{"id":10297,"date":"2024-08-16T20:12:15","date_gmt":"2024-08-16T19:12:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10297"},"modified":"2024-08-16T20:12:15","modified_gmt":"2024-08-16T19:12:15","slug":"the-x-axis-w-c-12-august-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10297","title":{"rendered":"The X-Axis – w\/c 12 August 2024"},"content":{"rendered":"

X-MEN: FROM THE ASHES INFINITY COMIC #10. <\/strong>By Alex Paknadel, Phillip Sevy, Arthur Hesli & Clayton Cowles. This is the start of another three-parter, and this time it’s an Omega Red arc. Thanks to Krakoa, Omega Red has been somewhat rehabbed to the point where you can now write a relatively sympathetic story about the guy. Arkady has been mellowed by his time on Krakoa to the point where he decides to go back and see his home town again. He gets a rather mixed reaction, and the story deals with that reasonably well. It looks like we’re getting some kind of story about odd things happening to local kids over the years, which feels like it could be looking to retcon some of his back story, but we’ll see where that goes. I’m not particularly up for toning down his history, I have to say. Anyway, all this is ultimately a lead-in to Sentinels<\/em> #1, which is the real context for anything we’re doing.<\/p>\n

X-MEN #2.<\/strong> (Annotations here.)<\/a> The X-Men head to San Francisco to help a new mutant whose powers have emerged in the middle of an apparent alien invasion, which remarkably enough turns out not to be a coincidence. Actually, that makes more sense than you’d think – even in Marvel Universe logic, “his powers created the alien invasion” is a lot less likely than “it’s a stressful event that triggered his powers manifesting”, so I don’t think the X-Men come across as too silly for not jumping straight to the right conclusion.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Jed MacKay’s X-Men <\/em>is quite similar to Gerry Duggan’s run in terms of being built around one-off stories – it’s going primarily for the straightforward superhero angle while building some things more subtly in the background. Maybe a little too subtly, since I’m not sure how many people will actually pick up on the fact that the new mutant’s powers have emerged in adulthood, which was the same oddity as the previous issue. He’s done similar things in Dr Strange <\/em>and Moon Knight, <\/em>and it’s worked there. This book is a bit less triumphalist in tone than Duggan’s run was, too, which is for the best. I’m starting to get into Ryan Stegman’s action sequences and his alien invasion splash page, but he does make everyone look awfully young – which is not ideal when a major plot is based around new mutants being older than they’re supposed to be.<\/p>\n

X-FACTOR #1.<\/strong> (Annotations here.)<\/a> So I liked this, but I can absolutely see it dividing people. It’s the government-sponsored X-Factor team crossed more or less with X-Statix, except that tonally it’s closer to JLI<\/em> than\u00a0to Milligan\/Allred. So maybe it’s actually government sponsored X-Factor meets Maxwell Lord, and the plot evoking X-Statix is unhelpful? Most of the first issue is devoted to an initial team led by Angel getting wiped out – and I’m not sure I’d have chosen Feral and Rusty Collins for that role, but the story does expressly leave open the possibility that they were just badly injured. And hell, people had the whole Krakoan era to write stories about Rusty Collins, and nobody wanted to.<\/p>\n

Mark Russell isn’t always exactly subtle as a satirist, but I like the fact that all his characters seem to be well aware of the problems with this media-sponsored set-up, and they’re trying to make it work. Xyber, the one newbie who survives the first team, has some promise as a rookie who’s completely out of his depth and knows it, but might actually turn out to be useful if he lives long enough. Havok is the only team member from the replacement squad who gets real page time here, and Russell makes a convincing enough case for him being willing to give this a go, if only because he’s never been a mutant separatist. Bob Quinn’s art is nice and clean, and fits the character comedy.\u00a0 It’s the issue #1 I’ve enjoyed most so far in the current line relaunch, but I can’t help suspecting it’ll be taken by a lot of people as a watered down X-Statix, even though I think it’s going for a very different tone.<\/p>\n

HELLVERINE #4.<\/strong> By Benjamin Percy, Julius Ohta, Frank D’Armata & Travis Lanham. This miniseries turned out much better than I expected. It’s a sequel to a Wolverine\/Ghost Rider crossover that was decent enough, but the basic idea of the Pentagon trying to weaponise Hell and screwing it up is a nice hook. It contrasts all of that with the mundane and normal very successfully, and Julius Ohta’s art avoids some of the usual cliches of Hell-linked character designs. And ultimately it gets Daken back into circulation, though I’m not sure I would have left him as a Ghost Rider permanently. That feels a bit gimmicky as a long term status quo. Still, it wouldn’t be hard for another writer to get rid of, and it gives him something to do in terms of leading his little group of Project Hellfire escapees.<\/p>\n

WOLVERINE ANNUAL #1. <\/strong>By Ezra Claytan Daniels, Yildiray \u00c7inar, Frank D’Armata & Cory Petit. This year’s annual theme: shoehorn in the characters who have the Infinity Gems right now. It’s a bit of a stretch to work that into a Wolverine story, and a lot of this issue is taken up with a subplot about the Prince of Power losing his mind, which never really feels like it belongs in this issue. Still, the Soul Gem provides an opportunity for Logan to get a moment with the ghost of Rose O’Hara that feels more meaningful. This is alright within the parameters of the crossover, but those parameters feel pretty limiting.<\/p>\n

SAVAGE WOLVERINE INFINITY COMIC #3.<\/strong> By Tom Bloom, Guillermo Sanna, Java Tartaglia & Joe Sabino. I don’t know why we need another X-Men Infinity Comic, but this is turning out to be a good story about weird stuff in a small town. Nothing extraordinary or ground breaking here, sure, but it’s a well paced, nicely delivered middle chapter to build the tension. Very solid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

X-MEN: FROM THE ASHES INFINITY COMIC #10. By Alex Paknadel, Phillip Sevy, Arthur Hesli & Clayton Cowles. This is the start of another three-parter, and this time it’s an Omega Red arc. Thanks to Krakoa, Omega Red has been somewhat rehabbed to the point where you can now write a relatively sympathetic story about the […]<\/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-10297","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\/10297","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=10297"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10297\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10300,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10297\/revisions\/10300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}