Phoenix #3 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
PHOENIX #3
Writer: Stephanie Phillips
Artist: Alessandro Miracolo
Colour artist: David Curiel
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Annalise Bissa
PHOENIX:
Despite the general tone of issues #2-3, she does trust Corsair enough to leave him to defend her body while she enters Hakan’s mind, in order to find out what all the zombie Asgardians are about. She empathises with Hakan’s pain but seems surprisingly reluctant to judge Odin’s punishment – she’s not normally this reticent. She seems to see Hakan as having brought it on himself by starting a civil war in Asgard, but the flashback we see is much more concerned to present Hakan sympathetically, and so Jean’s reaction seems at odds with it. Anyway, she lays the undead Asgardians to rest, then drives off the Black Order.
SUPPORTING CAST:
Corsair turns out to have been after a feather from one of Odin’s ravens which was buried in the Asgardian graveyard, and which is apparently valuable to collectors or something. To be fair, the idea that he would rope Phoenix into this adventure when his main priority was to find a trinket is fair enough – and Phoenix lets him keep the feather. But the story still seems to expect us to be surprised that Corsair would do something as low-level decent as taking the Black Order’s slave labour force home (despite the fact that his origin story involves him being an escaped slave himself). I try to be fairly open minded in the annotation posts about how flexibly a character can be interpreted, but this book’s approach to Corsair seems just downright incorrect to me.
X-Force #3 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-FORCE vol 7 #3
“The Walking Man”
Writer: Geoffrey Thorne
Artist: Marcus To
Colour artist: Erick Arciniega
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Editor: Mark Basso
X-FORCE:
Forge is a little troubled by the fact that Nuklo is causing havoc in Phnom Penh when the Analog says they’re meant to be heading somewhere 100 miles north – but not to the point of shaking his confidence in following the directions from his powers. He’s reassured when the Analog tells him that Nuko is merely connected to the “fracture” that they’re investigating.
Sage is frustrated by the vagueness of what the Analog actually is; she’s reluctant to just trust to Forge’s mutation. Her narration takes a detour to lament the fact that Professor X gives his students a simplistic, “binary” view of the world only for them to find out that it’s more complicated than that. Although she suggests that this was a problem for his other students rather than for her, there’s a fairly obvious subtext that she’s really talking about herself; Xavier sent her to infiltrate the Hellfire Club as a long-term mole.
Uncanny X-Men #3 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
UNCANNY X-MEN vol 6 #3
“Red Wave, part 3: The Inside Man”
Writer: Gail Simone
Artist: David Marquez
Colour artist: Matthew Wilson
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
THE X-MEN:
Rogue and Gambit have chosen to stay at Haven even though they have options; she feels they qualify as “orphans”, and besides, the Outliers certainly do (at least in a metaphorical sense).
Wolverine leaves, just as he refused to stay with Cyclops’ team in X-Men #1. He satisfies himself that Rogue will be able to take care of the Outliers, and claims that something feels wrong with him and that he doesn’t feel people are safe around him right now. As a parting gift, he leaves something outside for Rogue – presumably the makeshift Danger Room in the grounds, or maybe part of it. He then heads for the Kisatchie National Forest, apparently in search of Sarah Gaunt. At least, that’s where she finds him. Somehow, he’s able to psychically warn Rogue when he’s being killed by Sarah, but that might be more to do with Sarah’s magic.
Jubilee sticks around. Wolverine expects her to take his departure badly, but we don’t actually see that.
Daredevil Villains #38: Angar the Screamer
DAREDEVIL #100-101 (June-July 1973)
“Mind Storm!” / “Vengeance in the Sky with Diamonds!”
Writer: Steve Gerber
Pencillers: Gene Colan (layouts #100) & Rich Buckler (#101)
Inkers: John Tartaglione (finishes #100) & Frank Giacoia (#101)
Letterer: Artie Simek
Colourists: Stan Goldberg (#100), George Roussos (#101)
Editor: Roy Thomas
We’ve skipped issue #99, which doesn’t have a villain. Instead, it has Daredevil and Hawkeye literally fighting over the Black Widow as part of a loose crossover with Avengers. Natasha is so unimpressed by this display of 1970s machismo that she sticks around in Avengers for an extra month and skips Daredevil #100 entirely, despite being billed as co-star on the cover. So, in her absence, Daredevil has an anniversary issue all on his own.
In trying to find an approach to the book that works, Steve Gerber’s first thought is to play up the location. If this is Marvel’s only comic set in San Francisco, then surely it’s got to be about the counterculture, right? And so issue #100 guest stars Jann Wenner, the editor of Rolling Stone, who spends a good chunk of the book interviewing our hero. Daredevil endorses Rolling Stone as a quality publication, but “didn’t think the counter-culture was interested in anybody who works with the police.” Wenner assures him otherwise: “Of course they’re interested! You work with the cops, but you’re fair! You want the system to work justly, up-front – and even people who oppose the system can respect that!”
The X-Axis – w/c 16 September 2024
X-MEN: FROM THE ASHES INFINITY COMIC #15. By Alex Paknadel, Phillip Sevy, Michael Bartolo & Clayton Cowles. This is the first part of a Beast story, and it spends much of the time setting up its take on the character. We’re directly reminded that this guy is in fact the last surviving Beast clone with copied memories – something that X-Men itself has largely danced around, for perfectly good reasons, since it hasn’t been relevant yet. In this series, it does matter, because it goes to the fact that Hank has skipped all the decades of continuity in which he became evil or showed up as an evil version from another universe. Reasonably but predictably, Hank is struggling with the idea that this might be an inevitable direction for his character. Perhaps more interesting is the idea that he doesn’t even feel able to trust his own reasoning to avoid that direction, because his evil versions were all hyper-rational anyway. Having set up all that quite nicely, the story then packs Beast off to rescue a new mutant (everyone else is busy), and in true Silver Age style it turns out to be a villain. That side of things is a bit more sketchy so far, but it seems like a story that should be able to come together.
SAVAGE WOLVERINE INFINITY COMIC #8. By Tom Bloom, Guillermo Sanna, Java Targalia & Joe Sabino. End of the arc and, yeah, this was actually good. The story is perfectly fine, but Sanna’s angular and brutal art really is the draw for this series. I’m not 100% sure about the final reveal, but on balance I think it works – and I quite like the idea that the mutants who did skip out going to Krakoa might feel a bit uncomfortable about looking to the big name characters for help now. Anyway, if you’ve got an Unlimited subscription and you’re not overdosing on Wolverine already, this one is worth your time.
X-Factor #2 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-FACTOR vol 5 #2
“We Could Be Heroes”
Writer: Mark Russell
Artist: Bob Quinn
Colour artist: Jesus Aburtov
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Editor: Darren Shan
X-FACTOR:
Havok is apparently either living with Polaris or at least staying the night with her, despite her firm disapproval of his involvement in X-Factor. He defends the operation to her, despite his doubts, and explains that the team aren’t going on any missions until they figure out how last issue’s debut got so many characters killed. In fact, later in the issue, he seems to be arguing for this investigation to take place, which implies that he’s lying to Polaris about it being in train already. Even so, he understandably objects to her clumsily pushing him into an intervention by the Mutant Underground.
General Mills plays to Havok’s insecurities by telling him that he was put in charge of the team because he was a proper hero that they would look up to.
Pyro is appointed as Havok’s second in command. Havok objects to this, citing Pyro’s history in the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants – though Pyro was pretty clearly rehabilitated as a Marauder during the Krakoan era. He maybe has a better point in terms of whether Pyro has ever shown any leadership skills. And in fairness, if Havok sees X-Factor’s function as being to improve mutant PR, he might well question what a well-known ex-terrorist is doing on the team from that point of view. For his part, Pyro seems happy to swan around Factor House and enjoy the free drinks.
X-Men #4 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN vol 7 #4
“Upstarts”
Writer: Jed MacKay
Penciller: Netho Diaz
Inker: Sean Parsons
Colourist: Marte Gracia
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
THE X-MEN:
Cyclops stays behind at the Factory and sits out this mission, so plays a relatively minor role.
Magik is assigned as team leader for the mission, which makes sense given her role as one of the Captains of Krakoa. Granted, it means she’s chosen for the job over the Beast, but since he doesn’t even want to go, that seems fair enough. Beast is impressed with her performance in the field and thinks she’s a born leader, but he may not fully realise quite how fatalistic she is. According to Magik, she thinks there’s no hope of mutants ever winning, and her goal is just to “keep from losing for as long as possible”. Krakoa is the elephant in the room where this worldview is concerned; was she expecting it to fail all along, or just rationalising it after the fact?
Temper and Juggernaut make up her limited field team. Juggernaut gets to give a speech about how he’s opted into making mutant affairs his business, and that the X on his helmet is a crosshairs that he chooses to wear.
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
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
WOLVERINE vol 8 #1
“In the Bones”
Writer: Saladin Ahmed
Artist: Martín Cóccolo
Colour artist: Bryan Valenza
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso
WOLVERINE:
A less-than-prominent editorial note on the credits page places this story before X-Men #1 and Uncanny X-Men #1, though you could work that out anyway.
After the fall of Krakoa, Logan has headed off to the Canadian wilderness, as he sometimes does, to run around naked with wolves. He hasn’t completely dropped off the radar but he’s made it very clear that he wants to be left alone. Logan attributes his mental state to the trauma of “Fall of X” and associated events, and seems to be saying that now that he’s finally in a position to take some time to drop out of society, that’s what he wants to do. He resents being told that he has responsibilities as a prominent mutant (which is consistent with how he’s been acting in the X-Men books).
The wolves get wiped out by Cyber rather quickly, and Logan blames himself for exposing them to the inevitable attack by one of his villains. A few pages later, one of the campers who survived Cyber’s attack makes essentially the same argument – that the mutants drew Cyber to attack them. He’s not exactly wrong, but given his anti-mutant tone, Wolverine has a lot less sympathy for him, and declares that if Cyber comes back for him then he has it coming. In fact, though, Wolverine does try to protect them.
Uncanny X-Men #2 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
UNCANNY X-MEN vol 6 #2
“Red Wave, part 2: There Was a Before, There Will be an After”
Writer: Gail Simone
Artist: David Marquez
Colour artist: Matthew Wilson
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
THE X-MEN:
Rogue thinks that it’s fallen to her little group to step up and be the X-Men. She flags that the Outliers were willing to ally with her when most of the former X-Men wouldn’t return her calls. The elephant in the room here is the state of her relationship with Cyclops. They’re clearly in touch and basically cordial – they spoke last issue and speak again in this one. At the end of issue #1 (which leads directly into this one) Rogue said that “Cyclops is building something up there [north], I think”.
However… this issue includes Rogue’s side of her conversation with Cyclops from X-Men #3. If so, this issue comes after X-Men #2, where Cyclops’s team showed up publicly in San Francisco, and attracted some public attention. So did Rogue just miss all that? Or does she not regard Cyclops’ team as proper X-Men for some reason? The fact that she calls Cyclops “the last guy I want to talk to” might point in the latter direction.
Gambit is apparently affected by the Eye of Agamotto which he obtained last issue. It’s described here as the “left” eye, which alludes to the fact that it’s the pair of the one normally found in the custody fo Dr Strange. (For more of the back story, see the Uncanny X-Men #1 annotations under “Sadurang”.) This plot is a bit odd, since the issue starts with everyone apparently aware of the issue, and I don’t see anything in issue #1 setting it up. Anyway, the Eye fires off an energy blast without Gambit wanting it to. He says he’s “picked up a hitcher” who’s “a bit twitchy”.
