Daredevil Villains #66: The Trump
DAREDEVIL #203 (February 1984)
“Trumps!”
Writer: Steven Grant
Penciler: Geof Isherwood
Inker: Danny Bulanadi
Letterer: Jim Noavk
Colourist: George Roussos
Editor: Dennis O’Neil
Daredevil went into 1984 with regular penciller William Johnson struggling to keep up a monthly schedule. Having started his run on issue #197, he managed to do six consecutive issues. But this is where we hit our first fill-in, evidently commissioned back when Denny O’Neil was still the editor. Johnson only manages two further issues – #205 and #207 – before leaving the book.
Steven Grant had been writing for Marvel on and off since 1979, but hadn’t yet had a regular run on a series, unless you count seven issues of Marvel Team-Up. We’re still a couple of years away from him writing the first Punisher miniseries. Penciller Geof Isherwood was relatively new to Marvel: prior to this, he’d done an anthology story for Bizarre Adventures #33, and a fill-in issue of Power Man & Iron Fist (also written by Grant). In the same month as this, another Grant/Isherwood fill-in story appeared in G.I. Joe. You get the idea.
Charts – 26 December 2025
This is the dead chart – it covers sales and streams from 19-25 December, but it’s not the Christmas Number One, because that was last week. So it’s pretty much just what people had on their Christmas playlists. The BBC don’t even broadcast the post-Christmas chart because it’s so irrelevant; they use the week to do the top 100 of the year instead, despite the minor technicality that the year hasn’t finished yet. So, now that I’ve really sold you on reading this…
Returning to number 1 for its second week this year, and its twelfth week in total. We do have some entries at the lower end of the chart, though, as the Christmas also-rans make their big push to scrape above the number 40 mark.
29. Ed Sheeran & Elton John – “Merry Christmas”
This was number 1 for three weeks at Christmas 2021, although the actual Christmas number one that year was Ladbaby’s charity cover of the song. It passed its third anniversary during last year’s Christmas season, meaning that it went onto permanent ACR. Number 29 is where it ended up last year too.
The X-Axis – w/c 22 December 2025
X-MEN: AGE OF REVELATION INFINITY COMIC #8. By Alex Paknadel, Edoardo Audino, KJ Díaz & Clayton Cowles. Well, it’s an issue of the Punisher taking Glob Herman under his wing, ultimately leading to him going off on his own to seek revenge. The idea here is that the Punisher isn’t even trying to groom a successor, and thinks he’s just helping the poor kid to defend himself. That kind of works for Glob. It’s kind of weird for the Punisher, who’s apparently given up on vigilante homicide after the X-virus affected his hands, and has retired into a life of general niceness. I don’t really buy the Punisher reacting like that, as opposed to immediately setting about finding another way of pursuing his obsessional agenda – his one dimensionality is the point of him. But viewed as a Glob story, there’s a certain charm to it, and the story kind of requires the Punisher to present himself as a sympathetic figure to Glob. Perhaps it needs to be a bit more of an act for Glob’s sake.
EXPATRIATE X-MEN #3. (Annotations here.) So here we are, at the tail end of the “Age of Revelation” crossover, with just next week’s Finale one-shot to go. And this issue is… a bit of a mess, to be honest. There’s a lot of double-crossing going on and it doesn’t really come together. As near as I can tell, the plot is that the X-Men on the Flotilla thought that they were being hired by Mystique to take this Lyrebird guy to the Darkchild for reasons unknown, in exchange for unspecified intelligence. In fact, Lyrebird was tricking the X-Men into going to Darkchild’s territory as part of a deal with her. But Darkchild never explains why she wanted them, and ultimately just lets them go… and Lyrebird actually did want to go there all along, because and Illyana have a daughter from before she became Darkchild. Conceived at what point on the timeline? Oh god, don’t ask. Oh, and Melée had a side deal with 3K to get their technology into Limbo, for… reasons. And 3K didn’t want Lyrebird to wind up with Darkchild for… reasons? I mean, I think the idea is that Lyrebird was also working with 3K, but in that case, what was up with Melée and Lyrebird last issue? And then the payoff seems to be that everyone learns the lesson that they shouldn’t have got involved in these convoluted machinations, which would be a weird message for an X-Men story to begin with… except the next thing they do is announce that they’re spontaneously going to Philadelphia to appear in Finale, for no apparent reason.
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.
