The X-Axis – w/c 25 March 2024
(Again, before anyone asks, no, I’m not doing X-Men ’97, for essentially the same reasons that I’m not doing Ultimate X-Men: it’s not part of the core X-Men line, and it doesn’t interest me enough for me to spend money on it.)
X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #132. By Steve Foxe, Steve Orlando, Nick Roche, Yen Nitro & Travis Lanham. In this issue, Wiz Kid and Trinary fight off hackers in one of those cyberspace stories that I thought had gone out of fashion twenty years ago. We’re twelve issues into this arc and if there’s meant to be a point to any of it beyond killing time with a farewell tour of Krakoan D-listers, I honestly have not got the slightest clue what it is. I’m afraid my patience has run out.
RISE OF THE POWERS OF X #3. (Annotations here.) The Rise half of this event continues to feel much more coherent than Fall, without the same sense of last-minute changes of plan being accommodated. Perhaps any changes hit the other side more extensively – maybe this plotline was always going to pay off around now, or it’s been easier to skip to the end by jumping over the failed ascensions of Orbis Stellaris and Dr Stasis. And RB Silva’s art makes this book feel convincingly epic, as well. But for all the epic time travel and cosmic weirdness, this issue is built around Professor X finally getting to confront Moira about the collapse of Krakoa. Which means it’s really a story about how he feels about the compromises he was driven into, and also that Moira gets to be written as something more than a one-dimensional lunatic, an approach which pretty much killed the character after Hickman left. Going back to an earlier version of Moira helps to re-establish her as someone to invest in, and she’s really needed that.
X-FORCE #50. (Annotations here.) The final issue of X-Force, the one book to make it from the start of the Krakoan era to the end with the same writer and numbering. And it’s, er, a bit of an anticlimax. This is meant to be the pay off for the two Beasts confronting one another, and I suppose the heart of it is meant to be the older Beast getting himself killed in some sort of last-minute twinge of conscience after seeing his younger self and Wonder Man. But if that’s the idea then the moment isn’t played very effectively, and an obvious back door involving some ambiguity about which Beast dies achieves nothing beyond creating confusion and undercutting the story. X-Force themselves are given a marginal role in their final issue, and the pacing decisions towards the end are utterly baffling – this reads like a book that was written in the expectation of an issue #51, and has to rush its climax and shoehorn absurd amounts of exposition into the epilogue. I’ve always found X-Force hit or miss, but there have been plenty of hits along the way. This is a miss.
WOLVERINE #46. (Annotations here.) Fortunately, this is much better, as “Sabretooth War” has move on from the shock tactics and developed into a fairly sane Sabretooth/Wolverine story. Since they’ve been kept apart for the entire Krakoan era, this is actually somewhat fresh. And if there’s nothing radically different in the approach, there’s at least an unusual emphasis in playing up the love side of Sabretooth’s love-hate relationship with his nemesis. There’s remarkably little Wolverine in this arc, in fact – the focus is overwhelmingly on Sabretooth – but that’s working out just fine. Cory Smith’s art handles the split screen gimmick, with the same events shown in real-world and illusory form, quite nicely. It’s a bit of a surprise to see the Exiles get torn apart quite this swiftly, but by the nature of those characters, they really shouldn’t be able to put up much of a fight against Sabretooth if it doesn’t suit his interests to keep them around.
CABLE #3. By Fabian Nicieza, Scot Eaton, Lan Medina, Cam Smith, Java Tartagliana & Joe Sabino. This miniseries remains way off in the fringes of Fall of X, doing its own thing, which has worked out just fine for it. One thing about the earlier issues was that Cable’s alarm about Henri Parvenu’s steps towards a unified human race didn’t seem entirely convincing. But it works better with this issue. What Nicieza seems to be going for is that the older Cable thinks he’s doing “kill Hitler as a baby”, despite the fact that all the people he identifies as villains seem to be genuinely well intentioned, while the younger Cable has been giving him the benefit of the doubt without actually being persuaded at all. Granted, I’m not sure that having the younger Cable turn on the older one is that strong a twist – he did debut by killing his older self, so it’s nothing really new for him – but at least it’s coming together.
Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever read or heard Paul’s thoughts on any of the X-Men animated series…
“but by the nature of those characters, they really shouldn’t be able to put up much of a fight against Sabretooth if it doesn’t suit his interests to keep them around”
Considering the nature of Nedra’s powers. she should arguably be able to defeat Sabretooth after he tore her friend’s off. But the art is very careful not to show us exactly what happened to Nekra.
“What Nicieza seems to be going for is that the older Cable thinks he’s doing “kill Hitler as a baby”, despite the fact that all the people he identifies as villains seem to be genuinely well intentioned”
They may be well intentioned but their actions are repugnant. Look at what they did to Empyrean this issue.
Cable 3 has Irene Merryweather ask both Cables about Cyclops’s escape. Which is odd because after Scott escapes, he travels directly to the moon, where he finds Nimrod about to initiate the Sentinel City plan. And Enigma contacts Moira just as Nimrod, Omega Sentinel and Moira are moving to “phase two”. So by the time Irene learns Scott’s escaped, there should be a massive worldwide battle between superheroes and killer robots backed by a Dominion with the mind of a mad Victorian scientist. Yet there doesn’t seem to be any evidence of it in Cable 3.
Mueller got the data for Homo Unitus from Sinister’s experiment in X-Men Forever 10, involving a clone of her and a clone of Moira. That raises the question though, why didn’t the timeline reset when that Moira clone died? (In fairness, Sinister designed that clone to die in 3 hours, so it’s possible that had the side effect of neutralizing her x-gene or something.)
Am I the only person who the whole “which Beast died?” doesn’t make sense? The resurrected 1985 Beast should have the original design, while the Krakoa Beast should utilize the Immonen design which isn’t exactly the same. Closer to it than the Quietly cat-Beast, but still different from the original apr-Beast. If you want to say the Immonen/Bendis storyline returned him to his original design, I suppose you can, but that’s not what’s been reflected in the art for the past ten years. Or am I being obtuse?
(And here’s a vote for Paul’s thoughts on anything and everything X-Men TAS!)
Jeremy is correct on Beast’s appearance abd even power set.
Jeremy is incorrect on Paul reviewing X-MEN spin-off media. He already spends a crap ton of his own money on comic books. We don’t get a vote on whether he immerses himself into prose novels or video games or anything X-Men outside these particular comic books.
@Jeremy: Surprisingly, there’s an explanation for that. X-Force found a spare Beast clone and downloaded the 1985 memories into it, so he does come with his modern appearance.
Also, when Beast was killed by Wolverine earlier in Percy’s stuff, the design he came back with wasn’t quite the Immonen design anyway.
(Notwithstanding that, while it was more consistent than cat-Beast – which no two artists drew more than vaguely alike – Beast’s design has still “wandered around” a lot post-ANXM anyway)
Imagine the book “How To Draw Beast The Marvel Way. It’d just be a dark blue palette and nothing else. Not even a humanoid template. Maybe a picture of Nightcrawler with a cross through it.
When young Cable killed old Cable in the 2021 Duggan/Noto series, that was also in that series’s issue #3. So maybe this is intentional hommage?
One thing that would have been nice in Cable would be to compare his actions with Orchis. Both are trying to prevent a predicted replacement of their races. Orchis was using ethnic cleansing, while Cable wants to prevent his enemies from being created at all.
@Chris: To be clear, it’s more idle wondering than a “demand” for deep analysis, at least on my part – I’m genuinely curious as to whether Paul’s seen ’97 or any of the prior shows, just because I don’t recall it ever coming up before (but I’ve been reading X-Axis for over 20 years now, it’s entirely possible that I’m just blanking on any specific mentions).
Today I learned this has been going on for TWENTY YEARS?
Over 25, actually. If you click the X-Axis Archives on the right side of the landing page, you can read reviews from 1999. And Paul had already been doing them for awhile before that.
It occurred to me that the 2 Beasts plot could have been introduced and resolved 20 or 30 issues ago. Percy could have had someone else as the main villain in Wolverine, maybe someone connected with the evil auction house. We could have had Beast 2 (OR IS HE?!?!?) hanging out on Krakoa, doing science stuff with Forge. The story didn’t need to drag out this long, Beast 1’s actions could have been tied to Orchis’s rise more explicitly, and the Colssus story could have moved forward before we were annoyed by how long it was taking to end. Oh well.
Wolverine has recovered from the first parts of “Sabretooth War” being so bad. I like how Sabretooth switched from wanting “his” Wolverine back to deporting him in the last scene. I’m actually looking forward to the next issue, and I hope we don’t get another rushed, sloppy ending when we get to number 50.
@Mike Loughlin- as I understand it, Percy’s idea from the beginning was that Beast would become corrupted as head of the mutant CIA, Krakoa would be destroyed, and then while mutants are in crisis after the destruction of Krakoa, Beast continues to be evil, so they create Beast 2 to stop him. Hickman intended Krakoa to last a relatively short time. But the editors kept pushing back the end of Krakoa for years, and Percy decided to stick with his original plan, so Beast’s storyline wound up lasting years. And it made the Quiet Council look like idiots for keeping Beast in charge after he enslaved a country. (Of course, pushing back the end of Krakoa also backfired on Jordan White, since sales eventually dropped and Jordan got replaced with Tom Breevort.)
But yeah, Percy arguably should have changed his plans when Krakoa’s end kept getting pushed back.
@MasterMahan
Ah, that makes sense in the context of the story but also makes it feel like an even bigger miss. There’s a lot to be said about being confronted by a younger version of yourself that is an inherently different person, but you lose a lot of that thematically and visually with this approach. Also, it seemed like part of this was about getting Beast back to his pre-Quietly design, which looks to be reflected in the “From the Ashes” X-Men cover, but that doesn’t work if it’s still supposed to be the post-Immonen design. Which as @SanityOrMadness points out, is really, REALLY inconsistent.
@Chris
Fair enough! Request is contingent on him already having a Disney+ account 🙂
@Diane
I remember Paul making a passing reference to the cartoon as something he wasn’t really interested in. Seems to be along the lines of the new Ultimate X-Men book as something inspired by the core universe but not connected to it, so it doesn’t merit a close look.
I have read X-Axis since Usenet on rec.arts.comics.xmen, so nearly (but not quite) 30 years.
The Unlimited comic has mentioned a couple of times now the retcon that Cannonball was only tricked into thinking he was an External. Which only makes me wonder why they did the retcon in the first place. It doesn’t harm the character in any way, there’s plenty of immortal superheroes. It’s evidently not because Marvel wanted to wash their hands of the whole Externals mess, becausetheykeep getting used.
Was it some sort of lawsuit or copyright safeguard, because Cannonball’s story was a bit too close to Highlander?
I’m not sure how or exactly when, but I feel like that 30th anniversary should be marked in some way.
@Si- they WERE trying to get rid of the Externals at the time of the retcon. They killed off all of them except Selene and Apocalypse ,who were pre-existing characters.
Of course, the problem is that Selene’s dialogue implies Cable faked it somehow, which is impossible if you read the actual issues where Sam “dies”.
Oh yeah, it does make sense if the purpose of the story was to delete the Externals from the setting, but to keep the character Cannonball. It’s a clumsy way to do it, but that’s Jeph Loeb for you.
But then, why is this story drawing attention to a 20 year old retcon? I suppose the answer is “why is this scattershot story doing any of the things it’s doing?”
@Si if they were worried about ripping off Highlander, Marvel would never have done Black Axe, who is just Connor MacLeod with an axe. But then no one’s heard of Black Axe.