{"id":9504,"date":"2023-10-13T22:00:01","date_gmt":"2023-10-13T21:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=9504"},"modified":"2023-10-13T22:00:01","modified_gmt":"2023-10-13T21:00:01","slug":"the-x-axis-w-c-9-october-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=9504","title":{"rendered":"The X-Axis – w\/c 9 October 2023"},"content":{"rendered":"

X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #108.\u00a0<\/strong>By Steve Foxe, Steve Orlando, Lynne Yoshi, Fer Sifuentes-Sujo & Travis Lanham. A lot of this is infodump, but it picks up at the end when we get a bit of action followed by an unexpected swerve into something that has nothing at all to do with Sunfire’s quest for Redroot. (Which is – spoiler – that Moira shows up.) Even so, this arc is Just Kind Of There right now. For all we’ve seen so far, you could plug anyone into the hero role and it wouldn’t make much difference. There must be some reason why this is being done as a solo Sunfire story – he’s not a character who often gets to be a solo lead, maybe because he’s a bit too distant and annoying to work without someone a bit more friendly to bounce off. Which is kind of what Sheriff Whitechapel is asked to do in this issue. But in practice she just doles out exposition. That’s the issue right now, I think – I get why we’re doing “someone finally goes looking for Redroot”, but I don’t have any real sense of why we’re doing it with Sunfire.<\/p>\n

X-MEN RED #16.<\/strong> (Annotations here.)<\/a> We’re still in Genesis’ invasion of Arakko, but this issue brings us back to a couple of angles that interest me more. For one, there’s the plot thread of the Great Ring being offered access to Uranos as a Doomsday Weapon at the end of\u00a0Judgment Day<\/em>, and the dilemma of whether the situation is ever dire enough to resort to that – or indeed whether bringing him out is an excuse to avoid taking full responsibility for something that Storm could already do on her own. Then there’s the Horsemen, and specifically Death (since the other three are kind of interchangeable), who gets to play the traditionalist who’s at least sincere. It’s a bit of a stretch that Death is only just figuring out that his siblings see his core values as merely a means to an end – how long has he been fighting alongside them again? – but I like his reaction enough to let that slide. Yildiray \u00c7inar makes him look good, and does a lovely opening scene with Craig Marshall and his adopted kids, too. I’m not that interested in Genesis herself, but I can get behind her as something for other more interesting characters to bounce off, and that’s where the focus is with this issue.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

There’s also an 8-page back-up strip with Sunspot and Shark-Girl. We’ve had a few of these lately, and it’s not a format Marvel tend to do very well. It’s got better art than the typical\u00a0Marvel Comics Presents<\/em> short from back in the day, but the story is forgettable.<\/p>\n

WOLVERINE #38.<\/strong> (Annotations here.)<\/a> Wolverine teams up with Captain America to retrieve some Krakoan property from Legacy House. Although the\u00a0Wolverine<\/em> “Fall of X” issues are billed as an arc called “Last Mutant Standing”, it’s really a series of free standing team-up stories in which Wolverine tours the world working with heroes from outside the X-books. On its own terms, this is good. Benjamin Percy plays Captain America straight, and gets something out of the contrast with Wolverine without going too hard on it. And Juan Jos\u00e9 Ryp has a great issue drawing detailed crowds of weird Legacy House guests, and cutaways of ocean liners – as well as some decompressed action sequences that Percy gives space to breathe. It’s a really nice issue to look at.<\/p>\n

There are some weird co-ordination issues across the line, though – which stand out all the more because it’s the sort of thing that tended not to happen during the Krakoan era. I’ll turn a blind eye to the idea that Wolverine’s in New York and doesn’t seem to have any interest in making contact with the rest of the X-Men. That’s solo books for you. But when\u00a0Wolverine<\/em> is doing a story where the premise is that Orchis have raided Krakoa and stolen people’s stuff, and\u00a0Immortal X-Men<\/em> is doing a story where the premise is that Professor X is single handedly keeping at bay all the forces that try to land… well, I’m surprised something like that didn’t get caught, or at least explained away somehow.<\/p>\n

MAGNETO #3.\u00a0<\/strong>By J M DeMatteis, Todd Nauck, Rachelle Rosenberg & Travis Lanham. The basic project of this miniseries is to reconcile Silver Age Magneto with the Claremont version, the basic problem being that Silver Age Magneto does things like conquer small countries and try to nuke them in a fit of pique. I wonder if a single miniseries is too rushed to get through everything that DeMatteis is trying to pull off here. As a starting point, the story insists that Magneto was just playing the villain in the 60s in order to provide a foil for the X-Men, which is an audacious retcon in itself. But then he starts undermining that idea with the suggestion that Magneto got swept up in his role and became a proper villain. And then he has Irae, “Queen of Wrath”, as a villain radicalised by Silver Age Magneto who can challenge him on his change of heart. So we’ve jumped straight to deconstructing a rationalisation that had only just been established in the first place, which feels odd. I like the idea of Irae, though, and I enjoy the book trying to give us a modernised take on Magneto’s conquest of Santo Marco (which, in the original issue, is inexplicably drawn to look like Switzerland). Todd Nauck has some really nice pages, particularly with the intercutting close-ups towards the end. I’m not sure this mini is quite working, but it’s certainly interesting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #108.\u00a0By Steve Foxe, Steve Orlando, Lynne Yoshi, Fer Sifuentes-Sujo & Travis Lanham. A lot of this is infodump, but it picks up at the end when we get a bit of action followed by an unexpected swerve into something that has nothing at all to do with Sunfire’s quest for Redroot. […]<\/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-9504","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\/9504","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=9504"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9504\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9505,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9504\/revisions\/9505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}