{"id":10816,"date":"2025-02-22T21:41:59","date_gmt":"2025-02-22T21:41:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10816"},"modified":"2025-02-22T21:41:59","modified_gmt":"2025-02-22T21:41:59","slug":"the-x-axis-w-c-17-february-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10816","title":{"rendered":"The X-Axis – w\/c 17 February 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

ASTONISHING X-MEN INFINITY COMIC #11.<\/strong> By Tim Seeley, Edoardo Audino, KJ D\u00edaz & Clayton Cowles. So we have an absolutely ridiculous number of X-books out this week. Perhaps they’re trying to get through stuff before One World Under Doom<\/em> gets fully under way. Maybe they needed to get some things done before the “X-Manhunt” crossover. Or maybe they knew they were announcing a bunch of cancellations this week and thought that if they put out ten X-books in a single week then the news would come as a blessed relief.<\/p>\n

Look: I had no problem with the end of the Krakoan era. With the number of titles set there, I think there was a decent argument to be made that it had run its course, or at least that it was time to quit while they were ahead. And frankly, the post-Hickman back end of the Krakoan era was seriously patchy. Still, whatever came after it was always going to struggle to have the same impact. I think Tom Brevoort took a basically sensible approach in the circumstances by not even trying to compete on the “high concept” front and just going for a broad range of mostly standalone titles instead. I’m largely sympathetic to what the current office is trying to do, and there are some genuinely good books in the line. But we’ve got ten X-books this week and I’d struggle to recommend more than two, maybe three. That’s not a good hit rate.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Astonishing<\/em> #11 isn’t the problem. It’s inessential, but it’s a perfectly serviceable Cap\/Juggernaut team-up story with some rather nice art. The plot is rudimentary but Seeley writes a good rapport between Captain America and Juggernaut now that we’ve got on to them co-operating. I’m not so sure about Black Tom’s post-Krakoan direction being that he’s got plant powers and gone mad – it’s perfectly logical<\/em> in terms of where he was left by Benjamin Percy’s run on\u00a0X-Force<\/em> but it also feels like the least interesting thing you could do with him. Seeley wants it to be a story about how Cain’s attempts to reform are sabotaged by his ties to Black Tom but it feels far too late in the day to pull off that angle.<\/p>\n

UNCANNY X-MEN #10.<\/strong> (Annotations here.)<\/a> Sticking with the positive, the core X-Men titles have generally been good.\u00a0Uncanny X-Men<\/em> is perilously close to not actually being an X-Men comic, but an Outliers comic with the X-Men’s name on it. But the Outliers themselves are interesting, and one thing that’s been a genuine positive of the current era is getting the mutants a bit more grounded in the real world – something that hadn’t really been a focal point since the 1980s. Okay, the art on this issue is a little rough around the edges at times, and Graymalkin still seem too obvious as villains, but the focus is on the new characters and that’s making it work. Granted, by issue #10 we should probably have a clearer idea of what the kids actually do (though Deathdream’s spooky, so he gets away with being vague) and it seems bizarre that nobody’s sat down with them so far to ask basic questions like “so how did you meet and why did you come here”. But… the book gets away with all that because the characters are engaging and the book’s homely vibe is a pleasure.<\/p>\n

EXCEPTIONAL X-MEN #6.<\/strong> (Annotations here.)<\/a> Exceptional<\/em> may be my favourite of the current line, even if its approach of doing almost entirely character-driven stories with virtually zero action content feels at a minimum commercially bold. To be fair, it looks like we’re getting to an actual villain imminently (in just the second trade paperback!). But again, it’s the characters that make this work. It may be a little odd to shift gears to mutants as a visible minority in mainstream America, but it opens up new approaches for the X-books. My gut tells me the book has made a commercial mistake by not getting the point quicker, but as a reader I’m glad that it’s taking its time.<\/p>\n

X-FORCE #8.<\/strong> (Annotations here.)<\/a> The first of the imminently cancelled books. X-Force<\/em> has just two more issues to go, and one of them is an “X-Manhunt” tie-in, so brace yourself for an abrupt wrap-up. X-Force<\/em> is what you might call a respectable failure. The art has been good, and the core story concept had potential: Forge has so much faith in his mutant ability to come up with answers that he never stops to ask whether he’s being manipulated into asking the wrong question. At least, that seems to be part of the core idea; there’s something else going on about prompting Forge to reconnect with his magical side too. But this story is tricky to pull off in practice, because it results in a comic where the heroes run around from mission to mission for no real reason beyond the fact that Forge’s powers tell them to. That’s the starting point of the story, and it’s resulted in practice in a book that just feels like one arbitrary set piece after another. I can imagine\u00a0X-Force<\/em> looking good as a pitch; it hasn’t quite worked on the page.<\/p>\n

NYX #8.<\/strong> By Jackson Lanzing, Collin Kelly, Francesco Mortarino, Ra\u00fal Angulo & Joe Sabino. This is also being axed with issue #10, and it too is getting saddled with an “X-Manhunt” tie-in for issue #9. I wonder when these cancellations were decided on. On the whole, NYX<\/em> has been patchy, but leaning towards good. It’s another book that’s tried to ground the mutants in the real world again, with a fair degree of success – it’s rather dispiriting to see that it’s being replaced by a\u00a0Ms Marvel<\/em> gimmick miniseries, which doesn’t play to its strengths. Where it’s generally struggled is with bigger social ideas and naively optimistic ideas about activism. This issue is really neither of those – instead, it’s Laura breaking Julian Keller out of jail because she can’t believe he really turned evil. It’s not a bad character piece, but some of its rehabbing of Julian feels like backpedalling that doesn’t really work with the story we had in the previous issues. The main point of Julian’s role in Empath’s scheme was that his terrorist attacks were a cover for killing members of the city government in order that they could be replaced by Empath’s pawns. But now we’re told that Julian couldn’t bring himself to actually kill them so he… carried out a string of terrorist attacks anyway but instead quietly abducted the people he was meant to kill and kept them prisoner somewhere, where they’ve presumably been starving to death since he was arrested in issue #5? And these guys were all still declared dead even though there were no bodies? How did people even know they’d been on the trains? How triggerhappy are the presumption of death laws in Marvel New York? This makes so little sense that I can’t help feeling it’s been retrofitted to try and rehab Julian in a way that wasn’t originally planned.<\/p>\n

X-FACTOR #8.<\/strong> By Mark Russell, Bob Quinn, Jesus Aburtov & Joe Caramagna. This hasn’t officially<\/em> been cancelled with issue #10, but the solicitation seems awfully discouraging, the available sales data isn’t great, and ten issues does seem to be the standard Marvel order for a new ongoing. And nobody’s taken the opportunity to deny that it’s the last issue, either. And… well, it isn’t very good. Like X-Force<\/em>, though, it’s easy to see how it got commissioned – on paper, Mark Russell doing a JLI<\/em>-ish satirical book about the US government team feels like it ought to work. In practice it’s turned out to be a misfiring tone clash, with comedy elements that undercut the more serious storylines without actually being funny. I wouldn’t have predicted that going in, and even though I don’t think it’s worked, I think it was more than reasonable to take a punt on it.<\/p>\n

This issue is ostensibly a One World Under Doom<\/em> tie-in, though that seems suspiciously nailed-on to an unrelated idea. The\u00a0actual<\/em> idea is an AI-run city state in the ruins of Genosha – the issue does itself no favours by seeming to be unaware that Genosha was still a desolate ruin when we last saw it in 2023, but okay, I’ll buy that this place was raced into existence with nanotech or something. And I can see what Russell is going for here; it’s one of those cryptobro dreams of building a libertarian citystate, with Genosha as the site because it’s cheap, it’s available and the people behind the project are totally insensitive. But all the story really has to say about how the city works is that the population are under mind control as part of the terms of service, which is kind of a one-note gag, and doesn’t really develop the concept beyond that. There’s a version of this story which works. In fact, this issue has fewer tone problems than average for the series. But it isn’t coming together.<\/p>\n

MYSTIQUE #5.<\/strong> By Declan Shalvey, Matt Hollingsworth & Clayton Cowles. Final issue of the miniseries. This is the “maybe three” – I simply haven’t had time to go back and reread the whole miniseries yet and see whether it ties together in a satisfying way with hindsight. With that caveat, on a first reading, I found this to be less than the sum of its parts; it’s got some clever ideas about re-establishing the idea that Mystique could be anyone, but inevitably that’s a story where someone else is the protagonist, and that’s where I think the book runs into trouble – even though I rather liked its take on Nick Fury Jr as a frustrated super spy working within budget cuts, and he’s a character I’ve never really had much interest in before. But the resolution of the story for Mystique herself didn’t feel to me like it emerged much from anything that had happened up to that point. Still, I do want to go back and re-read it, because I have a nagging feeling it’s the sort of book that will make a lot more sense in a single sitting rather than being spread over several months.<\/p>\n

LAURA KINNEY: WOLVERINE #3.<\/strong> By Erica Schultz, Giada Belviso, Rachelle Rosenberg & Cory Petit. Three issues in, this series feels competent but redundant. It’s doing fairly standard X-Men beats. It’s told well enough, both in art and pacing. It just doesn’t feel like it has any particular ideas about Laura; there’s no sense of the book being about anything beyond filling the space. I suppose using first Elektra and (in the next issue) Winter Soldier as the guest stars has some tie to the theme of Laura having been a brainwashed weapon in the past, but that hasn’t really come to the fore, and besides,\u00a0Psylocke<\/em> is already doing the same theme (with more success). If you just want a Laura Kinney solo series, then this is a Laura Kinney solo series, and it isn’t offensively bad or anything. It’s just… there. And in a ten-book week that’s not really going to cut it.<\/p>\n

STORM #5.<\/strong> By Murewa Ayodele, Lucas Werneck, Alex Guimar\u00e3es & Travis Lanham. I absolutely get why Marvel are trying a Storm solo – sure, it’s never worked before, but she does have a devoted fanbase these days. And indeed, from what limited information we have, the sales seem to be rather good. ICV2’s sales data is wonky these days because it gets heavily skewed by the week of the month in which a book is released, but for what it’s worth, they had\u00a0Storm<\/em> #4 at number 25. That’s pretty good!<\/p>\n

It does nothing for me, though. This issue is ostensibly a One World Under Doom<\/em> tie-in, presumably because Doom is in it, though it’s just a continuation of last issue’s story and there’s nothing to suggest that OWUD is actually underway. Storm has died and been resurrected as a champion of Eternity, I guess. It’s got lovely art and if you’re into the bare fact of Storm being presented as a cosmic player then it’s got that… but it’s just meaningless cosmic woo, isn’t it? Normally with books I don’t like, I can at least see what they’re going for. With Storm<\/em>, I’m just entirely at cross-purposes with the whole thing. I don’t understand what this book is trying to do at all.<\/p>\n

WEAPON X-MEN #1.<\/strong> By Joe Casey, ChrisCross, Mark Morales, Yen Nitro & Clayton Cowles. Apparently this is an ongoing title, despite being listed on Amazon as a miniseries. It’s ostensibly a One Nation Under Doom<\/em> tie-in, though this seems to boil down to “it involves Latveria so we might as well put the banner on it”. It’s basically a Cable\/Deadpool\/Wolverine team-up book, with Chamber and Thunderbird thrown in for good measure. While it’s nice to see ChrisCross getting work, the world does not need a second Deadpool\/Wolverine team-up book, and nothing in this issue even starts to make a case for why the comic exists at all. From the promotion I was expecting something vaguely over the top but it isn’t, really. It’s not awful or anything, it’s just… Yet More. And releasing a book like that in a week like this is hardly showing it in the best light – it feels like the epitome of a week of glut.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ASTONISHING X-MEN INFINITY COMIC #11. By Tim Seeley, Edoardo Audino, KJ D\u00edaz & Clayton Cowles. So we have an absolutely ridiculous number of X-books out this week. Perhaps they’re trying to get through stuff before One World Under Doom gets fully under way. Maybe they needed to get some things done before the “X-Manhunt” crossover. […]<\/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-10816","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\/10816","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=10816"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10816\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10818,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10816\/revisions\/10818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}