{"id":11646,"date":"2025-12-26T15:18:39","date_gmt":"2025-12-26T15:18:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=11646"},"modified":"2025-12-26T15:18:39","modified_gmt":"2025-12-26T15:18:39","slug":"the-x-axis-w-c-22-december-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=11646","title":{"rendered":"The X-Axis – w\/c 22 December 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

X-MEN: AGE OF REVELATION INFINITY COMIC #8.<\/strong> By Alex Paknadel, Edoardo Audino, KJ D\u00edaz & Clayton Cowles. Well, it\u2019s an issue of the Punisher taking Glob Herman under his wing, ultimately leading to him going off on his own to seek revenge. The idea here is that the Punisher isn\u2019t even trying to groom a successor, and thinks he\u2019s just helping the poor kid to defend himself. That kind of\u00a0<\/em> works for Glob. It\u2019s kind of weird for the Punisher, who\u2019s apparently given up on vigilante homicide after the X-virus affected his hands, and has retired into a life of general niceness. I don\u2019t really buy the Punisher reacting like that, as opposed to immediately setting about finding another way of pursuing his obsessional agenda – his one dimensionality is the point of him. But viewed as a Glob story, there\u2019s a certain charm to it, and the story kind of requires the Punisher to present himself as a sympathetic figure to Glob. Perhaps it needs to be a bit more of an act for Glob\u2019s sake.<\/p>\n

EXPATRIATE X-MEN #3.\u00a0<\/strong>(Annotations here.)<\/a> So here we are, at the tail end of the \u201cAge of Revelation\u201d crossover, with just next week\u2019s\u00a0Finale<\/em> one-shot to go. And this issue is\u2026 a bit of a mess, to be honest. There\u2019s a lot of double-crossing going on and it doesn\u2019t really come together. As near as I can tell, the plot is that the X-Men on the Flotilla thought that they were being hired by Mystique to take this Lyrebird guy to the Darkchild for reasons unknown, in exchange for unspecified intelligence. In fact, Lyrebird was tricking the X-Men into going to Darkchild\u2019s territory as part of a deal with her. But Darkchild never explains why she wanted them, and ultimately just lets them go\u2026 and Lyrebird actually\u00a0did<\/em> want to go there all along, because and Illyana have a daughter from before she became Darkchild. Conceived at what point on the timeline? Oh god, don\u2019t ask. Oh, and Mel\u00e9e had a side deal with 3K to get their technology into Limbo, for\u2026 reasons. And 3K didn\u2019t want Lyrebird to wind up with Darkchild for\u2026 reasons? I mean, I\u00a0think<\/em> the idea is that Lyrebird was also working with 3K, but in that case, what was up with Mel\u00e9e and Lyrebird last issue? And then the payoff\u00a0seems<\/em> to be that everyone learns the lesson that they shouldn\u2019t have got involved in these convoluted machinations, which would be a weird message for an X-Men story to begin with\u2026 except the next thing they do is announce that they\u2019re spontaneously going to Philadelphia to appear in\u00a0Finale<\/em>, for no apparent reason.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

So it\u2019s a mess. It looks nice enough, to be sure, but whatever point it was actually trying to make gets completely lost in a welter of confusion. The Lyrebird\/Magik thing comes completely out of nowhere and seems disconnected to anything around it; it might make some sense if it\u2019s setting up a plot point for 2026, but Eve Ewing isn\u2019t the regular writer for Magik, so that seems unlikely. All very weird.<\/p>\n

CLOAK OR DAGGER #3.<\/strong> By Justina Ireland, Lonrezo Tammetta, Edoardo Audino, Andrew Dalhouse & Joe Caramagna. This is one of the lower-key successes of \u201cAge of Revelation\u201d. I\u2019m not quite sure that Fenris make sense in this villain role, except by virtue of the thematic link of being another duo who are weakened when they\u2019re apart. But that doesn\u2019t hugely matter, because Fenris are really just there to provide the opposition. Where this book scores is simply on the relationship between the two leads and having more or less get a happy ending and a family in an otherwise dystopian future. Things aren\u2019t so bad for Cloak and Dagger! Sure, they can\u2019t be together for long periods, but they can work around that, they\u2019re doing okay, and they get to be proper superheroes – which Tammetta\u2019s art fits well. Cloak just getting to be a dad is sweet, too. From their personal standpoint, this isn\u2019t such a bad timeline. I mean, up to the point where Revelation is planning to turn the world into Ego the Living Planet, but that\u2019s in another book. It\u2019s rather weird to do happy ending stories in the midst of an event like \u201cAge of Revelation\u201d but it\u2019s nice that we\u2019re getting some.<\/p>\n

UNDEADPOOL #3.\u00a0<\/strong>By Tim Seeley, Carlos Magno, GURU-eFX & Joe Sabino. Guest starring the\u00a0Exceptional\u00a0<\/em>cast, although their main role here is simply to refuse to deal with Deadpool on the grounds that he\u2019s a self-centred mercenary who didn\u2019t even manage to kill Revelation when he was paid to. Fearless turns out to be a traitor, and Deadpool dies heroically in stopping her. That\u2019s basically it. It\u2019s a very nice looking book, and it does a decent job of going for the 70s horror vibe, with Deadpool finally earning his release from quasi-zombie status. I\u2019m not sure it delivers what people are normally looking for in a Deadpool story, being quite a downbeat and sombre affair at the end of the day, but it does at least strike a clear tone and maintain it.<\/p>\n

X-VENGERS #3.\u00a0<\/strong>By Jason Loo, Sergio D\u00e1vila, Aure Jimenez, Rain Beredo & Joe Sabino. The Avengers have been given just three hours to avert a war between Revelation and the remains of the USA by providing that President Sam Wilson wasn\u2019t responsible for the attack on the Revelation Territories. And that turns out to be pretty much false peril, because instead of a race against the clock, it just turns out to be MODOK. There\u2019s a reasonable idea in here somewhere, of a battered and beleaguered Avengers team clinging on to their former dignity, but once you\u2019ve made that point, it doesn\u2019t really have a great deal to do with the actual plot of MODOK\u2019s biological weapons. It\u2019s entirely serviceable both as writing and art – nobody seems to have given D\u00e1vila any reference for what techno-organics look like, which is unfortunate, but otherwise it looks solidly traditional. Still, it winds up as a rather generic superhero plot instead of really digging into the premise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

X-MEN: AGE OF REVELATION INFINITY COMIC #8. By Alex Paknadel, Edoardo Audino, KJ D\u00edaz & Clayton Cowles. Well, it\u2019s an issue of the Punisher taking Glob Herman under his wing, ultimately leading to him going off on his own to seek revenge. The idea here is that the Punisher isn\u2019t even trying to groom a […]<\/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":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11646","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=11646"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11646\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11647,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11646\/revisions\/11647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}