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

WOLVERINE vol 8 #2
“Blood and Debt”
Writer: Saladin Ahmed
Artist: Martín Cóccolo
Colour artist: Bryan Valenza
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Tom Brevoort

WOLVERINE:

Wolverine has accepted Nightcrawler’s argument from the previous issue that he can’t leave the world behind, if only because the things that he’s trying to avoid will just follow him. Nonetheless, for the moment he’s still hanging around in the wilderness, presumably because Cyber is still out there. Cyber doesn’t appear in this story, but the plot is driven by the murders he committed in issue #1. Nightcrawler doesn’t appear either: presumably he was taken to hospital after the end of the previous issue.

Wolverine decides to help the new Wendigo (see below), after reminding himself that he used to be an animal and that other people helped him to regain his humanity – a familiar Wolverine trope. He takes this idea to the point of fighting off the Department H soldiers who are trying to capture the Wendigo; he claims that he’s trying to avoid a fight in which the soldiers would just get slaughtered. Despite his dislike of Department H, he regards this squad as legitimate (if underwhelming) footsoldiers and tries to do minimal harm to them – but he suggests that he also fears that drawing blood would affect his self-control too. He seems to take it as read that Department H either wouldn’t or couldn’t help the Wendigo.

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

UNCANNY X-MEN vol 6 #4
“Red Wave, part 4: The Eye of a Hurricane”
Writer: Gail Simone
Artist: David Marquez
Colourist: Matthew Wilson
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort

THE X-MEN:

Rogue confirms that there’s no logical explanation for her suddenly becoming aware of Wolverine’s injuries at the end of the previous issue. The suggestion seems to be that Sarah Gaunt deliberately lured her there after learning about Haven (and the Outliers’ presence there) when she defeated Wolverine in the previous issue. For some reason Rogue decides to stay and fight Sarah alone; maybe some more compulsion is at work, or maybe she just underestimates Sarah’s power even after seeing how badly she thrashed Wolverine.

Nightcrawler  is now referring to Rogue as “sister”. When asked for some good news, he replies “Krakoa yet lives”, presumably meaning the spirit of the place rather than anything literal.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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