{"id":10628,"date":"2024-12-20T20:35:16","date_gmt":"2024-12-20T20:35:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10628"},"modified":"2024-12-20T20:35:16","modified_gmt":"2024-12-20T20:35:16","slug":"the-x-axis-19-december-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10628","title":{"rendered":"The X-Axis – 19 December 2024"},"content":{"rendered":"

ASTONISHING X-MEN INFINITY COMIC #3.<\/strong> By Alex Paknadel, Phillip Sevy, Michael Bartolo & Clayton Cowles. Ah, the Infinity Comics, where you can get away with doing a spotlight issue on Lewis Guthrie. Which one is Lewis Guthrie? Well, that’s kind of the point. It’s basically a flashback issue explaining how Lewis has become a radicalised anti-mutant type during the Krakoan era, in which he sees his side of the family being ignored and left behind, while taking the flak from everyone else for the mutants doing unhelpful things like making telepathic announcements to the whole world. There is actually a story back in the 2000s where Lewis tries to get his hoped-for mutant powers to activate, which is about the only thing he’s ever done to stand out; it winds up with him almost getting killed by Dark Beast, so I can see why we’re downplaying that in favour of a more mundane (in the best sense) back story. It’s a straightforward story but quite convincingly handled. I suspect it might be read in some quarters as another sign of the current editorial office having an aversion to Krakoa. But for me, Hickman was always setting up the idea that there was a degree of hubris that wouldn’t turn out well, so I have no issue with this sort of thing.<\/p>\n

PSYLOCKE #2.<\/strong> (Annotations here.)<\/a> So after I spent last week’s X-Axis going through variations on “this isn’t really working”, here’s one that’s growing on me. When issue #1 came out, I wasn’t convinced that they had a hook for Kwannon as a solo lead, beyond recycling ideas about being raised as a living weapon that had already been done with Wolverine, X-23 and Elektra. And yes, that’s kind of what this book is doing too, but maybe with a lighter touch and a bit less brooding. Sure, Psylocke’s got strong feelings about rescuing kids from abuse, but Shinobi Shaw works nicely as a foil for her, and she’s given a deadpan sense of humour at the same time as not quite understanding the more normal characters (which is still a relative concept in this book, but the idea’s on the table). There’s some decent action sequences too, and while I’ve never been sold on the “underground gladiatoral arena for the rich” trope, I’m kind of coming round to the idea that maybe there’s enough unexplored territory in Kwannon that this can work?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

HELLVERINE #1.<\/strong> (Annotations here.)<\/a> Tonight, Matthew, I’m going to be Johnny Blaze. Now I quite liked the Hellverine<\/em> miniseries, but I also left it thinking that it was going to do something with the Project Hellfire characters it set up. From the look of this issue, though, we’re doing a wandering demon-possessed biker who keeps meeting random evil people and killing them in demon form. And if you’re going to do this book, surely the key is that it’s a Ghost Rider \/ Wolverine mash-up. This feels like it’s basically Benjamin Percy’s Ghost Rider<\/em> with the lead actor recast. And there are worse things to be – Percy’s Ghost Rider<\/em> was a good comic if that’s your thing, with a really strong tone and a clear identity. There’s some really nice art on some of the ghost\/horror sequences, too. It’s not a bad book at all – it’s just hard to figure out why it exists as a Daken book rather than another year of Ghost Rider<\/em>, and what Daken is actually bringing to this series beyond gimmickry.<\/p>\n

SENTINELS #3.<\/strong> By Alex Paknadel, Justin Mason, Federico Blee & Travis Lanham. Or, as Amazon have it, “Sentinels (2024-2025) #3 (of 5) (Sentinels (2024-))”. Wonderful service. Anyhow, Sentinels<\/em> is turning out quite well. One of my reservations about the book was that the Sentinel designs didn’t really work for human characters, and made everyone look quite similar. But it feels as if that’s almost the point – we’re only really invited to keep track of Lockstep and Drumfire, and Corina Ellis can’t remember which is which even when she’s talking to them. And if I wasn’t convinced about the use of Sebastian Shaw last issue, I’m rather more intrigued by Fabian Cortez’ sudden turn to charitable work and the appearance of a second Magneto. I mean, it’s presumably Joseph, but it works as a mystery for the characters. Mason’s art is rough at times, but in a way that gives a bit more personality to the Sentinel designs. Sentinels<\/em> is an easy book to overlook but it’s one of the stronger entries in the line right now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ASTONISHING X-MEN INFINITY COMIC #3. By Alex Paknadel, Phillip Sevy, Michael Bartolo & Clayton Cowles. Ah, the Infinity Comics, where you can get away with doing a spotlight issue on Lewis Guthrie. Which one is Lewis Guthrie? Well, that’s kind of the point. It’s basically a flashback issue explaining how Lewis has become a radicalised […]<\/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-10628","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\/10628","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=10628"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10633,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10628\/revisions\/10633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}