New Mutants<\/em>, but if we’re being honest, we’re on the fringes of Krakoan continuity here too. It remains very much a book centred on Charlie Jane Anders’ new character Escapade, which I don’t really have a problem with, since I quite like Escapade – but the established cast are getting marginalised. The middle section has some awkward cutting back and forth between scenes mid-page, which might have worked better if they were coloured more distinctively from another, but winds up feeling a bit confused at times. Still, this is mostly good fun as things start escalating at Nefaria’s Mansion, with a bit of soap opera for Escapade, Morgan and Cerebella thrown in. There’s a lot of personality in both writing and art, and it’s a very likeable series.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
BISHOP: WAR COLLEGE #4.<\/strong> By J Holtham, Sean Damien Hill, Victor Nava, Alberto Foche & Espen Grundetjern. This is a strange old book. The A plot – though in this issue, it’s really the B plot – sees Bishop transported to an alternate Earth where only black people are mutants. That idea feels underdeveloped. In practice it mostly draws parallels between racism and the treatment of mutants, which is the central metaphor anyway. And wouldn’t the angle be stronger if the local X-Men team consisted of the established black members plus a bunch of new characters, rather than a load of high-profile white characters who just happen to be black in this world – and people like Scott and Charles were just not mutants<\/em>?\u00a0Meanwhile, back on Krakoa, Orchis are apparently trying to break into the Pit and free the prisoners… which presumably means they don’t know about Sabretooth & The Exiles<\/em>, a book where they were the main villains. I suppose you can make that work if Graydon Creed never passed on any intelligence, but it’s a bit weird. Anyway, this side of the plot just feels mechanical, and I have no real idea what’s supposed to link it to the other half of the book. A whole load of puzzling, unsatisfying choices going on here. Maybe it’ll all click in the final issue, but it’s not convincing me at all right now.<\/p>\nTHE X-CELLENT #3.<\/strong> By Peter Milligan, Michael Allred & Laura Allred. I’ve only just noticed that this book has a legacy number… of #8, to tie it to the mini-series that contained the first half of the same story. Odd choice. Anyhow,\u00a0X-Cellent<\/em> feels like a niche book in 2023, but it’s almost revelling in being slightly out of date. There are good lines in this: “The Hollywood Walk of Fame is more than just a sidewalk. It represents everything we stand for.” The absurdly 50s-retro robot that threatens people with doxing is perfectly pitched. It works more as a series of absurd moments than as an actual story, admittedly – all the stuff about competing for followers as the modern day version of worshippers does feel a few years behind the times even allowing for the book’s self-deprecation. But it is genuinely funny.<\/p>\nSTORM #1.<\/strong> By Ann Nocenti, Sid Kotian & Andrew Dalhouse. Yet another of Marvel’s continuity implant minis, this time set “around the time frame of\u00a0Uncanny X-Men <\/em>#176″. In other words, Storm has just switched to her mohawk look, and Cyclops has just got married and retired, leaving her as the clear team leader. Most of these flashback minis are going in large part for the nostalgia angle, but even if Nocenti was the\u00a0Uncanny<\/em> editor at this point, her style is very different from Chris Claremont. You get a lot of metaphors for Big Ideas in Ann Nocenti stories, and there’s certainly a lot of that here, with musings about the wider consequences of playing with the weather, and a biker guy who’s invited a nanotech solution to pollution. There’s more X-Men character material than you might expect, though, with an extended Storm-as-leader montage to establish that she’s fallen out in a big way with Kitty (who did indeed react very badly to the change of look). Nocenti seems to be writing the next phase of the mother\/daughter relationship, as Kitty hits the teenage years and starts hanging out with a bad influence – Rogue, who’s only just joined at this point. There’s an interesting bit too with Wolverine gently questioning what on earth the whole mohawk thing has to do with Ororo’s personality or any of her actual interests. The art’s pretty good – not showy, but a lot of strong storytelling. Mind you, it wouldn’t be an Ann Nocenti comic without a few awkward bits – lines of dialogue that feel a bit off, or people talking about Sid Vicious (1957-1979) as if he was a contemporary reference. Still, there’s a lot of interesting stuff in here, and I’m looking forward to the rest of the series more than I was expecting to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Just one core book this week, so we’re straight on to the capsules. X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #88. By Steve Orlando, Emilio Laiso & Rachelle Rosenberg. Okay, so this is clearly us building to the big finale. Nature Girl has finally moved beyond eco-terrorism to outright atrocity, and the real X-Men finally show up to […]<\/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-9098","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\/9098","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=9098"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9098\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9101,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9098\/revisions\/9101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}