Expatriate X-Men #3 annotations
EXPATRIATE X-MEN #3
Writer: Eve L Ewing
Artist: Francesco Mortarino
Colourist: Raúl Angulo
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Editor: Tom Brevoort
COVER: The Darkchild holds the X-Men in her hand.
This is the final issue of Expatriate X-Men. The parent title Exceptional X-Men isn’t returning in 2026, but X-Men United appears to be its spiritual successor.
PAGES 1-4. The Providence city wall attacks the X-Men.
This picks up directly from the end of issue #2, which ended with Ms Marvel discovering that there was 3K technology underneath the Flotilla – on re-reading, the idea seems to be that it’s on the hull of the boats, and the storytelling problem is that issue #2 jumps from Ms Marvel reaching underwater to retrieve Lyrebird to being underwater with him, with no apparent moment where she actually goes underwater. Anyway, as soon as this secret is exposed, Melée and Rift teleport the ship to the edges of the Limbo Lands, where they immediately come under attack. The opening caption here establishes that the attacker is the city wall itself, which is “semi-sentient”.
The X-Axis – w/c 15 December 2025
X-MEN: AGE OF REVELATION INFINITY COMIC #7. By Alex Paknadel, Adoardo Audino, KJ Díaz & Clayton Cowles. One last back story arc for the Age of Revelation, then. This one is about how Glob Herman wound up becoming a violent radical. He starts off the way we normally see him in Alaska, just a bit disappointed about the how same-y Revelation’s paradise is. He winds up being accused of counter-revolutionary thought on the basis of a single conversation with an old school friend (and yes, Radian really is a very minor New X-Men character). And he gets rescued by a mutated version of the Punisher. So apparently we’re getting “Punisher mentors Glob Herman” for the next two issues. And that sounds like it could be quite fun, since it’s such a ridiculous clash of characters. The Punisher doesn’t belong in this storyline at all, in a good way. This is apparently Alex Paknadel’s last contribution to the Infinity comics – if they’re even continuing after Age of Revelation, given how many other ones have been wrapped up lately – but it seems like a pretty solid entry.
X-MEN: BOOK OF REVELATION #3. (Annotations here.) For such a sprawling event, Age of Revelation has only two books you really need to read, and they’re the Jed MacKay ones. Amazing X-Men and Book of Revelation are both behaving like an actual crossover, converging for the finale issue. Last Wolverine might possibly be feeding into the finale, but pretty much everything else feels peripheral – or at most as if they’re setting up future plot points for the 2026 titles. But these two books are at least bringing us to some sense of events coming to a head, with the X-Men showing up in Philadelphia just as Arakko invades.
Last Wolverine #3 annotations
LAST WOLVERINE #3
Writer: Saladin Ahmed
Artist: Edgar Salazar
Colour artist: Carlos Lopez
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso
COVER: Leonard fights the original Wolverine.
This is the final issue of the miniseries, with Wolverine resuming next month.
PAGES 1-3. Nightcrawler rescues Leonard from Wolverine.
The previous issue ended with Leonard waking at night to find that Vindicator’s plan to free Wolverine from mind control was simply to kill him with the Muramasa Blade. Leonard and Kurt’s role was simply to get her close enough.
Incidentally, the recap pages on issues #2-3 of this series give Leonard’s full name as Leonard Two Bears, which I don’t think has ever appeared in the body of a story. (Issue #1’s recap page just calls him “Leonard”.)
For the purposes of this story, we seem to be workings on the original, Wolverine: Origins concept of the Muramasa Blade, where its magical powers can cut through adamantium and leave wounds that won’t heal.
Charts – 19 December 2025
I don’t normally do these on Fridays, but it’s the Christmas number one, so why not? Christmas is next Thursday, and so this will be the reigning number one on Christmas Day. Next week’s chart will also be overrun with Christmas records – even more so, in fact, because it’ll cover streaming in the seven days up to Christmas Day itself. But this is the one people care about.
1. Kylie Minogue – “XMAS”
No, it’s not Wham. This is an Amazon exclusive, which in theory puts it at a disadvantage (though its streams on YouTube will count, now that an official video has been released there). The flip side is that it gets heavily promoted on Amazon Music’s Christmas playlists… but that’s not why it’s number one. Gwen Stefani’s single is an Amazon Music exclusive too, and it’s at number 60.
Rogue Storm #3 annotations
ROGUE STORM #3
“The Gallows and the Executioner”
Writer: Murewa Ayodele
Artist: Roland Boschi
Colourists: Neeraj Menon, Fer Sifuentes-Sujo & Rachelle Rosenberg
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Tom Brevoort
COVER: Rogue Red with a bunch of arrows through her at the top, and a defiant-looking Storm on her knees in the bottom half of the page.
This is the final issue of Rogue Storm, with Storm: Earth’s Mightiest Mutant #1 solicited for February. Despite Murewa Ayodele insisting that he’s been told it’s an ongoing, the recent solicitation for issue #2 still has it as a five-issue miniseries.
PAGES 1-3. Storm fights her way through Eēgūn’s soldiers.
While Rogue Storm is much easier to follow than the regular Storm series, it would still probably be useful to stick the plot in chronological order before we go any further. It runs like this:
- Flashback in issue #1: Two years into the Age of Revelation timeline, Storm takes in Rogue Red and gives her vibranium knuckledusters. (The timing is confirmed by Gambit in issue #3.)
- Per dialogue in issue #3, the demon Eēgūn escapes “the imprisonment imposed on him by the universe” (presumably his consumption by Maggott in Storm #6).
- Flashback in issue #3: Eēgūn attacks and destroys the Storm Sanctuary. Storm fights him for ten days straight and imprisons him in her body (presumably using magic). Unable to control him, she secludes herself in the Sahara Desert, guarded by the Storm Engines. She loses control of her powers and involuntarily causes worldwide devastation.
- Flashbacks in issues #1-3: Five years into the Age of Revelation, X-Force (Rogue Red, Warpath, Iceman, Gateway, Fantomex and Akujin) fight their way to Storm, and Rogue uses her powers to absorb Storm’s abilities, thinking that she’s going to stop the devastation. As a result, Eēgūn escapes. Akujin turns on the rest of X-Force and kills most of them; she’s an agent of Eēgūn who enlisted X-Force to help get past the Storm Engines in order to free Eēgūn. Storm and Rogue Red are rescued by Dr Voodoo and the ghost of his twin brother Daniel Drumm. Voodoo is killed while holding Eēgūn at bay. Rogue Red dies from her injuries, and discorporates on death.
- Dialogue in issues #2-3: Over the next five years, Storm searches the world for Eēgūn and practices magic. Daniel’s ghost continues to hang around with Storm in deference to his brother’s final wishes.
- Flashback in issue #3 and main story in issues #1-3: Storm gathers various magical weapons with a view to fighting the demon as “Primal Storm”. Gambit turns up looking for Rogue Red. Eēgūn attacks before the conversation can get anywhere. Storm defeats his henchmen and uses magic to trap herself and Eēgūn, apparently forever, resurrecting Rogue Red as a side effect.
X-Men: Book of Revelation #3 annotations
X-MEN: BOOK OF REVELATION #3
Writer: Jed MacKay
Penciller: Netho Diaz
Inkers: Sean Parsons & JP Mayer
Colourist: Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
COVER: Revelation squares off against Elbecca and, oddly, Kitty Pryde, who doesn’t appear in this issue – making this a conflation of scenes from issues #2 and #3. This is the final issue of the series, with the story continuing in the X-Men: Age of Revelation – Finale one-shot.
PAGES 1-2. Flashback: Apocalypse despatches Elbecca to Earth.
We established last issue that Elbecca was not actually a little girl from the Revelation Territories, but an Arakkii spy with a “cover personality” who had been sent to infiltrate the Choristers and weaken Revelation. This flashback shows her being sent on that mission in the first place. Revelation points out later in the issue that this scheme must have been planned long before Arakko received word from Bei of his plans (in X-Men: Age of Revelation – Overture and the World of Revelation one-shot), and thus can’t be a reaction to Bei’s message. This seems likely to be right, and raises the question of why Apocalypse was already scheming to bring Revelation down even before then. Revelation’s explanation of his motives later in the issue probably provides the answer to that.
The Homies 2025
Jingle bells, Batman smells… or DOES he? Does he actually smell of GOOD THINGS, in an unexpected twist? How does he smell… compared to other comics? There’s only one way to find out – let’s have an end of year awards season! It’s time for the 2025 Homies!
As always, we want to hear from you about what you dug this year. As with last year, rather than give you a long list of categories, we’re concentrating on the comics we read that really did it for us. We simply want you to tell us:
What was the best comic you read all year, and why?
It could be a new release, it could be a relaunch, it could be another great year for a reliable ongoing. It could be a majestic miniseries or a great graphic novel, an incredible indie or a brilliant Big Two book. We’ll be reading them out on the show, so let us know what you dug and what about it made it so special for you.
Give us your pick, and may 100% of your Christmases be white.
Daredevil Villains #65: Micah Synn
DAREDEVIL #202 (January 1984)
“Savages”
Writer: Denny O’Neil
Penciller: William Johnson
Inker: Danny Bulanadi
Colourist: Glynis Wein
Letterer: Joe Rosen
Editor: Mike Higgins
We’ve skipped issue #200, which is a Bullseye story, and issue #201, where the villains are one-off ordinary criminals. That brings us to issue #202, which was part of Assistant Editors’ Month – a stunt event where the assistant editors were supposedly running Marvel’s line for a month while all the regular editors were away at a convention. In practice this meant a lot of wacky gimmicks. Daredevil‘s contribution was a comedy back-up strip which doesn’t concern us – its only effect on the main story was to make it a few pages shorter.
Even so, Micah Synn is by far the most bizarre concept that we’re encountered since Steve Gerber’s Black Spectre arc back in the 1970s. He’s a major fixture of Denny O’Neil’s run – he appears nine times between issues #202 and #214 (and most of the issues where he doesn’t appear are fill-ins). And after that storyline, he vanishes entirely. He’s never been seen again.
Micah Synn is the chief of the Kinjorge tribe, “from Mount Suruba in eastern Africa”. Ah, eastern Africa. That really narrows it down. In 1775, a party of British explorers went to Africa hoping to start a trading post, but got stranded there and “reverted to savagery”. They’re the King George Tribe, if you hadn’t figured it out. They’ve been living in isolation ever since, apparently hiding from hostile neighbouring tribesmen, until being “discovered by a party of Belgian geologists” six months ago. The Kinjorge are entirely white, so it would appear that the eighteenth century traders had enough numbers (and enough women) to make a viable breeding population. Seems unlikely, but that’s the story.
Charts – 12 December 2025
Well, it’s the second week of December, what did you expect?
1. Wham! – “Last Christmas”
“Last Christmas” returns to number 1 for its eleventh week in total. It reached number 2 on release at Christmas 1984 (because that was the year of Band Aid), but it’s reached number 1in 2020, 2022, 2023 and 2024. As a back catalogue Christmas single, it’s on permanent downweighting – Christmas records are expressly excluded from the normal rules that allow old records to come off downweighting if they have a surge of interest – but it really makes no difference. If “Last Christmas” wasn’t being downweighted, it would have beaten the number 2 single (Raye’s “Where is my Husband”) by more than two to one.
The X-Axis – w/c 8 December 2025
X-MEN: AGE OF REVELATION INFINITY COMIC #6. By Tim Seeley, Phillip Sevy, Michael Bartolo & Clayton Cowles. The final part of the Magik story. The basic idea here seems clear enough: because Belasco conjured those Bloodstones from her years ago, when Magik dies her soul gets split in two, and the Illyana part winds up with Belasco while the Darkchild somehow ends up with S’ym. I don’t really get why the Darkchild ends up with S’ym – did he find her wandering Limbo or something – but she does? So Illyana and Darkchild engineer a war between Belasco and S’ym in order to bring themselves together again. They promptly kill Belasco, but then Darkchild seizes control once and for all. It all feels a bit rushed, and honestly it probably needed to be either told at greater length or left to implication.
A bigger problem is that Tim Seeley seems to want this story to be about Illyana learning that Darkchild reflected a dark side that was present in her all along. That’s not quite on the same page with the recent Magik series, but it’s not a million miles away either – that book also wants Darkchild to be a side of Illyana that she’s wrongly interpreted all these years as an infection when it was actually a defence mechanism. But it creates a problem both in having Illyana learn a slightly different version of a lesson that she only just learned in her own book, and in the fact that the actual plot – Darkchild usurps Illyana and replaces her once and for all – doesn’t really dovetail with the message.
