As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

EXCEPTIONAL X-MEN #3
Writer: Eve L Ewing
Artist: Carmen Carnero
Colour artist: Nolan Woodard
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Tom Brevoort

THE X-MEN:

Kate Pryde demands that Emma let the three teenagers go, and complains about Emma’s controlling nature, for several pages before giving in and fighting her. Kate is either immune to, or able to resist, Emma’s telepathy. There’s a precedent for this, with a handful of late Claremont stories claiming that Kate is resistant to telepathy while phased (we’re talking about the likes of X-Men: True Friends #2 here, mind you). Or, alternatively, she just has plenty of psychic training.

After Priti calms the situation, Kate grudgingly concedes that Emma is basically trustworthy and would be a very good teacher for the youngsters. However, she draws the line at taking the kids to a hidden base, and insists on training them in their community, in line with her general agenda in this series of wanting to return to the human world. Even then, she resists calling this project a “mutant dojo”. She tries to talk the kids out of aspiring to be heroes, though she accepts that they need enough training to defend themselves. She also disapproves of giving the kids codenames and costumes when they’re completely untrained and unqualified; it’s precisely what Professor X did with her, but she now thinks that was wrong. She’s hugely unimpressed with Emma ambushing the kids with a psychic illusion to see how they react.

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As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

PSYLOCKE vol 2 #1
“Masks”
Writer: Alyssa Wong
Artist: Vincenzo Carratù
Colourist: Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Editor: Darren Shan

Volume 1, if you’re wondering, was a four-issue miniseries published in 2010, featuring the original Psylocke.

PSYLOCKE.

She’s been taking mercenary work on the side, which she isn’t telling the X-Men about. Specifically, in this issue’s opening, she’s hired by politician Mr Acker (he doesn’t get a first name) to rescue his daughter Mila Acker from kidnappers. Mr Acker is apparently very anti-mutant, but Psylocke has no apparent qualms about taking this mission, since it really is just a genuine hostage rescue. She also wipes everyone’s memories of her involvement. This seems to be Psylocke quietly doing more-or-less heroic things in her own time, or just finding ways to keep herself permanently occupied. Her private missions aren’t solely mercenary, though, since she goes to investigate an AIM MGH event with no client. (It’s possible she would have told the X-Men about this if she hadn’t been benched at the time.)

Cyclops insists on Psylocke taking a week or two off because she never stops working. Notably, he sticks to this line even though he knows she’s just come back from Palmdale, California – presumably, he assumes that she’s been on some sort of private mission that she won’t talk about. Psylocke responds by yelling about how the X-Men need all hands on deck because of the ongoing threat to mutants, but of course the mission she just went on had nothing to do with all that. Cyclops implies that he thinks Psylocke still hasn’t got out of the habit of viewing herself as a living weapon (as she was raised to by the Hand), and that he’s trying to steer her away from that.

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As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

NYX vol 2 #5
Writers: Jackson Lanzing & Collin Kelly
Penciler: Francesco Mortarino
Inker: Elisabetta D’Amico
Colourist: Raúl Angulo
Letterer: Joe Sabino
Editor: Annalise Bissa

THE CORE CAST:

Prodigy becomes a public figure after his fight with the Krakoan last issue, with the Truthseekers gathering outside his apartment, and anti-mutant laws being proposed by the City Council as part of Empath’s plan to foment racial hatred (of which more in a bit).

Sophie seems to have been convinced, at least to start with. But as the vote draws near, she turns on Empath’s group and decides to side with Kamala, David and co after all. She telepathically sends all the protestors home, apologises, and is immediately accepted by Kamala, though Anole and Laura are a lot less forgiving. To be fair, Kamala is mainly trying to get the group to focus on the real problem. Sophie claims that the Cuckoos voted on whether to join Empath’s plan, but doesn’t actually say how she voted. However, her dialogue with the Cuckoos towards the end of the issue strongly implies that the “vote” was unanimous.

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As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

UNCANNY X-MEN vol 6 #5
“Red Wave, conclusion: Thunder in our Hearts”
Writer: Gail Simone
Artist: David Marquez
Colour artist: Matthew Wilson
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort

THE X-MEN

Rogue has been taking diction lessons, presumably out of insecurity about her accent. The opening flashback shows one of those lessons, “six months ago”; the part at the end is presumably her coming to her senses after being knocked out during her fight with Sarah Gaunt last issue, rather than something that actually happened.

We learn here that she absorbed some of Harvey X’s powers when she touched him in issue #1, which is why she was having psychic flashes over the last couple of issues.

Since her team don’t have any facilities to contain supervillains, she reluctantly hands the defeated Sarah Gaunt over to Corina Ellis, with a warning that they’ll be taking the Mansion back soon.

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As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

X-FACTOR vol 5 #4
“The Nematode”
Writer: Mark Russell
Artist: Bob Quinn
Colour artist: Jesus Aburtov
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Editor: Darren Shan

X-FACTOR

Havok actually seems fairly competent in this issue, if you overlook his willingness to be on this weird team in the first place.

Cecilia Reyes is being pressurised to adopt a codename for marketing purposes. She says that she joined X-Factor to get over her relationship with Oskar / Wintergeist (of whom more below) – she also mentioned this in passing in issue #2, and we saw them texting last issue. Once she gets his explanation for his disappearance, she does take him back.

Pyro has either been talked or pressurised into having his facial tattoo removed – it’s not clear how he was persuaded to do this, since he’s clearly not happy about it, or why X-Factor’s superiors waited until after his public debut. He claims that he joined X-Factor in order to promote his romance novels.

Frenzy joins the mission but doesn’t do much of importance.

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As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

Oh, and this week’s last set of annotations – X-Factor #4 – should be up on Saturday.

X-FORCE vol 7 #5
“One Second Later”
Writer: Geoffrey Thorne
Artist: Marcus To
Colour artist: Erick Arciniega
Letterer: Joe Caramanga
Editor: Mark Basso

X-FORCE:

Surge heroically sacrifices herself to stop Nuklo, and we see a body.

Sage is very unhappy that Forge hasn’t come up with a way to avoid this, but both Forge and Surge seem to accept that this isn’t within his control. The basic idea seems to be that Forge’s power comes up with a solution to the problem that he’s identified, but he doesn’t consciously understand why that solution will work (unless, presumably, he can work it out using regular human intelligence). So, although he knew that Surge’s involvement would solve the problem, he didn’t know that she’d die in the process. That in turn means that he couldn’t use his powers to avoid that outcome, because he didn’t know that it was a relevant question to be asking himself. Sage is not prepared to accept this line of reasoning, and quits.

Captain Britain, Askani and Tank are also here, but don’t do a great deal.

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As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

X-MEN vol 7 #7
“The Iron Night”
Writer: Jed MacKay
Penciller: Netho Diaz
Inkers: Sean Parsons & Livesay
Colourists: Marte Gracia & Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort

THE X-MEN

Cyclops. We get a flashback to the “Iron Night”, which explains the giant Sentinel that’s been hovering over the town since issue #1. After Krakoa fell and Phoenix departed for space, Cyclops returned to his family lodge near Merle to drown his sorrows. He resents the expectation that he’ll always be the one to lead the X-Men, but doesn’t take much persuasion from Magneto on the point – he’s already wearing his Morrison/Quitely-era X-Men jacket. It’s apparently just a coincidence that a Sentinel factory had been built in direct view of the Summers family lodge. According to issue #3, Cyclops got the building as a settlement with the US government following his torture at the hands of Orchis; evidently that comes after the flashback.

Temper. She continues to support Piper Cobb, even after a DNA test shows that she isn’t a mutant. She finds the Wild Sentinel attack on Merle reminiscent of her own encounter with a similar Sentinel, footnoted to Generation Hope #11. That’s the Schism tie-in issue with the Sentinel walking through San Francisco Bay to reach Utopia. The flashback specifically shows the opening scene of GH #11; the character sitting next to Temper is Velocidad.

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As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

NYX vol 2 #4
Writers: Jackson Lanzing & Collin Kelly
Artist: Enid Balám
Letterer: Joe Sabino
Colour artist: Raúl Angulo
Editor: Annalise Bissa

THE CORE CAST:

David Alleyne is the spotlight character in this issue. As strongly indicated in earlier issues, he’s responsible for the various mutant-themed street art that we’ve seen in the background throughout the series. He wears a costume when making his art, and shows up in the same costume to fight the Krakoan during the story.

At first, he refuses to help Kamala against the Krakoan, even though Kamala only wants him to come along and try to talk sense into Julian as an old friend (which would be a stretch, but she doesn’t know that). David claims that his “position requires a very careful balance” and that he can’t be seen in that sort of role. Kamala interprets this as David being unwilling to compromise his own comfort, and decides that Sophie’s sell-out accusations in issue #1 were correct. However, when Ms Marvel is clearly losing to Julian, and nobody else shows up to help, David does indeed intervene, and both of them wind up being arrested. David assumes that this will cost him his job with the university, but for the moment it’s just an assumption.

The narration in this issue consists largely of David’s “lecture notes” (which read more like brainstorming sessions). Very broadly speaking, his key points seem to be:

• Mutant culture is rooted in the superhero/supervillain paradigm, and by extension in violence.
• Mutant culture has been stuck in a binary choice of Professor X’s integration and Magneto’s domination, both of which have failed. Krakoa offered a third choice of separatism, which also failed (at least for people who didn’t want to emigrate to the White Hot Room).
• Mutants have been unable to live among other people and, in trying to do so, are left with only their inner lives as the remnants of mutant community.
• Another path needs to be found for mutants which breaks out of these binaries.
• Humans (or at least human authorities) are reasonably to be assumed to be hostile, if not outright genocidal.

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We’re going to be running off the normal schedule for the next couple of weeks, so expect things to be running a few days late. As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

X-FACTOR vol 5 #3
“Project Paperclip”
Writer: Mark Russell
Artist: Bob Quinn
Colour artist: Jesus Aburtov
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Editor: Tom Brevoort

X-FACTOR

The team are being packed off to autograph signing at conventions, which does at least reflect the PR aspect of their official remit. Havok is still worried about what happened to Polaris after she was left behind with the Mutant Underground at the end of the previous issue. He claims that all he cares about is getting his team back safely, and that he no longer has any misgivings about fighting other mutants (presumably following his encounter with the Underground last issue).

Granny Smite gets a back story here: she lived to 86 without realising that she was a mutant, at which point she lost her entire family within six months in disasters that she survived unscathed. Or at least, that’s Broderick’s account. It does beg some questions: as described here, she’s apparently not just immortal but invulnerable. Could you really live to 86 without noticing that? And since she apparently does age, can she die of old age? Nonetheless, Broderick’s account seems to match her behaviour: she’s lost everything she cared about and she seems to be mainly interested in getting herself killed. She clearly takes some enjoyment in freaking people out – she signs her publicity photo “I welcome death.” Havok isn’t at all convinced that she should be on the team, but to be fair, she does have useful powers and she is perfectly co-operative in a crisis. Then again, she’s also mentally unstable and barely trained.

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We’re going to be running off the normal schedule for the next couple of weeks, so expect things to be running a few days late. As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

X-MEN vol 7 #6
“Bark”
Writer: Jed MacKay
Penciller: Netho Diaz
Inker: Sean Parsons
Colourists: Marte Gracia & Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort

THE X-MEN:

Cyclops is team leader, chairing the X-Men’s meeting. He’s a little more reluctant than Magneto to acknowledge Ben and Jennifer as proper mutants, but does accept them.

Temper spots that one of the protestors outside the Factory – and they’re a small group – has a child who makes the “Midnight Bark” (or “Midnight M”) hand signal at her. Rather than tell Cyclops, she decides to take maters into her own hands and asks Magik to help, presumably seeing her as someone else who likely to agree. Note that she doesn’t go to Kid Omega, her ex, who had already made clear to her that he wasn’t really interested in messing with the protestors. She evidently isn’t put off by the warnings that she might start some sort of incident by taking matters into her own hands.

Magik‘s long distance chess game from issue #4 gets another mention – her opponent in that story apeared to be Colossus. The game is apparently something she’s keeping private, but she doesn’t seem that upset that Temper knows about it. She seems mainly amused by Temper’s response to the girl – she cautions that it could be a PR trap but seems quite happy to leave it up to Temper to decide what to do about it. The risk of starting an outright fight with O*N*E doesn’t really seem to bother her either.

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