X-Men #22 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN vol 6 #22
“Bring on the Bad Guys”
Writer: Gerry Duggan
Artist: Joshua Cassara
Colourist: Marte Gracia
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. Pin-up of Orchis. Specifically, from left to right, that’s Feilong, Omega Sentinel, Nimrod, Dr Stasis, the Wolverine-skeleton Sentinel seen later in the issue, M.O.D.O.K., and two of the ape scientists who’ve occasionally been seen among Orchis ranks.
PAGES 2-4. Omega Sentinel meets with Opal Vetiver.
Omega Sentinel. It’s been a while since Karima actually did anything – she was prominent as an Orchis adviser in the Hickman run but she’s done essentially nothing in the time since he left.
Charts – 12 May 2023
Well, Ed Sheeran has a new album out, and we all know what that means.
Oh, hold on.
1. Calvin Harris & Ellie Goulding – “Miracle”
That’s a total of five weeks, albeit with a one-week interruption by Lewis Capaldi in the middle. That overtakes “Love Me Like You Do” to be Ellie Goulding’s longest running number one. (Calvin Harris’s record is eight weeks, with “One Kiss”.) The midweeks have it holding on for a sixth week.
9. The Krown Jewelz – “Scrap the Monarchy”
The X-Axis – w/c 8 May 2023
FREE COMIC BOOK DAY 2023: AVENGERS / X-MEN #1. This came out last weekend, but as in previous years, Marvel have already put it on Marvel Unlimited. After all, it’s relevant to the plot. Well, kind of. As we’ve come to expect, it’s basically three teaser stories. “Prescribed Burn” by Gerry Duggan, Joshua Cassara and Marte Gracia is a flash forward to this year’s Hellfire Gala, and a mystery figure from Orchis attacking the Treehouse and stealing the Captain Krakoa costume. That leads directly into “Controlled Demolition” – Duggan again, Javier Garrón and Morry Hollowell – in which “Captain Krakoa” starts making trouble in Washington, and a bunch of Iron Man-themed Sentinels make their debut (which builds on a storyline from Duggan’s Iron Man). It’s… you know, it’s basically a trailer and we know the key plot points will all be repeated when the actual story comes out. But you can’t really say much more than that about it. If I’m being honest, I’m a lot more interested in the general “Fall of X” storyline than I am in more specific things like the return of Uncanny Avengers, a book which always felt like an awkward exercise in corporate synergy to me. But we’ll see how it goes. Rounding it out is literally a few pages of G.O.D.S. by Jonathan Hickman, Valerio Schiti and Marte Gracia, which truly is just a trailer fragment.
X-MEN: RED #11. (Annotations here.) This is a very talky issue – Storm and Craig Marshall go on a date for five pages, and then for the main event Storm talks with Professor X for ten straight pages. There’s a B-plot, and it’s mainly talking. And it’s all great, of course, because Al Ewing is consistently great at finding insightful little angles on his characters, and leveraging continuity to make it serve those character moments in a way that feels organic. Stefano Caselli and Jacopo Camagni deserve credit too for making it visual – the current Professor X design naturally obscures most of his face and there’s something quite effective about having him lose his composure anyway. The double page montage is also a really good way of representing memory fragments, particularly in the way that the panels are taken out of context, broken up, and so forth. And, yes, there are some flashback panels thrown in just to break up the talking heads, but that’s what you do. Clearly, this dovetails somewhat with the Storm spotlight issue in Immortal X-Men, in which she recognises the need to take steps to guard against the state of the Quiet Council, and confidently marches off in completely the wrong direction. This issue is a lot more ambiguous about her decisions – she’s clearly right in most of her criticisms of Professor X, but turning her back on him feels like it’s heading towards another case of Storm managing to position herself in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Wolverine #33 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
WOLVERINE vol 7 #33
“Weapons of X, part 3”
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Juan José Ryp
Colour artist: Frank D’Armata
Letterer: Cory Petit
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Mark Basso
COVER / PAGE 1. Wolverine fights the Beast.
PAGE 2. The Beast despatches one of his clones to retrieve the dead Wolverine clone.
Last issue, Beast sent several of his Wolverine clones to attack the submarine that Maverick and his Mercs were using to smuggle Krakoan flowers. Unknown to Beast, the missing Wolverine clone isn’t lying on the sea bed; Maverick escaped with him as a prisoner.
Obviously, Beast is being presented as a massive hypocrite in giving a pep talk about the importance of going on field operations when he’s almost never done so throughout the Krakoan era. Mind you, I suppose he was doing just that over the last couple of issues when he was dealing with Jeff Bannister, showing up at Legacy House and tagging along with Wolverine on assassination missions. Still, he’s definitely not treating his own clones as equals.
X-Men: Red #11 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN: RED vol 2 #11
“A Storm on the Horizon”
Writer: Al Ewing
Artists: Stefano Casselli & Jacopo Camagni
Colour artist: Federico Blee
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Design: Tom Muller
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1: Storm, surrounded by grasping, needy Professor Xs with Xs for mouths.
PAGES 2-6. Storm’s date with Craig Marshall.
Craig Marshall previously appeared in issue #6, where he was introduced as a soil scientist working for NASA who had spent the last month on Arakko studying the Krakoan terraforming process. He helped to save some children during Uranos’s attack on the planet as part of the A.X.E.: Judgment Day crossover. Loolo was named in that issue; Kobb is named for the first time here. In Storm & The Brotherhood of Mutants #1, set in the Sins of Sinister timeline, Loolo shows up as “Loolo Marshall”, so apparently in that timeline he adopted her.
Saucier is a background character from Marauders; he’s a mutant chef, though it’s unclear whether that has anything to do with his powers. He’s been somewhat condescending about humans in the past, but either he’s toned it down a bit, or he’s just being professional here.
Arakko was terraformed in Planet-Size X-Men #1, though I can’t imagine many of you need to be told that.
“The last person I had dinner with was Doctor Doom.” In S.W.O.R.D. vol 2 #7. This seems to be the same location.
The Incomplete Wolverine – 2012
Part 1: Origin to Origin II | Part 2: 1907 to 1914
Part 3: 1914 to 1939 | Part 4: World War II
Part 5: The postwar era | Part 6: Team X
Part 7: Post Team X | Part 8: Weapon X
Part 9: Department H | Part 10: The Silver Age
1974-1975 | 1976 | 1977 | 1978 | 1979
1980 | 1981 | 1982 | 1983 | 1984 | 1985
1986 | 1987 | 1988 | 1989 | 1990 | 1991
1992 | 1993 | 1994 | 1995 | 1996 | 1997
1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003
2004 |2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009
2010 | 2011
It’s 2012, and we’re in the first year of Wolverine as the headmaster of his very own school. At this point, Wolverine is still a member of the X-Men (well, half of them), the Avengers and X-Force as well as having a solo title. But compared to last year, 2012 is relatively restrained.
We left off with Wolverine vol 4 #20, which was the first part of another Japan storyline. But this is where Marvel goes through its brief enthusiasm for legacy numbering, and so the numbering jumps to…
WOLVERINE #300-303
“Back in Japan”
by Jason Aaron, Adam Kubert, Paul Mounts, Ron Garney, Billy Tan, Jason Keith, Steve Sanders & Sotocolor
January to March 2012
That’s a somewhat abbreviated credits list, as issues #300 and #303 have a lot of artists credited on them.
Anyway, Wolverine heads to Japan, where a war between the Hand and the Yakuza is brewing. The Hand are controlled by the Kingpin at this point, but Hand boss Azuma Gōda wants rid of him. Gōda hires Sabretooth as an ally, and kidnaps Wolverine’s foster daughter Amiko – for once, not to get at Wolverine, but because her boyfriend Shingen Harada II is the rightful heir to Clan Yashida. Shingen responds by making his debut as the new, hi-tech Silver Samurai; he’s not an outright villain yet, but an upstart who Wolverine and Sabretooth both view with disdain. Ultimately, Wolverine rescues Amiko himself, then goes after the Hand. During all this, Wolverine has sex with Yukio, who is actually a disguised Mystique (with enhanced powers that stop him recognising her by scent). Wolverine then slaughters a lot of the Hand ninjas in Tokyo, which Gōda views as a wonderful opportunity to get rid of the dead wood and rebuild from the core Hand organisation that remains in the shadows. Of course, he winds up getting killed by Wolverine. Having apparently defeated the Hand – or this splinter faction, at any rate – Wolverine is ready to return home, albeit with a sense of vague dissatisfaction about the whole thing.
What he doesn’t know is that Sabretooth, Mystique, Silver Samurai and Lord Deathstrike form an alliance to take over Tokyo organised crime, and effectively seize control of the Hand. (Or part of it? Kingpin keeps showing up in Hand stories for a while.) That’s Sabretooth’s status quo for the next few years.
Charts – 5 May 2023
To celebrate His Majesty’s coronation, virtually nothing is happening on the singles chart this week.
1. Calvin Harris & Ellie Goulding – “Miracle”
That’s a total of four weeks. It matches 2015’s “Love Me Like You Do” as Ellie Goulding’s longest running number one. (Calvin Harris’s record is eight weeks, with “One Kiss” in 2018.) If you’re wondering, the number one single on the day of Elizabeth II’s coronation was Frankie Laine’s “I Believe”.
10. Nines – “Tony Soprano 2”
19. Nines – “Calendar”
34. Nines featuring J Styles – “Favela”
The maximum three tracks from his album “Crop Circle 2”, which enters the album chart at number 1. He reached number 1 with his previous album, “Crabs in a Bucket” – the first “Crop Circle” was a 2018 mixtape that number 5.
The X-Axis – w/c 1 May 2023
At last, a nice quiet week.
IMMORTAL X-MEN #11. (Annotations here.) Okay, so it undercuts the ending of Sins of Sinister: Dominion to have the four compromised Quiet Council members who went to the Pit come straight back out again in the next scene. But that point aside, the slow burn approach feels like the right one. It’s not an immediate collapse – we don’t get to the “Fall of X” stuff for a while yet – but everything is pointing towards the looming failure of the Krakoan era, as everything about Krakoa starts to get a little bit hollowed out. Half the Quiet Council can’t vote any more. Resurrection can’t be trusted any more. And so on. In fact, the direction of travel seems so clear that part of me wonders whether it’s a feint and we’re going to get “Krakoa saved from the abyss”. But I do think it’s probably time to move on to something else, and the other way of reading it is that the focus is already starting to shift to “what next?”
Storm is our spotlight character in this issue, and we pick up on the theme from X-Men Red of her being hopelessly overcommitted. It might seem a bit odd to play that angle with Storm rather than, say, Wolverine. But of course, he’s not in charge of anything, and thanks to his amazing ability to be in nine stories at once, he doesn’t have a track record of taking on leadership roles and not being there when it matters. It’s also an angle that helps to undercut her tendencies towards sainthood, and we can already see that her attempts to manage the problem here are just going to lead to catastrophe. And, despite being warned to her face that she failed to spot any of the problems in the Sins of Sinister timeline, she magnificently fails to spot any of them in this timeline either. Poor Storm.
Immortal X-Men #11 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
IMMORTAL X-MEN #11
“Part 11: A Hard Reign”
Writer: Kieron Gillen
Artist: Lucas Werneck
Colour artist: David Curiel
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. Well, that’d be a picture of Storm in a tree, wouldn’t it?
PAGE 2. Data page. Our opening quote is presumably alluding to the circular arrangement of the Quiet Council meeting chamber, presented as the arena of (political) game-playing. Much of this issue is about the effort to keep up the appearance of the Quiet Council while attempting to prevent the abuse of its rules – with spectacular lack of effect, whatever the X-Men might think.
Johan Huizinga (1872-1945) was a pioneer of cultural history, who was interested in the role that art and culture played in society. Homo Ludens (1938) argues that play is an essential feature of culture. The term “dyutamandalam” just means “gaming circle”. The quote here is from a section which indirectly inspired the modern use of the term “magic circle” in the gaming context to mean (broadly) a place in which the rules of the game supplant the rules of the normal world.
X-Men: Before The Fall – Sons of X #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN: BEFORE THE FALL – SONS OF X #1
“Run It Again”
Writer: Si Spurrier
Artist: Phil Noto
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Sarah Brunstad
X-MEN: BEFORE THE FALL – SONS OF X. This is one of several X-Men: Before The Fall one-shots. The others are Mutant First Strike and Heralds of Apocalypse in June, and Sinister Four in July.
To all intents and purposes, however, this is Legion of X #14 (with the Nightcrawlers miniseries being issues #11-13).
COVER / PAGE 1. Legion faces down Mother Righteous, while Margali Szardos (carrying the Hopesword) stands over the distorted Nightcrawler, with Nimrod in the background.
PAGE 2. Opening montage.
Panel 1, as we’ll see, is Legion doing some Danger Room-style training to fight Nimrod.
Panel 2 shows a mutant transformed into a monster in New Jersey, continuing the storyline about mutants being magically transformed which was in progress in Legion of X before the “Sins of Sinister” crossover. It’s all the work of Nightcrawler’s sorceress mother Margali Szardos, who in turn has been working with Orchis. The two newspapers in the foreground show art recycled from page 3 of Legion of X #9.
