{"id":10425,"date":"2024-10-04T21:28:40","date_gmt":"2024-10-04T20:28:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10425"},"modified":"2024-10-04T21:28:40","modified_gmt":"2024-10-04T20:28:40","slug":"the-x-axis-w-c-30-september-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10425","title":{"rendered":"The X-Axis – w\/c 30 September 2024"},"content":{"rendered":"

X-MEN: FROM THE ASHES INFINITY COMIC #17.<\/strong> By Alex Paknadel, Phillip Sevy, Michael Bartolo & Clayton Cowles. This is a weird high-concept arc, isn’t it? The Beast, who is actually a clone of the Krakoa-era Beast with some of his memories, is copied by Blankslate, a mutant who’s said to have no innate personality and decides that he wants to be the Beast. All this is apparently meant to riff off the Beast’s fear that he’s innately doomed by his biology to become a villain. I like the idea in theory, since this Beast is himself essentially a copy to start with. I’m not convinced it works in practice, though, since the two Hanks don’t<\/em> feel like the same personality. I think what the story is trying to go for is that Blankslate’s different history<\/em> is what drives him to act in a more aggressive way in order to hold on to sense of identity that he likes, even though his innate personality<\/em> is the same, but I’m not sure that’s really coming across. Or maybe it’s just that there’s something inherently uncanny valley about the whole concept of Blankslate, which makes it difficult to get a hold on him.<\/p>\n

X-MEN #5. <\/strong>(Annotations here.)<\/a> This is a homage to the “psychic rescue” story from New X-Men<\/em> #121, and that’s always a bold comparison to invite. Perhaps wisely, it doesn’t attempt to track the original story very directly, and Quentin Quire simply refuses to play along with the conceit of not talking. And there is a reason for invoking the original story beyond simple self-indulgence, because the main plot point is to bring Cassandra Nova back into the frame as a major villain, and she was the villain in the New X-Men<\/em> story as well. Still, it’s a much more straightforward story than the original and probably doesn’t benefit from sending signals that something weirder might be on the way. But there’s plenty in here that I like: there’s an explanation of what actually differentiates two telepaths to justify having them on the same team; Psylocke’s relationship with Greycrow is brought back into the picture; and we establish that it’s Quentin who’s trying to ignore all the things that happened to him towards the end of the Krakoa era, rather than the book itself. Stegman does a really good Sabretooth in that scene, too, and if he has a tendency to draw his characters rather young, it works fine for Quentin.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

STORM #1.<\/strong> (Annotations here.)<\/a> Storm has never sustained a solo title in the past, although you could make a case for X-Men Red<\/em> coming close at times. But you can see why people want to try – she has the profile, and she has a personal fanbase who can be quite passionate about her. And while marrying her off to the Black Panther for a few years had the unfortunate side effect of turning her into a supporting character, prising her away from the X-Men and giving her an agenda independently of them may well have been for the good in the long run. It’s not too hard to buy the idea that 2024 Storm has goals of her own that aren’t all about the X-Men’s manifesto, and that they can provide a hook for a solo title that might have been tougher to find in earlier years. If I was casting about for an X-Man who could support a solo title (and wasn’t Wolverine), Storm would probably be near the top of my list.<\/p>\n

However, this feels like a book that has a good pitch, but doesn’t really work on the page. What actually happens in this issue? Well, Storm deals with a disaster which turns out to have been caused by a mutant whose powers emerged uncontrollably, and after a bit of time, she feels obliged to say so publicly, since innocent people are getting blamed. She’s setting up something called the Storm Sanctuary. And she may have radiation poisoning. And that’s… pretty much it?<\/p>\n

The moral dilemma is a perfectly fine idea, but Murewa Ayodele seems to skip too much of the connective tissue. We’ve got a nuclear reactor powered with alien technology – it’s never very clear whether this is something everyone knew about or whether it’s some sort of scandal in its own right. What was a newly emerged mutant doing in a nuclear reactor anyway? Why does nobody think to ask that question, even though Storm apparently spends several days dithering about whether to explain what happened, and hunting for some reason that might get the mutant off the hook? Why doesn’t he get a name? What happens to him after Storm stops him? Does he go to the Storm Sanctuary or to somewhere else? It feels like the writer and all the characters lose interest in him entirely the moment he’s fufilled his plot role of setting up a dilemma.<\/p>\n

What the hell is the Storm Sanctuary anyway? What does it do<\/em>? Is it a big flying city where she lives on her own with two hippos and a couple of giraffes? I’ll happily accept “where did it come from” as a mystery for another day. But “what does she intend to do with it” should surely be clear – she’s holding a press conference about it as a centrepiece of the issue and all we get is some hand-waving blether like “a haven in the day of adversity”. Is this a monument to one woman’s ego or does she actually want people to come and live in it? If so, who?<\/p>\n

The only other actual characters in this book are Frenzy, Iron Man, and the mutant who doesn’t get a name – does it actually have<\/em> a regular cast beyond Storm herself? There’s a tone of weirdly dreamy isolation to the whole thing, and I’m not at all convinced it’s intentional.<\/p>\n

It looks nice, to be sure. Lucas Werneck does do a good Storm, and this is stronger work than on Fall of the House of X<\/em>, no doubt with better lead-in times. And Storm’s voice comes across well. But there’s so much here being glossed over that it feels like not enough is left, and the ideas that the book actually cares about are left floating unsupported.<\/p>\n

WOLVERINE: DEEP CUT #4.<\/strong> By Chris Claremont, Edgar Salazar, Carlos Lopez & Travis Lanham. Yup, that was a four-issue fight scene. I’m not saying that I want to see Claremont just retread what he did in his prime – which is very hard to do anyway in a miniseries, given how much of his strength was in long-term development – but I doubt many people are itching to see him write a four-issue fight scene. It’s what you might politely call a mystifying project, and let’s leave it at that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

X-MEN: FROM THE ASHES INFINITY COMIC #17. By Alex Paknadel, Phillip Sevy, Michael Bartolo & Clayton Cowles. This is a weird high-concept arc, isn’t it? The Beast, who is actually a clone of the Krakoa-era Beast with some of his memories, is copied by Blankslate, a mutant who’s said to have no innate personality and […]<\/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-10425","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\/10425","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=10425"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10425\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10427,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10425\/revisions\/10427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}