The X-Axis – 29 January 2024
X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #124. By Steve Foxe, Steve Orlando, Phillip Sevy, Yen Nitro & Travis Lanham. This arc feels less like a story and more like a scramble to catch up on what a bunch of barely related characters were doing during Fall of X. Thunderbird! X-Corp! Shatterstar! Somnus! Cerebra! The notional main story here is that the Externals are rounding up mutants for Selene, which at least picks up on her trying to resurrect them in Immortal X-Men. But it feels like it’s being squeezed aside by all the unrelated stuff around it, and while Selene does have some actual star power as a villain, she’s still basically just doing what she normally does. And next issue is… something to do with Captain Britain? There’s way too much going on here, and none of it is cutting through.
WOLVERINE #42. (Annotations here.) Oh dear. A storyline co-written by Victor LaValle and Benjamin Percy sounded like a horrible style clash when it was announced. It avoids that trap, but largely because LaValle’s contribution is undetectable. Certainly, nothing that made his Sabretooth minis worth reading is to be found here. This is just a tiresome exercise in gore porn. Some of it is downright stupid, in a way that simply doesn’t work alongside the general horror tone that the book seems to be aiming for. But even the bits that strike a better balance are mainly just reminding me of why conventional Sabretooth stories were so boring. This is part 2 of 10 and another eight issues of this is going to be an absolute chore.
DEAD X-MEN #1. (Annotations here.) This, on the other hand, is a pleasant surprise, in as much as the title turns out to be a red herring. It’s simply the X-Men who died at the Hellfire Gala, having been resurrected by the Five in the White Hot Room, just as Immortal X-Men showed us they could do. In other words… it’s the rightful X-Men getting their chance after all. That’s nice! And it ties rather more closely to Rise of the Powers of X than I was expecting. I was expecting something much more gimmicky than this. Now… all that said, I’m not entirely sure it’s really about anything in particular, so much as a bounce through alternate timelines that complements the plot mechanics of another book. But it does that quite enjoyably, so I’m happy to give it some time to see where it’s going.
I did not know the Sabretooth Wars was 10 issues! Wow, that’s… that’s a choice.
My hope for Sabretooth War is that we’re reading 5 issues with Percy as the lead writer, then LaValle takes over for another five. It’s a vague hope, but I can’t fathom how they can drag the current ploy out for 8 more issues.
Part 10 of the Sabretooth War will just be Logan and Creed’s severed heads biting at each other for 22 pages.
I have the feeling the Infinity comic is meant as a kind of primer to the wider X-universe. As in the Steves were handed a list of B and C characters and locations to use, so that readers will be familiar with them when they get used for something else down the line.
It’s a shame it’s so erratic though, I would have liked a story featuring Grandma Proudstar on the Reservation, even if it was mostly about stabbing.
Ben Percy owes himself making a Lobo pitch to DC whenever he has the idea for one. He is superb at creating stories of grit and gore kept together by a fine sense of appreciation of the sweetness of revenge.
Not my cup of tea.
@Si: I think the Steves are basically using this Unlimited arc to give some kind of spotlight to characters who aren’t actively playing a part in the finale. It certainly doesn’t seem as though Betsy, the Proudstars, Somnus, Shatterstar or Cerebra factor into any storylines in the next few months; this might just be, for all intents and purposes, this cast’s last hurrah until the relaunch.
@Diana Yeah, that makes sense, but at the same time there’s a cavalcade of characters, the setting is also all over the place. The reservation, Karkao or whatever the secret island is called, Nova Roma, that other place I’ve forgotten.
Echoing Mike Loughlin, hoping that LaValle will pull off a miracle in the back half.
Jumping on the Mike Loughlin train, that was my thought on the Percy / LaValle team-up: that these have been Percy issues, that they are each doing sections, and that the LaValle section is coming soon.
Seems like the next issue is looking into the past a bit? Perhaps there’s some room for something interesting there.
Maybe Orphan Maker and Nanny show up to save the day, I don’t know.
(As an aside, Sinister in the only person still in The Pit at this point, correct? But his ‘contamination’ of Charles allows him to speak to him telepathically and take over Charles’ body when Charles is sleeping, correct? Or something like that? I’m still trying to fully understand that situation. Sabretooth being the most famous tenant of The Pit made me think about that again.)
I’m not sure Orlando needs to be handed a list of C characters to use; that seems like his usual jam. I’m really warming up to Foxe as he also likes pulling out characters who haven’t been seen for a while. Both writers have a good grasp of past continuity, which I appreciate.
I liked Percy’s zombie series Year Zero over at AWA is my current version of I liked Bendis’s creator-owned comics. But…
@Karl_H
About Year Zero, is it just me or is that series a bit odd regarding plot?
My recollection is that it is more like a series of thematic glimpses with no succession of events, no connective plot, no explanation for the datapages and redesigns of scenes from the past with a zombie theme.
It feels like a series of very brief fever nightmares that was somehow written in comic book form for no obvious reason.
@Si: True, but I feel like that’s a consequence of how haphazard Fall of X has been in terms of which loose threads matter to the current plot and which don’t – you’d think X-Corp having an invisible flying island would be a much bigger deal for the main books, but apparently not?
So if the Steves are going to spend 20 issues of Unlimited (this storyline’s meant to run to 140 in mid-May) checking in with as many Krakoa-era people and places as they can, I say more power to them. It may be the only closure we get.
Finally I’ll get to find out what Rusty Collins has been up to since his resurrection!
I like the idea of drawing together the characters who fell between the cracks like Shatterstar, Jamie and Layla, Wiz-Kid and Trinary, Sonny’s and Cerebra, Dani and the Proudstar Brothers and even deep cuts like El Aguila. But this once again reinforces how bad a job Orchis did of getting rid of the mutants by having Xavier send them through gates. It mainly just got rid of the ones on Krakoa, there’s a loooooot left running around actively resisting or being hunted.
But at least someone cared enough to bring back the X-Corps island! That feels like something useful. Too bad they can’t bring in Kurt or Bobby to help as part of the network.
Frankly, as disjointed as this storyline seems,I’d rather read about these characters and approach to Fall of X than Percy’s X-Force. This is at least fun. Though I’m not a fan of John Proudstar’s one personality trait being “antagonistic asshole.”
@The Other Michael: John’s still fuming that he hasn’t come up with a proper retort to Cable for that “you had a plane to catch” burn
As someone who grew up with 90s gratuitous violence, Sabretooth War seems really gratuitous.
@Luis Dantas: The Year Zero miniseries were just short stories (5 per series IIRC) set at the start of a zombie apocalypse, set in the same world but not connected or continuing. Mainly variations of “what’s going on? oh no zombies!” and arguably by the last series it was running out of steam, but that’s the part of zombie stories I find most interesting, so it worked for me.