{"id":10205,"date":"2024-07-03T16:41:35","date_gmt":"2024-07-03T15:41:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10205"},"modified":"2024-07-03T16:41:35","modified_gmt":"2024-07-03T15:41:35","slug":"the-x-axis-w-c-1-july-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10205","title":{"rendered":"The X-Axis – w\/c 1 July 2024"},"content":{"rendered":"

X-MEN: FROM THE ASHES INFINITY COMIC #4.<\/strong> By Alex Paknadel, Di\u00f3genes Neves, Arthur Hesli & Clayton Cowles. Moving on to the book\u2019s second arc – which still feels like weird timing when\u00a0X-Men<\/em> #1 isn\u2019t 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, \u201cWhat Charlie Did\u2026\u201d, is about journalist Sally Floyd trying to make sense of Professor X\u2019s recent heel turn and his handing himself in to the authorities after\u00a0Fall of the House of X<\/em>. If you\u2019re struggling to place Sally Floyd, then she\u2019s the alcoholic journalist from\u00a0Generation M<\/em>, 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\u2019t think the X-books have done anything with her since Generation M<\/em>, and she doesn\u2019t seem to have been used anywhere in several years. Still, if you\u2019re looking for a viewpoint character to write about mutantdom, she\u2019s as good as any.<\/p>\n

This first chapter is really just restatement of ideas. Sally\u2019s 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\u2019s self-image. Hard to say at this point where they\u2019re going with this, and it certainly seems a bit early to be setting up Xavier for rehabilitation from the end of Krakoa, but we\u2019ll see.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

DEADPOOL VS. WOLVERINE: SLASH \u2019EM UP #3.<\/strong> By Christos Gage, Alan Robinson, Carlos Lopez & Joe Sabino. I know it\u2019s the concept, and I know it\u2019s an Infinity Comic, but this feels like it\u2019s a bit high on the endless fight scenes and a bit light on the\u2026 well, everything else. It does have a detour to Wolverine telling Deadpool what it was like to regain his lost memories, and that leads to a genuinely creative cliffhanger – a silly one, but that\u2019s fine, it\u2019s a Deadpool story. But it\u2019s hard to make anything emotional land in a story where Deadpool is co-starring because he tends to overpower everything he\u2019s in. The current WWIII<\/em> miniseries gets round this problem by having Deadpool transformed near the end of issue #1 so that he stops talking. This feels more like an extended fight scene that\u2019s paying lip service to the idea of being a story, at least at this point.<\/p>\n

X-MEN: BLOOD HUNT – PSYLOCKE #1.<\/strong> By Steve Foxe, Lynne Yoshii, Ruth Redmond & Ariana Maher. How many versions of \u201cvampires are running wild\u201d can you do? This issue\u2019s solution is to interpret the brief very, very loosely indeed. Vampires? Well, what about any old supernatural monster? Sure, let\u2019s go with that. It\u2019s stretching the concept, but if you don\u2019t stretch the concept, it\u2019s not going to run to as many tie-in issues as Marvel want.<\/p>\n

So here are Kwannon and Greycrow, still a couple, in Osaka when darkness falls. And instead of vampires, we\u2019ve got Kuchisake-onna. Apparently there\u2019s a difference of view about whether this is a genuine historical Japanese myth or a more modern story akin to an urban legend. Either way, the character is a maimed woman who goes around demanding to know whether people think she\u2019s pretty, kills everyone who says no, and maims everyone who says yes. (According to Wikipedia, she will accept \u201cmiddling\u201d as an answer and leave you alone.) Foxe\u2019s idea, of course, is that this character has some resonance with Kwannon, which makes some sense. There\u2019s some rather good art in this too, and I like the fact that Kwannon seems to be using the Psylocke identity here precisely because she\u2019s trying to save civilians and wants to present to them as reassuring. The issue stumbles towards the end by spelling out the moral far too directly: \u201cI believed that for far too long. But now I\u2019ve channeled my rage into making sure no one else must go through what I have\u2026\u201d Still, the idea is solid and nothing remotely turns on it being a\u00a0Blood Hunt<\/em> tie-in.<\/p>\n

WOLVERINE: DEEP CUT #1. <\/strong>By Chris Claremont, Edgar Salazar, Carlos Lopez & Travis Lanham. Are we just doing an endless series of Chris Claremont continuity implant minis, then? There are certainly worse things you could do with him. For example, have you been waiting since 1989 to find out why Wolverine took a leave of absence from the X-Men in\u00a0Uncanny X-Men<\/em> #246? Probably not but\u2026 sure, why not? It\u2019s an anchor in history, and that can help this sort of implant story.<\/p>\n

So we\u2019re in the Australia era, and it\u2019s Wolverine\u2019s birthday. Wolverine assumes that since he\u2019s meant to be dead, Sabretooth will attack Mariko Yashida instead, and he\u2019s right. So he shows up to fight Sabretooth, since he assumes that if Sabretooth knows he\u2019s alive, then he\u2019ll leave Mariko alone and\u2026 hmm, that would mean that this story takes place before Wolverine<\/em> #10, where Sabretooth did <\/em>know that Wolverine was alive. How many birthdays did Wolverine have in this period? Oh well.<\/p>\n

Much of this issue is devoted to an extended fight scene between Wolverine and Sabretooth, which ultimately turns out to be a reason to send Wolverine after Mr Sinister alone. Claremont\u2019s vision for Mr Sinister was very different from the way continuity eventually turned out, so that\u2019s an interesting area for him to revist. As a first issue\u2026 well, it\u2019s an extended Wolverine\/Sabretooth fight scene, possibly not well served by coming so soon after a ten-part Wolverine\/Sabretooth storyline. But Salazar does a good classic Sabretooth, and Claremont\u2019s Wolverine is still pleasingly familiar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

X-MEN: FROM THE ASHES INFINITY COMIC #4. By Alex Paknadel, Di\u00f3genes Neves, Arthur Hesli & Clayton Cowles. Moving on to the book\u2019s second arc – which still feels like weird timing when\u00a0X-Men #1 isn\u2019t even out yet, but okay. And it seems we have an actual regular creative team on this book now, which is […]<\/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-10205","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\/10205","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=10205"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10206,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10205\/revisions\/10206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}