{"id":9315,"date":"2023-08-11T22:26:22","date_gmt":"2023-08-11T21:26:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=9315"},"modified":"2023-08-11T22:26:22","modified_gmt":"2023-08-11T21:26:22","slug":"the-x-axis-w-c-7-august-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=9315","title":{"rendered":"The X-Axis – w\/c 7 August 2023"},"content":{"rendered":"

X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #99.<\/strong> By Alex Segura, Alberto Alburquerque and Pete Pantazis. The end of the Polaris four-parter, which turns out to be pretty straightforward, really. Mesmero wants to prove something because he sees his first encounter with Polaris as the only time he was really an A-lister. For reasons that aren’t exactly clear, he controls Dani and gets her to do the attacking rather than just mind-controlling Lorna directly – um, why is Dani, who actually has psychic powers, an easier target than Lorna? And there’s a fairly routine “overcoming our past” bit at the end. Inoffensive, I guess, but it only touches on any of the themes it raised, and it’s nothing you need to go out of your way to read.<\/p>\n

IMMORTAL X-MEN #14.\u00a0<\/strong>(Annotations here.)<\/a> Okay, after a slightly shaky start\u00a0Fall of X\u00a0<\/em>seems to be hitting its stride. We’re no longer doing the spotlight issues here – instead, we’re following the former members of the Quiet Council, or at least those who aren’t off in their own books. Professor X is still keeping his silent vigil on Krakoa – and Gillen and Werneck demonstrate that they’re good enough to spend five pages recapping the plot and still<\/em> make it interesting through the montage approach and the intercutting with his blank reactions. Sebastian Shaw has belatedly figured out that he’s been outwitted by Mother Righteous, because he doesn’t understand magic as well as he thinks he does, and he sets about trying to rectify the situation. And Exodus gets to do… well, I mean, of course<\/em> his reaction to being dumped in a desert with the civilian population of Krakoa is to do Moses. The guy calls himself Exodus. This is the role he’s always wanted. Moreover… all this does read like a finite story rather than a long-term return to the 198, which is what worried me initially. So that’s reassuring.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

CHILDREN OF THE VAULT #1.\u00a0<\/strong>(Annotations here.)<\/a> Hey, a logo that doesn’t use the standard X-font! It’s a bit 90s Marvel UK for my taste, but sure, the Children of the Vault shouldn’t have the standard design. Despite the title, this is actually a Cable\/Bishop series in which they team up to deal with the threat of the Children of the Vault, who have decided to take over the world in the mutants’ absence by posing as heroes. Why conquer the world when you can make everyone love you with a literal viral idea? It’s a teensy bit parallel-universe – shouldn’t they be registering a bit more in other Fall of X<\/em> books? – but maybe that’ll come with time. The approach to Cable and Bishop as a duo is a little curious as well, referencing the\u00a0Cable<\/em> series but not really committing to just how appalling Bishop was in that book. But… that said, I think I prefer seeing them written as professionals who’ll work together if there’s nobody else around, which is a subtler approach. The Children’s gimmick isn’t entirely novel, but it’s nicely done here, and this feels like a strong start to a series that has its own identity rather than just being part of Fall of X.\u00a0<\/em>Quite promising.<\/p>\n

GHOST RIDER \/ WOLVERINE: WEAPONS OF VENGEANCE ALPHA.<\/strong> By Benjamin Percy, Geoff Shaw, Rain Beredo & Travis Lanham. This is the first part of a four-part crossover between\u00a0Wolverine<\/em> and\u00a0Ghost Rider<\/em>; since Benjamin Percy is the regular writer on both titles, it’s a natural fit. It’s a slightly odd time to be doing it, in the first month of Fall of X<\/em>, but maybe it’s not a bad move to get Wolverine occupied with something else instead of finding busy work for him. The set-up here is pretty simple: years ago, Wolverine and Ghost Rider fought a demonically possessed kid who was brought to the X-Men Mansion because his carers mistakenly thought he might be mutant. Now the kid is back and they fight him again. Presumably we’ll get some more flashbacks to the previous conflict as this goes along. It’s a surprisingly gentle first issue in many ways, taking us back to the early 80s X-Men and Xavier as straight ahead teacher, with pleasantly understated art. Granted, the kid seems to have managed to visit the X-Men Mansion on a day when all the lightbulbs needed changing, but that’s demonic possession stories for you.<\/p>\n

I feel obliged to point out that the chronology here doesn’t seem to work at all<\/em>. The X-Men references pin this down quite precisely to somewhere around X-Men<\/em> #139 in 1980. But the Ghost Rider has Roxanne Simpson with him, who was written out of his book in 1978 and didn’t return until 1983 – and spent the period in between as an amnesiac. So, er, yeah, that’s an issue. Maybe magic does weird things to time? But this is very readable and I enjoyed it much more than I was expecting.<\/p>\n

LOVE UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #62.<\/strong> By Carola Borelli, Carlos Lopez & Ariana Maher. So we’re doing Rogue and Gambit in a heist-off, and this issue is… maybe a bit heavy on the set-up for an Infinity Comic? But I see where we’re going with this. At first glance Gambit ought to win this hands down, what with thievery being his schtick, and Rogue being a battering ram. But Rogue can do stealthy if she wants – kind of – and more to the point, what’s going to mess up Gambit’s plans is having Rogue running around as an X-factor. Okay, that’s kind of cute. It’s disposable stuff but it feels like writer and artist both get the characters – and that’s the key to this this sort of thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #99. By Alex Segura, Alberto Alburquerque and Pete Pantazis. The end of the Polaris four-parter, which turns out to be pretty straightforward, really. Mesmero wants to prove something because he sees his first encounter with Polaris as the only time he was really an A-lister. For reasons that aren’t exactly clear, […]<\/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-9315","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\/9315","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=9315"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9317,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9315\/revisions\/9317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}