X-Men #20 annotations
X-MEN vol 7 #20
“A Civilized Discussion”
Writer: Jed MacKay
Penciller: Netho Diaz
Inker: Sean Parsons
Colourist: Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
COVER: Cyclops and Agent Lundqvist in jail.
PAGE 1. Cyclops arrives for his meeting with Lundqvist and is immediately punched in the face.
This is the third issue to feature an extended conversation between Cyclops and Agent Lundqvist – the first was in issue #3, and also took place in McDade’s Diner, and the second was in issue #10. Cyclops came off comfortably better in each of those arguments, which is at least one reason why Lundqvist doesn’t want to argue with him again.
Note that Lundqvist sets his gun aside at the start of the fight – evidently this is about asserting status rather than actually trying to hurt Scott. Scott seems to take the situation accordingly, and doesn’t use his optic beams – he claims towards the end of the issue that he believes Lundqvist is trying to provoke him into using his powers, though Lundqvist denies this.
Daredevil Villains #57: The Kingpin
DAREDEVIL #170-172 (May to July 1981)
“The Kingpin Must Die!” / “In the Kingpin’s Clutches”
Writer, penciller: Frank Miller
Finisher: Klaus Janson
Colourist: Glynis Wein
Letterer: Joe Rosen
Editor: Denny O’Neill
We’ve skipped issue #169 (which is a Bullseye story), and so we go straight from Elektra to Frank Miller’s other major addition to the series.
The Kingpin had been around since 1967 as a Spider-Man villain. I don’t normally cover guest villains in this feature. But the Kingpin is an outright import into Daredevil’s rogue’s gallery, even if he’ll continue to be shared with Spider-Man.
On one level, there’s nothing new in Miller’s Kingpin. He’s built entirely out of elements taken from earlier Kingpin stories. But the Kingpin had never really worked before in the way that he does under Miller. So we should take a look at the Kingpin stories that came before this.
The Kingpin debuted in Amazing Spider-Man #50-52 (1965), by Stan Lee and John Romita Sr. It’s the “Spider-Man no more!” story, the one where Spider-Man dumps his costume in a trash can. The Kingpin installs himself as head of the New York mobs, and of course Spider-Man comes out of retirement to defeat him. At this stage, the Kingpin has some Silver Age gimmickry such as an “obliterator beam” in his cane – which will keep showing up for years to come. But the main premise is that the Kingpin plans to run the underworld like business. He seems to think he’s respectable, and takes offence at the idea that killing his opponents counts as murder.
Charts – 8 August 2025
Gosh, we’re really shuffling through the number ones now.
1. Chappell Roan – “The Subway”
A new entry at number 1, which isn’t that common these days. Lewis Capaldi did it with “Survive” a month ago, but that was mostly thanks to physical sales in the first week. “The Subway” is here on digital sales and its streaming alone would have made it number 1 – even if “Ordinary” wasn’t on downweighting.
The X-Axis – w/c 4 August 2025
ASTONISHING X-MEN INFINITY COMIC #31. By Alex Paknadel, Phillip Sevy, Michael Bartolo & Clayton Cowles. This is the final part of “The Cuckoo Song”, the story about the Scottish islanders becoming a weird anti-mutant cult after the Krakoan drug supply was cut off. It really doesn’t work. It doesn’t convincingly sell the idea that they blame the fall of Krakoa on the mutants themselves; the religious angle, which is fine in theory, doesn’t really go anywhere; and the symbiote thing is just another “they got it from the X-Cutioner” subplot, which is the norm for this series. And did I miss the bit where the Scottish islander that Husk impersonates has an English accent? Anyway, it there are plenty of promising elements in here, but it winds up as just a half-formed thing.
UNCANNY X-MEN #19. (Annotations here.) So this one is less than the sum of its parts, but the parts are very good. It’s a David Marquez issue, for a start, and they’re always a pleasure. I particularly like the X-Men’s confusion at how to deal with people’s overly enthusiastic embrace of mutants – they’re not quite used to this, and not entirely sure how to respond to horribly clumsy marketing proposals that seem to have the right idea at heart. Deadpool and Outlaw seem to be here mainly so that Gail Simone gets a chance to write them again – they really don’t do anything that they couldn’t have achieved by picking up the phone – so the A-plot is really the sequel to the Free Comic Book Day issue from last year, with the rich thug from that issue coming back to the diner for revenge.
Storm #11 annotations
STORM vol 5 #11
“Thunder War Rises”
Writer: Murewa Ayodele
Artists: Mario Santoro with CF Villa
Colour artists: Fer Sifuentes-Sujo with Slex Guimarães
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Tom Brevoort
COVER: Well, that’s Storm on a hippo. Hippo enthusiasts should be warned that one only panel of this story features hippos, and they are riderless.
PAGES 1-2. Zeus convenes the meeting of storm gods.
As we’ll see, the purpose of this meeting is for the storm gods of assorted pantheons to decide whether to align themselves with Storm or with Hadad. Of course, Storm herself has yet to take any particular interest in Hadad, but we clarify later on that the storm gods are aware of her possession by Eternity, and regard her as having been selected by Eternity as his champion whether she knows it or not.
Hjem Spíti. Described as a “neutral realm for all pantheons”, this seems to be new – it’s not a pre-existing mythological term, either. Google Translate suggests that it’s Icelandic for “Sorry Home”, for whatever that may be worth.
Uncanny X-Men #19 annotations
UNCANNY X-MEN vol 6 #19
“Skin Condition”
Writer: Gail Simone
Artist: David Marquez
Colour artist: Matthew Wilson
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
COVER: Deadpool and Outlaw flee the X-Men.
Hey, Outlaw’s got a logo!
PAGES 1-3. Ellis and Ezra stop by the All Star Diner.
The All Star Diner. As a footnote points out later in the issue, this is the same diner from last year’s Free Comic Book Day 2024: Blood Hunt/X-Men with the same mutant waitress. The sign that reads “Stop on in and make a friend” was in that story too, although it was just advertising the food there.
“She says I have a skin condition.” This is the same claim that was made in the FCBD issue. In that issue, Jubilee interpreted it as a sign that Uva’s mother was ashamed of her being a mutant, despite the obvious possibility that they might just be legitimately afraid.
The Midnight M. Uva makes the Midnight M signal to Ellis and Ezra on page 2 panel 3, presumably hoping that they’ll recognise it. It’s not clear whether Uva recognises them, though Ellis seems to think it’s at least a possibility. Ezra is in full uniform, so for that reason alone Uva might think he was able to help.
Daredevil Villains #56: Elektra
DAREDEVIL #168 (January 1981)
“Elektra”
Writer, penciller: Frank Miller
Inker, embellisher: Klaus Janson
Colourist: “Dr Martin”.
Letterer: Joe Rosen
Editor: Denny O’Neil
This feature began with me wondering why there were so few major Daredevil villains, despite the book having been around since the early sixties. Back in the first post, I wrote: “There’s the Kingpin, the Hand, Bullseye, um, Typhoid… um… does Elektra count…?”
Over fifty posts in, we’ve only met one character from that list: Bullseye. Typhoid won’t show up until 1988. But the other three are about to join the book in rapid succession, because we’ve now reached Frank Miller’s run – initially as writer / artist, with Klaus Janson as his finisher and inker, though Janson takes over on art entirely towards the end.
It’s a statement of the obvious, but Miller’s run genuinely is a quantum leap in quality. It’s not that the plots are that much deeper than before, so much as that the storytelling really kicks up a gear. Miller turned Daredevil into a book that people were talking about, and the sales increase got it back onto a monthly schedule again. And this run is the template for Daredevil going forward.
Charts – 1 August 2025
Just one week for Justin Bieber, then.
1. HUNTR/X, EJAE, Audrey Nuna, Rei Ami & The KPop Demon Hunters Cast – “Golden”
Climbing to number 1 in its fifth week on the top 40, and with two other soundtrack songs not so far behind – “Your Idol” is at 10 and “Soda Pop” at 11, though both of those are Saja Boys tracks. As I’ve explained before, the convoluted chart credit is actually listing the same people three times: the fictional band, the real singers (on this track, mostly EJAE), and a generic cast credit because that’s how the overall album is credited.
“Golden” really is very good – it works as a regular pop song, but fits the plot requirement of being unreasonably difficult to sing. This thing requires a two and a half octave range, and the top end is really high.
The X-Axis – 30 July 2025
Well, this is quiet. There’s no Infinite Comic this week, though they do take skip weeks sometimes. I notice they just axed Astonishing Spider-Man, which does make me wonder whether somebody’s starting to have doubts about how many subscriptions these things are selling, but we’ll see. Remarkably, that leaves us with a grand total of one X-book.
SPIDER-MAN & WOLVERINE #3. By Marc Guggenheim, Kaare Andrews, Brian Reber & Travis Lanham. Yeah, even if it’s the only book out, I can’t get worked up enough about Spider-Man & Wolverine to give it its own post. Well, except by default. This kind of is its own post. But you know what I mean.
The plot of this series is ostensibly something about a directory full of confidential information about SHIELD double agents, with Kraven and Omega Red also hunting it, and the title characters learning that Wolverine might have killed his parents back in the days when he was working for Romulus. For present purposes we’re doing the memory gaps thing again, so Wolverine can’t say for sure whether it’s true or not. That’s all perfectly serviceable as far as it goes.
Charts – 25 July 2025
A number 1 we actually weren’t expecting!
1. Justin Bieber – “Daisies”
This entered at number 4 last week, and had only made it to number 2 by the midweeks. It winds up with around a 10% lead over MK.
Justin Bieber’s first hit was back in 2010, and this is his eighth number one. Three of them came from his 2015 album “Purpose”: “What do you Mean”, “Sorry” and “Love Yourself”. The others are guest vocals on other people’s tracks: “Cold Water” by Major Lazer in 2016, “I’m the One” by DJ Khaled in 2017 (to be fair, he’s the top billed actual artist on that track), the English-language remix of “Despacito” by Luis Fonsi & Daddy Yankee in 2017, and “I Don’t Care” by Ed Sheeran in 2019. So it’s been six years since his last number 1, and a decade since he had one purely under his own power.
