The X-Axis – w/c 21 July 2025
ASTONISHING X-MEN INFINITY COMIC #30. By Alex Paknadel, Phillip Sevy, Michael Bartolo & Clayton Cowles. Somewhere in here, there ought to be an interesting story about the embittered humans whose supply of anti-dementia drugs was cut off with the fall of Krakoa, but this really isn’t it. The plot requires the islanders to blame mutants for their own downfall, which could work, but feels like it would need a lot more scaffolding than it gets here. Instead, we end up jumping from that mildly promising starting point to a rather by-the-numbers affair in which people who hate mutants hunt mutants, and it just doesn’t feel as if this is heading anywhere much.
Psylocke #9 annotations
PSYLOCKE vol 2 #9
“A Bird in Hand”
Writer: Alyssa Wong
Artist: Vincenzo Carratú
Colour artist: Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Editor: Darren Shan
PAGES 1-5. Mitsuki welcomes Kwannon in and tells her story.
The seal on Mitsuki’s costume is the same symbol that was burned into Kwannon’s wrist by the ghost figure in issue #7. We saw it on the door of Hayashi’s house in the previous issue (though it isn’t visible in the establishing shot at the start of the story), and we were also told that Matsu’o Tsurayaba had it as a tattoo.
Essentially, Mitsuki claims that Hayashi beat her and left her for dead, but she was saved by the yokai that she had previously befriended using her powers.
The umbrella. It’s a kasa-obake, which is a stock form of yokai. Basically an umbrella come to life.
Storm #10 annotations
STORM vol 5 #10
“Thunder War Begins”
Writer: Murewa Ayodele
Artist: Lucas Werneck
Colour artist: Alex Guimarães
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Tom Brevoort
PAGES 1-2. Flash forward: Bishop releases an energy blast.
Bishop. This is the first time we’ve seen him in this book – his last non-cameo appearance was in the Timeslide one-shot at the end of last year. As we’ll see later in the issue, Bishop has been entrusted with looking after the mutant child from issue #1, who is offhandedly given the name “Jaden” on the recap page. The previous issue indicated that Storm had either had her knowledge of the child’s whereabouts magically suppressed in order to keep them safe, or at least had magically prevented herself from being able to disclose it.
We’ll see later that Jaden has had a nightmare and lost control of their powers; Bishop has to absorb the resulting energy; and this is him discharging it, which is likely to make Jaden traceable, hence Bishop’s regrets. The flashforward takes place around page 13 of the story.
Wolverine #11 annotations
WOLVERINE vol 8 #11
“Only a Mother”
Writer: Saladin Ahmed
Artist: Martín Cóccolo
Colour artist: Bryan Valenza
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso
PAGES 1-2. Wolverine and Sabretooth start to fight.
So, okay, let’s stick with this format…
“He’s found us!” Elizabeth’s comment doesn’t make much sense logically – they’re in the room where she was kept chained up. If Sabretooth was her captor, what would he need to find? But the whole point of this story is that the sense memories cause Wolverine to gloss over the logical problems, as we’ll see.
PAGES 3-5. Wolverine and Sabretooth fight.
“Disappointed I ain’t dead?” Wolverine killed Sabretooth in Wolverine vol 7 #50, just last year.
“This ain’t the first time you proved too stupid to die, Victor.” Sabretooth has indeed come back from apparent death on plenty of previous occasions. He was beheaded in Wolverine #50; mind you, he was also beheaded in Wolverine vol 3 #55, and that turned out to be a clone. Oh, and he was beheaded for real in War of the Realms: Uncanny X-Men #3, but that was just before Krakoa, when everyone was conveniently dropping dead. Since it was presumably resurrection that brought him back that time, he ought to be dead for real this time, but… come on, it’s Sabretooth.
Phoenix #13 annotations
PHOENIX #13
Writer: Stephanie Phillips
Artist: Roi Mercado
Colour artist: Java Tartaglia
Letterer: Joe Sabino
Editor: Annalise Bissa
You know, I’m thinking maybe I’ll go back to the scene-by-scene format, especially now that the post-Krakoan books have been around long enough to build up a bit of continuity. As with the last time I did this, I’m going to use the story page numbers, since Kindle still can’t count.
Page 1. Flashback: Jean raises Nathan Summers.
This is an original (and largely generic) scene which takes place somewhere during the 1994 miniseries Adventures of Cyclops & Phoenix. It’s attempting to set up Jean and Cable’s relationship without getting too far into the weeds of 90s continuity. For anyone not familiar, however:
Nathan is the child of Cyclops and Madelyne Pryor, who was a clone of Jean. In X-Factor #68, Nathan is sent into the far future so that the Askani can save him from a techno-organic virus; after some back and forth, it turns out that he returns to the present day as Cable to try and avert that future timeline. In Adventures of Cyclops & Phoenix, Scott and Jean are brought forward in time to that future and wind up spending several years raising Nathan as his adoptive parents, though Cable only discovers this later on.
Uncanny X-Men #18 annotations
UNCANNY X-MEN vol 6 #18
“Corn Dogs and Carnage”
Writer: Gail Simone
Artist: Luciano Vecchio
Colour artist: Rachelle Rosenberg
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
THE X-MEN
Calico. Either she’s having nightmares about Mutina following the previous issue, or Mutina is genuinely stalking her. These encounters prompt her to sleepwalk, something she’s been doing “almost every night of late.” The very strong implication is that Mutina really is teleporting into Calico’s room to threaten her at night – when Gambit and Jubilee try to take her back to her room, they find the bed slashed, along with the painting on the wall. It was fine when she got up to start her sleepwalking a few pages earlier.
According to Gambit, she’s a hopeless cook (“she don’t know how to cook toast”), presumably because her rich family always had people to provide her with food. Despite this, she tries to make pancakes while sleepwalking, and seems at least to be vaguely aware of the correct ingredients. While sleepwalking, she recites some of Mutina’s threats, but also says “Everyone cooks, everyone cleans”, which are two of the Haven house rules from issue #3.
House to Astonish Presents: The Lightning Round Episode 26
We’re on the home stretch of TBolts Volume 1, as we look at Thunderbolts #65-68. There’s a whole new squad of ‘bolts, a brand new costume for Moonstone and a fresh new minty taste (that’ll be the Verdant Green). Plus! The logistics of Hydro-Man’s stogie! The Continuity Sugababes! and the unfortunate wording of early 2000s soft drink ads!
The podcast is here, or available via the embedded player below. Let us know what you think, in the comments, via email or on Bluesky, and if you want one of our lovely shirts then we recommend getting it now while we reconsider what we’re doing with the Redbubble shop.
Daredevil Villains #55: Edwin Cord
DAREDEVIL #167 (November 1980)
“…The Mauler!”
Writer: David Michelinie
Penciller: Frank Miller
Inker: Klaus Janson
Letterer: Joe Rosen
Colourist: Glynis Wein
Editor: Denny O’Neil
So here’s what happened since our last instalment. Issues #163 and #164 don’t have villains: the first one guest stars the Hulk, and the other is the story where Daredevil admits his secret identity to Ben Urich, who decides not to publish. Issue #165 has Dr Octopus, on loan from Amazing Spider-Man. Issue #166 brings back the Gladiator. And that’s the end of Roger McKenzie’s run as writer.
By this point, Denny O’Neil has taken over as editor, and as of issue #168, Frank Miller will be writing as well as pencilling. But first, we have another fill-in.
This one is a rather better fit than the Steve Ditko story we looked at last time. For a start, it still has the regular art team of Frank Miller and Klaus Janson. But this time, our guest writer is David Michelinie. At this point, he’s about 30 issues into his run on Iron Man, and he’s already completed “Demon in a Bottle”. So this feels like a contemporary Marvel comic from 1980.
Charts – 18 July 2025
This would be a quiet week if it wasn’t for Justin Bieber.
1. MK featuring Chrystal – “Dior”
Two weeks. Here’s some chart trivia I skipped over last week: MK’s first credited top 40 hit was “Always” in February 1995. Since he didn’t have an artist credit on the Storm Queen track that he remixed – which is fair enough, because it really was just a conventional remix – he had a wait of 30 years and 6 months from his first chart entry to his first number 1.
There are only three artists with longer gaps than that, and they all had slightly freak circumstances. The all time record holder is Tony Christie at 34 years, but that’s on the strength of the charity reissue of his back catalogue track “Show Me The Way to Amarillo”. Number 2 is Ozzy Osbourne, if you measure from Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid” in 1970, rather than his own first solo credit in 1980. Oh, and the number 1 was his duet with daughter Kelly.
The X-Axis – w/c 14 July 2025
ASTONISHING X-MEN INFINITY COMIC #29. By Alex Paknadel, Phillip Sevy, Michael Bartolo & Clayton Cowles. Right, so the story really is just that the island is run by people who hate mutants, and somehow they’ve got their hands on a symbiote? That’s… not very interesting, honestly. There’s the occasional glimmer of a story about how some people might see mutants using their Krakoan drugs for political leverage, but really it’s just the usual in a slightly different location, isn’t it? If it’s doing something more than that, I really don’t get it – and I’m afraid this is a story where I’m getting less interested with each chapter.
EXCEPTIONAL X-MEN #11. (Annotations here.) Since the book is set in Chicago, it was only a matter of time before Eve Ewing brought in Ironheart. Here she seems to be picking up on a dropped plot from her Ironheart run six years ago, though it’s simple enough to repeat the set-up for new readers – the original story pretty much just established Tank as a mysterious guy who was interested in small portals for some unclear reason, and then never got back to him before the book was cancelled six issues later. Remarkably, this means we get an actual action sequence for the second story in a row, something that hasn’t exactly been common in this book – much as I like its focus on character scenes, it’s odd to see everyone talking as if the kids have proved themselves on the strength of a single encounter with Mr Sinister and that time they helped to evacuate a shop.
