The X-Axis – w/c 9 September 2024
X-MEN: FROM THE ASHES INFINITY COMIC #14. By Alex Paknadel, Diógenes Neves, Arthur Hesli & Clayton Cowles. Just a two-parter, this one – the first time the series has broken from a three-part format. It’s pretty much what you’d expect from the first part, which is to say, it’s a vignette designed to remind Magneto that even without his powers he can still help by providing direction. Given the limits of that sort of story, it’s quite well done and avoids feeling too trite, even if it has to reach for some sense of resolution without actually advancing very much.
UNCANNY X-MEN #2. (Annotations here.) Two issues in, I have mixed feelings about this title. Having Rogue act as if there isn’t another X-Men book out there might be intended to suggest that she doesn’t regard Scott’s team as real X-Men, as I suggested in the annotations… but in the absence of any hints at a reason for that, it feels more like a weird discontinuity than an intentional plot. And I’m entirely un-sold on Corina Ellis as a main villain, since she’s both one-dimensional thus far and way, way too close to Orchis, a villain type that’s been beaten into the ground for most of the last year. Quite a few of these From the Ashes books read as if the new office wasn’t expecting the “Fall of X” period to be anywhere near as bleak and fascistic as it was, and thought they were taking over just after Krakoa had fallen; it’s a pervasive problem across the line. On the other hand, the Outliers all seem like promising new characters, and the art is consistently beautiful – David Marquez adds a ton of depth and emotion to the cast.
WOLVERINE #1. (Annotations here.) Saladin Ahmed and Martín Cóccolo’s run gets off to a very back to basics start, complete with Logan running around naked in the wilderness with wolves, Nightcrawler fretting about his soul, and a villain showing up for revenge. For the most part, it’s an issue devoted to restating the premise rather than setting out an immediately gripping high concept. That said, it restates the Wolverine baseline very solidly, and there’s no harm in doing that from time to time. More to the point, and more encouragingly, it mostly gets that side of things out of the way in the course of its first issue, on the way to setting up a rather odder plot about some sort of self-aware metal that hates adamantium. Cyber seems to have been selected as the first issue villain mainly so that he can feed into that storyline. That does feel like something new, and Ahmed’s other work has been strong enough to give him the benefit of the doubt that this is heading somewhere interesting.
VENOM WAR: WOLVERINE #1. By Tim Seeley, Tony Fleecs, Kev Walker, Java Tartaglia & Cory Petit. Are we going back to the days of a random Wolverine tie in for every event going, then? Hope not. This is the kind of commission that I take an instinctive dislike to, simply because it feels like it exists for mainly spreadsheet-related purposes. That said, it seems to be doing its best to tell an actual story in the margins of the Venom War crossover: the idea seems to be that Logan has encountered this family before and dealt with the abusive father in his inimitable style, but with symbiotes everywhere, the guy has a chance of putting up more of a fight in the rematch. So at root, it seems to want to be a relatively normal Wolverine story where Venom War levels the playing field for a villain who’d normally be entirely outclassed, and that’s not a bad way of using the gimmick. Walker is a great choice of artist, with a cartooning quality that really suits the symbiotes.
SAVAGE WOLVERINE INFINITY COMIC #7. By Tom Bloom, Guillermo Sanna, Java Targalia & Joe Sabino. Fight chapter, and quite a brutal one at that. Marvel Unlimited has odd policies on this sort of thing – it doesn’t cover the Max books or “red band” variants, but it does cover main line Marvel titles that are graphically violent. It doesn’t make an awful lot of sense. Anyway, it’s a fight scene, but very effectively done, and Sanna’s bold angles and shapes suit this format very well.
LOVABLE LOCKHEED INFINITY COMIC #1-2. By Nathan Stockman and Tríona Farrell. I’m not going to review three Infinity Comics a week and this isn’t the sort of series where you can really find anything new to say about individual issues, but I ought to at least acknowledge its existence. Marvel Unlimited runs quite a few silent gag strips, which tend to have lovely art and no jokes. This is in a similar ballpark – it’s Lockheed as the X-Men’s house pet somewhere just after he arrives in Uncanny #168. It’s simple but it has better ideas than a lot of these books, and the art is genuinely adorable. But barring some surprise developments, I don’t plan to come back to it every week just to say that again.
Regarding Marvel Unlimited, they do not offer the old MAX series and Red Band Editions, but the miniseries Get Fury, which is labelled MAX, is offered on a regular basis. I don’t understand the logic either (with the age check during registration, there should be no problem).
Re: Rogue not regarding Scott’s team as real X-Men- the previews for X-Men 4 are out and the dialogue makes it clear that whatever happened to Magneto might happen to any of the members of Scott’s team at any point. Obviously, we’ll be able to discuss this better when next week’s X-Men comes out. But the problem is that MacKay and Simone wanted to keep the twist about Scott’s team a secret. But that meant none of the characters were talking about what happened to Magneto and what might happen to the others- which defies credulity! It’s just bad writing.
A new ongoing Magik series is coming out in January and Illyana’s Darkchylde side will return in it. Maybe Maddie will appear in it.
Declan Shalvey has said that the Mystique series is about returning her to be a villain.
A new limited series chronicling Rogue’s time in the Savage Land with Mangeto called Rogue:the Savage Land by Tim Seeley will appear in January 2025. Seeley already managed to offend Rogue fans by describing her as from MISSOURI in an interview. it looks like a more accurate title would be Rogue: Half Naked.
Ashley Allan, the writer on Magik, is apparently a former Playboy Playmate who worked for the WWE. That’s a different (?) choice for Marvel…either that, or Wikipedia linked to the wrong person. Take your pick.
Honestly, as annoying as I find Ellis, all this talk of the Endling and something being genetically wrong with Scott’s team is giving me M-Pox vibes and I really don’t think we need that concept coming back around. I really thought the introduction of new mutants in Uncanny, Exceptional and X-Factor meant we weren’t doing another round of threat-of-extinction stories…
The number of (existing and announced) X-series and -minis has gotten to a point where it just seems like flooding the market. I’m not sure that’s the best way to get the X-Men back to the top of the charts, but what do I know.
Having said that, the character design sheets for the Magik and Rogue books are really beautiful.
Ashley Allan, not Ashley Allen. I think you have the wrong person…
For clarification, both the writer of Magik and the former Playboy playmate are Ashley Allen (same spelling, with an ‘e’)
This the Playboy model
https://ringthedamnbell.wordpress.com/2018/01/10/the-wwfs-disappearing-diva-the-mystery-of-ashley-allen/
And this is the writer of Magik
https://x.com/_ashkallen/status/1806111026145837525
They’re not the same person, to be clear. The Playboy model appeared in the magazine in 1992 and her IMDB entry says she was born in 1968. The writer’s Twitter account has several recent photos and she’s clearly nowhere near old enough to be the same person.
@Thom H- Agreed. And the problem is that a lot of these books are solos for characters that are already appearing in team books. So that means that plenty of characters get no exposure.
In some ways. this reflects Breevort’s tenure as Avengers editor. Captain America, Thor and Iron Man have always been solo books. And She-Hulk had two series before Breevort came along. But Breevort seemed determined to create series for characters that either never had their own series or hadn’t had one in decades. He gave Carol her own book despite not having had one since 1979. And he was responsible for several Hawkeye series. To be fair, Clint had never had his own ongoing series but he did have the lead feature in Solo Avengers for 3 years. But Breevort also gave the Scarlet Witch several series despite never having had an ongoing series before- there was a 12-issue Vision & Scarlet Witch maxi series in the 1980s but that’s it. And he also gave the Black Widow several series despite never having had one- she had a feature in Amazing Adventures but it only lasted eight issues.
And similarly, Breevort is creating series for X-Men characters that don’t usually have solos. The one X-Man that always has a solo is Wolverine.Then, there’s Cable, whose solo lasted over 100 issues in the ’90s. But Breevort is giving solos to Storm and Phoenix, who each had one attempt at an ongoing that lasted less than a year. And to Psylocke and Magik, who have never had solo ongoings.
It couldn’t have been worse than Marvel hiring Phil Brooks to write comics. At least the issue Scott Levy did was co-written by Azzarello and pretty good, IIRC.
“…there was a 12-issue Vision & Scarlet Witch maxi series in the 1980s but that’s it.”
There was a 4-issue Vision & Scarlet Witch miniseries preceding that. The fourth issue was noteable for revealing Magneto to be Wanda and Pietro’s biological father.
Sorry, Moo. I should have worded that more clearly. What I meant was “the closest thing that Wanda had to an ONGOIN series was the 12-issue Vision & Scarlet Witch maxi-series”.
(There was also a 4 issue Scarlet Witch limited series in the 1990s.)
For the record, I was mainly making light of the fact that Wikipedia mistook the two for the same. I didn’t really think it was accurate.
The Scarlet Witch series written by James Robinson was one of Marvel’s best books at that time. If Marvel managed to put out some books that are as of high quality as that one or Tom King’s Vision, it might be worth it. I say that with the caveat that these “From the Ashes” titles seem to be being received as underwhelming or average. The problem is that Marvel floods the market by releasing all these new titles within a few months of each other. Fans can’t keep up with that, so new titles go by the wayside because who wants to pick up a Psylocke solo series when said fan just started buying five other new X-books. So, yeah, it didn’t matter how high quality Robinson’s Scarlet Witch comic ended up, it was always going to end sooner than otherwise (fifteen issues wasn’t bad for a solo Scarlet Witch series) because it had a hard time standing out on the racks while Marvel was putting out an entire line of #1 issues.
@Chris V- I think the major problem with Robinson’s run was the attempt to explain Wanda’s parentage. So Wanda was really related to the Maximoffs and both Agatha and the Maximoffs knew this and never told her for no real reason and the High Evolutionary for some reason decided to alter her DNA and have Bova lie about her parentage and…
I realize that Robinson inherited this problem from Remender and Marvel didn’t want the twins to be related to Magneto because of movie reasons but he probably should have just ignored it instead of making it more convoluted.
Ah Bova. She will always be there, making the back story of Scarlet Witch and Spider-Woman that much sillier.
The Magneto Unlimited story had an odd ending. This is mostly spoilers ahead for the story in question, but nothing important or surprising.
There was a girl in a burning car, and Magneto had to convince her to leave her dead father behind, and cut through her seatbelt even though the glass she uses was cutting her. He does this at risk of being caught in the car explosion himself.
Then a word balloon announces that the dad is alive and the fire brigade got him out safe and sound.
So you have this highly symbolic scene of Magneto saving another by convincing her to cut ties to her past, etc. But then that word balloon, most likely added by an editor, changes the message to being Magneto risked his own life to talk a girl into cutting up her hands, instead of waiting two minutes for the professionals to arrive.
Aside from that, is there a TV Tropes page for seatbelt buckles getting jammed?
Oh by the way, am I the only one thoroughly sick of Venoms and Carnages and Knulls and Poisons and all that nonsense?
@Si- I think the idea is the girl would have been killed in the fire if Magneto hadn’t had her cut her seatbelt and move away from the flames.But it’s not very clear from the art.
@Si. No, you are not. I am flabbergasted that Venon is still around in 2024.
He was good for a story or two back in the 1990s. Far as I am concerned, that is the end of it.
Oh that was the original intent, sure. But the rabbi or doctor or whoever undercuts it all in the closing scene. It’s clumsy editing to make the story happier, is what I’m saying.
@Si & @Luis Dantas;
I’m sick of symbiotes. I’ve been sick of them since about 1993. But… I liked Al Ewing’s Venom comics, which didn’t really end. The current Venom War series looks to end that particular story. I am reading that one singular Venom title. Unfortunately, there are approximately 75 symbionts titles released every week which are not Al Ewing’s Venom story, and they all look dumb and ugly.
I haven’t been reading any Venom books, but I did read the Unlimited Avengers Academy story (which is actually pretty good for what it is). Lil Normie Osborn has a symbiote these days, and so does his mum. Says it all really.
Sick of symbiotes the same way I’m sick of: Phoenixes, zombies, vampires, multiversal characters, time-displaced characters that are actually new….
I’m sick of Kardashians, bachelorettes, and desperate housewives.
Deadpool’s daughter has a symbiote. Not even bonded to her, just as a pet.
And why not? After all the Kings in Blacks and Symbiote Planets and Snot Invasions, they have to basically be an introduced species. In a year or two they’ll push out the squirrels from Central Park.
They’re going to be like spotted lanternflies, where cities have to put up public service signs. “Symbiotes are an invasive species. If you see one, kill it. Complimentary airhorns and lighters are available upon request.”
Some news from Breevort’s blog:
Banshee will be back before the end of the year.
X-Men 4 will be “bringing back not just Trevor Fitzroy and a number of other almost-forgotten characters as the new Upstarts, but also a once-prominent X-Villain that you never expected to see again.”
And finally Tom gets asked the same question about Trista that most of us were wondering:
BIC:the scene with the bouncer in Exceptional X-Men seems to have confused quite a few people.
First, why was Bronze/Trisha not let in? She did not look like a mutant before things heated up, so that does not seem to be the reason.:
TOM:I think that scene is that scene, Bic, so I don’t really want to go interpreting it for the audience. We’ll definitely come back to Bronze further, though I don’t know that we’ll be revisiting the events of that evening in particular
That sounds like he also doesn’t know Ewing’s intent and didn’t notice that he didn’t know during the production process.
@Krzysiek Ceran: The symbiote dog is also Deadpool’s daughter. At least, that’s how he refers to her, after some mad scientist infected him with part of a Carnage symbiote and essentially it burst out of his body.
(Or something like that. I dropped Alyssa Wong’s Deadpool book after 4 issues.)
Anyway, count me as another person who’s been sick of symbiotes since Maximum Carnage. They seem to really get shoved back into the forefront when Donny Cates was writing Venom, and have only grown more inescapable from there. I think Cates and I read a lot of the same comics in the ’90s, but came away from them with completely opposite opinions.
The symbiotes have their fans, at least judging by the relative popularity of the rather lousy Venom movies.
Sabretooth will be getting a new 5-issue mini-series starting in December. The idea is that after Sabretooth’s funeral, Wolverine learns of an adventure Sabretooth had in the early twentieth-century. So it looks like Sabretooth is dead at least until April 2025.
Someone cared enough about Sabretooth to hold a funeral?
I can easily believe there are multiple people who’d want to be there when his dead body went into the ground.
There will be a crossover in December and January between MacKay’s X-Menn and Simone’s Uncanny X-Men called Raid on Graymalkin:
https://bleedingcool.com/comics/marvel-announces-x-men-crossover-raid-on-graymalkin/
The idea is that Scott’s team and Rogue’s team both go to Graymalkin Prison to rescue Xavier and wind up fighting each other.
The guy on the cover of Uncanny X-Men 8 looks like Sinister.
I liked CM Punk’s comics well enough, and he also had a co-writer (on Drax, at least).