{"id":9845,"date":"2024-02-16T21:45:46","date_gmt":"2024-02-16T21:45:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=9845"},"modified":"2024-02-16T21:45:47","modified_gmt":"2024-02-16T21:45:47","slug":"the-x-axis-w-c-12-february-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=9845","title":{"rendered":"The X-Axis – w\/c 12 February 2024"},"content":{"rendered":"

X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #126. <\/strong>By Steve Foxe, Steve Orlando, Phillip Sevy & Yen Nitro. Captain Britain, Rictor and Shatterstar go to break mutants out of British government custody, but the Externals have got there first. This is at least a bit more focussed than previous issues – we’re not jumping all over the place any more, and at least we’re back to the supposed plot – but it’s still hard to figure out what the hook is meant to be. Most of the Externals were bush league characters at the best of time, and nothing here is really setting out a stall for why we should be interested to see them again – and thus far, whatever Selene has planned isn’t really that different from any other “Fall of X” story about Orchis persecution. The individual issue is better, but I still don’t get what this story is trying to do.<\/p>\n

WOLVERINE #43. <\/strong>(Annotations here.)<\/a> The first two issues of “Sabretooth War” were fairly dire, but this is rather more like it. The gratuitous violence is kept down to one big moment, and it’s much more effective that way, while Wolverine himself is barely in this issue. Instead, we get Sabretooth thinking back to the happy days when he and Logan were killing lots of people side by side, the remaining alt-Sabretooths wondering why the hell they’ve been following this clown, and the Exiles showing up to enter the plot. Geoff Shaw’s art also brings this much closer to feeling like a continuation of Sabretooth & The Exiles<\/em>. Victor LaValle’s contribution wasn’t terribly evident in the last couple of issues but it’s rather more recognisable here. That’s a relief, because I had no interest in a 12-issue arc that read like the first couple of issue. This is far more promising.<\/p>\n

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FALL OF THE HOUSE OF X #2.<\/strong> (Annotations here.)<\/a> What a strange comic this is. The A-plot is relatively straightforward: the X-Men take down the Orchis satellite as they start to turn the corner. Fair enough, though I’m pretty sure Knowhere used to be a lot bigger than this, and there’s a weird incoherence about whether Polaris is trying to kill everyone on board or not. And if she’s part of the plan (which apparently she is), why didn’t somebody tell her that Firestar’s allowed to live? The B-plot is Rogue and Gambit deciding to wake Manifold from suspended animation because… it’s time to? They literally depart from the mission in progress because they decide for no apparent reason that it’s time to wake the guy up. The immediate aftermath of the Hellfire Gala didn’t seem like emergency enough? What about the day before the big attack, when they had some time to spare? What about… well, a plot point that prompts them to wake him? And then at the end we have Cyclops facing execution and Alia Gregor turning on Orchis in an absurdly rushed resolution. It’s so strangely paced that it surely has to be the result of a rewrite. And on top of that we’ve got dialogue spoiling the plot of an issue of Iron Man<\/em> that won’t be out for a fortnight. No, it’s not running late – both books are coming out on their original schedule. This does hang together better than the first issue, and the art has its moments, but a feeling of frantic improvisation pervades it, which is not the vibe you want to project.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #126. By Steve Foxe, Steve Orlando, Phillip Sevy & Yen Nitro. Captain Britain, Rictor and Shatterstar go to break mutants out of British government custody, but the Externals have got there first. This is at least a bit more focussed than previous issues – we’re not jumping all over the place […]<\/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-9845","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\/9845","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=9845"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9845\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9846,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9845\/revisions\/9846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}