{"id":9628,"date":"2023-11-25T21:25:06","date_gmt":"2023-11-25T21:25:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=9628"},"modified":"2023-11-25T21:25:06","modified_gmt":"2023-11-25T21:25:06","slug":"the-x-axis-20-november-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=9628","title":{"rendered":"The X-Axis – 20 November 2023"},"content":{"rendered":"

X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #114.<\/strong> By Steve Foxe, Steve Orlando, Guillermo Sanna, Java Tartaglia & Travis Lanham. This is turning out to be a nice little arc. Firestar’s undercover role in Orchis is at best a B plot in\u00a0X-Men<\/em>, but in\u00a0Unlimited\u00a0<\/em>it gets some room to breathe. Not only do we get some reaction from Firestar-adjacent characters who know what’s going on and those who don’t, but we’re also finally getting to the question of what on Earth Judas Traveller – also a mutant – has been doing in Orchis all this time. He’s basically there because he figured they were going to win, but he’s played quite nicely here as someone who’s hedging his bets at the same time, and starting to believe in Firestar as a potential ally in an organisation full of people who want to kill them both. And there’s something in the idea that Firestar is believable in this role precisely because Jean didn’t have time to do anything more than pick someone at random, meaning that she’s wound up assigning a mutant that nobody would regard as the first choice for the job. Guillermo Sanna pitches her acting quite well. I’m enjoying this.<\/p>\n

IMMORTAL X-MEN #17.<\/strong> (Annotations here.)<\/a> It may not quite match up neatly with\u00a0Jean Grey<\/em>‘s final issue in terms of Jean’s state of mind, but this picks up the general theme of Jean being stuck in confused versions of her past rather nicely, with the clever device of having her “narrate” the book entirely with fragments of dialogue from (mostly) iconic appearances – plus a couple that aren’t quite so well known but fit the narrative requirements so well that Gillen would have been mad to pass them up. The Mother Righteous storyline also seems to be building to some kind of climax, while Mr Sinister makes his pitch for an alliance of convenience with Xavier. Quite how we’ve ended up with two comics drawn by Juan Jos\u00e9 Ryp in a single week, I’m not sure – but his autumnal Krakoa is beautifully rendered, and other than a slightly odd sequence with Apocalypse crushing Exodus’s head, which feels a bit like wires got crossed somewhere, it’s a good issue.<\/p>\n

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UNCANNY SPIDER-MAN #4.\u00a0<\/strong>(Annotations here.)<\/a> Partly a lead-in to next week’s\u00a0X-Men Blue: Origins<\/em> one-shot, but this also moves the whole Silver Sable plot towards next issue’s conclusion. The hero ducking the big questions and being reluctant to get involved is a difficult story to pull off without making him seem unsympathetic or frustrating, but Spurrier’s done it quite effectively here, by having Nightcrawler take refuge in traditional New York superhero tropes while studiously ignoring “Fall of X”. So he’s still an active character, he’s still likeable, but he’s also avoiding the real issue. Lee Garbett’s art suits the brightly coloured Spider-Man vibe of the whole thing. There’s something a bit odd about the way Mystique just seems to wander around doing random stuff without getting caught by Orchis, but I’m willing to let that slide when the book works overall.<\/p>\n

WOLVERINE #39.<\/strong> (Annotations here.)<\/a>\u00a0Wolverine\u00a0<\/em>isn’t exactly sitting out “Fall of X”, but it comes very close. “Last Mutant Standing” isn’t really a storyline at all, so much as a series of one-off team-up stories with assorted non-mutant heroes. But I’m fine with that; I’m not exactly in love with the “Fall of X” premise to start with, and there’s nothing wrong with just getting Wolverine out there to have traditional Wolverine adventures from time to time. I get the impression there are some crossed wires about what\u00a0Black Panther<\/em>‘s setting of Birnin T’Chaka is meant to look like – it’s still meant to be a Wakandan sci-fi city on the surface, and Ryp kind of draws it as a New York slum district – but Wolverine fits nicely into the setting, and this is a perfectly solid team-up story.<\/p>\n

INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #12.<\/strong> By Gerry Duggan, Ig Guara, Bryan Valenza & Joe Caramagna. I’ve generally enjoyed Duggan’s\u00a0Iron Man\u00a0<\/em>issues more than his\u00a0X-Men<\/em>. This is… not one of the better issues, being built around a completely random fight between Emma Frost and Ironheart that only happens because there wouldn’t be a plot otherwise. Yes, it gives the Kingpin a chance to be creative, but it makes both women look like idiots, and that’s not good. It also feels a bit like time-marking, because Iron Man already got his mysterium over the last couple of issues, but in terms of the wider crossover, it’s too early for him to actually use it. It’s still kind of okay in parts, but the book’s done better.<\/p>\n

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X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #114. By Steve Foxe, Steve Orlando, Guillermo Sanna, Java Tartaglia & Travis Lanham. This is turning out to be a nice little arc. Firestar’s undercover role in Orchis is at best a B plot in\u00a0X-Men, but in\u00a0Unlimited\u00a0it gets some room to breathe. Not only do we get some reaction from Firestar-adjacent […]<\/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-9628","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\/9628","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=9628"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9630,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9628\/revisions\/9630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}