X-Men: Heir of Apocalypse #3 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN: HEIR OF APOCALYPSE #3
Writer: Steve Foxe
Penciller: Netho Diaz
Inkers: Sean Parsons & Lorenzo Ruggiero
Colour artist: Alex Sinclair
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Annalise Bissa
APOCALYPSE
We get another recap of Apocalypse’s fight with the X-Men in X-Men #35 – which the footnote insists on calling Uncanny X-Men #700, just to make absolutely sure that there’s no danger whatsoever of readers being able to find the bloody thing on Marvel Unlimited or Amazon. Apocalypse attempts to explain what the hell was going on there and doesn’t really make matters much clearer. He starts by claiming that Krakoa was Professor X’s vision (which it wasn’t, and that was a large part of the point of Immortal X-Men). He accepts that he was rejected by mutantkind, but conflates mutantkind entirely with the X-Men (and Xavier’s vision), and utterly ignores the fact that he was trying to claim control of a Krakoa which had developed without him for several years (which seemed to be the point of X-Men #35). Nor does it really explain why his selection of contestants is predominantly made up of the very people who he claims rejected him.
Charitably, let’s assume that Apocalypse is simply reinterpreting his rejection in the way least humiliating to him. At any rate, he recognises that he is no longer welcome as a mutant leader on Earth and needs to find someone else for the role – essentially what he said in issue #1.
X-Men #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN vol 7 #1
“Fire-Baptised Species”
Writer: Jed Mackay
Penciller: Ryan Stegman
Inker: JP Mayer
Colourist: Marte Gracia
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
We’ve been in the post-Krakoa era for a month now, but in the form of a sort of season break. Unless you count the Free Comic Book Day one-shot, which was more of a teaser, this is effectively where the “From the Ashes” era begins.
THE X-MEN
Or one group of them, anyway – there’ll be another group over in Uncanny X-Men. But in this book, we’re interested in Cyclops’ group. The field team is Cyclops, Juggernaut, Kid Omega, Magik, Psylocke and Temper, with the Beast, Magneto, Xorn and Glob Herman back at base. Because of the time jump from the previous issue, we don’t yet know how this particular line-up came together.
The group are openly operating as the X-Men, from a former Sentinel factory in Merle, Alaska, on which they’ve daubed an enormous X logo – it looks like we’re calling this place the Factory. They moved in in the epilogue to X-Men vol 6 #35. The Factory was smashed up by the Avengers in Avengers #12, a tie-in to Fall of the House of X. The X-Men have invited local police chief Paula Robbins to see the facility, in what seems to be a broadly genuine attempt to set up relations with the local community – although as we’ll see, they also seem to have chosen the location to send a message.
Daredevil Villains #30: Quothar
DAREDEVIL #72 (January 1971)
“Lo! The Lord of the Leopards!”
Writer: Gerry Conway
Penciller: Gene Colan
Inker: Syd Shores
Letterer: Artie Simek
Colourist: not credited
Editor: Stan Lee
If you were feeling harsh, you might say that for Stan Lee, Daredevil was about the romantic triangle between Matt, Foggy and Karen; for Roy Thomas, Daredevil was about Matt and Karen trying to make their relationship work; and for Gerry Conway, Daredevil was about twenty pages long, once a month.
This isn’t entirely fair. True, Gerry Conway’s first year on the book has a lot of blatant filler, random crossover issues, and some decent ideas that would have been better suited to a different title. But he was clearly aware of the problem, given the drastic steps he took to re-tool the the book. And besides, right at the start of his run, we have a couple of stories that are unquestionably Daredevil-specific. They’re about blindness.
Charts – 5 July 2024
Britain’s attention is elsewhere, and so we have another rather quiet chart. I’m doing this on my iPad, so no embedded videos this week. But there isn’t actually much to embed anyway, so don’t get too comfortable.
1. Sabrina Carpenter – “Please Please Please”
That’s three weeks at number one, and “Espresso” has spent all three of them at number 2.
30. The Kid Laroi – “Nights Like This”
Not a new release, but a 86-second track from last year’s album “The First Time” – although there is a new video for it in order to promote his tour.
35. BL3SS & CamrinWatsin featuring Bbyclose – “Kisses”
This week’s only actual new entry, and it’s a track that’s been out for three months and climbs from the lower reaches. Debut hit for everyone – as best I can tell, BL3SS and CamrinWatsin are the producers. Although I’ve linked the primary version above, a lot of the streams seem to belong to the Evan McGee remix.
The X-Axis – w/c 1 July 2024
X-MEN: FROM THE ASHES INFINITY COMIC #4. By Alex Paknadel, Diógenes Neves, Arthur Hesli & Clayton Cowles. Moving on to the book’s second arc – which still feels like weird timing when X-Men #1 isn’t even out yet, but okay. And it seems we have an actual regular creative team on this book now, which is a different approach. This arc, “What Charlie Did…”, is about journalist Sally Floyd trying to make sense of Professor X’s recent heel turn and his handing himself in to the authorities after Fall of the House of X. If you’re struggling to place Sally Floyd, then she’s the alcoholic journalist from Generation M, a miniseries from the Decimation period. After that, she got shunted over to the wider Marvel Universe as one of its cast of available journalists, but I don’t think the X-books have done anything with her since Generation M, and she doesn’t seem to have been used anywhere in several years. Still, if you’re looking for a viewpoint character to write about mutantdom, she’s as good as any.
This first chapter is really just restatement of ideas. Sally’s basic role as a talented journalist and recidivist alcoholic is set up again, and we get a recap of all the things Professor X has done wrong- specifically, the things that were turning points in how the character was interpreted – coupled with a reminder of his more straightforwardly heroic moments that have been downplayed over the years. The project here is apparently to explain how these conflicting versions of the character are meant to work together, but part of the angle is some weird Arthurian connection in Xavier’s self-image. Hard to say at this point where they’re going with this, and it certainly seems a bit early to be setting up Xavier for rehabilitation from the end of Krakoa, but we’ll see.
Daredevil Villains #29: The Tribune
DAREDEVIL #70-71 (November & December 1970)
“The Tribune” / “If an Eye Offend Thee…”
Writer: Gary Friedrich (#70), Roy Thomas & Lein Wein (#71)
Penciller: Gene Colan
Inker: Syd Shores
Letterer: Sam Rosen (#70) & Artie Simek (#71)
Colourist: not credited
Editor: Stan Lee
This is the third story in a row to deal with political radicals. In issue #68, Phoenix were so vague as to be meaningless; in issue #69, the Thunderbolts were a clumsy stab at social relevance. So a third extremist story might sound less than promising. And when you find that the first half is by a fill-in writer, and the second half has two credited writers, neither of whom worked on the first half… you could be forgiven for not getting your hopes up.
But this story has neither the timidness that sank the Phoenix story, nor the over-earnestness of the Thunderbolts. It’s absolutely mad.
The Tribune is movie star Buck Ralston. Despite being enormously famous, Buck likes to give soapbox speeches to passers-by on the streets of Hollywood. “It’s about time patriots like us stopped being a silent majority!” he says. Karen Page is up for a part in his next film, but to the horror of her agent, she tells Ralston to his face that he’s an extremist. Ralston naturally concludes that she’s a commie. “Gotta watch anybody that says you can be too patriotic!”
Charts – 28 June 2024
After last week’s coma, there’s a bit more going on this week. Almost all outside the top 20, admittedly, but hey.
1. Sabrina Carpenter – “Please Please Please”
Two weeks. It’s peaked already, but she still has both the number 1 and 2 slots.
21. Tommy Richman – “Devil is a Lie”
Climbing from the lower reaches, this is the follow-up to “Million Dollar Baby”, which is still at number 10. It’s a decent production in search of a better song, and I think the first hit is the stronger, but yeah, it’s not bad. The video is the sort of thing you used to see at number 7 on the Chart Show Indie Chart, which is an interesting call. The microbudget video is making something of a comeback, not least because labels are starting to wonder what the point of expensive videos even is in 2024. For example…
The X-Axis – w/c 24 June 2024
X-MEN: FROM THE ASHES INFINITY COMIC #3. By Alex Paknadel, Diógenes Neves, Arthur Hesli & Clayton Cowles. The first arc turns out to be just three parts, which is fine – that feels like the natural length of a fairly straightforward ghost story. The ghost turns out to be mostly preoccupied with his wife, a mountaineer whom he assumes must have died on the mountain for no particular reason beyond sexism. That comes somewhat out of the blue as a plot point in this story, which hadn’t really hinted very much about what the ghost was up to, but it does dovetail nicely with Scott’s discomfort about how his relationship with Jean can survive their power disparity in the long run, which is the idea that Paknadel really seems interested in. It’s a solid idea for an Infinity Comic short, nicely illustrated for the most part (though some of the vertical scrolling feels a bit clunky in this one). A pretty good little story.
DEADPOOL VS. WOLVERINE: SLASH ‘EM UP INFINITY COMIC #2. By Christos Gage, Alan Robinson, Carlos Lopez & Joe Sabino. Well, yup, that’s an extended fight scene. There’s not much to this in the way of plot. Wolverine has a vaguely interesting motivation: he’s helping a old man who, as a kid, used to help him out in Madripoor, until he forgot about the boy due to memory wipes and abandoned him. But it really is just an extended fight scene, even if it’s done with a bit of wit.
X-Men: Heir of Apocalypse #2 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN: HEIR OF APOCALYPSE #2
Writer: Steve Foxe
Penciller: Netho Diaz
Inkers: JP Mayer with Sean Parsons
Colour artist: Alex Sinclair
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
APOCALYPSE
Despite being the title character, Apocalypse is barely in this issue. Aside from more brief flashbacks to show how he selected some of his twelve contestants, he doesn’t show up until two pages from the end, where he confirms that he did indeed lure Genocide to Egypt as part of his test – although Genocide isn’t in on it.
Apocalypse is unimpressed by his candidates’ performance against “my most despised child”. We’re not told why Apocalypse feels that way about Genocide – I don’t think the two have ever met – but the idea from the original Uncanny X-Force storyline which introduced Genocide was that Apocalypse viewed him as a threat. It might also be that Apocalypse views Genocide as a moron who hasn’t understood his philosophy at all.
Apocalypse’s new base on Mars is an Egyptian-stye pyramid, albeit with more modern construction in the grounds.
House to Astonish Episode 208
It’s been a few weeks, but we’re back, and we’ve got a full basket of comics news which we’re dispensing left, right and centre. This time round, we’re remembering Don Perlin and Peter B. Gillis, looking at Jeff Lemire’s Minor Arcana, the finales of Jupiter’s Legacy and Marvel’s Star Wars, and the new Blade: Red Band mini, chatting through the ends of Zeb Wells and John Romita Jr’s run on Amazing Spider-Man and Joshua Williamson’s runs on Green Arrow and Batman and Robin, and drawing your attention to the Wicked & the Divine‘s covers collection Kickstarter. We’ve also got reviews of Destro and Self-Help, and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe belongs in a museum. All this plus Blade: Special Vampires Unit, an alien goth and Spider-Man’s 1980s toy restoration hobby.
The episode is here, or available via the embedded player below. Let us know what you think, in the comments, on Bluesky, via email or on our Facebook fan page. And if you don’t have a House to Astonish t-shirt by now, then God, Jed, I don’t even wanna know you.
