{"id":9890,"date":"2024-03-02T17:36:22","date_gmt":"2024-03-02T17:36:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=9890"},"modified":"2024-03-02T17:36:22","modified_gmt":"2024-03-02T17:36:22","slug":"the-x-axis-w-c-26-february-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=9890","title":{"rendered":"The X-Axis – w\/c 26 February 2024"},"content":{"rendered":"

A busy week, then! It’s been a while!<\/p>\n

X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #128.<\/strong> By Steve Foxe, Steve Orlando, Nick Roche, Yen Nitro & Travis Lanham. You’d have thought that by day 6 of release someone would have gone in and removed the opening clapperboard graphic that reads “for internal use only – to be deleted”, but apparently either nobody’s noticed yet or nobody’s had the time. Huh. Anyway, this is part 8, and there’s only so much I can say about this story every week. It’s finally getting around to some sort of point – Selene has promised the other Externals some sort of ascension if they kidnap mutants for her, they don’t trust her – but despite Foxe and Orlando trying to draw out their individual personalities, the Externals just aren’t all that interesting.<\/p>\n

DEAD X-MEN #2.<\/strong> (Annotations here.)<\/a> Apparently\u00a0Dead X-Men<\/em> has already fulfilled its mission for\u00a0Rise of the Powers of X<\/em>, but we’re getting the X-Men pursuing Moira back through her past lives anyway. It’s hard to say whether this actually plays into anything bigger or whether the book is now just off doing its own thing – in theory, anything that messes about with Moira’s memories ought to have massive ripple effects, but who knows how any of this is meant to work. At any rate, going back through Moira’s past seems like a good idea for the closing months of the Krakoan era – it’s a story that the X-books never really got around to, it offers some possibility to flesh out the current version of the character beyond psycho robot, and it contributes to an overall sense of closure. All that said, I’m not sure the conceit of having different artists for every timeline adds anything. (If indeed it is a conceit rather than a scheduling problem, but it’s probably the former, since this is how the series was always solicited.) Nor is it making a terribly strong case for the lost potential in this team of X-Men, since pretty much everyone other than Prodigy in this series is replaceable. Hopefully the others get more to do later on. Still, it’s an enjoyable romp, and the art on the Ultron Sentinel world is lovely.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

WOLVERINE #44.<\/strong> (Annotations here.)<\/a> After an extremely shaky start, “Sabretooth War” is picking up a bit – although I still have precisely zero interest in another round of ultraviolence with these characters. This issue, though, is mostly Wolverine reacting to the initial attack on X-Force in typical style: blaming himself for dragging other people into his orbit, and expressing that almost entirely by wanting to fight Sabretooth. Which, of course, is precisely what Sabretooth is trying to encourage in him anyway, since this arc is going with the idea that Sabretooth kind of wants to go back to the days when he and Wolverine were partners. It’s still not particularly out of the ordinary, but after such a terrible first act, the storyline at least no longer has me dreading the remaining chapters.<\/p>\n

RESURRECTION OF MAGNETO #2.<\/strong> (Annotations here.)<\/a> But of course. The focus here shifts from Storm to Magneto – well, it is his story, after all. And the tone also shifts from symbolism to something rather more direct. Perhaps that’s just how Magneto approaches this sort of thing; he doesn’t really do poetry. A war memorial style list of the names of all the people he’s killed is nobody’s idea of subtle symbolism, but apparently this is how Magneto feels like spending the afterlife. He says he’s read almost every name, but he’s less than clear about what he was planning to do once he was finished – stay and torture himself, or declare himself purged and move on? The upshot is that Magneto is persuaded that he’s been focussing entirely on the damage he did rather than the good, all of which seems surprisingly on the nose after the first issue. Mind you, it’s the second issue turning point, not the end of the series. I’m not really sure what to make of this book just yet. The tone feels very erratic, but maybe that’ll come together.<\/p>\n

CABLE #2.<\/strong> By Fabian Nicieza, Scot Eaton, Lan Medina, Cam Smith, Java Tartaglia & Joe Sabino. If we’re going to do a side quest to keep the two Cables busy, it may as well offer a complete detour from\u00a0Fall of X<\/em>, and that’s pretty much what this is. Orchis? Artificial intelligence? Nope, we’re doing scientists trying to turn humanity into an energy-based commune, and Fabian Nicieza coming back to Amanda Mueller, one of his signature villains who never seems to get used by anyone else. And we’ve got throwaway references to characters so obscure that Steve Orlando would probably have to look them up. (The list of energy-based superhumans includes Suede, a character from a short lived anthology title published in Italy in the mid-90s.) There’s nothing particularly outstanding here and if I’m being honest, until I sat down to write this, I’d kind of forgotten that I’d read it. But it’s very readable and Nicieza seems to be enjoying himself.<\/p>\n

INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #15.<\/strong> By Gerry Duggan, Creees Lee, Walden Wong, Bryan Valenza & Joe Caramagna. Over in the honorary X-book, Iron Man lures Orchis into his trap. The publishing schedule really hasn’t done this any favours, since other books have already passed this point in the storyline. I do like the Tony\/Emma relationship, though, where he’s actually falling in love with her and she’s coming round to him but still clearly sees their relationship as a cover identity that will not be surviving the end of this crossover. And to be fair, Iron Man’s personal storyline is\u00a0meant<\/em> to be a diversion in the context of the overall anti-Orchis plan, which means it can also double as the pay-off of his fight against Feilong, his personal nemesis. The giant armour suits have a nice sense of scale and it all feels like it has more focus than Duggan’s X-Men stories – maybe just because it’s a solo book with fewer plates to spin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A busy week, then! It’s been a while! X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #128. By Steve Foxe, Steve Orlando, Nick Roche, Yen Nitro & Travis Lanham. You’d have thought that by day 6 of release someone would have gone in and removed the opening clapperboard graphic that reads “for internal use only – to be deleted”, […]<\/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-9890","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\/9890","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=9890"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9890\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9891,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9890\/revisions\/9891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}