Generation X-23 #10 annotations
GENERATION X-23 #10
“Take Me To Church”
Writer: Jody Houser
Artist: Marco Renna
Colour artist: Erick Arciniega
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Editors: Mark Basso & Alanna Smith
COVER: Just a general pin-up of the core cast. This is the final issue of the series.
PAGES 1-4. The teams square off.
We’re picking up directly from the end of the previous issue, where X-Infinite did indeed identify his followers as “the Church of the Generated”. On the opposing team, we have:
- X-Infinite, obviously. As in early issues of this series, he’s sticking to his identity as a genetically engineered creation and claiming superiority over both humans and mutants. Presumably, it’s something of a eugenics-based worldview – he’s better because he was made this way on purpose.
- X-66, and more on her later.
- Bellona. X-Infinite explains in passing that he learned about Bellona as another X-23 clone, and went after her in the hopes of finding another source for her healing factor. In the first arc, he wanted the healing factor so that he could try and stabilise the Generated, including himself. However, Bellona doesn’t have healing powers; he says he’s agreed to give them to her as payment. At any rate, this is X-Infinite’s understanding of the position; see below for more on that.
- “One of the Stepford Cuckoos”. Laura tells us that it’s Celeste, and she’s presumably right, but the Cuckoo herself never confirms this. No particular reason is given for why one of them has shown up alone, but the fact that it’s unusual is flagged to our attention. Presumably this would have gone somewhere if the series had continued. The Cuckoos are basically clones of Emma Frost, and apparently meet X-Infinite’s definition of generated.
X-Men United #9 annotations
X-MEN UNITED #9
“Who Is Justina LaGuardia?”
Writers: Eve L Ewing & Evan Narcisse
Penciller: Ruairí Coleman
Inker: Roberto Poggi
Colour artist: Brian Reber
Letterer: Joe Sabino
Editor: Annalise Bissa
COVER. Emma Frost being mind controlled by Justina LaGuardia.
PAGES 1-5. Flashback: Emma Frost meets Justina LaGuardia.
This flashback takes place shortly before Uncanny X-Men #281, the first issue of Whilce Portacio’s run, published in 1991. In the original story, Emma invites the X-Men to the Hellfire Club for a truce, claiming that the Club are under attack from some mysterious force; this is vouched by another failed attack being made on her life during the issue. The original idea was that the threat was the Upstarts, who were in a contest to kill mutants to win a prize, but their storyline rather fizzled out. The main significance of this story is that it leads to Emma being knocked out in issue #281 (leaving her in a coma which lasts until issue #316), and her trainees the Hellions being murdered in issue #282. Their death is a turning point for Emma’s character and ultimately leads to her switching sides.
X-Men #41 annotations
X-MEN vol 7 #41
“Quarantine”
Writer: Jed MacKay
Penciller: Netho Diaz
Inkers: JP Mayer & Sean Parsons
Colourists: Arthur Hesli & Dono Sánchez-Almara
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
COVER: The X-Men and the FF in action. If you look closely in the background, they’re fighting a bunch of masked gunmen in black oufits, which isn’t really what the O*N*E guys look like, but close enough. This is the final DNX tie-in issue.
PAGES 1-3. Psylocke gives directions.
This picks up directly from the end of DNX #4. In that issue, the Chairman discovered that instead of turning a minority of the population of Juniper into new mutants and killing everyone else, his X-virus had actually just killed everyone, with some of them becoming unviable mutants in the process. He surrounded the town in a force field and apparently intended to blow it up by way of containment, if only to eradicate his own failure. The issue ends with Cyclops being allowed in to confront him, which we’ll presumably see in DNX #5.
Charts – 6 November 2026
It’s 10 November – what better time to cover the Hallowe’en singles chart?
1. Jamie Miller – “Babydoll”
Three weeks, and it’s number 1 by a mile. It does seem to have slightly passed its peak, but it’s so far ahead of everything else that it’s likely to stay here for a while to come.
This is the chart that came out on Friday 6 November, and it covers the chart week from Friday 30 October to Thursday 5 November. That means it has the peak of the Hallowe’en streaming, which is enough to get a bunch of tracks into the top 40, even though there are almost no worthwhile Hallowe’en tracks. (Join us again next week when the first signs of the Christmas influx arrive.) The top placed is “Thriller” by Michael Jackson, which climbs to an all-time peak of number 5, but it was already in the charts. Let’s run down the others, all of which will be making one-week stays.
12. Ray Parker Jr – “Ghostbusters”
House to Astonish Episode 221
It’s our birthday! Or it was yesterday when we recorded this, anyway! Join us for House to Astonish’s 18th anniversary, as we run through the comics landscapes of 1993 and 1998 (the years when we turned 18, do you see, it’s thematic) and talk about all sorts of things that happened in those years, from Marvel Knights to Vertigo, DC One Million to Slingers, via a man made of air, the gentle hillock of Marvel UK, a fruity tench, St Trinians vs Umbrella Academy and the Punisher War Journal of Barbies.
The podcast is here, or available via the embedded player below. Let us know what you think, in the comments, on Bluesky or via email.
And if you’re at Thought Bubble in Harrogate this weekend, come and see me, Gary Lactus and The Beast Must Die as we do more silly things with and to comics creators, with John Allison, Sarah Graley, Christian Ward and Becky Cloonan on SILENCE! To Astonish!
The X-Axis – 4 November 2026
DNX #4. (Annotations here.) We’re running very late this week, but let’s run through the books quickly anyway. I’ve said before that the mistake with “Age of Revelation” was to try to turn it into a line-wide event when it was better suited to being a storyline in X-Men. DNX hasn’t fallen into that trap, since the event is only running in X-Men itself, DNX (which is just five extra issues of X-Men) and two good but skippable issues of Fantastic Four for… reasons. But even so, I can’t help wondering whether this would have worked better if it had just been an X-Men storyline, maybe paying off in an anniversary issue. The attack on Philadelphia gets averted; the new X-virus doesn’t work and the X-Men already know how they’re going to stop it. (Or think they do, at least, but that’s the plot.) And while Juniper does get annihilated, the core of the story seems to be a final confrontation between Scott and Chairman Hank – all of which is perfectly good in its own way, but it feels like it would play better if it had been presented as a character-driven storyline in X-Men than as an attempted epic in DNX.
UNCANNY X-MEN #38. (Annotations here.) There’s an awful lot going on in this issue. I’m mostly on board with Sarah Gaunt setting up a rival school with the Scavenged, as a dodgy imitation of the X-Men and incoherent attempt to get back at Professor X; taking him off the board has been something of a problem for this character, given her obsession with him, but I can get behind the idea of her repositioning in a wonky attempt to usurp his legacy. It’s harder to know quite what to make of the Scavenged themselves at this stage, since it looks like they’re under some degree of mind control, but there’s enough there to hint at them being promising. Luciano Vecchio’s designs for them are looking good at this point, and Mutina’s slow-burn face turn (or at least her toying with the possibility) has been handled well enough that we can get behind her now.
Wolverine #29 annotations
WOLVERINE vol 8 #29
“Aftershocks on the Riviera”
Writer: Saladin Ahmed
Artist: Julius Ohta
Colour artist: Jesus Aburtov
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso
COVER: A straightforward Wolverine pin-up.
PAGE 1. A family of hotel guests get gassed.
We’ll find out in the next scene that this is Solem taking hostages. On the next page, Wolverine talks about this as a hotel for the “ultra-wealthy”, but Ahmed is going out of his way here to present this family sympathetically (“years of saving”).
PAGES 2-7. Wolverine arrives at the hotel and meets Solem.
This is the first time we’ve seen Solem in this series since the end of the Krakoan era. He did make a couple of appearances in Deadpool #9 and #13 last year, where he was still doing his smug hedonist routine. In those stories, he had given away his version of the Muramasa Blade, and the sword he’s carrying here seems to be a new one. Solem’s mutant power (aside from his evident longevity) is meant to be his adamantium skin, which was always a bit of a stretch given that it’s a man-made alloy, but we’ve seen stranger powers than that. This scene spells out that it’s more accurately described as an “adamantium mesh covering your skin”, essentially a sort of chainmail – this has certainly been offered before as an answer to “so how does he move”, though I’m not sure it’s been spelled out quite so directly in a story.
Uncanny X-Men #38 annotations
UNCANNY X-MEN vol 6 #38
“Soul Deep, part 2: In the Hands of a Wounded Child”
Writer: Gail Simone
Artist: Luciano Vecchio
Colour artist: Matthew Wilson
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
COVER: Wolverine and Nightcrawler in a swamp, apparently ready to fight an alligator or something. Nothing like this happens in the issue, but maybe it was always intended as a generic pin-up. For what it’s worth, the solicitations for this month listed Uncanny X-Men #37-38 as parts 1 and 2 of “The Scavenged”, but the actual story content in the solicitation seems to match with what we have here.
PAGES 1-4. Sarah Gaunt acquires a house.
Let’s start with the house. Sarah Gaunt’s back story, as related in the early issues of this series, involves her meeting Charles Xavier at Oxford University, entering a relationship with him, declaring after a month or so that she wants them to have children, and becoming vindictive when he rejects her. The broad strokes of that seem to be confirmed by Xavier himself.
DNX #4 annotations
DNX #4
Writer: Jed MacKay
Artist: Federico Vicentini
Colour artist: David Curiel
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
COVER: The Fantastic Four and the X-Men surrounded by newly transformed, zombie-like mutants. Nothing like this happens in the issue.
PAGES 1-3. Flashback: The Age of Revelation Beast sends his message back to the present.
This is a continuation of a scene from X-Men: Age of Revelation Finale. In the original scene, the Age of Revelation Beast swapped back into his body, and quickly figured out from speaking to Animalia that he had swapped minds with the Chairman instead of with the X-Men’s version of the Beast. Then he asked Schwarzchild to help him send “an information burst” to the past. We don’t see any of these characters again, before the world ends a few pages later.
In this version, the Beast continues by helpfully recapping the plot of “Age of Revelation” for the benefit of any newcomers. Interestingly, he suggests that the Age of Revelation X-Men weren’t aware that the Chairman was alive at all, and apparently still thought he had died at the end of Benjamin Percy’s X-Force run. Since 3K were framed for the release of the X-virus in the “AoR” timeline, presumably it did have a version of the Chairman, who got killed by Revelation before the X-Men found out his identity.
Housekeeping
Annotations will be up at the weekend, for anyone checking in.
