The X-Axis – w/c 7 October 2024
X-MEN: FROM THE ASHES INFINITY COMIC #13. By Alex Paknadel, Phillip Sevy, Michael Bartolo & Clayton Cowles. This is the end of the Beast/Blankslate arc, which feels a bit too high concept and abstract to quite work. There’s a reasonable idea in here: Beast is worried that something about his powers inevitably drives him mad, Blankslate copies his powers and seems to immediately go down that line. But ultimately Beast gets reassured that apparently he does have self-control. But if the Beast’s concern is that he’s going to go mad in the long run, what does a couple of weeks with Blankslate actually tell anyone? And more to the point, Blankslate never feels like a functioning character – the very nature of the concept almost prevents him from being one. So it’s a hard story to really connect with. But it’s a nice idea in theory.
EXCEPTIONAL X-MEN #2. (Annotations here.) We’re still at the stage of introducing the cast, but this seems like a fun series so far. Thao and Alex get their debuts here, and while they’re certainly recognisable types, there’s enough in the details to make them feel more fully thought out than that. And the cast dynamics seem promising: Trista wants mutant friends, Thao wants to be a mutant activist, Kate and Alex would both quite like a normal life, and who knows yet what Emma’s up to. It’s clearly a character-driven book, but the art can carry it, and I’m happy to see a bit more mundanity in the X-books, both here and in NYX. Okay, it stretches credibility at times – how many newly activated teen mutants can Kate stumble into while wandering around Chicago? Does Thao, the wannabe activist, really not recognise Kate Pryde even after hearing her name and seeing her powers? But I can let that sort of thing slide when I buy the characters.
Phoenix #4 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
PHOENIX #4
Writer: Stephanie Phillips
Artist: Alessandro Miracolo
Colour artist: David Curiel
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Annalise Bissa
PHOENIX:
Jean has volunteered to help out Captain Marvel, presumably as part of her ongoing efforts at rehabilitation. Instead, Carol invites her to a festival. Carol thinks Jean is overworking herself in an attempt to atone for something that wasn’t really her fault anyway. Carol argues that while Jean seems to have control of the Phoenix, she’s still afraid of it and needs to overcome that in order to really have control
GUEST STAR:
Captain Marvel is basically here to serve as a sounding board and warn Jean not to burn herself out. She mainly references rebuilding her own life after losing her identity to Rogue, but her concern about burnout and self-control might resonate more with her late-90s alcoholism storyline.
SUPPORTING CHARACTERS:
The Galactic Council – basically an intergalactic diplomatic talking shop – is mainly a Guardians of the Galaxy thing, though several of the diplomats also showed up in X-Men Red. Their base, the New Proscenium, appears here for the first time – the original Proscenium was another diplomatic conference centre, and was destroyed in the last run of Guardians.
X-Force #4 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-FORCE vol 7 #4
“Two Seconds Later”
Writer: Geoffrey Thorne
Artist: Marcus To
Colour artist: Erick Arciniega
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Editor: Mark Basso
X-FORCE:
Forge is still refusing to remove his telepathy blocking headband, something that gets quite heavily stressed in this issue. As in the previous issue, he’s puzzled that the information he’s getting from the Analog doesn’t seem to match with the actual location of the problem. He concludes that something’s interfering with it but doesn’t seem inclined to depart from his blind faith in it. He still gets fazed by seeing even an alternate reality Storm.
Captain Britain and Askani are getting increasingly impatient with Forge’s secrecy. Betsy uses her Captain Britain role for the first time in the series by letting the team travel through Otherworld in order to reach the Nexus of All Realities in Florida as quickly as possible; normally she can only go to Otherworld and return to where she came from, but the Nexus is a special case because it’s already connected to Otherworld in its own right.
Exceptional X-Men #2 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
EXCEPTIONAL X-MEN #2
Writer: Eve L Ewing
Artist: Carmen Carnero
Colour artist: Nolan Woodard
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Tom Brevoort
THE MAIN CAST:
Kate Pryde is still “Kate”, despite giving her name to Trista as “Kitty” in the previous issue. She doesn’t want to get dragged back into the mutant world by mentoring Trista, and when she stumbles upon some more mutant teenagers, she decides that the solution is just to introduce them to one another and leave them to get on with it. Such is her enthusiasm for the mundane world, she actually wants to go and watch a complete stranger’s high school soccer game. When asked about her own interest in sport, she defaults to talking about dance, but awkwardly acknowledges “some martial arts stuff”.
Kate does step in to calm the situation and get Thao and Alex to safety when a fight breaks out, but immediately gives Thao a dressing down for escalating the situation.
Trista Marshall is pestering Kate to remain friends with her, and seems to be looking for a mutant mentor.
Thao and Alex are the two new members of the core cast, making their in-story debut (though they were on the cover of issue #1). Thao is playing in the Senn High School soccer team – remarkably, this is a real school, shown in its actual colours, although they stopped short of using its bulldog logo. She’s unwilling to tolerate Alex being bullied, and starts frantically making the “Midnight M” sign at him. When he doesn’t respond – and doesn’t seem to want her help – she charges in anyway to fight the bullies. This is apparently fairly normal behaviour for her.
Daredevil Villains #39: Ramrod
DAREDEVIL #103 (September 1973)
“…Then Came Ramrod!”
Writer: Steve Gerber
Penciller: Don Heck
Inker: Sal Trapani
Letterer: Artie Simek
Colourist: George Roussos
Editor: Roy Thomas
We’ve skipped issue #102: it’s a fill-in by Chris Claremont and Syd Shores, and the villain is Stilt-Man. And now, back to the storyline in progress.
Daredevil has been working his way through a series of new supervillains, all created as henchmen by a mystery archvillain. Daredevil has already faced the nebulously religion-themed Dark Messiah, and psychedelic oddball Angar the Screamer. Ramrod is the next in the series.
What is a ramrod, anyway? Good question! Well, it’s a stick for ramming things into a gun barrel. You probably have one at home for your own musket. But in America, it also means a foreman who’s a strict disciplinarian. That’s presumably the sense that Steve Gerber had in mind, since Ramrod’s extremely token origin story has him as an obnoxious foreman on an oil rig. When he gets crushed by an oil drum, he’s taken to the same hospital where Mordecai Jones became the Dark Messiah a few issues back. The same shadowy villain carts him off, gives him superpowers, and tells him to kill Daredevil.
The X-Axis – w/c 30 September 2024
X-MEN: FROM THE ASHES INFINITY COMIC #17. By Alex Paknadel, Phillip Sevy, Michael Bartolo & Clayton Cowles. This is a weird high-concept arc, isn’t it? The Beast, who is actually a clone of the Krakoa-era Beast with some of his memories, is copied by Blankslate, a mutant who’s said to have no innate personality and decides that he wants to be the Beast. All this is apparently meant to riff off the Beast’s fear that he’s innately doomed by his biology to become a villain. I like the idea in theory, since this Beast is himself essentially a copy to start with. I’m not convinced it works in practice, though, since the two Hanks don’t feel like the same personality. I think what the story is trying to go for is that Blankslate’s different history is what drives him to act in a more aggressive way in order to hold on to sense of identity that he likes, even though his innate personality is the same, but I’m not sure that’s really coming across. Or maybe it’s just that there’s something inherently uncanny valley about the whole concept of Blankslate, which makes it difficult to get a hold on him.
X-MEN #5. (Annotations here.) This is a homage to the “psychic rescue” story from New X-Men #121, and that’s always a bold comparison to invite. Perhaps wisely, it doesn’t attempt to track the original story very directly, and Quentin Quire simply refuses to play along with the conceit of not talking. And there is a reason for invoking the original story beyond simple self-indulgence, because the main plot point is to bring Cassandra Nova back into the frame as a major villain, and she was the villain in the New X-Men story as well. Still, it’s a much more straightforward story than the original and probably doesn’t benefit from sending signals that something weirder might be on the way. But there’s plenty in here that I like: there’s an explanation of what actually differentiates two telepaths to justify having them on the same team; Psylocke’s relationship with Greycrow is brought back into the picture; and we establish that it’s Quentin who’s trying to ignore all the things that happened to him towards the end of the Krakoa era, rather than the book itself. Stegman does a really good Sabretooth in that scene, too, and if he has a tendency to draw his characters rather young, it works fine for Quentin.
Storm #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
STORM vol 5 #1
“Grand Opening”
Writer: Murewa Ayodele
Artist: Lucas Werneck
Colour artists: Alex Guimarães & Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Tom Brevoort
Yes, volume 5. There were minis in 1996, 2006 and 2023, and a short-lived ongoing series from 2014-2015 (which is the one that’s been counted towards this issue’s Legacy Number of #12).
STORM:
She’s opened something called the Storm Sanctuary in Atlanta, which seems to be some sort of flying base of nebulous function. It’s “a haven in the day of adversity, a solace during difficult times and a refuge in the hours of need”, apparently. What that means in practice beyond “it’s a wildlife sanctuary” isn’t at all clear, nor is how anyone’s supposed to take refuge in it when it’s floating above a skyscraper. It doesn’t seem to have any particularly mutant-specific function, and indeed Storm says in her press conference that she wants to pursue some goals of her own rather than simply pursuing the agenda of the X-Men or (now) the Avengers.
As the story begins, she’s riding a wave of popularity after dealing with a disaster in Oklahoma City (though since this was only seven days ago, she must have been working on the Sanctuary for a while). The problem appears to be a series of shockwaves coming from a power plant, which Storm initially assumes to be some sort of nuclear meltdown – and she develops signs of radiation poisoning rather quickly once inside the building. She’s also slightly unwell at the press conference which ends the issue, so that doesn’t bode well for her.
X-Men #5 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN vol 7 #5
“Psychic Rescue in Progress”
Writer: Jed MacKay
Penciller: Ryan Stegman
Inkers: JP Mayer, John Livesay & Ryan Stegman
Colourist: Marte Gracia
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
THE X-MEN:
Psylocke. She’s still in a relationship with Greycrow, which started in Hellions during the Krakoan era and was still in place as of the X-Men: Blood Hunt – Psylocke one-shot. However, this is the first time we’ve seen Greycrow in this series. She claims that what they have in common is being used as living weapons, and that she joined the X-Men in order to have a purpose to apply herself to. She tries to persuade him to join the X-Men, but his refusal – and his return to crime – are evidently not dealbreakers for her. Her nightmare in the “Black Bug Room” sequence is the thought that she’s only good for killing.
Quentin Quire. He doesn’t get on very well with Psylocke, who clearly finds him intensely irritating. Still, the two of them are reasonably co-operative on the “psychic rescue”. For all his bravado, his personal nightmare is an image of Sabretooth, so evidently he isn’t brushing off his decapitation in “Sabretooth War” as much as he claims. This Sabretooth also mocks Quentin for everyone else he cares about leaving him – interestingly, Wolverine makes the list.
The X-Axis – w/c 23 September 2024
X-MEN: FROM THE ASHES INFINITY COMIC #16. By Alex Paknadel, Phillip Sevy, Michael Bartolo & Clayton Cowles. Ah, so apparently the appearance of a duplicate Beast last issue wasn’t meant to come across as a new villain, which is how I read it… but the plot of this issue is basically that he turns out to be a villain. So that doesn’t exactly work for me. Still, I see what we’re doing here: the duplicate Beast is a mutant who simply takes on the persona of whoever’s around him, with little underlying personality of his own. And the idea is clearly to test the idea that something about the Beast inherently dooms him to become a villain by confronting him with another copy. The idea makes sense but I’m not entirely convinced – I think the issue for me is that the mimic character is just a bit too obviously contrived to fit the theme, so it’s hard to buy him as an actual person.
Oh, and no issue of Savage Wolverine this week, so apparently it was a miniseries. I’m quite relieved about that, to be honest, even though I liked the book, since Marvel seem to be determined to restore Wolverine to the level of overexposure that plagued him for so many years.
UNCANNY X-MEN #3. (Annotations here.) Four ongoing titles in a single week! It’s been a while since that happened, but that’s mainly because they’ve taken their time on rolling out the relaunch. Still, we’re back down to two next week.
NYX #3 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
NYX vol 2 #3
Writers: Jackson Lanzing & Collin Kelly
Artist: Francesco Mortarino
Colour artist: Raúl Angulo
Letterer: Joe Sabino
Editor: Annalise Bissa
THE CORE CAST:
Anole is this issue’s spotlight character. He was indeed fired from his bar job after the fight in issue #1, which was strongly implied at the time, but could just have been the bouncer exceeding his authority. His human roommates are letting him stay rent free for the moment. He heads off alone to investigate the new Morlocks, and gets invited to join; the point seems to be that he’s not just a mutant, but a visible mutant (unlike everyone else in the core cast). He objects to the suggestion that he’s an “X-Man” rather than a Morlock, insisting that all he wants to do be left alone to live a normal life, but ultimately seems willing to retain a link with the Morlocks. Still, he believes that visible mutants like him need to be out there in public to set an example; the Morlocks agree to follow his lead and “walk our brother home”.
Ms Marvel takes the lead in rounding everone up for a vigil for Shay, the mutant killed the previous night. (Shay hasn’t appeared before, but we do get a photograph of him on page 4.) Aside from Kamala just being generally nice, it’s striking that she’s the one who seems most keen to promote a show of mutant solidarity despite being a relative outsider to the mutant community. Perhaps she’s also just less jaded about this sort of thing.
