{"id":11569,"date":"2025-11-28T20:40:15","date_gmt":"2025-11-28T20:40:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=11569"},"modified":"2025-11-28T20:40:15","modified_gmt":"2025-11-28T20:40:15","slug":"the-x-axis-24-november-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=11569","title":{"rendered":"The X-Axis – 24 November 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

X-MEN: AGE OF REVELATION INFINITY COMIC #4.<\/strong> By Tim Seeley, Phillip Sevy, Michael Bartolo & Clayton Cowles. Oh boy. So this one went down well. It’s the first part of a Magik storyline filling her “Age of Revelation” back story. We already established, back in\u00a0Age of Revelation<\/em> #0, that Magik had died on the raid that freed Fabian Cortez from SHIELD custody, and that she returned as the Darkchild to rule Providence. Most of this issue consists of the raid itself, which is a bit underwhelming – she gets carried away, kills Maria Hill, and then gets gunned down by Nick Fury. It’s not especially creative. Anyway, the big idea is that the Bloodstones that Belasco conjured from Magik’s soul during her childhood mean that her soul passes to his control on death, with him apparently restored as the ruler of Limbo. That seems like something we might be wanting to address in the present day. The issue then cuts to a rather confusing segment of Darkchild (apparently separate from Magik) as S’ym’s slave, which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. I guess it’s a jump forward in time? I think?<\/p>\n

It’s not an especially good issue, but many of the complaints seem to be reading in things that aren’t there, or seizing on subtext that’s been part of Magik’s back story for forty years. But you can give Illyana a depressing ending in an alternate future timeline – in the long run it becomes something that she’s motivated to avoid when Cyclops reports back on it. Mind you, if you’re going to give female characters sexualised costumes, you can’t really complain when people read the humiliation sequence with S’ym and take you at face value. But this is more heavy-handed than anything else, certainly in a context where we already know that the story is going to end with Darkchild reclaiming Limbo. Having said that, I’m not really very interested in reading a repeat of Magik’s back story where the Darkchild persona comes out on top, which seems to be where we’re going here. That just feels repetitive, and doesn’t really fit with what’s been done with Darkchild in Magik<\/em> lately.<\/p>\n

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EXPATRIATE X-MEN #2.\u00a0<\/strong>(Annotations here.)<\/a> This is very dense compared to its parent title\u00a0Exceptional X-Men<\/em>. That’s mostly for the best, since that book did tend to move very slowly, but it also means a book which is filling in back story through passing hints and a story where everyone seems to have ulterior motives that might not fully make sense until the end of issue #3. Fundamentally, the story here seems to be that everyone has agreed to take this Lyrebird guy to the Darkchild in exchange for information (the implications of handing him over to Darkchild doesn’t seem to trouble anyone), but Mel\u00e9e and Lyrebird himself are trying to sabotage the mission and get him out of there without being noticed. Since we don’t know who Mel\u00e9e is working for, it’s kind of hard to figure out where our sympathies ought to lie, and there are some clarity issues too – I simply don’t understand how Kamala ends up underwater and able to see the 3K tech in the closing scene. And yet I rather like this – Mortarino’s art gives it a consistent feel that manages to go for dystopian without being too grim, and it does feel as if it’s all going to come together at the end of the day.<\/p>\n

CLOAK OR DAGGER #2.<\/strong> By Justina Ireland, Lorenzo Tammeta, Andrew Dalhouse & Joe Caramagna. Well, obviously a book about Cloak and Dagger having to stay apart from one another as a result of the X-virus is going to have them coming together in the final issue. No surprises there. I’m not sure what I make of that gimmick – I feel like I’ve read quite a lot of stories with Cloak and Dagger separated in the past, so that in itself doesn’t mean a great deal to me. But there is something in the way they’re both present in the story, and communicating, but at a distance. Francesco Mortarino art looks great in the action sequences – Cloak should keep his hair like this – but it really does a great job on the domesticity of their family home. It’s obvious from the plot and dialogue that there’s something not quite right about this place, but it needs to look suitably reassuring anyway. I’m assuming all those blank pictures on the walls are meant to be subtly wrong, mind you, and he does draw the corridors at Haven in the same way, so… And I’m a little puzzled by the choice of Fenris as the villains here, since they really do seem to just be celebrating the transformation of humans into new mutants. I’m not sure Fenris have ever cared that much about mutants, let alone random civilian mutants – this doesn’t feel like their thing. But the Cloak & Dagger family set-up is working for me, and carries the book.<\/p>\n

UNDEADPOOL #2.\u00a0<\/strong>By Tim Seeley, Carlos Magno, GURU-eFX & Joe Sabino. Well, this is a weird issue. Deadpool is back in his right mind for the whole issue, and the sole survivor of the “Alpha Warriors” is a psychic, so she knows she can trust him for now. And so it’s basically Deadpool trying to help Fearless to reach the (Expatriate) X-Men and seeing if he can lighten the mood a bit along the way. The conspicuously moody art doesn’t entirely sell that, but I suppose it depends on whether we’re meant to be taking him as\u00a0successfully<\/em> lightening the mood. And then a very confused Cable shows up for a fight. This only really makes sense if you’ve read the end of\u00a0X-Men: Age of Revelation Infinity Comic<\/em> #3, where Revelation drives Cable mad and leaves him trapped in a sort of circa-1991 version of continuity, thinking that he’s on the verge of founding X-Force. Magno does a really nice job of the out-of-control techno-virus, but it feels like a plot point from a different comic.<\/p>\n

X-VENGERS #2.\u00a0<\/strong>By Jason Loo, Sergio D\u00e1vila, Aure Jimenez, Rain Beredo & Joe Sabino. The Avengers team up with Revelation and his Seraphim against what seems to be a genuine outside threat, through Revelation is predictably unbothered about using the Avengers as cannon fodder. And the upshot is that next issue, Dani has to convince Revelation that it isn’t an attack by the US government, since otherwise he’s going to retaliate. This is perfectly fine, actually, though the non-mutant Avengers characters don’t get much space to shine (except for Vision, who might wish he hadn’t). That does mean we get a reunion of some of the New Mutants, and Dani having a chance to react to Revelation, all of which lands quite well. Giving Revelation a chance to actually defend his people is worthwhile too, since we do need to see some reasons why he’s apparently popular in the Territories. The book isn’t really that interested in the Avengers, actually – it just needs Dani to be leading an outside superhero team, and preferable a non-mutant one, and the Avengers will do. Once you accept that, it works decently enough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

X-MEN: AGE OF REVELATION INFINITY COMIC #4. By Tim Seeley, Phillip Sevy, Michael Bartolo & Clayton Cowles. Oh boy. So this one went down well. It’s the first part of a Magik storyline filling her “Age of Revelation” back story. We already established, back in\u00a0Age of Revelation #0, that Magik had died on the raid […]<\/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-11569","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\/11569","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=11569"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11569\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11570,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11569\/revisions\/11570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}