{"id":10220,"date":"2024-07-12T18:28:20","date_gmt":"2024-07-12T17:28:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10220"},"modified":"2024-07-12T18:28:20","modified_gmt":"2024-07-12T17:28:20","slug":"the-x-axis-w-c-8-july-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10220","title":{"rendered":"The X-Axis – w\/c 8 July 2024"},"content":{"rendered":"

X-MEN: FROM THE ASHES INFINITY COMIC #5.<\/strong> By Alex Paknadel, Di\u00f3genes Neves, Arthur Hesli & Clayton Cowles. Hmm. So from the look of this, where we’re going is that Professor X didn’t actually kill the crew of the Agnew<\/em>, but wanted it to look as if he had – and he’s psychically trying to cover his tracks, leading to anomalies which Sally Floyd has been misinterpreting as something to do with her alcoholism. That’s interesting, even if I have my doubts about teasing the reversal of such a major plot point that quickly. Then again, it also raises the question of what Professor X is really doing in a cell, having framed himself for murder. I’m certainly intrigued, though I’m not sold on the timing.<\/p>\n

X-MEN<\/strong> #1.<\/strong> (Annotations here.)<\/a> The thing about “From the Ashes” is that it doesn’t have a unifying theme, unless you count “diaspora”. And it’s broadly intended as, if not an outright reset, at least a restatement of the core idea. I don’t have a problem with that; you need to go back to the themes from time to time. But it’s going to come across as fairly conservative (with a small C) and it’s never going to create the same sort of first issue excitement as something like House of X<\/em>.<\/p>\n

And that’s pretty much what we have here. We’re setting up Cyclops’ X-Men team, we’re establishing the cast, we’re introducing the new location, and we’re fighting some bad guys. I’ve read enough of Jed MacKay’s Marvel work to have some confidence in him, but taken purely on its own terms, this is a good-but-not-great issue. The new team go into action so we can get a sense of the team dynamic. The immediate villains are the Fourth School, basically an Orchis faction who’ve reinvented themselves as the U-Men; the bigger picture is the introduction of 3K, who are obviously the main villains of MacKay’s run.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The issue could probably have used a bit more of 3K and a bit less of the Fourth School. While they do provide some link with what came before, they’re basically the U-Men. The U-Men were always one step above bozo status, and the Fourth School are firmly positioned here at the same level – which is an odd way to start a series. 3K are meant to be the real point of interest, but they get so little space in the story that we don’t find out anything very concrete about them – which means the story is basically teasing the fact that this superhero book will have villains in it. MacKay is usually decent with big ideas, but it’s that track record rather than the content of this issue that has me interested in where he’s going with 3K.<\/p>\n

I’ve always been a bit lukewarm about Ryan Stegman’s art, which can feel to me both a bit cartoonish and a bit constrained, and I’m not wild about the costume designs here. But I liked his scenes at the Factory, with the Beast showing the police chief around, quite a bit. Those parts work rather nicely, and the relationship with the town is the part of this story that seems most promising to me. I’m not so sure about getting Stegman to do pages of 3K’s council in moody shadow – that really doesn’t play to his strengths.<\/p>\n

(Oh, and do we have<\/em> to have this annoying QR code gimmick for bonus pages? I get that they’re trying to do something different, and create a sense of occasion around them, but honestly, these things are an absolute chore. I’m meant to – what, use my phone to follow the link and then view the page on my phone? But it’s not laid out for a phone screen. So what do you want me to do? Manually zoom in to read it? Just stick it at the end after the “next issue” page. That always has a surprise factor and it doesn’t kill the momentum. And the page is easily readable, which is not a small thing.)<\/p>\n

X-MEN: HEIR OF APOCALYPSE #3.<\/strong> (Annotations here.)<\/a> Oh dear. This series started reasonably enough, but we’re now deep in Idiot Plot territory. Mr Sinister is openly betraying the rest of the group, but they insist on keeping him around because… why, for god’s sake? There’s really not much more to this issue than that, and it’s one of those awkward middle chapters where it turns out that this four issue miniseries only had three issues worth of plot. It needs the extra issue to pick off some more of the 12 contestants, but it doesn’t do anything very interesting with them. Netho Diaz draws quite a good Mr Sinister, and I quite like his Apocalypse too, but the story feels increasingly half-formed.<\/p>\n

WOLVERINE: BLOOD HUNT #3.<\/strong> By Tom Waltz, Juan Jos\u00e9 Ryp, Guru-eFX and Cory Petit. Pretty much just an extended fight scene. There’s a tiny bit of actual plot in here, but this issue really stands and falls entirely on how keen you are to see Ryp drawing an extended action sequence. It does look very good, to be fair. You could make a case for it as good old fashioned decompression, something which we haven’t seen in a while. There are a couple of creative spots along the way. But the bottom line is that it’s a four-issue miniseries which looks to have only enough story for an annual at a push. If you’re into it as an art showcase, fair enough.<\/p>\n

DEADPOOL VS WOLVERINE SLASH’EM UP! INFINITY COMIC #3.<\/strong> By Christos Gage, Alan Robinson, Carlos Lopez & Joe Sabino. Behold, corporate synergy. It’s a very basic plot which is an excuse for Deadpool to ramble on, and Wolverine to ignore him, while they do random fight scenes. But Deadpool’s extended monologue about his lost memories of his back story has some good gags, and Wolverine plays off it rather well by completely ignoring him and attempting to focus on the plot for the vast majority of the issue. It’s entertaining fluff and perfectly happy to be that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

X-MEN: FROM THE ASHES INFINITY COMIC #5. By Alex Paknadel, Di\u00f3genes Neves, Arthur Hesli & Clayton Cowles. Hmm. So from the look of this, where we’re going is that Professor X didn’t actually kill the crew of the Agnew, but wanted it to look as if he had – and he’s psychically trying to cover […]<\/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-10220","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\/10220","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=10220"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10220\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10222,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10220\/revisions\/10222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}