{"id":11163,"date":"2025-06-21T20:16:30","date_gmt":"2025-06-21T19:16:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=11163"},"modified":"2025-06-21T20:16:30","modified_gmt":"2025-06-21T19:16:30","slug":"the-x-axis-16-june-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=11163","title":{"rendered":"The X-Axis – 16 June 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

ASTONISHING X-MEN INFINITY COMIC #25.<\/strong> By Alex Paknadel, Phillip Sevy, Michael Bartolo & Clayton Cowles. Start of a new arc, and this is still a\u00a0Generation X<\/em> reunion book. This time, Paige and Angelo investigate Mursay, an island in the Orkneys supposedly offering itself to mutants as a new home. Naturally the place is hugely suspicious. And hey, Mursay is actually a fairly reasonable name for a fictitious island in the Orkneys! Obviously it’s a lost opportunity to set a story on Muckle Skerry or Papa Westray, but sure, the smaller Orkney islands are a reasonable enough place to do this sort of story. The first chapter doesn’t really set up much beyond “obvious trap”, but it does that well enough, so no complaints.<\/p>\n

X-MEN #18.<\/strong> (Annotations here.)<\/a> End of the arc, and five issues feels like it was too long. Particularly as we still don’t get to find out\u00a0that<\/em> much about the individual 3K X-Men, despite them having such a big role. We have fill-in art from Emilio Laiso on the last chapter too, which is perfectly fine but lacking a little in distinctiveness. There are plenty of good ideas in here – the Beast being approached by 3K because everyone knows he’ll turn into a villain in the end, Ben Liu’s slightly-too-aggressive approach to doing the right thing, and the twin being talked down. The bit where she softens on being given a name is very effective, and the parallels with Cassandra’s own back story are left nicely understated. But… it’s still basically a five-issue action sequence which is more of a step in a larger story than a complete story of itself.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

WOLVERINE #10.<\/strong> (Annotations here.)<\/a> If you’re going to do an issue of Wolverine making his way through the haunted house on his way to find Sabretooth, then it’s really all about the vibes. And the book more or less gets away with it. I don’t know\u00a0why<\/em> the house is sitting there in ruins with furniture still in place, but Javier Pina’s art sells the mood well enough, and the brief lapse into\u00a0actual<\/em> ghosts feels suitably different. I’m genuinely confused by the last page, though – I\u00a0think<\/em> we’re supposed to take it that Sabretooth is somehow giant now, but something about it doesn’t get the scale across, and it registers more as a perspective issue. In story terms, well, not much happens. I like the idea that Logan is capable of being fooled by convincing scents because he’s used to relying on them for authenticity, but the whole thing\u00a0 feels a bit slow.<\/p>\n

PSYLOCKE #8.<\/strong> (Annotations here.)<\/a> Judging from the solicitations, this seems to be cancelled with issue #10, which is a shame – while it’s far from flawless, it was basically successful in getting Kwannon to work as a solo lead. Fortunately, it looks like the book is getting to the point of all the flashbacks to Kwannon’s childhood training with Mitsuki, and so it should be on course to wrap up in a satisfying way. Exactly what’s\u00a0happening<\/em> here is a bit confusing, but that’s at least partly intentional. Some of it isn’t, though: the cliffhanger expects you to recognise the symbol on Hayashi’s door as the same one that was burned into Psylocke’s wrist last issue, which was only shown obliquely in that issue, and doesn’t get shown again in this one, despite two scenes of people talking about it. Still, both Alyssa Wong and Mois\u00e9s Hidalgo are convincing me of Kwannon and Mitsuki’s childhood bond, which is the heart of the story, and so it can get away with a lot.<\/p>\n

WEAPON X-MEN #5.<\/strong> By Joe Casey, ChrisCross, Mark Morales, Yen Nitro & Clayton Cowles. Final issue, so it’s time for the obligatory scramble to the finish line. Or rather, it resolves the Thunderbird subplot: he wants to go back in time to his death and take his own place so that he can go down in history as a hero after all. He gets talked out of it. It’s not a\u00a0bad<\/em> idea, but it’s kind of rushed here. As for the actual point of the team, Casey waves the white flag and just has Cable tell us that they’re supposed to face some unspecified upcoming threat. Oh well! Pretty as it is, this book never made a convincing case for its own existence.<\/p>\n

EMMA FROST: THE WHITE QUEEN #1.<\/strong> By Amy Chu, Andrea Di Vito, Antonio Fabela & Ariana Maher. Continuity implant miniseries set back when Emma was in the Hellfire Club’s Inner Circle. I can’t help suspecting this got commissioned mainly so they could do the costume on the covers. I suppose in theory there’s a story to be done, revisiting this period in the light of Emma’s extensive retooling in later years, and trying to square it off with the later character. In practice… well, Emma is visiting the Argentinian branch of the Hellfire Club as an honoured guest and the big event goes badly wrong when the X-Men crash in to rescue a local mutant. Emma thinks someone’s manoeuvring against her. Fair enough, I guess – internal feuding within the Hellfire Club is probably the best way to make her the relative hero here – and the classic 80s X-Men line-up feel nicely familiar. But it doesn’t feel like a book we particularly needed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ASTONISHING X-MEN INFINITY COMIC #25. By Alex Paknadel, Phillip Sevy, Michael Bartolo & Clayton Cowles. Start of a new arc, and this is still a\u00a0Generation X reunion book. This time, Paige and Angelo investigate Mursay, an island in the Orkneys supposedly offering itself to mutants as a new home. Naturally the place is hugely suspicious. […]<\/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-11163","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\/11163","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=11163"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11163\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11164,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11163\/revisions\/11164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}