{"id":10595,"date":"2024-12-09T21:02:36","date_gmt":"2024-12-09T21:02:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10595"},"modified":"2024-12-09T21:02:36","modified_gmt":"2024-12-09T21:02:36","slug":"the-x-axis-w-c-2-december-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10595","title":{"rendered":"The X-Axis – w\/c 2 December 2024"},"content":{"rendered":"

ASTONISHING X-MEN INFINITY COMIC #1-2.<\/strong> By Alex Paknadel, Phillip Sevy, Michael Bartolo & Clayton Cowles. Well, I’m late enough with this one that I might as well cover today’s issue #2. We’ve got a new title and a fresh number #1, but this is the same book as From the Ashes<\/em> with the same creative team. But you can’t keep calling it From the Ashes<\/em> forever, I guess.<\/p>\n

This arc has two seemingly unrelated threads, though it’s fairly obvious how they’re likely to come together. On the one hand, we have Husk returning home to the Guthrie family for Thanksgiving. But the wheels are coming off the family group: Paige is the only mutant in the family to show up, since Sam’s apparently not been in touch since his resurrection, while the other mutant siblings decided to stay in the White Hot Room. There’s a plot about how they’re in danger of losing the farm, but it’s basically a story about the non-mutant relatives being treated as afterthoughts, with one of the background kids drifting into radicalism.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Sean Cassidy is in New York looking for his daughter (who’s in Graymalkin, but he doesn’t know that) and gets roped into investigating the murder of a mutant. In a really weird piece of scheduling, this leads to him visiting the newly opened NYX community centre, which is apparently going to be a thing in NYX<\/em>, but doesn’t exist yet. You’d think it’d come up first in its own book – this plays as more of a spoiler than a teaser. Anyway, accordingly to Prodigy, this is all part of a series of similar killings by radicals, which is presumably where we tie in to Husk’s storyline.<\/p>\n

As usual with this title, it’s a perfectly solid little drama, though it feels like it’s paced to go longer than the three issue stories that were typical of the previous series. After all, two issues in, the A and B plots have barely converged.<\/p>\n

X-MEN #8.<\/strong> (Annotations here.)<\/a> Part 1 of the “Raid on Graymalkin” crossover with Uncanny X-Men<\/em>, and while Warden Ellis was showing some signs of nuance in that book, we’re pretty much back to her being a one-dimensional villain here. The big problem with this whole storyline is that it’s far, far too close to the Orchis stuff which has only just finished – and because that arc was pitched at such an extreme level, it can’t help but feel like “Orchis, but less so”. At the same time, it feels too early for the X-Men to be converging to attack this place, which they’ve barely had any interactions with. Yes, it’s linked to Sarah Gaunt and she was the main villain from the first Uncanny<\/em> arc, but the X-Men don’t know that. There are<\/em> some good character moments in this issue for Beast and Calico, and Ryan Stegman does a good job on those bits. But I still don’t get what the hook is suposed to be that’s justifying going back to this well so soon. Hopefully the reason we’re going to the attack on the jail so quickly is to move the arc onto something else.<\/p>\n

NYX #6. <\/strong>(Annotations here.)<\/a> Over in the book which is apparently going to be about a community centre but isn’t yet, we have an informal tie-in with Dazzler <\/em>#4 – which is to say, it’s just a case of two stories taking place at the same event. That seems like a better approach than tying these two series together more directly, since their tones are very different.<\/p>\n

Now, I didn’t like issue #5 at all, partly because of the timing, but also because it was simplistic in a way that couldn’t fit in the same book as David’s lecture notes. That’s much less of a problem here: it’s still a fairly simple story, with Mojo sending Local to try and hijack Dazzler’s audience for himself, but there’s no theorising to pose a tone clash. My issue with the book on a first reading was that Local’s behaviour seemed too inconsistent across the series, but on reflection I’m willing to go with the idea that he behaves erratically when Mojo’s involved, because of Mojo’s influence – that’s basically what we’re told at the end of the issue, and it does provide a viable explanation. There’s some really nice art on the scenes with Mojo possessing Local, too; he’s being repositioned rather well as creepy rather than comedic.<\/p>\n

I’m less sure about bringing back Kiden Nixon, even if it does help to justify the title. With the best will in the world, other than Laura, the cast of the original NYX<\/em> weren’t very interesting, which is why they’ve barely appeared since. I don’t honestly care about Kiden, but I’m willing to buy that Laura does, so I guess we’ll see where it’s going.<\/p>\n

X-FORCE #6.<\/strong> (Annotations here.)<\/a> Okay, this is a step up. This book’s opening arc basically saw the team running around from random location to random location doing arbitrary things, which wasn’t especially satisfying to read. As I suspected, the angle seems to be that Forge and the team have indeed been putting too much trust into Forge’s powers and not asking themselves why they’re doing any of this – or at least, they’ve been kept too busy to do so. With Sage quitting the team, she’s been able to give it a bit of thought. To put the point another way: Forge always gets the correct answer, but has anyone stopped to wonder whether he’s asking the right question?<\/p>\n

I can see why that storyline leads itself to some opening issues that feel arbitrary, though I can’t help thinking there must have been ways to lash it together more effectively. But hey, we’re getting to the point now and… um, it’s a female version of Diablo, the alchemist villain from the Fantastic Four. That’s not as random as it sounds, since the whole point of alchemy is that it’s the grey area between science and magic, which is precisely the area that Forge could<\/em> operate in, but doesn’t. I’m still not sold on the book, but this does enough to start drawing the threads together to hold my interest, which was very much waning.<\/p>\n

WOLVERINE #4.<\/strong> (Annotations here.)<\/a> It turns out the Wendigo thing wasn’t a detour so much as the introduction of a supporting character in the form of Leonard The Wendigo. And now the Adamantine storyline that was teased at the end of issue #1 makes its first contact with Wolverine itself. The hunt for adamantium-themed villains in the Official Handbook leads Saladin Ahmed to the Constrictor, who isn’t a bad choice – he’s visual, he’s moderately well known, he fits the plot, and his role in the story would be a waste of a character who had actual history with Wolverine. Aside from the mind-controlling metal angle, this book is very much Trad Wolverine so far, but executed with some flair. The question is whether the Adamantine angle can raise it above that now that it’s really getting going.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ASTONISHING X-MEN INFINITY COMIC #1-2. By Alex Paknadel, Phillip Sevy, Michael Bartolo & Clayton Cowles. Well, I’m late enough with this one that I might as well cover today’s issue #2. We’ve got a new title and a fresh number #1, but this is the same book as From the Ashes with the same creative […]<\/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":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10595","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=10595"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10595\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10596,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10595\/revisions\/10596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}