The X-Axis – w/c 15 April 2024
X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #135. By Steve Foxe, Steve Orlando, Phillip Sevy, Yen Nitro & Travis Lanham. Well, apparently we’re going with Sunspot versus Gideon as a huge showdown that everyone’s been waiting for. And… I mean, it’s a storyline from thirty years ago that hardly ever comes up. Even I barely remember anything about it. Seemed like a big deal in early X-Force, never came to anything much? Something like that. At any rate, it’s the sort of continuity reference that’s fine for a bit of background colour but hardly carries the weight of being the hook for an issue. You’re going to have to work a lot harder than this to persuade me to care about Gideon in 2024.
FALL OF THE HOUSE OF X #4. (Annotations here.) Fall of the House of X is feeling a little more coherent than it was when it started, but it’s still not pulling off the epic feel. Apocalypse rounding up mutants to sacrifice themselves to kickstart Krakoa – okay, that kind of works. It’s the sort of thing that you can imagine making sense to Apocalypse and some of the guys from Arakko. But the material with the X-Men and Orchis just feels rather rushed. The art doesn’t give a sense of a grand scale, the plot feels truncated, and the whole thing is just rough around the edges. It’s like reading an outline.
DEAD X-MEN #4. (Annotations here.) Not a great week, this. The final issue of Dead X-Men is okay at best, but doesn’t stand up to much thought. You can see how this miniseries made sense as a pitch. The X-Men who died at the Hellfire Gala get a chance to be a team; we visit some of Moira’s past lives; and it can all feed in to Rise of the Powers of X around the edges. It looks decent enough and it has a reasonable shot of providing closure by looping us back to the first issue. But… aside from Prodigy, literally any bunch of characters could have been in this series, and the book never finds anything much to do with its specific set of characters. Ideally you’d want this book to make a case for its cast as a great lost X-roster, and it doesn’t do that. And the plot mechanics boil down to some arbitrary stuff happening in order to bring about a result which arbitrarily advances the plot of Rise. It’s not like anything very meaningful happened during the visits to Moira’s past lives, and I just don’t buy that anything was actually learned from the exercise.
Dead X-Men #4 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
DEAD X-MEN #4
“Hyperballad”
Writer: Steve Foxe
Artists; David Baldeón, Bernard Chang & Vincenzo Carratù
Colour artist: Frank Martin
Letterer: Cory Petit
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. The X-Men fight their alt-Moira.
PAGE 2. Paul Neary obituary.
PAGES 3-4. The X-Men and Moira are dragged back through time.
Issue #3 ended with the cyborg alt-Moira from issue #1 attacking the X-Men and their local counterparts in Moira’s fifth life. This turns out to be a bit of an anticlimax, as Dazzler calls on Rachel to haul them all back through time and bring Moira with them.
The montage on page 4 shows scenes from Moira’s earlier lives.
- Top left: Moira sees Professor X in a bar in her second life. This is page 8 panel 4 of House of X #2.
- To the right of that, a generic-looking campus scene. By elimination, this is probably meant to be her uneventful first life.
- On the second tier, on the left, Destiny threatens Moira before killing her in her third life.
- To the right of that, a Sentinel blasts Professor X and Moira in her fourth life. This is page 17 panel 4 of House of X #2.
- Below that, Moira and Logan in the Preserve in her sixth life.
- In the bottom tier, on the left, Moira and a wheelchair-bound Xavier in a futuristic city. This is Moira’s fifth life, where they built a mutant city.
- To the right of that, Moira with a sniper rifle, about to kill one of the Trask family. This is her seventh life.
- Next, Moira approaches Magneto. This is her eighth life, and specifically page 21 panel 2 of House of X #2.
- To the right of that, Moira with Apocalypse. This is her ninth life.
- And finally, above Frenzy’s head, a generic head shot of Moira, presumably representing her tenth and present life (from the perspective of this divergent Moira).
Fall of the House of X #4 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
FALL OF THE HOUSE OF X #4
“The Turn”
Writer: Gerry Duggan
Artists: Jucas Werneck & Jethro Morales
Colour artist: Bryan Valenza
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. Moira and Cyclops fight.
PAGE 2. Paul Neary obituary.
PAGE 3. Data page (!). The opening quote is Magneto’s line “Promise me you’ll watch Charles… Three began Krakoa. Moira betrayed us. I… deserted my post. Now Charles is alone with his dream.” This is from Magneto’s death scene in X-Men Red #7, which has since been positioned as foreshadowing for Professor X caving to Orchis’ demands in X-Men: Hellfire Gala 2023. That in turn ties to Professor X’s role in this issue, of which more later.
PAGES 4-6. Apocalypse leads his forces against Orchis.
Up in the sky are the two crossed space stations from the previous issue.
Apocalypse and his forces have arrived in time to save Krakoa from Orchis. Krakoa has been on the run from them ever since issue #1. As Apocalypse points out, Krakoa feeds off mutant energy, which wasn’t a problem when it had a whole mutant population and could take trivial amounts from each one. Without the mutants around, he’s been starving, so Apocalypse needs to offer up some life force.
House to Astonish Episode 207
We’re back (back! Back!) with remembrances of Trina Robbins and Mark “Doc” Bright, a whiz through the first six post-Krakoa X-books and a mini-explainer of Misty and the new Gail Simone-run iteration thereof. We’ve also got reviews of Action Comics and Uncanny Valley and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe All this plus a utility cry-shoulder, A Different Murderworld and Wolverine’s favourite herd of elephants.
The show is here, or available via the embedded player below. Let us know what you think, in the comments, on Bluesky, via email or on our Facebook fan page. And do you deserve one of our lovely t-shirts? Yes, yes you do.
Charts – 12 April 2024
And here’s something I didn’t see coming.
1. Hozier – “Too Sweet”
My list of predictions for 2024 certainly did not include Hozier, of all people, having a number 1 hit a decade after “Take Me To Church” reached number 2. He did have a mid-table hit last year, when “Eat Your Young” reached number 22, but he seemed like someone who was destined to be remembered for his one hit. Like “Take Me To Church” (and none of his other singles since), it’s doing well internationally, at least in English language markets.
I know they say the younger generation have turned away from alcoholic debauchery, but there’s something quite adorable about a song in which Hozier explains that he cannot match his girl’s innocence due to his penchant for black coffee and undiluted whisky.
The X-Axis – w/c 8 April 2024
X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #134. By Steve Foxe & Steve Orlando, Phillip Sevy, Yen Nitro & Travis Lanham. Well, at least this issue has a fun bit which uses the vertical scrolling quite effectively for a leap across the room during an action sequence. Other than that, I don’t know what I can say that I haven’t said before. We’re apparently building to a fight between Sunspot and Gideon, and… um, that doesn’t feel to me like much of a hook in 2024. God, we must have another month of this to go. (Sighs deeply.)
RESURRECTION OF MAGNETO #4. (Annotations here.) At first glance, it seems like an odd choice to do three rather abstract issues venturing into the afterlife and then end on a final issue of Magneto joining the fight against Orchis – even if the crossover context might make that unavoidable. But it fits better than you’d expect, since this issue isn’t really concerned with the crossover at all; it’s about what Magneto has learned from the last few issues and how he chooses to put that into practice when fighting the Orchis footsoldiers. It’s an issue of Magneto trying to be responsible, though he gets boxed into a corner where he winds up killing the Orchis guys anyway. I’m not convinced that the colour coding thing works – red doesn’t really work as symbolising a middle path for Magneto when it’s the colour most associated with his Silver Age persona as a one-dimensional villain, while the black and white versions of his costume come from much later stories that are much more nuanced – but the basic positioning of Magneto coming out the story works, and the way that the art makes Magneto look traditionally heroic plays nicely against all that.
Wolverine #47 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
WOLVERINE vol 6 #47
“Sabretooth War, part 7: Bad Seed”
Writers: Victor LaValle & Benjamin Percy
Artist: Geoff Shaw
Colour artist: Alex Sinclair
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso
COVER / PAGE 1. Wolverine (Laura) fights the “Savage” alt-Sabretooth.
PAGE 2. Paul Neary obituary.
PAGES 3-5. Laura escapes her cage.
Laura cut this control collar off one of the beheaded Sabretooth drones last issue. Apparently, the collars trigger the security systems, so once the others are at a safe distance, she’s able to use it to escape. This doesn’t seem like a very good security system, but she is dealing with a whole crew of Sabretooths.
PAGE 6. Recap and credits.
PAGES 7-8. Wolverine and Sabretooth fight.
This picks up directly from the end of the previous issue, where Sabretooth had just zapped Wolverine with Forge’s de-powering gun. Note that even though this is Wolverine’s book (where he’s normally the narrator), Sabretooth is the narrator in this scene, and Wolverine only gets a single line of dialogue. In fact, Wolverine doesn’t get any more proper dialogue until the final page of the issue.
Resurrection of Magneto #4 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
RESURRECTION OF MAGNETO #4
“Reawakening”
Writer: Al Ewing
Artist: Luciano Vecchio
Colour artists: David Curiel & Jesus Aburtov
Letterer: Joe Sabino
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. Magneto attacks Orchis footsoldiers. He’s in his black costume, rather than the red one worn in the issue.
PAGE 2. Obituary for Paul Neary.
PAGE 3. Magneto advances towards Orchis soldiers.
As in previous issues, this opening splash page is a tarot reference – it’s loosely based on the Rider-Waite version of the Hierophant. That card doesn’t show the Hierophant with three helmets, but it does show him in a purple cape between two pillar type structures, raising his right hand in the same position as Magneto here, and with two worshippers in the position of the two Orchis footsoldiers. It also has two crossed keys lying on the floor, replaced here by two Orchis cards.
Daredevil Villains #20: Starr Saxon
We’re skipping Daredevil #48, which is another Stilt-Man story. And with that, we’ve reached the end of Stan Lee’s run as writer.
DAREDEVIL #49-55
(January to August 1969)
Writer: Stan Lee (#49-50, 53), Roy Thomas (#51-55)
Pencillers: Gene Colan (#49, #53-55), Barry Smith (#50-52)
Inker: George Klein (#49, #51, #53-54), Johnny Craig (#50, #52), Syd Shores (#55)
Letterer: Artie Simek (#49, #51, #53-55), Herb Cooper (#50), Sam Rosen (#52)
Colourist: not credited
Editor: Stan Lee
You only have to look at those credits to see that this is a bit chaotic. Perhaps Stan Lee was keen to stick around until issue #50 because it was a nice round number. But instead of ending his run with a grand finale, Lee hands the book over to Roy Thomas in mid storyline. And the story just keeps going, in the book’s longest arc to date. In practice it’s really six issues rather than seven – issue #53 is a fill-in with a token framing sequence to continue the plot – but that’s still far longer than any continuous arc so far, and far longer than anything we’ll get in the rest of Roy Thomas’ run. The Masked Marauder hung around for the better part of a year, but that was as a recurring villain. This is one continuing arc.
Charts – 5 April 2024
Well, Beyonce has an album out.
1. Beyoncé – “Texas Hold ’Em”
8. Beyoncé – “Jolene”
9. Beyoncé featuring Miley Cyrus – “II Most Wanted”
The maximum three tracks from the album “Cowboy Carter”, which predictably enters at number 1 – Beyoncé hasn’t missed number 1 with a studio album since 2013. After two weeks at number 3, “Texas Hold ’Em” returns to number 1 for a fifth week.
“Jolene” is the talking point cover version. Country hasn’t traditionally been huge in the UK, but “Jolene” was a hit for Dolly Parton back in 1976, reaching number 7 (so still one place above Beyoncé). Dolly Parton’s only other top 40 hit in the UK was “Islands in the Stream” with Kenny Rogers, which also got to number 7 in 1983. Everyone knows “9 to 5” but it didn’t actually make the top 40.
