{"id":10081,"date":"2024-05-11T17:25:17","date_gmt":"2024-05-11T16:25:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10081"},"modified":"2024-05-11T17:25:17","modified_gmt":"2024-05-11T16:25:17","slug":"the-x-axis-w-c-6-may-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10081","title":{"rendered":"The X-Axis – w\/c 6 May 2024"},"content":{"rendered":"

X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #138.<\/strong> By Steve Foxe, Steve Orlando, Phillip Sevy, Yen Nitro & Travis Lanham. Part 18 of the story that will not end. In this issue there is a fight scene, and then next issue we are promised a fight scene. Foxe and Orlando have both done good work during the Krakoan era, but this is just pointless.<\/p>\n

FREE COMIC BOOK DAY 2024: BLOOD HUNT \/ X-MEN #1.<\/strong> (Annotations here.)<\/a> This was released for Free Comic Book Day last Saturday, but like all Marvel’s FCBD issues, it was added to Unlimited on Wednesday. Gail Simone and David Marquez take on the unenviable remit of trailing their upcoming Uncanny X-Men<\/em> run without giving away too much about how the Krakoan era ends – and doing so in a story which is also meant to be suitable for new readers brought in by FCBD, not just an exercise in hint-dropping for the regulars. In ten pages. What that means in practice is a fairly standard “hero saves a mutant civilian from some bullies” story of the sort that wouldn’t have been out of place in the 1980s and a few pages of subplot to introduce Uncanny<\/em>‘s new villains.<\/p>\n

With all that in mind, it’s perfectly fine, but it’s not immediately gripping. It does have a vibe of “Fall of X, but less so”. Granted, Fall of X would have been vastly improved by being Fall of X, but less so. Still, the new villains are a bit too close to Orchis to be immediately engaging – maybe that’ll change when we learn more about them. And perhaps the execution of “Fall of X” has created an intractable problem that the new books are just going to have to meet head on: In theory, we’re coming off months of horrific human rights abuses and the defeat of Orchis ought to be an upswing for the books. But because “Fall of X” was done in such a way as to hold out the possibility of Krakoa’s return, when that doesn’t happen, the ending becomes a down beat instead. So we’re back repeating the same loss of Krakoa that we already did six months ago. That’s a problem, but it’s not the fault of anything that this story is doing.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

X-MEN: FOREVER #3.<\/strong> (Annotations here.)<\/a> The Enigma plot is the strongest part of Rise\/Fall<\/em>, and the cliffhanger here is a really strong twist. The real focus of this issue, though, is on Mystique, Destiny and Nightcrawler, who finally get together to further the family revelations from Uncanny Spider-Man<\/em>. Destiny winds up as the most compelling character of the three – Kurt kind of has to be here for plot reasons, but it’s really Destiny and Mystique’s story. Elsewhere, you can see plotlines being tied off and the pieces being readied to go back in the box, but it’s nicely paced and doesn’t feel too forced. Where it does kind of lose me is with the whole “Hope is going to do something or other involving the Phoenix” plot. I don’t really get what she’s meant to be doing or what she’s expecting it to achieve, and I kind of get the feeling that I’m meant to, rather than it being an intentional mystery. And the Hopesword is used in a way that doesn’t seem to fit with Si Spurrier’s issues. But the character beats land. Luca Maresca’s art is a little rough around the edges at times, and maybe a bit one note in the pacing, but Cable’s cameo is nicely done, and Enigma’s on-panel debut is pleasingly understated.<\/p>\n

WOLVERINE<\/strong> #49.<\/strong> (Annotations here.)<\/a> This is more of a Sabretooth story than a Wolverine story, isn’t it? The title character’s barely been in the last two issues. I don’t know quite what to make of this story right now: the basic take on Sabretooth seems solid to me, and the idea of well-meaning liberal Cypher thinking that he can bring out Sabretooth’s empathic side seems to work. On the other hand, Graydon Creed as Bad Seed is a very thin character and, ultimately, what was all that stuff with the alternate-universe Sabretooths about? “Sabretooth War” has improved a lot from the first couple of chapters, which were over reliant on shock value, but it’s still got a lot to do in the final issue to tie everything together.<\/p>\n

GIANT-SIZE X-MEN #1.<\/strong> By Ann Nocenti, Lee Ferguson, KJ D\u00edaz & Cory Petit. This is one of a series of Giant-Size <\/em>one-shots with a regular-length original story coupled with a reprint. It’s really an Angel issue, and the selected reprint is his appearance in Marvel Two-in-One<\/em> #68. As for the story: it’s apparently during Fall of X<\/em> (but before Warren died), and Warren stumbles upon new villain Maze. Maze claims to be a proteg\u00e9 of Arcade who’s more interested in using Murderworld-style simulations to interrogate and challenge her victims, though we’re probably not meant to take that entirely at face value, since she was<\/em> hanging around with Arcade in the first place. Supposedly she lets people go if they show some sort of insight and growth in response to her scenarios. Ann Nocenti has always had a tendency to write characters who are more concept delivery vehicles than people, and this is very much one of those stories – it’s weirdly eccentric and abstract, and doesn’t really convince enough to pull off an ending where Warren thinks the experience might have been worthwhile enough to let Maze go.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #138. By Steve Foxe, Steve Orlando, Phillip Sevy, Yen Nitro & Travis Lanham. Part 18 of the story that will not end. In this issue there is a fight scene, and then next issue we are promised a fight scene. Foxe and Orlando have both done good work during the Krakoan […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-x-axis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10081"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10081\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10082,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10081\/revisions\/10082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}