{"id":12037,"date":"2026-05-29T22:34:36","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T21:34:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=12037"},"modified":"2026-05-29T22:34:46","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T21:34:46","slug":"the-x-axis-29-may-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=12037","title":{"rendered":"The X-Axis – 29 May 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

X-MEN #30.\u00a0<\/strong>(Annotations here.)<\/a> This is the fifth and final part of “Danger Room”. Why five issues? Well, it seems to be Marvel’s current standard length for trade paperback collections, up from four. And those four issue collections did look kind of flimsy. It’s under 100 pages, you know? But Jed MacKay’s\u00a0X-Men<\/em> tends to be at its best doing short and focussed stories, and “Danger Room” – which is fundamentally a romp in which some psychos try to take down the X-Men and fail because the X-Men show more heart than them – didn’t need to be five issues. It’s certainly good in parts. It’s nice to see Kid Omega’s radical side get an outing again; Greycrow is worth bringing into the regular cast now that the\u00a0Psylocke\u00a0<\/em>solo title is over; I liked the idea of the two Danger Room members who think they’re Skrulls trapped in human form. (Or maybe they even are?) Still, it feels like less than the sum of its parts. The Beyond Corporation are kind of arbitrary as villains; the Danger Room members got big individual introductions but only one of them even gets any meaningful dialogue in the final chapter; the town-and-factory tension gets the mindwipe reset button. It’s fine, but it’s not a 5-issue premise, I think.<\/p>\n

GENERATION X-23 #4.<\/strong> (Annotations here.)<\/a> I have a few reservations about the pace of this opening arc as well – it’s another five-parter, naturally – but on the whole I think it’s working. The plot isn’t exactly breakneck, but there are a lot of new characters being introduced, and it’s giving them room to breathe. Okay, yes, X-73 and X-66 remain in the background relative to the others (that’s the two older girls), but X-92 is charming and Infinite is a good villain. Aside from the fact that he puts Laura in the position of defending a version of the Facility, Jody Houser has set up the reveal quite nicely – first you practically telegraph the bad guy, then you start trying to convince us that we’re jumping to conclusions and he’s just doing his best. So it’s a twist in plain sight, and it pulls that off. Marco Renna’s art is giving a ton of personality to Scout and X-92 in particular (and X-92 really needs it, since they’re the silent character and depends entirely on the art to sell their persona). That scorpion robot cyborg thing still makes for confusing fight scenes – I guess you could say that at least sells the chaos – but it’s a nice looking book all round. I’m enjoying this.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

PSYLOCKE: NINJA #5.<\/strong> By Tim Seeley, Nico Leon, Dono S\u00e1nchez-Almara & Ariana Maher. Final issue of the continuity implant mini, which is a mixed affair. The basic idea here is to do a story set shortly after Betsy’s body swap from the late 1980s, and it does make a reasonable case for that being a worthwhile exercise. The whole body swap angle is widely seen as rather problematic in 2026, but even in its original form it glossed over Betsy adapting to her new body. There’s room for a story fleshing that out (which this does, a bit); and for filling out her relationship with Jubilee (ditto); and for trying to figure out how Matsu’o’s behaviour in the original story fits with the retcon that he’s meant to be in love with her. That, in theory, is what this final issue is about, but much of the issue is actually taken up with fighting other Hand warrior types, and Matsu’o’s part, which is surely the interesting bit, gets rather lost in there. It looks pretty good for the most part, but I feel like we’re focussing on the wrong bad guys here. Then there’s the decision to tie the whole thing in to Elektra – I know she has the Hand back story, so it’s not completely random, but her presence still feels like clutter, and it would be a stronger story without her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

X-MEN #30.\u00a0(Annotations here.) This is the fifth and final part of “Danger Room”. Why five issues? Well, it seems to be Marvel’s current standard length for trade paperback collections, up from four. And those four issue collections did look kind of flimsy. It’s under 100 pages, you know? But Jed MacKay’s\u00a0X-Men tends to be at […]<\/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-12037","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\/12037","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=12037"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12037\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12038,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12037\/revisions\/12038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}