seen this year.
But getting other characters to express awe at a writer’s safe, insipid platitudes is Captain America’s super power!
Now Rich Johnston at Bleeding Cool is claiming that at New York Comic Con, he was told that the identity of Captain Krakoa is “the one everything thinks it is”, meaning Hydra Cap. Rich’s spoilers have an uneven track record, and Burnside and Hydra Cap would look alike to someone who saw the unlettered art, but it’s something to think about.
The Captain America speech was awful. Given the current political climate, Steve Rogers changing hearts and minds with a speech was more unbelievable than any super-powered feat performed by the cast.
Uncanny Spider-Man was fun, however, and I like seeing Nightcrawler in this role. As with Dark X-Men, I wish the series was running longer.
As for Ms. Marvel: New Mutant, I forgot I read it until I saw this pos. It’s ok, but got lost in the glut of comics from the past week.
Michael> Rich’s spoilers have an uneven track record, and Burnside and Hydra Cap would look alike to someone who saw the unlettered art, but it’s something to think about.
Well, Burnside is meant to have a lot of chest/shoulder scarring from his “death” as the Grand Director.
I swear, if Burnside doesn’t have great big sideburns, then what is even the point of this visual medium?
@Mike: Cap’s involvement in mutant affairs always gets on my nerves – if someone’s going to be giving speeches on behalf of mutants, and appealing to the better angels of human nature… shouldn’t that someone be a mutant? Xavier used to give the whole “we are all human” spiel in the late ’80s and ’90s, and maybe he’s not the best spokesperson right now, but why does Steve Rogers have to be the one to speak for a group he doesn’t even belong to?
@Diana- But when the Avengers DON’T help the X-Men, readers (and some writers) claim they’re ignoring the plight of mutants, when the reality is the X-Men don’t help the Avengers out either when the plot requires them not to help.
In any case, as I said above, it does look like Captain Krakoa is either Burnside or Hydra Cap, who are both evil “Steven Rogers”, and we’ll get to see their rejoinder in the finale.
I don’t know…the last time a mutant spoke for their own cause, it was Magneto telling humans they had “new gods now”. It may not be a strength for mutants.
I’m not sure why it should be a mutant. Wouldn’t humanity think that mutants are being self-interested? “Of course they are going to say we should treat them equally, so they can dominate humans.”
Having a fellow human arguing that we are wrong about mutants, they are the same as everyone else, should speak stronger towards humans’ feelings about mutants.
I’m more concerned about the presentation of the public by Marvel. They are so stupid and easily led that anyone making a speech changes their beliefs.
“Mutants are the enemy.” “Hey, these guys we’ve never heard of are making a lot of sense. Let’s persecute mutants.”
“Wait. That’s wrong.” “Hey, it’s Cap, and he’s telling us something different. Let’s listen to him instead.”
Wait until this Captain Krakoa’s speech. “No. That Cap is wrong. We were right to hate all mutants.” “OK. Let’s do what he tells us now.”
Isn’t The Voice a mutant? Maybe the X-Men dressed him up as Cap and that’s what we are seeing in this issue. That would make more sense of this scene. It would also be believable with how mutants have been going about their business in the Krakoa age.
Captain Krakoa will be revealed as the real Steve Rogers who is an evil racist for real this time.
Diana said: Cap’s involvement in mutant affairs always gets on my nerves – if someone’s going to be giving speeches on behalf of mutants, and appealing to the better angels of human nature… shouldn’t that someone be a mutant? Xavier used to give the whole “we are all human” spiel in the late ’80s and ’90s, and maybe he’s not the best spokesperson right now, but why does Steve Rogers have to be the one to speak for a group he doesn’t even belong to?
It’s really a cliche at this point to wheel out Captain America and have him make speeches that win the day.
It seems like the writers don’t know how to write meaningful allyship without making the ally the main voice.
Michael said: But when the Avengers DON’T help the X-Men, readers (and some writers) claim they’re ignoring the plight of mutants, when the reality is the X-Men don’t help the Avengers out either when the plot requires them not to help.
It’s another example of the way the more hyperbolic anti-mutant stuff requires disregarding the shared universe setting.
When the X-books are telling stories about literal death camps, as in Tieri’s Weapon X, or showing a fanatical group mass-murdering children in school buses, it’s kind of hard to explain why the Avengers aren’t getting involved.
But the problem is as much the over-the-top portrayal of anti-mutant hatred as it is anything else. When the X-books portray anti-mutant sentiment at the level of ongoing, active attempts at genocide, does that mean the Avengers title have to put their own plots on hold for the duration?
And if that becomes the recurring status quo so that X-Men plotlines have the requisite intensity, then do the Avengers titles just become satellite X-books?
Chris V said: I’m more concerned about the presentation of the public by Marvel. They are so stupid and easily led that anyone making a speech changes their beliefs.
See also the Dark Reign event: “Let’s make convicted costumed psychopath Norman Osborn the head of superhuman affairs in the United States.”
Isn’t The Voice a mutant?
He’s a mutate, since his powers kicked in during adulthood when he was exposed to radiation.
I’m pretty tired of the X-Men fighting humans and/or other mutants and/or machines for all the genetic marbles. Another “mutant cure,” another dystopian future, another island to gather on.
The threat of annihilation works so much better as a background hum than the heartbeat of the franchise. Not just because it strains the credibility of the Marvel universe, but because it’s so played out at this point.
Hopefully, Breevort can return the books to a smaller scale. Hickman widened the scope about as much as you could, so smaller is honestly about the only place left to go.
@Omar: See also the ending of Tom Taylor’s X-Men Red, in which rather than face and defeat Cassandra Nova on her own, Jean throws a bunch of Avengers at her because her superpower is making friends. For a relatively good series, it was one hell of a flat note to end on
Actually , the Official HandBook to the Marvel Universe already retconned 616-The Voice as being a latent X-gene mutant because it appears that its now editorial policy that 616-radiation-based mutates must have powers which are logically connected to radiation (i.e. generic “energy” powers) or if anything else which are not GEP, they must be the result of some other element coming into contact with the radiation ex. Irradiated animals like with Spiderman , irradiated elements like Sandman/Hydroman etcetera)
http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix/voicetta.htm
Jdsm24 said: Actually , the Official HandBook to the Marvel Universe already retconned 616-The Voice as being a latent X-gene mutant because it appears that its now editorial policy that 616-radiation-based mutates must have powers which are logically connected to radiation (i.e. generic “energy” powers) or if anything else which are not GEP, they must be the result of some other element coming into contact with the radiation ex. Irradiated animals like with Spiderman , irradiated elements like Sandman/Hydroman etcetera)
The Voice’s origin has the radiation zapping him through his microphone. Wouldn’t that count? Bitten by a radioactive sound system?
But if the Handbooks have spoken, then he’s a latent mutant.
…try and understand it
Make a noise and make it clear”