{"id":11000,"date":"2025-04-19T14:51:31","date_gmt":"2025-04-19T13:51:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=11000"},"modified":"2025-04-19T14:51:31","modified_gmt":"2025-04-19T13:51:31","slug":"the-x-axis-w-c-14-april-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=11000","title":{"rendered":"The X-Axis – w\/c 14 April 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

ASTONISHING X-MEN INFINITY COMIC<\/strong> #18.<\/strong> By Alex Paknadel, Phillip Sevy, Michael Bartolo & Clayton Cowles. And so we reach the end of the second arc by this creative team, with the long term game seeming to be a very slow reunion of the cast of Generation X<\/em> in order to take on the grass roots allies of 3K. This issue, Emma Frost wanders by as a guest star, and Skin heads off to hang around with Sean and Paige some more. At the same time, the story is trying to illustrate how basically sympathetic characters can be radicalised, which is basically what the first arc did too. All this sounds like it ought to work, but in practice it feels like we’re treading water – it’s basically the same as the first arc with added Skin, and it hasn’t really found a compelling angle on the characters. It’s okay but it needs to kick up a gear in the next arc.<\/p>\n

EXCEPTIONAL X-MEN #8.<\/strong> (Annotations here.)<\/a> Even as someone who appreciates the languid pace of this book, I can’t help raising an eyebrow at devoting the first third of the book to a Mr Sinister monologue that doesn’t really advance the plot much, and then spending the rest of the issue on the rest of the cast figuring out that there’s a crisis they ought to be doing something about. You have to admire the book’s commitment to not letting itself be rushed. And yet it does\u00a0<\/em>work – certainly once it gets past Sinister’s monologue. Carmen Carnero’s art does a lovely job with the malfunctioning Axo clone as it ambles awkwardly through his life, while Trista and Thao trying to summon Emma by thinking really hard at her is a neat spot. Still, things have to come to some sort of head next issue… right?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

WOLVERINE<\/strong> #8. <\/strong>(Annotations here.)<\/a> This is legacy issue #400, and what a bizarre issue it is. It wraps up the Romulus\/Adamantine plot in ten pages – or at least kicks it to the side for now – and then jumps to tying up the Wendigo B-plot with an Arcade story. It does<\/em> work as a way of tying up the Wendigo’s arc, but it’s still such a strange call to go from several issues in the wilderness to Romulus ranting about mythical tradition to… Arcade? And the Adamantine material is so abrupt that it leaves me wondering what on earth happened behind the scenes. Is there a sudden rush to get to another plot point for some reason? It doesn’t feel like a transition, it feels like a storyline being aborted. It’s\u00a0really weird<\/em>.\u00a0Even so, it does more or less stick the landing with the Wendigo storyline, and the cliffhanger with Logan’s mother (or so she claims) is an interesting direction. Mart\u00edn C\u00f3ccolo does a rather old-school Arcade, in carnival barker mode, and gets away with it – and the warped Weapon X facility room is a neat effect. There’s good stuff in here, when it gets to its main story, but it’s still a strange read.<\/p>\n

X-FACTOR #9.\u00a0<\/strong>(Annotations here.)<\/a> With the book set to be cancelled next month, Havok and Frenzy come back for one last mission with the nice members of the team, while Archangel gets sent after Polaris. This is mainly an issue about lining up the parts for the finale next month, but it does at least give most of the characters their time to shine and a resolution of sorts to Xyber’s subplot about fearing his powers will kill him. Granny Smite even gets to be useful and to drop the act for a bit of team bonding. It’s fine enough, as a story which exists mainly to get the book from A to B – although I don’t think it really works as a turning point to have Havok realise something which has obviously been the moral of the series all along. But it does the job.<\/p>\n

CABLE: LOVE & CHROME #4.<\/strong> By David Pepose, Mike Henderson, Arif Prianto & Joe Sabino. Hmm. I love the art in this series, but this is a story which sets itself the tricky task of asking us to believe that the love interest introduced a few issues is so important to Cable as to lead him to the sort of timeline-mutilating antics he’s avoided in thirty odd years as a time traveller. Do I buy it? Um… maybe? It’s not like Cable’s great loves have been shown on panel in the past so that we’re competing with some star-crossed romance storyline here, but there’s still a challenge in selling the idea that such a well-established character is in a relationship that matters enough for him to cross such well-established lines in just four issues, and I think maybe it’s a storyline that needed a little bit more time to work? Not much more, though, and I kind of buy it for the purposes of this miniseries. So… I guess it just about gets away with it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ASTONISHING X-MEN INFINITY COMIC #18. By Alex Paknadel, Phillip Sevy, Michael Bartolo & Clayton Cowles. And so we reach the end of the second arc by this creative team, with the long term game seeming to be a very slow reunion of the cast of Generation X in order to take on the grass roots […]<\/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-11000","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\/11000","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=11000"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11000\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11001,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11000\/revisions\/11001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}