{"id":11267,"date":"2025-07-27T21:46:18","date_gmt":"2025-07-27T20:46:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=11267"},"modified":"2025-07-27T21:46:18","modified_gmt":"2025-07-27T20:46:18","slug":"the-x-axis-w-c-21-july-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=11267","title":{"rendered":"The X-Axis – w\/c 21 July 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

ASTONISHING X-MEN INFINITY COMIC #30.<\/strong> By Alex Paknadel, Phillip Sevy, Michael Bartolo & Clayton Cowles. Somewhere in here, there ought to be an interesting story about the embittered humans whose supply of anti-dementia drugs was cut off with the fall of Krakoa, but this really isn’t it. The plot requires the islanders to blame mutants for their own downfall, which could work, but feels like it would need a lot more scaffolding than it gets here. Instead, we end up jumping from that mildly promising starting point to a rather by-the-numbers affair in which people who hate mutants hunt mutants, and it just doesn’t feel as if this is heading anywhere much.<\/p>\n

UNCANNY X-MEN #18.<\/strong> (Annotations here.)<\/a> Ah, an optimistic issue. We were probably overdue for one. This is the New Orleans Friendship Fest, as promised a couple of issues ago – and it’s basically a fair. The X-Men show up, are pleasantly surprised by the reception, and if they don’t entirely head off the attempts to disrupt it, they don’t get the blame either. I do like the direction of the X-Men building bridges with the human world; one thing I never liked about Krakoa was how far it isolated the X-books from reality. So going back to something fairly low key like this seems like a good idea. Of course you can make the case that this isn’t all that unprecedented – we did something similar with San Francisco in the pre-Utopia era – but that was a good while ago, and in a book which has been running for sixty years, you have to allow some latitude on that kind of thing or you limit yourself too much. Luciano Vecchio does good work on the opening Mutina subplot, too.<\/p>\n

PHOENIX #13.<\/strong> (Annotations here.)<\/a> And, in fact…<\/p>\n

WOLVERINE #11.<\/strong> (Annotations here.)<\/a> So that’s two issues in a single week doing more or less the same story: long lost relative returns, it’s not real, lead character is blinded to the anomalies by the emotional impact. I mean, Wolverine also has an angle that he’s prone to manipulation by sensory illusions but… that’s more plot mechanics than something the story is about. It’s very similar territory for two books in the line to be doing at once. Neither of them is exactly working, either. Both have effectively wound up devoting most of an issue to something they then have to turn round and disavow –\u00a0Phoenix<\/em> can at least make the argument that Sara thinks she’s real, and her back story explains what she believes, but\u00a0Wolverine<\/em> basically spends a whole issue on an illusory fight scene, right on the heels of what was presumably a whole issue of haunted house illusions, and it doesn’t feel like we’re getting enough out of that to justify it. Perhaps it’s a case of pacing for the trade, but in 2025 it feels awkward.<\/p>\n

STORM #10.<\/strong> (Annotations here.)<\/a> The first part of “Thunder War”, which the book has been building to for a while – though it seems like it may now be accelerating it somewhat in order to get through it before the crossover. By this book’s feverish standards, issue #10 is actually fairly coherent, in as much as it does seem to be drawing some threads together, but by god it’s hard work – and it really does read like the mindset is simply that the more powerful you make Storm, the more awesome she is. That may well be what the hardcore Storm fans want in a\u00a0Storm<\/em> book, and if so, fair enough. Marvel’s cosmic stuff has never done much for me, so even if this was working perfectly it probably still wouldn’t be for me. It can still muster some excellent art. You couldn’t accuse it of sticking to the obvious path. But it feels like one baffling decision after another, issue after issue.<\/p>\n

PSYLOCKE #9. <\/strong>(Annotations here.)<\/a> This seems to be the penultimate issue, but the resolution of Mitsuki’s storyline doesn’t seem too rushed. After all the build up of Mitsuki as Kwannon’s saintly childhood friend, I rather like the angle that Mitsuki turns out to be not just alive, but far more vengeful against their old mentor than Kwannon ever was – the reality doesn’t live up to Kwannon’s memory. And while there’s a definite hint that something isn’t quite right with her, at least if you go back and check against previous issues, I think it’s a much more interesting direction to go with than just bringing her back to get revenge on the Hand. Nice art, too – the bleached-out possession Psylocke is a great look.<\/p>\n

EMMA FROST: WHITE QUEEN<\/strong>\u00a0#2.\u00a0<\/strong>By Amy Chu, Andrea Di Vito, Antonio Fabela & Ariana Maher. The problem that a lot of these continuity implant minis face is the unspoken question of “Yes, but why?” I can imagine a reason to go back to Emma as a villain, because there’s maybe some work to be done in terms of squaring off that part of her history with post-90s Emma into a single character. I’m not sure this book is really doing that, though, so much as focussing on intra-Hellfire rivalry – something that allows Emma to duck doing anything especially villainous, but in doing so loses a lot of the potential in writing a story at this point in her life. Still, as a story about Hellfire politicking and a mystery about who the traitor is, it’s decently paced and makes an effort to flesh out the inner working of the Hellfire Club, albeit in ways that sometimes feel arbitrary. Di Vito does a good Emma, and also sets up the globetrotting settings nicely. It’s a perfectly fine comic, but is that enough?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ASTONISHING X-MEN INFINITY COMIC #30. By Alex Paknadel, Phillip Sevy, Michael Bartolo & Clayton Cowles. Somewhere in here, there ought to be an interesting story about the embittered humans whose supply of anti-dementia drugs was cut off with the fall of Krakoa, but this really isn’t it. The plot requires the islanders to blame mutants […]<\/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-11267","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\/11267","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=11267"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11267\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11272,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11267\/revisions\/11272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}