The X-Axis – w/c 18 September 2023
X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #105. By Steve Foxe, Stephanie Williams, Noemi Vettori, Pete Pantazis & Travis Lanham. This is another ludicrously overloaded week from the X-office. Which means it’s probably not the best week to be listening to the opinions of completists like me, or at least it’s best to attach a caveat to them, since anyone reading all of these books would have to be absolutely rabid in order to get to the end of the pile without, at some point, thinking “Oh god, is there still more?” To be fair, Uncanny Spider-Man #1 is running two weeks late. But the planned schedule always had eight comics, which is ridiculous.
X-Men Unlimited Infinity Comic has the good fortune to come out first. It completes the series of spotlight stories for the members of the X-Men team who got annihilated at the Hellfire Gala. This is Juggernaut’s story, and it’s basically people recapping his history and talking about his journey of atonement. But it seems to be trying to present election to the X-Men as the climax of that journey, which runs up against the problem that he joined the X-Men during the Chuck Austen run, something like fifteen years ago now. I suppose you can argue that being voted onto the team carries more weight, though. And if you’re willing to wave that point through, then it’s a nice enough recap of Juggernaut’s career, but it’s not much more than that.
Uncanny Spider-Man #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
UNCANNY SPIDER-MAN #1
“Park Life”
Writer: Si Spurrier
Artist: Lee Garbett
Colour artist: Matt Milla
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Sarah Brunstad
Editor-in-chief: C B Cebulski
UNCANNY SPIDER-MAN is the latest iteration of the book formerly known as Way of X and Legion of X. We last saw Nightcrawler in X-Men: Before the Fall – Sons of X #1 (which was effectively a Legion of X special), in which he was freed from Orchis and reunited with the “Hopesword” that Margali Szardos conjured out of him in Legion of X #10. Then he decided to leave Krakoa, which is why he wasn’t around for the Hellfire Gala.
COVER / PAGE 1. Nightcrawler in action as “Spider-Man”.
PAGES 2-3. John Romita tribute pages.
PAGES 4-9. “Spider-Man” defeats some organ thieves.
Shocker tech. The thieves are apparently using the technology of perennial Spider-Man D-list villain the Shocker – and they’re so far down the pecking order that they think it’s impressive.
“Entschulgigung.” “Excuse me.”
Nightcrawler is wearing a modified Spider-Man costume with a mask, though he’s not exactly going overboard to disguise himself – his tail is in full view and his unusual hands and feet are also clearly visible. Plus, he’s still wearing his red and black colour scheme. This seems to me more of an exercise in plausible deniability.
Dark X-Men #2 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
DARK X-MEN vol 2 #2
“Wings Off Flies”
Writer: Steve Foxe
Artist: Jonas Scharf
Colour artist: Frank Martin
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. Well, that’s Madelyne fighting Maggott while Gambit and Gimmick watch, which in the story itself is no more than a mild argument. Featuring a rare 2023 outing for the brokeback pose, albeit innovatively viewed from overhead, it’s the worst cover I can remember seeing on an X-book in quite some time.
PAGE 2. Flashbacks: The alternate Goblin Queen’s life.
We saw this Goblin Queen at the end of last issue, when the captured Archangel was delivered to an Orchis black site.
“There are few worlds throughout the Multiverse in which Madelyne Pryor lives a good, simple life.” Presumably because she was created by Mr Sinister as a clone of Jean Grey for his own schemes. Therefore, in any world where she exists, she’s almost certain to get sucked into Sinister’s plans in some way, unless he gets defeated before that can happen.
Wolverine #37 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
WOLVERINE vol 7 #37
“Last Mutant Standing, part 1”
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Juan José Ryp
Colour artist: Frank D’Armata
Letterer: Cory Petit
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Mark Basso
COVER / PAGE 1. Wolverine fights the Hulk, with the three Wolverine clones in the background. Not really what happens in the issue, but close enough for a cover.
PAGES 2-3. Wolverine recaps the premise of “Fall of X”.
After last month’s diversion to do a crossover with Ghost Rider, Wolverine joins “Fall of X” proper. And for the benefit of anyone reading this in trade, Logan opens the issue by recapping the plot in narration (quite effectively, actually). Since the central themes of this book over the last year have included Wolverine’s disillusionment with the Krakoan authorities, and Beast thinking he’s above the law, Wolverine actually has slightly more sympathy for anti-mutant sentiment than some of his teammates, though obviously not to the point of sympathising with Orchis themselves.
The Orchis roadblock includes a robot with adamantium claws of its own. This is one of the X-Sentinels that Orchis created in X-Men #22 using the adamantium skeletons left behind on the Orchis Forge space station after X-Force’s repeated suicide assaults on the station, as shown in Inferno #1. We also saw an X-Sentinel in X-Force #44, Percy’s other “Fall of X” series.
Charts – 15 September 2023
At last, stability.
1. Doja Cat – “Paint the Town Red”
After three tracks that only lasted a week at number 1, Doja Cat makes it to two. Apparently the margin is fairly comfortable.
7. Olivia Rodrigo – “Get Him Back”
This is the release week single from “Guts”, which becomes her second number one album and outsells the first. Admittedly, part of that is because she now has the sort of fanbase who buy the physical formats in week one. The She has her maximum three singles all in the top 10 – “Vampire”, one of the one-week number ones, rebounds to 2, and “Bad Idea Right” leaps back from 12 to 3 (having previously peaked at 6 a month ago).
The X-Axis – w/c 11 September 2023
X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #104. By Steve Foxe, Stephanie Williams, Noemi Vettori, Pete Pantazis & Travis Lanham. Continuing with the series of spotlight stories on the members of the abortive X-Men team from Hellfire Gala, this is Dazzler’s issue. She wins a “Cultural Vanguard” award for (one assumes) diversity or something. The X-Cutioner shows up to complain about mutants appropriating human culture, but everyone loves Dazzler, and she easily defeats him.
Aside from last week’s Frenzy story, these shorts aren’t working – I think there’s meant to be a bittersweet undertone knowing what happened to the characters, but the stories are far too generic to suggest that we lost very much. I don’t think you can really do a story about Dazzler as a massively popular, accepted mutant artist one week before a U-turn where apparently everyone hates mutants now and there’s no pro-mutant sympathy to be seen – well, unless the story is meant to be about the shallowness of diversity awards, but I don’t think that’s the idea. X-Cutioner isn’t the right choice of villain for this – his schtick is meant to be that he resents mutants feeling that they’re above the law, which is at least a semi-legitimate complaint. And the art doesn’t capture the sense of “the music industry’s most prestigious awards ceremony” at all – it looks way too small scale for that. Not good, I’m afraid.
X-FORCE #44. (Annotations here.) I really, really don’t like the fact that we’ve just got Orchis working in both the US and Russia without any explanation. I’m not even sure having them here adds anything to the story. Wouldn’t it have been easier to have the Russians with their own bootleg Orchis – or even to twist the knife by offering “sanctuary” to the remaining mutants? I suppose my bigger problem here is that the whole “Fall of X” set-up doesn’t feel like it’s been coherently thought through – the books keep contradicting each other; the premise is that all the mutants are gone and yet there seem to be more of them around in human society than ever; public opinion lurches to a ridiculously one-sided degree overnight, simply because That’s The Story. The exile side of the plot seems to work, but the Orchis police state rings false to me whenever it comes up.
Children of the Vault #2 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
CHILDREN OF THE VAULT #2
Writer: Deniz Camp
Artist: Luca Maresca
Colourist: Carlos Lopez
Letterer: Cory Petit
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Sarah Brunstad
COVER / PAGE 1. The Children of the Vault – Ferro, Serafina, a guy in the background that I don’t recognise, Capitán and Átomo – hover over the public in superhero mode. Bishop and Cable are among the crowd wearing hoods.
PAGES 2-4. Bishop and Cable capture Martillo-131.
Presumably Martillo gets chosen as the target because he’s alone. But our attention is drawn to the fact that Martillo likes the current state of human culture, which the Children’s plan is going to wipe out. He’s more at the stage of regretting its loss than actually turning against the plan, but still.
PAGE 5. Recap and credits
Astonishing Iceman #2 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
ASTONISHING ICEMAN #2
“Out Cold, part two”
Writer: Steve Orlando
Artist: Vincenzo Carratù
Colour artist: Java Tartaglia
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Mark Basso
COVER / PAGE 1. Iceman in action in a city; basically just a generic Iceman cover.
PAGE 2. John Romita tribute page.
PAGES 3-4. Flashback: Teenage Bobby freezes Rocky Beasely.
This is a recap of the Iceman back-up strip from X-Men #44 (1968), part of the “Origins of the X-Men” series which recounts how Cyclops, Iceman, Beast and Angel got recruited into the team. The original story is by Gary Friedrich, George Tuska and John Verpoorten. Bobby is returning home from seeing a film with his girlfriend Judy Harmon when they’re attacked by bullies led by Rocky Beasely. Obviously, in some respects Judy is inconvenient with hindsight, but by serendipity, the bullies do immediately claim that they’re there to “show Miss Harmon just who the real man around here is”, which you could now read differently.
X-Men Red #15 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN RED vol 2 #15
“Nothing and Nobody”
Writer: Al Ewing
Artist: Yildiray Çinar
Colour artist: Federico Blee
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. Storm and Genesis fight, with the Fisher King in the background, suspended in Xilo’s worms.
PAGE 2. Flashback: The young Fisher King meets Azazoth.
In a passing line in issue #6, Fisher King said that his name had been “psychically amputated in the prisons to guard against the Vile Omnipaths.” In this version, the future Fisher King seems quite keen to be rendered invisible, something which will actually give him a power of sorts.
Azazoth is a new character, though someone quite like him was among Genesis’s forces in the previous issue. He’s likely named after Azathoth, one of HP Lovecraft’s gods.
X-Force #44 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-FORCE vol 6 #44
“The Chronicles of Colossus”
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Robert Gill
Colourist: GURU-eFX
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Editor: Mark Basso
COVER / PAGE 1. Domino, Deadpool and Sage fight Orchis’ X-Sentinels in an alleyway. There’s what looks to be a poster of Colossus’s face on the right-hand wall. Astute readers will note that Deadpool isn’t actually in this issue. He wandered off on page 14 of the previous issue, and wasn’t with the X-Force members who followed Colossus through the portal to Mikhail’s base.
However, the solicitation for this issue refers to X-Force being captured, with “Sage, Deadpool and Domino” trying to reach them before the Sentinels do. Evidently Deadpool got cut from the plot, perhaps because it didn’t make sense for him to be in this book and Uncanny Avengers at the same time.
PAGES 2-3. Domino watches an Orchis checkpoint in Moscow.
Are we… are we seriously just going with the idea that Orchis are openly operating, with the blessing of the authorities, in both the USA and Russia, and that no further explanation is required for that? That’s…. um, well, gosh, that’s quite a choice we’ve made there, isn’t it?
