{"id":11416,"date":"2025-09-20T14:34:35","date_gmt":"2025-09-20T13:34:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=11416"},"modified":"2025-09-20T14:34:35","modified_gmt":"2025-09-20T13:34:35","slug":"the-x-axis-w-c-15-september-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=11416","title":{"rendered":"The X-Axis – w\/c 15 September 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

UNCANNY X-MEN #21.<\/strong> (Annotations here.)<\/a> No\u00a0X-Men Unlimited<\/em> issue this week – they often take weeks off between arcs but for some reason they’ve started doing it mid-story of late. Which is a silly idea but what the hell, it’s only the Infinity Comic. So we’ll move straight on to\u00a0Uncanny X-Men\u00a0<\/em>as it wraps up for “Age of Revelation”.<\/p>\n

Now, I remember the original “Age of Apocalypse”, which also did the stunt of “cancelling” the line and replacing it with stand-in books for the duration of the event. And the first time around, they made a point of actually leading in to the event. The official prologue was confined to the core X-Men titles, but the other books at least ended on a cliffhanger before going into their break. We’re not getting that here – in some cases that’s because the book had been cancelled, or perhaps they just weren’t sure what it was doing on the other side of the crossover, but even\u00a0Uncanny X-Men<\/em> isn’t actually doing anything to set up its participation in the story. Which is very weird in terms of momentum. It hasn’t felt in the slightest like we’re leading in to a big event – it feels like the line is closing down for the winter.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Still, on the level of individual issues, it’s probably for the best that they aren’t forcing a tie-in. This is the second part of Ransom’s spotlight story, in which he goes back to Argentina to rescue his estranged ex-brother from a cult, and winds up visiting a comicon with Wolverine. It’s an odd issue. It looks nice enough, and Vecchio has some fun with the convention cosplayers (even if the place does look a bit spartan). The emotional beats with Ransom and his family land decently. There’s maybe a bit more nuance to his father than we’ve seen before, and some more hints about a family history to be explored in future, but Ransom’s complaint of feeling rejected by his father is basically made out. What’s not made clear is why his father ever took him in in the first place, which is a story for another day. And all this\u00a0just about<\/em> gets away with there being a gaping hole at the centre of the plot where the villain’s motivation ought to be. It’s never at all clear what Proctor actually wanted, or what the purpose of his cult is, or what they were trying to achieve (or even what his cultists\u00a0think<\/em> they’re trying to achieve). Which… has the advantage of leaving the way clear to tell us that Benicio just wanted to belong to something and allowing him to redeem himself, without the awkwardness of making him an explicit racist. I guess. But without ever really knowing what any of this was about, parts of the story float uncomfortably.<\/p>\n

PHOENIX #15.\u00a0<\/strong>(Annotations here.)<\/a> So, look, I sort of get what Stephanie Phillips is trying to do here: she wants to do the story where creating Sara Grey creates a massive problem, and the cosmic powers that be want to deal with that problem by eradicating her. But Jean shows them that there’s a better way. And everyone learns that Jean is bringing something new and worthwhile to the cosmic gods by adding the perspective of the little person, which in turn justifies Sara’s new role as… well, a cosmic Jiminy Cricket.<\/p>\n

But the execution fails comprehensively. The plot hinges explicitly on the fact that if Sara is allowed to continue existing then this will bring universal disaster. And this is evidenced by showing the White Hot Room breaking apart, and a trip to a future timeline where, for some unfathomable reason, it’s all zombies. Nobody\u00a0at any point<\/em> suggests that there’s a possible solution that doesn’t involve killing Sara, even Jean. She’s simply written as refusing on principle to sacrifice one “life” for the greater good, without having any explanation of how else she’s going to avoid the mass extinction thing. So when she just out of nowhere declares that it’s a solvable problem and everyone goes “oh, okay, fair enough then”,\u00a0that’s a massive cheat<\/em> and the story collapses.<\/p>\n

Plus, if this is the story, it should have been one of the cosmic entities or their messengers setting out the problem, not Cable. By using him, the story inadvertently positions the cosmic entities’ attitude as one shared by reasonable mortals, and completely undercuts the idea that it’s something about cosmic perspective. Then we’ve got a bunch of former Phoenix hosts, from the prominent to the extremely obscure, showing up as guest stars only to do literally nothing.<\/p>\n

Artist Roi Mercado has their moments – I think they’re actually a good artist for more down to earth material, and they do a pretty solid job when asked to draw the cosmic beings in their human forms from G.O.D.S<\/em>.. Oblivion comes across particularly well here. It’s the grand cosmic bits that fall a bit flat, but that’s more a case of Mercado being miscast on this particular book; I’d be happy to see more from them on a book better suited to their strengths.<\/p>\n

Overall, though… yeah, a bit of a catastrophe.<\/p>\n

MAGIK #10.\u00a0<\/strong>(Annotations here.)<\/a> Another final issue. The absence of this series from “Age of Revelation” raised eyebrows, since on the available data it seemed to be selling respectably. It turns out that the same creative team are starting a new book in January – presumably not just a\u00a0Magik<\/em> title, or they’d have said so – which is something. This has been one of the stronger X-books of late. That’s not just in terms of having a strong sense of identity, but also in terms of finding a way to make Magik a viable character again after many years of using her as a mobile snark delivery system, simply by leaning into the idea that she hides behind her persona, and then putting her in situations where she can’t. Or indeed by putting her in situations where she\u00a0can<\/em>, but her first person narration is more honest than her dialogue. Germ\u00e1n Peralta has even managed to make her costume work, and very few people have.<\/p>\n

So it’s a book that’s done good work in reviving my interest in Illyana, and it’s had some good concepts as well. This final issue is maybe not its strongest outing; it feels like plotlines about the Exemplars turning on Embodiment are being rushed to a finale that was meant to come in another arc’s time. And the way that Illyana defeats Embodiment kind of depends on inventing some previously undeclared rules about the villain’s precognitive powers right before they’re conveniently needed, when this book is usually better than that at laying its groundwork. But it’s still good enough, and delivers as a resolution to that last ten issues.\u00a0Magik<\/em> has been better, but this is perfectly fine.<\/p>\n

DEADPOOL\/WOLVERINE<\/strong>\u00a0#9.\u00a0<\/strong>By Benjamin Percy, Robert Gill & Guru-eFX. I ran out of things to say about this comic months ago. If you were into Benjamin Percy and Robert Gill’s\u00a0X-Force\u00a0<\/em>issues then, well, tonally, this is very much like that. But the decision to drag out this one storyline for 10 issues, when it feels like even five would have been pushing it, is baffling to me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UNCANNY X-MEN #21. (Annotations here.) No\u00a0X-Men Unlimited issue this week – they often take weeks off between arcs but for some reason they’ve started doing it mid-story of late. Which is a silly idea but what the hell, it’s only the Infinity Comic. So we’ll move straight on to\u00a0Uncanny X-Men\u00a0as it wraps up for “Age […]<\/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-11416","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\/11416","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=11416"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11417,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11416\/revisions\/11417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}