{"id":10470,"date":"2024-10-18T21:34:52","date_gmt":"2024-10-18T20:34:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10470"},"modified":"2024-10-18T21:37:01","modified_gmt":"2024-10-18T20:37:01","slug":"the-x-axis-w-c-14-october-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10470","title":{"rendered":"The X-Axis – w\/c 14 October 2024"},"content":{"rendered":"

X-MEN: FROM THE ASHES INFINITY COMIC #19.<\/strong> By Alex Paknadel, Di\u00f3genes Neves, Arthur Hesli & Clayton Cowles. Well, here’s something I wasn’t expecting: a Lifeguard story. Lifeguard is a character who appeared in X-Treme X-Men<\/em> in 2001-2002 and has essentially done nothing since then. As in, she had a minor speaking part in one issue of Excalibur<\/em> in 2004 and had two background cameos during the Krakoan era, and that’s literally it. Her brother Slipstream is in the same boat, but he’s quietly packed off to White Room Krakoa in a flashback, leaving Lifeguard behind on Earth to look after their ailing stepmother. The story is basically Heather trying to resume a normal life in Australia despite the awkward gap in her CV, while people keep going down with a weird skin condition in her presence – I guess we’re meant to be wondering if it’s a threat that her powers are reacting to, or something that she’s actually doing to defend herself against the outside world. I’m quite happy to see obscure characters get an outing in the Infinity Comics, but it’s not really clear yet where all this is heading. And the art is unusually wonky – it really feels a bit rushed, with strange neck angles and fixed grins.<\/p>\n

UNCANNY X-MEN #4.<\/strong> (Annotations here.)<\/a> The penultimate issue of the “Red Wave” arc, and it’s built mainly around Sarah Gaunt fighting Rogue to build her up as a top tier physical threat. She’s starting to click for me as a villain – straight mystical threats don’t always fit in the X-books, but while Sarah has a lot of the magical trappings, it’s not actually clear quite what she is. And it feels like a deliberate piece of mystery, which the story can carry, since it’s starting to give us a clearer idea of what she actually wants. She strongly implies that Charles Xavier abandoned her with his child, but she’s also clearly mad, and there are at least some indications that there’s more to the story than that. I’m also pleasantly surprised to see the Graymalkin Prison characters – who have been decidedly one-dimensional so far – show a bit more range, and start to distinguish themselves from Orchis a bit more. Marquez’ art has enough cartooning to\u00a0 carry off Sarah’s exaggerated design (I suspect some artists might struggle with her in future), but the flashbacks are nicely pitched too. Good issue.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

WOLVERINE #2.<\/strong> (Annotations here.)<\/a> So we’re not picking up on the first issue cliffhanger at all, as it turns out. Instead, we’re going to a Wendigo story first. I can’t honestly say that I find the Wendigo particularly interesting as a concept – there’s not really that much you can do with the guy, and stories built around him can be very similar. If it wasn’t for the fact that he happened to be in Wolverine’s debut story, I suspect he’d have been long since forgotten, lying in the continuity dumpster next to Woodgod. But hey, it’s been a good while since anyone did a trad Wendigo story. The hook here is that the latest Wendigo is still holding on to some of his humanity, and Wolverine wants to help him – which is perfectly fine, but still very much a trad Wendigo story. It also seems to be a backdrop to get some Department H characters into play for future stories, and to re-establish what Department H actually is these days – which feels like it could head somewhere. Still, if you’re going to do a Wendigo story, this is a pretty good example of how to do it, with solid pacing, a nicely sorrowful look on the big guy’s face, and some nice chasing through wintery landscapes. And I quite like the formal trick of representing the guy’s diary as a comic (I mean, I assume<\/em> we’re not meant to take it literally, surely?). I’m just not sure the Wendigo is a strong enough hook for the start of a run.<\/p>\n

MYSTIQUE #1.<\/strong> By Declan Shalvey, Matt Hollingsworth & Declan Shalvey. So it’s Mystique as a spy story, playing up the angle that any character might<\/em> be Mystique. But other shapechangers are available, so even characters who appear to be Mystique might not<\/em> be Mystique – after all, she can’t be in two places at once, and one Mystique in this story doesn’t seem to recognise the name Raven. Meanwhile, SHIELD is apparently in straitened financial circumstances, and Nick Fury Jr seems to be the main point of view character as he tries to hunt Mystique down. I\u00a0 don’t remember the story where SHIELD found itself in this state, or when Nick Fury Sr got back into circulation, but okay. It suits the story we’re doing. I kind of like the approach of restoring some distance with Mystique and bringing back some doubt about what’s going on, and Shalvey draws her with a curiously inscrutable face that works rather well. If I’m being honest, though, it’s the sort of issue where I find myself admiring the details more than getting drawn into the story, and wondering if the whole might be less than the sum of its parts. The cliffhanger doesn’t land for me, because you really can’t tease killing Destiny in 2024 and expect me to buy it. Of course <\/em>they’re not going to kill Destiny. Come on now. But by the nature of what we’re doing here, the big picture won’t become apparent for a few issues, so we’ll see how it comes together.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

X-MEN: FROM THE ASHES INFINITY COMIC #19. By Alex Paknadel, Di\u00f3genes Neves, Arthur Hesli & Clayton Cowles. Well, here’s something I wasn’t expecting: a Lifeguard story. Lifeguard is a character who appeared in X-Treme X-Men in 2001-2002 and has essentially done nothing since then. As in, she had a minor speaking part in one issue […]<\/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-10470","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\/10470","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=10470"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10473,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10470\/revisions\/10473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}