X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #131. By Steve Foxe, Steve Orlando, Phillip Sevy, Yen Nitro & Travis Lanham. I think we’re far enough into this arc now to be pretty confident that it’s not going to miraculously come together into something coherent. Which isn’t to say that it’s outright nonsensical or anything, but it’s weirdly diffuse and unfocussed, meandering from character to character and  relying on a rather dull plot about Selene and the Externals to hold it all together. This issue, X-Corp decide that it might be a good idea to send a Madrox dupe into Selene’s clutches to die, and use nanotech to spy on her. Which… I mean, I just don’t buy that any of the Madrox dupes are fine with that just because they’re dupes, rather than because they’re heroic. Which is certainly how this story seems to be playing it.

X-MEN: FOREVER #1. (Annotations here.) Apparently this started life as Immortal X-Men #19, which would have been out a couple of months ago, before getting reworked into a miniseries for scheduling reasons. It’s a curious choice on Marvel’s part, but on the whole I think it works out reasonably well. The jump forward in time to Rise of the Powers of X #1 allows for a few surprises and reveals to be set up, and then this book gets to go back and fill in the connective tissue, so you get the best of both worlds. That said, it doesn’t feel at all like the first issue of a miniseries, not least because it doesn’t really set up any story that’s independent of Rise of the Powers of X; as a tie-in issue of Immortal X-Men, it would have made much more sense. Still, Marvel do love their #1s. The best parts of this naturally relate to the expansion of earlier Immortal plots, and it works very nicely as a part of that larger jigsaw. As an issue #1, it’s a little weird.

RESURRECTION OF MAGNETO #3. (Annotations here.) The penultimate issue of the mini, but apparently the final part of the actual journey through the afterlife, with Storm and Magneto both getting to confront assorted cosmic evil types. This being an Al Ewing comic, we also get a kind of unified theory to explain why the Phoenix Force has had so many opposite numbers over the years, even if it’s more hinted at than fully explained. Annihilation probably benefits from being linked to the Shadow King, since she wasn’t really that different from him in the first place. Others are so obscure that they hardly cried out for explanation – when was the last time anyone thought about the Goblin Force? – but it’s fun to cite them as part of the fix. As for the actual story, we get some degree of pay off for the recurring theme of Storm overcommitting herself, and an interesting attempt to acknowledge Silver Age Magneto as part of the character’s history. He’s a real problem for most modern interpretations, because he’s relentlessly one-dimensional; interestingly, the “role-play-gone-wrong” theory from the recent Magneto miniseries, which wasn’t presented as a retcon but simply as something we already knew, gets embraced as part of that. But in a more meta sense, we also have an acknowledgement that this is what all later versions of Magneto grew from, and a clever leveraging of him to serve as the anger that Magneto (and his later creators) haven’t quite come to terms with.

INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #16. By Gerry Duggan, Creees Lee, Walden Wong, Bryan Valenza & Joe Caramagna. Given Iron Man’s somewhat arbitrary inclusion in the whole “Fall of X” event – let’s be honest, he’s here mainly because Gerry Duggan happened to be writing his book – I do appreciate that his role turns out to be to get rid of the Stark Sentinels in a big diversionary battle against Feilong. He’s not here to win the day for the mutants, but his side quest does give him the big showdown his book needs against his own top villain. The actual issue here is simply a fight scene told entirely in splash pages, as a homage to Thor #380 (there’s a dedication to that book’s creative team, if there was any doubt about which was in mind). That’s inviting comparisons with Walt Simonson at his peak, which it can’t really match, but it is a gimmick that plays into the absurd scale of the giant armours that the story is working with. A perfectly decent fight issue.

WOLVERINE: MADRIPOOR KNIGHTS #2. By Chris Claremont, Edgar Salazar, Carlos Lopez & Cory Petit. Despite the name, this isn’t a Wolverine miniseries so much as a makeshift team book with Captain America and Black Widow having equal billing. On the other hand, it is Claremont playing the hits from his Madripoor stories with the likes of Tyger Tiger and Bloodscream getting outings, and a slightly odd attempt to explain what ever happened to the indigenous population of Madripoor. (They’re, um, in an underground town.) I’m not sure there’s a great deal of point to this beyond playing the hits, mind you, but it bounces along well enough, and Salazar does a good job with Bloodscream’s life-draining gimmick.