The X-Axis – w/c 24 March 2025
X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #15. By Alex Paknadel, Phillip Sevy, Michael Bartolo & Clayton Cowles. For the most part I’ve liked Paknadel and Sevy’s Infinity Comics stories, but this arc feels like it’s going back over the same territory as their previous arc. I can kind of see the appeal right now of having Americans cast the mutants returning from Krakoa as immigrants – yes, it undercuts X-Men #35 for there to be that many of them, but okay, we’ll run with it for the purposes of the current stories. This sort of believable grassroots bigotry was the subject of the first arc and worked pretty well there. But it feels like we’re just repeating that idea rather than developing the theme here.
X-MANHUNT OMEGA. (Annotations here.) Well, that’s two crossovers under the current editorial office, and neither of them has exactly been great. They’re not catastrophic or anything, but at best they feel like a distraction that doesn’t play to the books’ strengths. Part of that is simply that the post-Krakoa X-books have opted to avoid a unifying theme in favour of going for a diaspora with a wide range of approaches, and that results in a bunch of comics that don’t particularly want to be yoked together into a single plot. Part of it’s just an inherent feature of old-school crossovers – Marvel do them because they move the needle, not because they make the books better.
Laura Kinney: Wolverine #4 annotations
LAURA KINNEY: WOLVERINE #4
“Brother in Arms, part 1”
Writer: Erica Schultz
Artist: Giada Belviso
Colour artist: Rachelle Rosenberg
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso
This one won’t take us long.
WOLVERINE
Bucky claims to be enlisting her help because he needs an “old-school tracker” to locate Henrick Schneider. She doesn’t believe this is the whole story but doesn’t seem to press him on it. She seems to be happy enough to go along for the sake of the road trip and the chance to go after a Nazi mad scientist. Bucky specifically sells to her the fact that Schneider tortured mutants.
Naturally enough, she sees Bucky as “not so different from me”, as they’re both would-be heroes trying to escape a past when they were used as weapons. This was also the theme with Elektra, the guest star in the previous arc.
She’s surprised to find that the unnamed mutant they rescue in Red Oak wanted to keep it secret that he was a mutant, and has to remind herself that not all mutants are “ready to be out” (to be fair, there weren’t many closeted mutants on Krakoa, nor is she meeting many in NYX).
Uncanny X-Men #12 annotations
UNCANNY X-MEN vol 6 #12
“Some Kinda Way”
Writer: Gail Simone
Artist: Gavin Guidry
Colour artist: Matthew Wilson
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
THE X-MEN
Gambit. This is a self-contained spotlight issue for him.
The flashbacks to his childhood take place, according to him, at a time when he “wasn’t quite wild yet, not quite feral”. He’s been adopted by Jean-Luc LeBeau at this point, but hasn’t yet been fully accepted into the Thieves Guild. If we’re going by the account of his early life in Gambit #1 (1999), this almost certainly means that he’s ten. According to that story, Remy was always seen as significant in New Orleans Guilds circles because of his strange eyes, and Jean-Luc had been keeping an eye on him throughout his life, but wasn’t able to take him in earlier due to guild politics. In the years running up to this, he’s been a member of a street gang called Fagan’s Mob, learned to fight and pick pockets, and already befriended Bella Donna Boudreaux. Everything here is basically consistent with that.
Remy’s powers are apparently starting to manifest at this point. He’s promised to stay out of trouble but winds up getting into a fight with some other Assassins Guild family members, which the Vig gets him out of, leaving him in debt. (See below.) These events also lead to him meeting Marcus St Juniors for the first time, while in hiding from the Assassins Guild. It turns out that the whole thing was engineered by the Vig, and this story is basically Gambit standing up to him when he tries to get back into Gambit’s life.
X-Manhunt Omega annotations
X-MANHUNT OMEGA
“X-Manhunt Finale: Dreams End”
Writers: Murewa Ayodele & Gail Simone
Artists: Gleb Melnikov, Federica Mancin & Edni Balám
Colour artist: Brian Reber
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Tom Brevoort
This double-sized one-shot is the final part of the “X-Manhunt” crossover. For annotation purposes, I’m going to treat it as an X-Men special.
X-MEN
Cyclops. When trying to reconcile with Rogue in a flashback set after “Raid on Graymalkin”, he makes an optimistic case for the post-Krakoan diaspora as offering a range of different mutant dreams; he seems to be rationalising Krakoa as a dream that went wrong because it was one-size-fits-all.
Nonetheless, he insists that Professor X has to be kept in prison. His official argument is that Xavier is worth sacrificing to preserve deals with the US government (which, to be fair, was Professor X’s stated reason for handing himself in to the authorities in the first place), but he seems to believe that Professor X deserves to be there for the atrocities he committed in House of X, and he resents the trauma that Professor X has inflicted on him over the years. He doesn’t know that the crew of the Agnew were simulacra, something which seems to surprise Professor X (who, on one reading of the original scene, was trying to heavily hint to Scott that all was not as it seemed). Professor X suggests that Cyclops is caught between hating him and not wanting him to leave.
The X-Axis – w/c 17 March 2025
ASTONISHING X-MEN INFINITY COMIC #14. By Alex Paknadel, Phillip Sevy, Michael Bartolo & Clayton Cowles. Well, this is pretty much a second chapter hitting much the same beats as the first. Paige is staying with Sean in Ireland but she can’t get away from anti-mutant sentiment; Angelo is working on a construction site and outclassed human workers are annoyed. It moves things on a little bit, by trying to make Sean simultaneously a protective father to Paige and a badass to the villagers, and by having Paige try to use her powers to live as a different person at the end, but to be honest most of the issue feels like it’s covering quite familiar ground.
X-FORCE #9. (Annotations here.) So the June solicitations are out and X-Factor is indeed finished. Which means that this seven-part crossover runs through the penultimate issues of three cancelled books. It’s hard to believe that this was the best way of doing things, though admittedly X-Factor and NYX more or less made it work. X-Force, though, finds itself having to interrupt a fight scene in progress so that a character who isn’t technically on the team can help Professor X borrow a spaceship. As an issue of X-Force it’s a distraction, which could have been used to resolve the book’s actual story.
Magik #3 annotations
MAGIK vol 3 #3
“Pacts”
Writer: Ashley Allen
Artist: Germán Peralta
Colour artist: Arthur Hesli
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Editor: Darren Shan
MAGIK
While in Liminal’s domain, she can’t teleport and can only use simple magic. This seems to still be enough for her to put up a fight against him, but he gets back in control quickly enough that he may just be stringing her along. Liminal claims her magic is impaired in his domain because it’s so closely linked with him (and that he’d be in the same position in Limbo, which is equally closely tied to her) – but he also suggests that her bigger issue is a refusal to access Darkchild’s power.
She hates being trapped in Liminal’s domain, evidently because it reminds her of her origin story – something that Liminal goes out of his way to play up with “constructs” of characters from the first Magik miniseries. Belasco seems to particularly disturb her.
Psylocke #5 annotations
PSYLOCKE vol 2 #5
“Hostile Hospitality”
Writer: Alyssa Wong
Artists: Vincenzo Carratù with Moisés Hidalgo
Colour artist: Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Editor: Darren Shan
PSYLOCKE
She takes particular exception to being treated as an object to be preserved, which brings to mind her upbringing with the Hand. She thinks that the Hand regarded her not merely as a weapon but as “something to be discarded when it’s outlived its use” – the accompanying flashback in fact shows childhood friend Mitsuki being murdered in order to motivate Kwannon, but evidently she sees no real difference between the two. At least in the flashback, she feels guilty for failing to protect her best friend.
She declares that she’s spent too long hiding from her past and trying to “bury” what happened to her in order to build a new future. There’s at least a suggestion that this is why she’s chosen to take on Betsy’s Psylocke name and role instead of focussing on her own identity. The other moral that she draws from the story is that the Taxonomist’s traumatic past is not an excuse for his current behaviour, with obvious parallels to herself.
Exceptional X-Men #7 annotations
EXCEPTIONAL X-MEN #7
Writer: Eve L Ewing
Artist: Carmen Carnero
Colour artist: Nolan Woodard
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Tom Brevoort
This isssue is bannered as an “X-Manhunt” tie in, with the tag “Collateral Damage” instead of a part number. On his Substack, Tom Brevoort described it as a “red skies” crossover and he wasn’t kidding – the “crossover” consists of a two page scene in which the cast learn that “X-Manhunt” is happening, exchange some thoughts on it, and then get back to the plot. That’s literally it.
THE CORE CAST
Emma Frost. The issue opens with a five page monologue by Emma accompanied by a montage of images from her life. The general thrust is that she’s been through a cycle of building safe havens for mutants, trying to escape the human world, and seeing them collapse – hence, she’s experimenting with “something else”. Presumably, by that she means training the mutants within the human world instead of withdrawing from it. (The Massachusetts Academy had mostly human students, but it was still an elite boarding school and so outside the normal world in other ways.) This is more something that Kate insisted upon, but she seems to be coming round to it.
X-Force #9 annotations
X-FORCE vol 7 #9
“X-Manhunt, part 6: The Shapley Value”
Writer: Geoffrey Thorne
Artist: Marcus To
Colour artist: Erick Arciniega
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Editor: Mark Basso
X-FORCE
This is the penultimate chapter of the “X-Manhunt” crossover. It’s also the penultimate issue of the series, so X-Force can’t break off in mid-storyline to participate; hence, the crossover A-plot actually consists of Sage (not technically on the team right now) helping out Professor X, while X-Force spend the whole issue continuing the fight that started last issue. Forge, Askani, Captain Britain and Tank get to contribute to this vital exercise.
SUPPORTING CAST
Sage. Her real name is Terisia Karišik, as used at the end of the previous issue, which would imply that she’s Bosnian. (She’s been presented as Balkan in the past, but this is more specific.) She claims that she deleted her telepathy in “my last system update”, along with her alcoholism and “some other traits”. This presumably explains her mental recovery between the flashback and main story in issue #1. Professor X doesn’t seem particularly surprised by this notion, and it may be intended to explain the inconsistent portrayal of her psychic powers over the years.
Daredevil Villains #48: Bullseye
DAREDEVIL #131-132 (March & April 1976)
“Watch Out for Bullseye, He Never Misses!” / “Bullseye Rules Supreme”
Writer, editor: Marv Wolfman
Penciller: Bob Brown
Inker: Klaus Janson
Colourist: Michele Wolfman
Letterer: Joe Rosen
Well, it took us 48 goes and over a decade of comics, but we’ve finally reached one of the really big names. We’ve had enduring second-tier villains like the Gladiator, the Jester and the Owl. We’ve had some villains who were big deal for a short time, like the Masked Marauder and the Death-Stalker. And we’ve had a whole bunch of one-off villains. But truly A-list villains? There’s the Purple Man, perhaps, but his claim to that status rests largely on stories published long after he stopped appearing in Daredevil.
Bullseye is in a different position. He still appears in Daredevil today. He’ll get his own minis. He’s a recognisable figure around the Marvel Universe. He’ll even make it to the Dark Avengers. But it’ll take him a little time. He made it into the first Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe but didn’t make the cut for the Deluxe Edition – which means he was ranked below the likes of the Death-Throws, a team of evil jugglers. He didn’t get back in until Update ’89. So why didn’t he click immediately?
