{"id":12361,"date":"2026-09-18T22:11:31","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T21:11:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=12361"},"modified":"2026-09-18T22:11:31","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T21:11:31","slug":"the-x-axis-16-september-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=12361","title":{"rendered":"The X-Axis – 16 September 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

DNX #1.\u00a0<\/strong>(Annotations here.)<\/a> I’m really not sure how Cyclops’ jaw is meant to work on that cover. Or where the light’s coming from if it’s glistening on both sides of his visor at once, come to think of it. But anyway. This event seems to be the climax of the 3K storyline that’s been running throughout Jed MacKay’s\u00a0X-Men<\/em> run. And I’m rather relieved to see it being kept to just\u00a0X-Men<\/em> and a couple of issues of\u00a0Fantastic Four –\u00a0<\/em>DNX<\/em>, after all, seems to be basically just extra issues of\u00a0X-Men<\/em>. But where “Age of Revelation” went wrong was in trying to turn the middle act of an X-Men storyline into a linewide event. By all means let’s keep it focussed.<\/p>\n

This first issue is basically the X-Men showing up to stop 3K from releasing the X-virus in Philadelphia, while 3K continue to squabble amongst themselves, and the Alaskan Beast tries to get the Fantastic Four to help out with the plot. It’s fairly straightforward stuff, but I enjoy Federico Vicentini’s art, particularly on the Chairman. There’s a nice angle here with the way he can’t seem to understand why a bunch of people he only enlisted as an alliance of convenience to get this point are looking over their shoulders now that they’re about to become expendable. Despite being openly manipulative with them, he can’t understand why they aren’t true believers.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I’m less sure about the FF material. It’s been so long since Magneto was last a full blown villain that I don’t really buy Reed being this averse to fixing his powers. I can buy that Reed wouldn’t see it as a particularly high priority as long as he could save the guy’s life, or that he wouldn’t understand Magneto’s symbolic significance among mutants. But I don’t buy him seeing it as a moral line akin to making a WMD. Still, it doesn’t look like that’s going to be the core of the FF’s plot – it seems to be an argument that’s mainly there to give Reed something to do in this first issue – so I doubt that’s going to be a problem going forward.<\/p>\n

X-MEN #37. <\/strong>(Annotations here.)<\/a> We seem to be doing the format where the core miniseries has the main plot and the home title is doing the secondary tie-ins. So this is essentially an issue of Kid Omega fighting Cassandra Nova in the margins on\u00a0DNX<\/em> proper. But it does serve a point beyond that. For one thing, sticking Kid Omega on his own forces him into the hero role when he doesn’t have anyone to be insubordinate to, and MacKay has been slowly dialling up his tendency to take the heroic line in these situations. The bit about him talking up Magneto’s journey to rejecting his anti-human stance carries more weight if you remember that this is the argument Magneto was having with Quentin just a few issues ago.<\/p>\n

It’s also the story that brings Phoenix back into circulation, even though she’s still out in the Shi’ar Empire. We haven’t seen her in any material way since her solo book got cancelled, and the art does a lovely job of dialling up the darkness in the run-up to her appearance so that the firebird makes more impact. I’m still not sure how you make Jean work in the long run as a cosmic powered character, but I suppose at least we already established in “Age of Revelation” that stopping the spread of viruses is beyond her. We’re probably overdue to say something about the state of her and Scott’s marriage, as well, which has barely come up at all in\u00a0X-Men<\/em>. But that’s probably a matter for after DNX.<\/p>\n

X-MEN: OUTBACK #3.\u00a0<\/strong>By Steve Orlando, Roi\u00a0 Mercado, Alex Sinclair & Joe Sabino. I have no idea why the cover shows Maddy and Alex in Inferno mode, because this story has nothing to do with that at all. There’s a bit about Madelyne wanting to be useful by going on a mission, and a passing mention of the dreams that are going to lead to her becoming the Goblin Queen, but it doesn’t feel like it really comes to anything much. The story actually involves the X-Men saving a hidden community of outback mutants from the Lava Men, of all people. It’s very much Orlando by numbers, I’m afraid – hidden community of mutants, new character whose personality is pretty much just being right about everything, random continuity reference to a king of the Lava Men who last appeared in 1994. Like most of this series, it’s not terrible, but it does feel pointless.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DNX #1.\u00a0(Annotations here.) I’m really not sure how Cyclops’ jaw is meant to work on that cover. Or where the light’s coming from if it’s glistening on both sides of his visor at once, come to think of it. But anyway. This event seems to be the climax of the 3K storyline that’s been running […]<\/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,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12361","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\/12361","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=12361"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12361\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12362,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12361\/revisions\/12362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}