{"id":11463,"date":"2025-10-11T21:28:13","date_gmt":"2025-10-11T20:28:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=11463"},"modified":"2025-10-11T21:28:13","modified_gmt":"2025-10-11T20:28:13","slug":"the-x-axis-w-c-6-october-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=11463","title":{"rendered":"The X-Axis – w\/c 6 October 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

ASTONISHING X-MEN INFINITY COMIC #39.\u00a0<\/strong>By Alex Paknadel, Tim Seeley, Phillip Sevy, Michael Bartolo & Clayton Cowles. Well, someone didn’t get the memo about “Age of Revelation”.\u00a0Astonishing X-Men<\/em> ploughs gamely on as normal. Then again, it might not have a choice, because this looks a lot like it’s meant to be drawing the book’s storylines to a head – Morph goes on trial after the previous arc, and the X-Cutioner attacks the court with a greatest hits selection of all the weapons he’s used in the series to date. So that sounds a lot like we’re getting to the pay off, and it wouldn’t be the first Infinity Comic they’ve wrapped up recently. Now, there’s an inherent problem in a marginal book like this trying to play the “mutant trial of the century” card – quite aside from the fact that Magneto and Cyclops have both been put on trial before – and it means that my plot problems with the previous arc are rolled forward to this one, since I don’t really buy that the ground rules of the Marvel Universe allow people to waltz in to nuclear facilities and launch missiles just because they happened to have a high security clearance a decade ago. And this book’s take on X-Cutioner has always been a bit one-dimensional as well. So… it clunks a bit, this. But we’ll see if it can pull everything together.<\/p>\n

AMAZING X-MEN #1.\u00a0<\/strong>(Annotations here.)<\/a> It’s the first full week of “Age of Revelation”, and this is obviously the core series – the whole thing grows entirely out of MacKay’s\u00a0X-Men.\u00a0<\/em>In many ways I’m happy to see that there’s a clear and contained core to the thing, rather than inventing all manner of busywork sidequests to justify all the tie-ins. From all we’ve seen so far, the answer to the question “Which Age of Revelation books do you really have to read to follow the event” is… this one. Just this one. And… great! It can outsource a bit of the world building to the other titles and focus on its own story, which ultimately seems to be an episodic road trip around the AoR, coupled with a mystery about why the future X-Men are clearly lying to Cyclops about at least some of this. And a subsidiary mystery about what’s up with the Beast; I suspect the twist here may be that he\u00a0is<\/em> from the past, but not from the same\u00a0point<\/em> in the past. I’m not entirely sold on Wolverine being so unstoppable that he can just get out of a black hole, and the art feels a bit muted at times… but then again, the sequence of Revelation reprogramming Wolverine is very nicely done. It’s a solid chapter of a relatively tight core story, anyway.<\/p>\n

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BINARY #1.<\/strong> (Annotations here.)<\/a> But there are five “Age of Revelation” tie-ins this week alone, and eighteen in total over the course of the month. Now, obviously Marvel have access to rather better sales data than we do, but I beg leave to doubt that an X-books event in late 2025 is in any state to support 18 books. True, some of them are visitors from the wider Marvel Universe – in particular, Iron Frost\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0Undeadpool\u00a0<\/em>are basically the\u00a0Iron Man\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0Deadpool<\/em> books for the duration. And\u00a0World of Revelation<\/em> was a one-shot rather than a mini. But it still seems heroically optimistic.<\/p>\n

Binary<\/em> is effectively a continuation of\u00a0Phoenix<\/em>, although since that book doesn’t seem to be returning after “Age of Revelation”, it feels a little bit lost. Jean is supposedly dead, and Carol Danvers is the new Phoenix, but she’s been spending the last few years simply preserving her hometown in a bubble to keep the virus out. (There’s some handwaving stuff about limited communication with the outside to explain why everyone didn’t starve long ago.) It’s an odd issue, since Carol seems to have no agenda to do anything\u00a0other<\/em> than that – she’s not searching for a way to fight back, she’s not trying to find a way to safely evacuate, she just seems to want to sit there indefinitely. I can’t make up my mind whether that’s a potentially interesting set-up about resignation and depression, or just a three-issue miniseries not getting around to the inciting event in the first issue. Frankly, Stephanie Phillips’ preceding run on\u00a0Phoenix<\/em> doesn’t inspire confidence that she’ll stick the landing on an interesting idea. Giada Beluiso’s art is okay, but struggles to convey what’s going on at times – the bit with the serpent and the dome is just hard to follow, and I’m genuinely unsure whether the cliffhanger is meant to be that Jean is alive after all, or that Madelyne is back, or what. Perhaps we’re meant to be confused, but if so, that’s not an effective ending.<\/p>\n

LAURA KINNEY, SABRETOOTH #1.\u00a0<\/strong>(Annotations here.)<\/a> This is the only book from this week to feature a character who sided with Revelation. I think Erica Schultz does a pretty good job writing Laura as a mutant nationalist who’s convinced herself she’s with the good guys, even though her doubts show through in her actions. Schultz also seems to have picked up on the opportunities to use “Age of Revelation” to advance ongoing stories: since this is only ten years in the future, you can use it for a bit of foreshadowing. So this story indicates that in the not too distant future, Laura will pair up with Sabretooth’s previously unmentioned son (who must logically exist in the present), and if that’s the planned direction for the title then it’s a smart use of the three issues. Except… ah, hold on,\u00a0Laura Kinney, Wolverine<\/em> isn’t returning after “Age of Revelation”, so scratch that. Instead, Laura seems to be taking the trainer role in the new school book –\u00a0Generation X-23<\/em> – but that’s going to be written by Jody Houser. Huh. So maybe this is a detour? Or a plot we’re never going to see? Or… I don’t know. The material with Revelation manipulating Laura makes good use of the event format (since it’s more obvious that he’s lying if you’ve read some of the other books, but if you don’t know that then it’s not really a problem). The scenes with Hellion don’t work at all, though, and Valentina Pinti draws him far too young for ten years in the future. Laura’s son Alex just looks weird, too, which is a problem when he’s so central to the plot – he doesn’t feel like a child so much as a character drawn in a different style.<\/p>\n

WORLD OF REVELATION #1.\u00a0<\/strong>This one-shot is an anthology of three short stories. The only one with obvious significance to the wider event is “The Message” by Al Ewing and Agustin Alessio, which shows Bei’s message to Apocalypse (from\u00a0Age of Revelation Overture<\/em>) being received. But the story itself is basically a tour of Arakko to bring us up to date on what’s happening there now. In that sense it’s a coda to Ewing’s\u00a0X-Men Red<\/em>, with some nice location work from Alessio. If you enjoyed\u00a0Red<\/em>, you’ll probably enjoy this. “Never Let Me Go” by Steve Foxe and Jes\u00fas Merino is a Wiccan and Hulkling story which really exists to sell us on the horror of Babels, with Wiccan having the misfortune to serve as a warning for the wider superhero community. It has a simple job and it does it pretty well. Finally, Ryan North and Adam Szalowski provide a Franklin Richards story – well, that’s how it’s billed, but it’s really more of a HERBIE story. North is an essentially optimistic writer, not particularly suited to dystopias, but squares that off rather well by doing a “this too shall pass” story. Anthologies are not generally Marvel’s strong suit, but this is actually pretty good.<\/p>\n

LONGSHOTS #1.<\/strong> By Gerry Duggan, Jonathan Hickman, Alan Robinson, Yen Nitro & Ariana Maher. Oh god, it’s a comedy book. And not just a comedy book, but a wacky<\/em> comedy book. This is very much not my thing. I drew the line at\u00a0Wolverine and the X-Men<\/em>, for god’s sake.\u00a0I mean, if you’re going to do eighteen tie-ins, then sure, absolutely throw in something left field – I hope there are a few more that try to go nuts within the format – but I really have less than zero interest in this.<\/p>\n

SPIDER-MAN & WOLVERINE #6.<\/strong> By Marc Guggenheim, Gerardo Sandoval, Victor Nava, Brian Reber & Travis Lanham. Because you demanded it – another issue of fill-in art on the book whose main selling point is Kaare Andrews! That said, Sandoval’s art in this issue is perfectly okay. And rather than start the second arc with guest art, this is a one-off story that would have made a perfectly serviceable Spider-Man fill-in. It’s nothing extraordinary but once it gets past talking about the previous arc, it’s an acceptable little story about the characters’ attitudes to mercy killing. And that’s a sound enough subject for a Spider-Man\/Wolverine team-up story. The previous issues of this series were frankly bad if viewed as stories rather than as an art showcase; this one is fine, if unnecessary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ASTONISHING X-MEN INFINITY COMIC #39.\u00a0By Alex Paknadel, Tim Seeley, Phillip Sevy, Michael Bartolo & Clayton Cowles. Well, someone didn’t get the memo about “Age of Revelation”.\u00a0Astonishing X-Men ploughs gamely on as normal. Then again, it might not have a choice, because this looks a lot like it’s meant to be drawing the book’s storylines to […]<\/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-11463","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\/11463","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=11463"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11463\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11464,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11463\/revisions\/11464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}