{"id":7756,"date":"2022-04-05T20:41:01","date_gmt":"2022-04-05T19:41:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=7756"},"modified":"2022-04-05T20:41:01","modified_gmt":"2022-04-05T19:41:01","slug":"x-men-unlimited-infinity-comic-22-25","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=7756","title":{"rendered":"X-Men Unlimited Infinity Comic #22-25"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #22-25<\/strong>
\nWriter & artist: Declan Shalvey<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Joe Sabino<\/strong>
\nEditor: Jordan D White<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you’re not reading this book, you may wonder why we’ve skipped issue #21. Well, it’s the first part of a storyline which is being serialised\u00a0between<\/em> the other story arcs, for reasons that aren’t exactly obvious. So we’ll come back to it when it’s finished.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, this is the sequel to the first\u00a0Unlimited<\/em> arc, where AIM kidnapped three mutants and got away with one of them. Jonathan Hickman is no longer around, but Declan Shalvey, who drew that arc, returns as writer\/artist to tie up the plot.<\/p>\n

The unlikely team of Wolverine, Warlock and Strong Guy finally track the remaining stasis tube to an AIM base in New Zealand. You could be forgiven for thinking this is a case of an artist picking two characters he thought would be fun to draw, but heck, why not? They’re both gloriously ridiculous Bill Sienkiewicz designs, and it’s always fun to see someone take a crack at Warlock who’s willing to lean into the idea.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

And it’s fair to say this arc is still mostly about Shalvey having fun with the vertical scrolling format. It’s not pushed quite as far as the ludicrously extended scrolling panels from the first arc, but there’s plenty of long downward scrolls here being used for pacing. There are some interesting effects you can get with that, since vertical scrolling controls the pace at which the reader gets through the comic, in a way that regular comics don’t allow. You can’t\u00a0skim<\/em> one of these things, or at least it’s a lot trickier. The technology just doesn’t allow for it. If the artist wants to force you to slow down, he can. Or he can find weird scrolling images to put in the background behind unavoidable exposition. There’s plenty of potential in all this.<\/p>\n

If you’re looking for a comparison in terms of length, by the way, part 2 has 37 panels by my count, although some of those are long vertical scrolls. So you’re maybe looking at the equivalent of 1-2 regular issues, depending on how they’re paced. And so it’s a pretty straightforward plot. AIM actually turn out to have two more mutants in custody – one who’s a minor name but understandably wasn’t missed in the regular books, and a girl called Maddie who the X-Men have never seen before. When it’s not doing visual fireworks, the story is about who Maddie is.<\/p>\n

This answer is the sort of thing that really needs a footnote. Maddie\u00a0kind of sort of<\/em> explains that she’s out for revenge on Wolverine for unspecified things, and mentions meeting “an older version” of him before, but none of this is likely to mean anything to you unless either (a) you know where to look these things up online, which really shouldn’t be essential for reading the Infinity Comics, or (b) you actually recognise Maddie, with a bit of prompting, from Shalvey’s 2017 miniseries\u00a0Deadpool vs Old Man Logan<\/em>. Which was great, and I’m fine with bringing her back, but you need a bit more set-up for any of this to work as a story.<\/p>\n

Without that context the story is really just a vehicle for the art – there’s a token bit of Wolverine thinking that whatever he did in the future, he probably deserved it, and wondering about Maddie as one of the handful of mutants who outright rejects Krakoa, but really the appeal here is visual. Fortunately, it’s very good at that, and an illustration of what you can do in this format.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #22-25 Writer & artist: Declan Shalvey Letterer: Joe Sabino Editor: Jordan D White If you’re not reading this book, you may wonder why we’ve skipped issue #21. Well, it’s the first part of a storyline which is being serialised\u00a0between the other story arcs, for reasons that aren’t exactly obvious. So we’ll […]<\/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-7756","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\/7756","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=7756"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7756\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7758,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7756\/revisions\/7758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}