{"id":10737,"date":"2025-01-25T21:20:35","date_gmt":"2025-01-25T21:20:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10737"},"modified":"2025-01-25T21:20:35","modified_gmt":"2025-01-25T21:20:35","slug":"the-x-axis-w-c-20-january-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10737","title":{"rendered":"The X-Axis – w\/c 20 January 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

ASTONISHING X-MEN INFINITY COMIC #7.<\/strong> By Tim Seeley, Edoardo Audino, KJ Diaz & Clayton Cowles. Looks like we’re alternating creative teams on this book now, but Seeley and Audino are perfectly good, so I’ve no read complaints there. This is the first part of a Black Tom Cassidy arc, as he not only tries to return to the regular world, but also has to adjust to being separated from Krakoa. Given his role in X-Force, and his link with Juggernaut, he’s a sensible character to check in with, and this is a solid first chapter. It’s a little jarring at first to see Captain America show up, shrug his shoulders and think “yup, C-list supervillain”, but that’s probably how the non-mutant heroes should<\/em> see the likes of Black Tom. It’s not like his Krakoan face turn was high profile – he was in the Krakoan secret service. So it makes a certain sense to play him as a character who’s even more directionless than most of the others – except for the obvious question of “So why isn’t he with the Juggernaut, then?” But the story is obviously gearing up to answer that question directly, and so far so good.<\/p>\n

UNCANNY X-MEN #9.<\/strong> (Annotations here.)<\/a> And I guess we’re doing alternating artists on this book, since David Marquez hasn’t drawn a whole issue since #5, and isn’t solicited to do so again until #13 as far as I can see. Mind you, at 18 issues a year, he was never going to draw them all. This issue was solicited with art by Javier Garr\u00f3n, but winds up drawn by Andrei Bressan, which might explain why it looks a bit rough. Still, it tells the story well enough, and the conversation sequences are pretty good. As for the story, Uncanny X-Men<\/em> is very much “The Outliers featuring the X-Men” at this point, but I like the Outliers, so I have no complaints about that. I’m not so sure about tying Ransom to Sunspot, though – yes, he’s a character in the mould of early Sunspot, but does it actually help him to draw attention to that fact? The Wolfpack Sentinels work as villains for the newbies, but it does make it a weird decision to use them in an ineffective background role in the “Raid on Graymalkin” crossover. But as another spotlight issue for the Outliers, this does its job quite well.<\/p>\n

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PHOENIX #7.<\/strong> (Annotations here.)<\/a> Yeah, the wheels are coming off this, aren’t they? And look, I thought the first issue of this book was promising. It’s not the direction I have an issue with, it’s the execution. In the annotations I put the boot into the baffling plan of luring Thanos’ lieutenants to<\/em> the fight instead of away from it, but the problems are much bigger than that. Why is Adani just standing around waiting for the plot to call her? Where are the rest of Thanos’ forces, when we established last issue that he’s got entire armies available to him? This is supposed to be a battle for control of the galaxy and of the Phoenix power, but in practice it’s a couple of characters having an argument on a balcony. Where’s the sense of scale and stakes? Most fundamentally, what is any of this actually about, thematically speaking? The book started by putting some interesting themes on the table, but at this point it’s just Stuff Happening. Nor is it making much of a case for Jean Grey as a compelling solo lead – in theory, taking her away from the X-Men ought to create space to draw out a role for her beyond “heart of the team”, but we’re not seeing it. At a bare minimum, this book needs some serious retooling.<\/p>\n

HELLVERINE #2.<\/strong> (Annotations here.)<\/a> Well, it does what it says on the tin. My main problem with issue #1 was that it felt like a Ghost Rider story with Akihiro swapped in, but this issue does a little better at drawing on the X-books’ side of the mash-up. It’s still very much a short-term gimmick\u00a0 – my bet is that this sticks around for about as long as the angel Punisher did – but there are worse ideas if you want something for Akihiro to do for a year. It’s weirdly light on actual characters, as opposed to demons and the possessed, but it sort of sells that as a sense of disconnected isolation. It’s decently paced, Ienco’s art makes it feel more grounded than it has any right to be… basically, if you’re going to do an “Akihiro as Ghost Rider” series, then this is a perfectly good example of that comic. What it’s not managing so far is to sell me on the idea that the series needs to exist in the first place. Mind you, if it was simply a storyline within an ongoing Akihiro solo title, I probably wouldn’t feel that way about it, so maybe I should just view it that way.<\/p>\n

MYSTIQUE #4.<\/strong> By Declan Shalvey, Matt Hollingsworth & Clayton Cowles. I’m starting to feel that this book might be less than the sum of its parts. The big idea of the series isn’t so much the story as an attempt to go back to basics with the whole idea of a character who can change shape to impersonate other characters – you should never be sure which character is Mystique. And that seems like a good idea – it’s easy to take Mystique’s powers for granted and there’s a lot to be said for reminding us of why they should keep us on the back foot. Shalvey’s a great artist who can make that sort of thing work and feel fresh again. But it’s also an approach that keeps us distanced from Mystique and makes it hard to actually have her as the lead in her own comic. Really, the book’s solution to that problem is that this isn’t<\/em> her own comic – it’s a Nick Fury miniseries with Mystique as the villain. And it’s a good take on Nick Fury, who’s easier to identify with when he’s in more of an underdog role. There’s a lot to like here, but is there actually a compelling story underneath it all? I’m not sure there is, but there’s still time for it all to be drawn together in the final issue.<\/p>\n

WOLVERINE: REVENGE #4.<\/strong> By Jonathan Hickman, Greg Caullo, Tim Townsend, Alex Sinclair & Cory Petit. Meanwhile, off in an alternate timeline, here’s a post-apocalyptic quasi-western world where ageing Logan still wants revenge on Sabretooth. It’s obviously a riff on “Old Man Logan”, but without that storyline’s grimdark elements – the rather clever inversion is that this post-apocalyptic world seems to be getting back on its feet nicely enough, at least in the town where Forge and the remaining superheroes have set up, and people are looking to the future, but Wolverine and Sabretooth still won’t let it go. This time jump is where the book starts to make sense: the end of civilisation stuff isn’t just a random backdrop, it’s a story about Wolverine and Sabretooth continuing their arch-rivalry even with the world rebooting around them. It really is a great looking book, too, and it would justify its existence simply as an art showcase – but the story is coming together better than I expected too.<\/p>\n

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ASTONISHING X-MEN INFINITY COMIC #7. By Tim Seeley, Edoardo Audino, KJ Diaz & Clayton Cowles. Looks like we’re alternating creative teams on this book now, but Seeley and Audino are perfectly good, so I’ve no read complaints there. This is the first part of a Black Tom Cassidy arc, as he not only tries to […]<\/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,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10737","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\/10737","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=10737"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10737\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10738,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10737\/revisions\/10738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}