{"id":10801,"date":"2025-02-16T20:03:20","date_gmt":"2025-02-16T20:03:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10801"},"modified":"2025-02-16T20:03:20","modified_gmt":"2025-02-16T20:03:20","slug":"the-x-axis-w-c-10-february-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10801","title":{"rendered":"The X-Axis – w\/c 10 February 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

ASTONISHING X-MEN INFINITY COMIC #10.<\/strong> By Tim Seeley, Edoardo Audino, K J D\u00edaz & Clayton Cowles. Well, there’s some nice art on this. And it’s got beyond the improbable “Captain America doesn’t seem to have noticed that Juggernaut is an X-Man now” stuff to a more plausible angle of Cap not having worked much with this guy and being a bit sceptical about him. It’s also pretty well designed to give them a problem that their powers aren’t particularly well designed to solve. But it’s still a fairly basic “fight then team up” story which isn’t really getting to grips with the more interesting bits about Black Tom. And… you know, I’ll be honest, this is not the time to give me stories about Captain America, old-school beacon of decency. That character is going to be the walking dead until someone comes up with a story that adjusts to 2025 (and persuades Disney to publish it, and good luck with that).<\/p>\n

X-MEN #11.<\/strong> (Annotations here.)<\/a> Corsair returns from outer space, and everyone assumes that he’s there to get the X-Men’s help in fending off space mercenaries. But it’s a (slightly contrived) misunderstanding as they’re actually after Cyclops. Um… fine, I guess? The team banter in the background works for me, and while the book seems to be trying for broadly the same interpretation of Corsair that crashed and burned in Phoenix<\/em>, it’s done here with a bit more balance that makes it easier to square with his history. It helps, of course, that in this story the idea that he’s only out for himself is just misdirection. But it’s still ultimately “space baddies attack for some reason”, and I’m not sure there’s an issue’s worth of material in this chapter.<\/p>\n

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PSYLOCKE #4.<\/strong> (Annotations here.)<\/a> Okay, so apparently they did<\/em> mean “Taxonomist”, since the word “taxidermy” shows up in this issue. Although I’m not entirely sure they know what it is, since the claim is that the Taxonomist’s drones are a mixture of machinery and “taxidermied animal parts”, which would ultimately just mean that there was a bit of dead fur in there for show. Maybe that is<\/em> the idea? The “Taxonomist” thing seems to be about him being interested in the division between normal members of a species and mutants, though quite why that makes him interested in Psylocke is tricky to understand. The issue mostly consists of Psylocke making her way through a museum of dead mutant animals and hallucinating, and I’m not sure it quite pulls off the hallucinogenic tone that it’s going for. But I’m glad to see the book addressing head on the question of why someone who’s supposed to have reclaimed her identity after all these years has immediately chosen to become Psylocke II and join the X-Men. We all know the publishing reason – Psylocke was perceived as a popular character and the race-swap angle had come to be seen as increasingly embarrassing – but it doesn’t really make sense as a direction for Kwannon unless you think there are weird hang-ups at play where she’s trying to make a role for herself in taking over the persona that Betsy had abandoned. That shouldn’t become a central focus of the character – it ties her to an exceedingly complicated back story, for a start – but it’s weird enough to call for some exploration.<\/p>\n

MAGIK #2.<\/strong> (Annotations here.)<\/a> This isn’t doing much for me, but that’s more because I don’t care about magic and demons than because there’s anything objectively wrong with the book. If you’re into that sort of thing, then sure, this is a perfectly good book in the vein of Ghost Rider (cursed hero has demonic persona who may be helpful or may not). I’m slightly relieved as well to see that we’re not going to do the obvious thing of have Illyana do a tour of five seal locations, and instead we’re cutting to the chase. The magic electric guitar stuff feels tonally odd to me, though, and the set-up for the show feels really sketchy – a random character inviting Illyana along before basically fading into the background, and nobody noticing her teleport into the room in full view of everyone, feels weird. But it’s got a mood that it pulls off, with some strong design work on the characters, and I can see why someone more inclined to this sort of thing would be keen on it.<\/p>\n

DEADPOOL \/ WOLVERINE #2.<\/strong> (Annotations here.)<\/a> This feels like it can’t make up its mind whether it wants to be a wacky romp or something darker. Mostly the answer seems to be “wacky romp”, but if that’s the direction, maybe don’t nuke South Dakota, and lean into Stryfe’s absurdity rather than dialling him back? I’m especially unconvinced by the latter choice, since his costume flamboyance was arguably Stryfe’s most distinctive trait beyond his convoluted back story. It’s got some nice monsters, I guess? Maybe a bigger issue is that the series isn’t making much of a case for its own existence. I’ve read plenty of Deadpool \/ Wolverine team-up stories over the last year and I don’t think it’s a particularly interesting relationship, at least on an ongoing basis. But if the premise of your book is that it is<\/em> an interesting relationship then… why have Deadpool brainwashed and out of circulation for most of the issue?<\/p>\n

CABLE: LOVE AND CHROME #2.<\/strong> By David Pepose, Mike Henderson, Arif Prianto & Joe Sabino. This really does seem to be just a series where Cable meets a woman with her own techno-organic infection and falls in love with her, in a distant alternate future of no wider continuity significance. I mean, there’s an insurgent war for them to fight in, but that’s hardly the point. I’m not sure what sort of market there is for this, but fair play for trying. What it really does have going for it is Henderson’s art (and Prianto’s colouring), which is bold and dynamic stuff and deserves a wider audience – hopefully it gets them an outing on a higher profile book in the future.<\/p>\n

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ASTONISHING X-MEN INFINITY COMIC #10. By Tim Seeley, Edoardo Audino, K J D\u00edaz & Clayton Cowles. Well, there’s some nice art on this. And it’s got beyond the improbable “Captain America doesn’t seem to have noticed that Juggernaut is an X-Man now” stuff to a more plausible angle of Cap not having worked much with […]<\/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-10801","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\/10801","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=10801"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10801\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10803,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10801\/revisions\/10803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}