{"id":9522,"date":"2023-10-21T17:14:10","date_gmt":"2023-10-21T16:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=9522"},"modified":"2023-10-21T17:14:10","modified_gmt":"2023-10-21T16:14:10","slug":"the-x-axis-w-c-16-october-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=9522","title":{"rendered":"The X-Axis – w\/c 16 October 2023"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is a fairly quiet week, but don’t worry – next week is ludicrous. It’s got\u00a0X-Men: Days of Future Past – Doomsday<\/em> #4,\u00a0Alpha Flight<\/em> #3,\u00a0Dark X-Men<\/em> #3,\u00a0Jean Grey<\/em> #3, Uncanny Avengers<\/i> #3,\u00a0Realm of X<\/em> #3,\u00a0Ms Marvel: The New Mutants<\/em> #3,\u00a0Uncanny Spider-Man<\/em> #2, and\u00a0Predator vs Wolverine<\/em> #2. And\u00a0X-Men Unlimited\u00a0<\/em>makes ten. Is this really an optimal schedule?<\/p>\n

Anyway…<\/p>\n

X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #109.\u00a0<\/strong>By Steve Foxe, Steve Orlando, Lynne Yoshii, Fer Sifuentes-Sujo & Travis Lanham. We’re getting to the point now. Rather than just doing a tour around Otherworld, as it first seemed, Sunfire winds up as a prisoner of Orchis so that he can learn about what happened to the mutants back on Earth, even if he’s not sure that he believes it. And with that angle, maybe there\u00a0is<\/em> a reason why we’re doing this story with Sunfire – it plays into the idea that he’s a semi-detached, fringe X-Man. On top of that, his mission has become pointless in his absence, except to the extent that Redroot is worth saving in her own right. At any rate, that’s the angle Moira seems to be taking with him. Naturally, Orchis have also got Redroot – this isn’t a complete deviation from the original quest – but we’re now getting to the turning point where Sunfire starts to fight back. (And, by the way, I’m glad we’re not spending multiple issues with him as a prisoner – cutting straight to the fight is the right call.)<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

This arc still has the problem that Sunfire’s not the most rounded character, and Redroot is… well, barely a character at all. But I think it’s heading in the right direction, and I’m certainly more interested to see Sunfire reconnecting with the main storylines than I was to see him going on a sightseeing trip around fantasy realms.<\/p>\n

ASTONISHING ICEMAN #3.<\/strong> (Annotations here.)<\/a> So this is episodic but it’s fun. Aaron Fischer’s a slightly odd choice of guest star, and probably calls for a bit more introduction than he actually gets here, but there’s a nice build going on here. The power of love stuff with Romeo doesn’t entirely make sense, but there’s a kind of emotional thread to it, so I’ll go with it. The basic story is very simple: Iceman keeps outwitting Orchis and outmanoeuvring their anti-Iceman tech, but Mr Clean is better than he looks, and he’s homing in on going after Romeo to remove Iceman’s anchor. I appreciate Steve Orlando going for the mutant-adjacent characters as targets for Orchis, too, when other books seem too keen to find more mutants down the back of the sofa. The lighter tone of the book – story and art – is also a good call in the context of “Fall of X”. If I’ve got an issue with this story, it’s that after Mr Clean was built up as an uncontrollable maniac that even Orchis were reluctant to put in the field, he comes across here as fairly calm and professional. But he’s quite effective in that role.<\/p>\n

CHILDREN OF THE VAULT #3.<\/strong> (Annotations here.)<\/a> This book has seemed semi-detached from the rest of the line up until now. But with this issue, it veers wildly closer to the centre of the plot, revealing that Orchis is somehow connected with a Dominion (which, needless to say, other books have already established as a very big deal indeed). That makes me sit up and take notice. Admittedly, if you leave that point aside, this issue is largely a big fight scene, with some cultural warfare between Orchis and the Children going on in the background. And that does read oddly – the timescale for that stuff doesn’t seem to match up with the timescale for the A-plot, and the whole thing reinforces the feeling that things are happening in Children<\/em> that ought to be major news in the other books, even if you accept the rationale that the Children’s “Message” is stopping anyone else from feeling motivated to interfere. I’m not saying that every story needs to explain why characters from other books aren’t showing up – the reason why Captain America doesn’t always call the Avengers is that if he did, he wouldn’t have a solo book. But when you’ve got something presented as a line-wide event, a sense of parallel universe syndrome becomes more of an issue.<\/p>\n

INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #11.\u00a0<\/strong>By Gerry Duggan, Andrea Di Vito, Bryan Valenza & Joe Caramagna. Over in the temporary honorary X-book, Tony Stark and Emma Frost go on their honeymoon. Which is basically an excuse for Iron Man to sneak onto Krakoa and steal some mysterium. That’s mostly kind of a fight scene, and while it takes\u00a0Wolverine<\/em>‘s line that Orchis have been messing about on the island, it squares things with\u00a0Immortal X-Men<\/em> a little better by establishing that the landing parties tend not to last long. The issue rounds off with Tony going on a tour of the Marvel Universe’s other heroes to test his mysterium. It’s… fine, but more of an exercise in getting from A to B than a story. Nice art, though, and if you’re going to do a random fight with some of the Orchis guys, it might as well be one of the talking apes.<\/p>\n

DEADPOOL: BADDER BLOOD #5.\u00a0<\/strong>By Rob Liefeld, Chad Bowers, Cory Hamscher, Chance Wolf & Jay David Ramos. Well, yes, pretty much what you’d expect. To be fair, after a lot of completely random nonsense in the middle chapters, the script does manage to drag this back to the plot that was set up in the first issue. And there are a few decent gags in there too. It’s not something to go out of your way to read unless you’re keen on Rob Liefeld’s work, but hey, it’s exactly what was promised.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a fairly quiet week, but don’t worry – next week is ludicrous. It’s got\u00a0X-Men: Days of Future Past – Doomsday #4,\u00a0Alpha Flight #3,\u00a0Dark X-Men #3,\u00a0Jean Grey #3, Uncanny Avengers #3,\u00a0Realm of X #3,\u00a0Ms Marvel: The New Mutants #3,\u00a0Uncanny Spider-Man #2, and\u00a0Predator vs Wolverine #2. And\u00a0X-Men Unlimited\u00a0makes ten. Is this really an optimal schedule? […]<\/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-9522","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\/9522","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=9522"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9522\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9523,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9522\/revisions\/9523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}