The X-Axis – w/c 12 August 2024
X-MEN: FROM THE ASHES INFINITY COMIC #10. By Alex Paknadel, Phillip Sevy, Arthur Hesli & Clayton Cowles. This is the start of another three-parter, and this time it’s an Omega Red arc. Thanks to Krakoa, Omega Red has been somewhat rehabbed to the point where you can now write a relatively sympathetic story about the guy. Arkady has been mellowed by his time on Krakoa to the point where he decides to go back and see his home town again. He gets a rather mixed reaction, and the story deals with that reasonably well. It looks like we’re getting some kind of story about odd things happening to local kids over the years, which feels like it could be looking to retcon some of his back story, but we’ll see where that goes. I’m not particularly up for toning down his history, I have to say. Anyway, all this is ultimately a lead-in to Sentinels #1, which is the real context for anything we’re doing.
X-MEN #2. (Annotations here.) The X-Men head to San Francisco to help a new mutant whose powers have emerged in the middle of an apparent alien invasion, which remarkably enough turns out not to be a coincidence. Actually, that makes more sense than you’d think – even in Marvel Universe logic, “his powers created the alien invasion” is a lot less likely than “it’s a stressful event that triggered his powers manifesting”, so I don’t think the X-Men come across as too silly for not jumping straight to the right conclusion.
X-Factor #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-FACTOR vol 5 #1
“Red Carpet”
Writer: Mark Russell
Artist: Bob Quinn
Colour artist: Jesus Aburtov
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Editor: Darren Shan
X-FACTOR:
This is the fifth volume of X-Factor, a name which has been attached to all sorts of unrelated concepts. Volume 1 started as a reunion book for the original X-Men and changed direction completely in the early 90s to become a book about a team working for the US government. Volume 2 was a miniseries about the Mutant Civil Rights Taskforce, volume 3 was Jamie Madrox’s X-Factor Investigations, and volume 4 was the Krakoan group who investigated mutant deaths. (EDIT: For those asking in the comments, the book about a corporate X-Factor team isn’t in the volume count because its official title was All-New X-Factor.)
This new version of X-Factor is essentially the 1990s government team, but hybridised with Peter Milligan and Mike Allred’s X-Force/X-Statix – though tonally, a better comparison might be Justice League International. That said, it repeats the trick from the first issue of X-Force of introducing a team and promptly killing most of them off, which feels like it might be a homage. To be fair, what we’re actually told is that the team members are “dead or clinging to life”, which leaves a back door for anyone who wants to bring the characters back.
X-Men #2 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN vol 7 #2
“Invasion”
Writer: Jed MacKay
Penciller: Ryan Stegman
Inker: JP Mayer
Colourists: Marte Gracia & Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
This issue also includes a back-up strip: the eighth and final chapter of “Weapon X-Traction”, which is basically a Deadpool & Wolverine comedy strip. I’m not going to be covering that.
THE X-MEN:
The X-Men have access to a Cerebro, presumably from one of the satellite locations of Krakoa.
Cyclops is very clear that even in the midst of an alien invasion, the X-Men’s primary concern is rescuing the new mutant that they’ve detected. He does insist that they’re still going to do the superhero stuff and help San Francisco, and acknowledges that the city has been good to mutants in the past (i.e., in the Utopia era), but he makes plain that it’s a secondary objective at best. His interest in relations with the humans seems to be largely instrumental: on a purely practical level, it’s good for the X-Men to be liked.
When he realises that the aliens are a projection of his new mutant, Cyclops’ main concern is to cover it up so that the humans don’t find out. He goes to the length of faking the new mutant’s death. Of course, this is the sort of thing that might count as a legitimate worry about uncontrolled mutant powers, but Cyclops feels there’s a bigger picture. (He surely can’t be that surprised to learn that there’s a connection between his new mutant signal and the alien invasion, but maybe he just figured that mutant powers often emerge for the first time under stress.)
Charts – 9 August 2024
Just one major new entry this week, but…
1. Charli XCX featuring Billie Eilish – “Guess”
Technically this is Charli XCX’s second number one, because she had a featured artist credit on Icona Pop’s “I Don’t Care”. That’s an odd one, since she doesn’t actually feature on the record in any normal sense – apparently she’s doing backing vocals somewhere, but the credit mainly relates to her writing the song. Anyway, that was in 2013. Since then, she’s been a steady presence in the singles chart, mostly in the mid range and with the occasional bigger hit, but her peak as a lead artist was number 6 (with “Boom Clap”, over a decade ago).
The X-Axis – w/c 5 August 2024
X-MEN: FROM THE ASHES INFINITY COMIC #6. By Alex Paknadel, Phillip Sevy, Arthur Hesli & Clayton Cowles. Pretty much what you’d expect from the previous two issues: yes, Madelyne deliberately botched Havok’s magical resurrection in Dark X-Men, but she says it was to keep him safe by making sure he stayed by her side. If you’re going in that direction then this is handled perfectly well, even if the art seems to be struggling a bit to sell Alex’s decay in a PG way – I buy it for the characters, and that’s the key thing. Still, it’s obviously a story that exists primarily to extricate Alex from a fairly recent storyline and free him up for X-Factor, and there’s an unavoidable issue here of being able to see the strings. Needs must, I suppose.
UNCANNY X-MEN #1. (Annotations here.) So there’s a lot to like here, but I’m not entirely sold yet. On the plus side, Gail Simone has always been strong on characterisation and interaction, and I like her takes on the main cast. Rogue as leader has been done before, but it’s still fair enough to play her as someone who doesn’t see herself as suited to the role, and I like the idea that she’s mainly looking to reassure herself that the whole X-Men thing had some sort of point to it. It’s good to see the X-Men doing some normal things in the real world for a change, and put them more in the everyday. David Marquez’s art is absolutely fantastic, and if I’m not quite sure why we’re devoting so much of issue #1 to a fight with Sadurang, the establishing shot of him on the pyramid is just beautiful.
Uncanny X-Men #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
UNCANNY X-MEN vol 6 #1
“Red Wave”
Writer: Gail Simone
Artist: David Marquez
Colourist: Matthew Wilson
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
This is the sixth ongoing book with the Uncanny X-Men title; the last one was the Matthew Rosenberg run that preceded the Krakoan era back in 2019. The Free Comic Book Day one-shot for this year is effectively an issue #0 of this book, though the opening scene is a flashback to Corrina Ellis’s arrival at the X-Men Mansion, so at least that scene takes place before the FCBD one-shot – in fact, the whole issue probably does.
THE X-MEN:
Wolverine. He hasn’t been keeping in touch with the other X-Men, although he does show up for the death of Miguel, an “old army buddy” we haven’t seen before. They apparently had a bet about who would die last, and Logan feels guilty for cheating by Krakoan resurrection. He advises against joining Cyclops’ group – we saw him leave that group in X-Men #1, and he suggests here that it’s a closed community which is too far under Cyclops’ thumb.
Daredevil Villains #34: Mr Kline
DAREDEVIL #84 (February 1972)
“Night of the Assassin!”
Writer: Gerry Conway
Artist: Gene Colan
Inker: Syd Shores
Letterer: Artie Simek
Colourist: not credited
Editor: Stan Lee
We’ve skipped issues #80-81, which feature the Owl, acting at the behest of Mr Kline. That story also introduces the Black Widow to the cast, which will shortly lead to a radical retooling of the whole series. We’ve also skipped issues #82-83, where Daredevil and the Widow fight android duplicates of the Scorpion and Mr Hyde, built by, you guessed it, Mr Kline.
That brings us to this issue, where Daredevil finally meets Mr Kline after some six months of build-up. And defeats him in one issue.
Context, then. At this point, Gerry Conway was writing both Daredevil and Iron Man. Both titles gave Mr Kline an extended build up over the course of several months, with Kline sending an assortment of seemingly random villains to carry out missions with little or no discernible link between them. In Daredevil, he’s also a blackmailer, extorting money from Foggy Nelson for some vague and unspecified mistake. Eventually, after the whole arc is over, we do get an answer to this question: it’s something to do with papers that Crime-Wave prepared when he was working in the DA’s office circa issue #59, and that Foggy signed without reading them.
Charts – 2 August 2024
Back to another quiet week, then.
1. Sabrina Carpenter – “Please Please Please”
That’s five weeks in total. It’s hanging on there by default more than anything else, but it’s still 5% ahead of Chappell Roan at number 2, and everything else in the top 10 has been around even longer than it has. “Espresso” is still at number 8
26. Post Malone featuring Luke Combs – “Guy For That”
Another single from Post Malone’s country album, though the change of genre hasn’t persuaded him to get rid of that awful vocal processing he insists on using. The previous track, with Blake Shelton, only got to number 34. Luke Combs has a bit more of a UK profile, since his version of “Fast Car” was a minor hit last year. The most notable thing about this, though, is that we’ve now reached the point where routine country-pop records are a regular feature on the UK chart, when for years they were quarantined within the USA.
The X-Axis – w/c 29 July 2024
X-MEN: FROM THE ASHES INFINITY COMIC #8. By Alex Paknadel, Phillip Sevy, Arthur Hesli & Clayton Cowles. Havok’s demon nurse takes him to Limbo to try and get him healed, but it turns out that the plan is just to do a deal with N’astirh. Fair enough, and it’s all done quite efficiently. I raise an eyebrow at Havok actually taking the deal, but then he’s always been a flawed hero at best. What surprises me more is the reveal that the Goblin Queen didn’t botch Havok’s magical resurrection, but did it this way on purpose. I get that From the Ashes seems to serve the function of repositioning some characters for the relaunch and saving the regular books the need to do the job, and I get why they want to extricate Havok from this plot before he shows up in the new X-Factor, but it does feel like we’ve had two stories in a row rather obviously trying to re-write plots from the outgoing regime. And even if the specific things they’re doing are fine, there’s a sense of being able to see the strings here.
X-MEN: HEIR OF APOCALYPSE #4. (Annotations here.) This was a patchy miniseries. The basic idea of Apocalypse deciding to withdraw to Arakko but being egotistical enough to think that he has to anoint somebody to shepherd mutantkind on Earth seems reasonable, and it’s done in a way that avoids just resetting him to villain status. The art is very 90s but quite readable, and it has some strong moments – I really like the page of successive teen teams hanging out. The eventual choice of Cypher as the heir works for me; the story makes a convincing argument that Cypher was much more closely bonded to Krakoa than even the other mutants, and is accordingly much more traumatised by its loss. (It’s also much more recent for him, since he was in suspended animation for the whole of “Fall of X”.) And while his redesign doesn’t look great, there’s something in the idea of Cypher as someone both peaceful and very angry, with Bei and Warlock still hanging around as his followers. On the other hand, the actual contest which has provided the A-plot of these four issues feels mostly like busy work that doesn’t have a great deal to do with the outcome; the attempt to tie the final four to the Horsemen in this last issue is too strained; and twelve characters was probably too many to try and juggle. Still, I think the end result has potential.
X-Force #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-FORCE vol 7 #1
“Where Monsters Dwell”
Writer: Geoffrey Thorne
Artist: Marcus To
Colour artist: Erick Arciniega
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Editor: Mark Basso
X-FORCE:
The new X-Force is a team put together by Forge to deal with a hazily defined problem of “fractures” that are causing the world to break apart. Aside from the fact that Forge and Sage were both regulars in the previous run, it doesn’t have much connection to previous versions of X-Force. (In fact, the book was apparently pitched under a different name and assigned the “X-Force” name after the fact.)
Forge is effectively the lead character. When we first see him, he’s replaying some sort of video or simulation of a 1980s X-Men team fighting the Brood, for some reason or other. The art doesn’t really match up with any specific event. Forge is apparently obsessed with this, enough to spend over a day watching it and losing track of time.
Forge’s main project is “the McCoy Project”, which Forge says is inspired by the Beast’s research into mutantdom – i.e., the work that led to him become blue and furry back in Amazing Adventures #10 (1971). Forge claims that the Beast was “tr[ying] to run away from his mutation and stumbled into a power-up”, which is not what happened in the original story – the Beast was just investigating the “chemical cause of mutation”. Perhaps Forge construes any investigation into that topic as some sort of attempt to create a cure. In the context of an X-Force book, any suggestion that Forge is following in the steps of the Beast should probably be seen as some sort of warning.
