I\u2019m still on holiday, but time for a quick round-up of this week\u2019s X-books anyway.<\/p>\n
X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #94.<\/strong> By Jason Loo and Antonio Fabela. Okay, I see where this is meant to be going. Madrox wants to impress Reed Richards by showing how far he\u2019s come since his debut in\u00a0Giant-Size Fantastic Four <\/em>– he conspicuously doesn\u2019t care that much about the rest of the FF – but finds himself in a storyline involving his own evil renegade dupes. And those dupes are part of him, and therefore that\u2019s\u00a0embarrassing<\/em>. I kind of get that, but there\u2019s something a bit odd about positioning Reed as the paragon family-man that Madrox aspires to be – aside from the fact that he\u2019s never come up before, Reed has always been defined more by his awkwardness in that role. Still, he\u00a0is<\/em> the patriarch of the MU\u2019s top family-themed superhero team and I guess you could see how Madrox aspires to that\u2026 ish? There\u2019s something in that angle, but the A plot with the dupes and Blastaar really isn\u2019t doing much for me at all.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n X-MEN #24.<\/strong> By Gerry Duggan, Joshua Cassara & Frank Martin. We\u2019re firmly into the build for the Hellfire Gala now. Kid Cable returns to try and take down Orchis and change history, but gets nowhere. The kidnap of Manifold – which happened in\u00a0Rogue and Gambit<\/em>, a book that isn\u2019t actually finished yet – is apparently a bigger deal than its positioning in that side series implied. Destiny tries to get Rogue to do something unspecified to avert something she can\u2019t or won\u2019t explain. Scott and Jean argue some more and Jean wants to leave the team; Jean talks to Polaris for some reason. Sunfire finally gets around to hunting for Redroot, which is apparently going to be an\u00a0X-Men Unlimited<\/em> arc.<\/p>\n And\u2026 for some reason none of that is the A-plot, which appears to be a fight with Pogg ur-Pogg on Gameworld? That doesn\u2019t really seem to have much to go with anything else, and it only runs from pages 10 to 17. \u00a0I\u2019m happy enough to see the guy back, to see if we can do anything with him now that we\u2019ve had the gag reveal that it\u2019s a guy in a suit. But this feels decidedly pointless, unless it\u2019s to give everyone an excuse to talk for a bit about mysterium, which hasn\u2019t come up much in this book.<\/p>\n As an individual issue, it\u2019s terribly scattershot. We\u2019ll see if it all comes together as the Hellfire Gala hits.<\/p>\n X-MEN: BEFORE THE FALL – SINISTER FOUR #1.<\/strong> By Kieron Gillen, Paco Medina, Edgar Delgado & Fer Sifuentes Sujo. As with the\u00a0Heralds of Apocalypse<\/em> series, this is basically an issue of an ongoing series –\u00a0Immortal X-Men<\/em> – without the burden of having to include the regular cast. The focus here is on Dr Stasis and Mother Righteous, and a fuller exploration of the idea that she\u2019s a re-creation of Essex\u2019s beloved wife Rebecca.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a lot going on here; Stasis is being positioned as the Sinister closest to the original Nathaniel Essex, because his whole thing is that he\u00a0doesn\u2019t<\/em> change with time. Consequently, Stasis is immediately smitten by this re-creation of his ex-wife, and also struggling to account for the ways she\u2019s changed. (\u201cI\u2019m sorry. It\u2019s no longer the nineteenth century. I should respect your career goals.\u201d) It\u2019s basically an issue of conversation, but it does a massive amount to flesh out Stasis and actually humanise him somewhat as an echo of his long-dead creator. Medina\u2019s art really sells him letting his guard down around Righteous, too. As for her, Rebecca Essex has previously served mainly to be disappointed in her husband in a handful of origin appearances; making her into an Eliza Doolittle figure adds a lot to her, and to their relationship. Very good.<\/p>\n X-23: DEADLY REGENESIS #5.<\/strong> By Erica Schultz, Edgar Salazar & Carlos Lopez. The final issue is much what you\u2019d expect from the rest of the series: X-23 and Haymaker team up to rebel against Kimura and the Kingpin. The bad guys get away, and X-23 kind of learns a lesson about living with her past which was really part of her character anyway. The art\u2019s a bit stiff in some of the action sequences, and and it winds up acting as if it was setting up Haymaker as a supporting character, which obviously he wasn\u2019t. But it\u2019s perfectly okay; if you want more of X-23 from this period of her continuity, well, it does what it says on the tin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I\u2019m still on holiday, but time for a quick round-up of this week\u2019s X-books anyway. X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #94. By Jason Loo and Antonio Fabela. Okay, I see where this is meant to be going. Madrox wants to impress Reed Richards by showing how far he\u2019s come since his debut in\u00a0Giant-Size Fantastic Four – […]<\/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-9245","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\/9245","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=9245"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9245\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9246,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9245\/revisions\/9246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}