As always, this post contains spoilers and page numbers…

Well, I was going to go with the page numbers in Kindle, but for some reason Kindle is absolutely insistent now that comics start on page 2, which is the cover. So hell, let’s go with the story pages.

X-FACTOR vol 5 #8
“X-Manhunt, part 5: The Summers of Days Past”
Writer: Mark Russell
Artist: Bob Quinn
Colour Artist: Jesus Aburtov
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Editor: Darren Shan

In legacy numbering, this is issue #300 – not that the various books called X-Factor have a great deal in common. For the anniversary, we get a larger legacy number on the front cover, and a cover gallery at the end of the issue. Exciting!

X-FACTOR

Angel. He seems to have no problem at all with opposing the X-Men on behalf of the US government and returning Professor X to Graymalkin, despite the X-Men protesting that it’s a “mutant-hating death-trap”. (As mentioned at the end of the last chapter, the X-Men agreed with Storm that Professor X should at least go to a less inhumane prison.) It’s odd behaviour, but to be honest, none of the remaining team seem to have any particular problem with carrying out this mission. Even so, the team’s performance is predictably dismal – the only members to manage any meaningful offence at all are Angel himself and, of all people, ForgetMeNot.

While he was in hospital after issue #1, Angel had “elective procedures” carried out to restore his Archangel powers. This whole thread is a bit odd: he lost that power off panel somewhere between Heir of Apocalypse and X-Factor #1 in what appears to have been a continuity error, and certainly wasn’t explained. The new Archangel also has metal cloaws on his hands and feet (which look like they might be glove-like contraptions) and carries a sword. He also has a weird new move where he folds his metal wings around himself into a sort of buzzsaw.

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

X-MEN vol 7 #13
“X-Manhunt, part 4: Gods and Monsters”
Writer: Jed MacKay
Penciller: Netho Diaz
Inker: Sean Parsons
Colourist: Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort

THE X-MEN

Cyclops. He spends most of the issue unconscious. Despite the recap claiming that Storm “badly injur[ed]” him in the last chapter, the ice on his face doesn’t seem to do any lasting damage.

Psylocke. She takes command when Cyclops is unconscious. She has a grudge against Professor X for possessing her in issue #9 (during “Raid on Graymalkin”), but she’s more aggrieved by Storm for sheltering him. In part, that’s because Professor X is a danger to those around him, something that Storm doesn’t know (more on that below), and she’s brought him into a populated area – but mainly she views Storm as someone who’s bought into her goddess schtick and “can’t imagine being wrong”. This is a dubious reading of Storm’s character, but it’s a plausible view for Psylocke to hold of her.

At any rate, Psylocke certainly isn’t intimidated by Storm’s persona or reputation, and feels entirely comfortable lecturing her. Admittedly, even in taking the moral high ground, she threatens to kill Maggott , and claims that “we are just monsters”; the lecture gets Storm back to her senses, but doesn’t exactly her convince her of Psylocke’s moral standing.

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

WOLVERINE vol 8 #7
“Ancient History”
Writer: Saladin Ahmed
Artist: Martín Cóccolo
Colour artist: Bryan Valenza
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso

WOLVERINE

Not much to say, really. He fights some people, listens to Romulus rant, and vouches for some of what Romulus says so that we know that there’s a core we should take seriously.

GUEST STAR

Wolverine (Laura Kinney). She’s there in the fight scene but doesn’t contribute much to the plot beyond that.

VILLAINS

Romulus. The story cuts through his garbled and confusing history by having Laura describe him as “the guy who claims to have founded Rome” and “to be the origin of our bloodline”, and immediately having Logan say that “Most of it’s lies and head games.” In other words, all that really matters for present purposes is that he makes these grandiose and self-mythologising claims about himself, which are probably (but not definitively) false. The story does seem to want us to accept that he’s been around since the classical era but it doesn’t greatly matter whether we believe his claim to be the mythological Romulus, co-founder and first king of Rome. Wolverine certainly believes that he’s been around since “before Jesus was born”.

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

STORM vol 5 #6
“X-Manhunt, part 3: Thundercloud”
Writer: Murewa Ayodele
Artist: Luciano Vecchio
Colour artists: Alex Guimarães & Rachelle Rosenberg
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Tom Brevoort

This is part 3 of the “X-Manhunt” crossover. We skipped issue #5, because it came out in a massively overloaded week.

STORM

And since we skipped last issue, a recap might be useful. In issue #1, Storm contracted radiation poisoning. In issue #3, she’s cured by the evil spirit Eégún in exchange for her agreeing to refrain from using her powers for a week. In issue #4, she breaks that deal to save an innocent from Dr Doom, and is immediately struck dead. In issue #5, she is resurrected by Eternity, and becomes his host. (It wasn’t actually clearly stated in the previous issue that her cosmic persona was Eternity, but this issue clarifies it by referring in passing to Oblivion as “my brother”.) For most of the previous issue, Eternity speaks through Storm and talks about her as if she’s a host body with some residual influence on what he’s doing. In this issue she’s just back to normal, until page 15 when she starts talking in the white-on-blue speech balloons from the previous issue, for no terribly obvious reason.

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

NYX vol 2 #9
“X-Manhunt, part 2: Charles”
Writers: Jackson Lanzing & Collin Kelly
Artist: Francesco Mortarino
Colour artist: Raúl Angulo
Letterer: Joe Sabino
Editor: Annalise Bissa

This issue is part of the “X-Manhunt” crossover, and also a tie-in to One World Under Doom (though that’s not billed on the cover). And it’s also the penultimate issue before cancellation with issue #10. So a lot to do.

THE CORE CAST.

Sophie Cuckoo. Her powers have returned to an extent, but she says they’re “still glitching half the time.”

She’s still playing Summoner, which was previously mentioned in issue #6 as a game that she’d become obsessed with after losing her powers in issue #5; it was indicated that she was spending more time on the chat function than actually playing the game, and we learn here that she’s talking to someone called TarnishedMoodRing who seems to be a boyfriend. The art indicates that the game has Krakoan-era mutant iconography – at least in a meta sense, with the graphics using the font that we as readers recognise from Krakoan-era logos, and what looks to be a version of the Marauders symbol.

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

UNCANNY X-MEN vol 6 #11
“X-Manhunt, part 1: Echoes of Madness”
Writer: Gail Simone
Artist: Javier Garrón
Colour artist: Matthew Wilson
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort

This is part of the “X-Manhunt” crossover, which ships its first three chapters in a single week. It doesn’t come up in this issue, but part two establishes that One World Under Doom is also in full flow at this point. The plot of that series basically involves Doom getting all national governments to pledge allegiance to him, presumably through magical means, which is why the normal day-to-day authorities are continuing to operate.

THE X-MEN:

Rogue. Despite running the cuddly X-Men team, she’s becoming worried that everyone is treating their training exercise as a game, and that it’s actually making people complacent – the Outliers in particular. In classic Claremont fashion, her solution to this problem is to have Gambit chuck an exploding card at one of the group in the middle of a training session which has been specifically described to the kids as a game. Gambit sides with her on this, and doesn’t even seem particularly bothered about it. Wolverine says that he understands but seems a bit less convinced.

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

HELLVERINE vol 2 #3
“The Devil’s Orphan”
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Raffaele Ienco
Colour artist: Bryan Valenza
Letterer: Ravis Lanham
Editor: Mark Basso

HELLVERINE:

Mephisto has been taking locations where Akihiro suffered “great personal tragedy” and turning them into places that corrupt mutants in the vicinity and make them into serial killers. The incident at X-Force’s Greenhouse last issue was one of these places, the significance apparently being that Akihiro died there rather than anything to do with the mechanics of his resurrection.

It’s not entirely clear whether the people affected by these locations need to have any awareness of the relevant events; the people at the Greenhouse and Jasmine Falls presumably did, but it seems more likely that Mephisto is just somehow weaponising Akihiro’s emotional link to these places. At any rate, this means that Akihiro has to sort the problem out for magical reasons, rather than just handing the whole issue over to the experts.

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

X-MEN vol 7 #12
“Work Release”
Writer: Jed MacKay
Penciller: Netho Diaz
Inkers: Sean Parsons & John Livesay
Colourist: Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort

THE X-MEN:

Cyclops. The alien mercenaries want him so that he can be used as a hostage to keep Phoenix under control – or at any rate, that’s what they understand that their unnamed employer wants. For once, he doesn’t really contribute a great deal to the X-Men’s victory, but he remains as calmly confident as ever while waiting for his team to sort it out. He offers to break Alpha Flight out of jail if they want, but seems to regard it as their choice whether to play along with Department H.

Juggernaut. He can be stopped with “inertia foam” – since he isn’t as powerful as he used to be, presumably he isn’t literally unstoppable any more. It’s also possible that the foam doesn’t completely stop him but slows his progress to such an extent that it comes to the same thing in the heat of battle.

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

There are a ridiculous number of new titles out this week – eight ongoing titles in total, plus one miniseries – so I won’t be doing annotations for all of them.

X-FORCE vol 7 #8
“The Devil’s Lesson”
Writer: Geoffrey Thorne
Artist: Marcus To
Colour artist: Erick Arciniega
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Editor: Mark Basso

X-FORCE:

Forge. La Diabla spells out fairly directly the criticism that I figured the book was making of Forge: he has undue faith in his ability to create machines, and doesn’t pay proper attention to whether he’s building the right machine. In other words, he has such faith in his ability to come up with the answers that he doesn’t think carefully enough about whether he’s asking the right question.

Captain Britain. She can make magical protection wards using her sword.

Askani. The psychic regulators that Forge gave her last issue seem to work well.

Tank. He’s the first to attack “Colossus”, although the guy has threatened to kill everyone. Forge seems to think that Colossus should be of particular interest to him, though. He uses his weapon-creation powers to summon up knuckledusters to punch Colossus with; they seem to have some sort of energy attack. He remains mostly silent until directly challenged by Colossus to speak, at which point he expresses disdain for people who talk a lot, and insists quite confidently that this Colossus is an impostor. You could obviously read this as a hint that Colossus is inside the costume (though remember, we’ve also seen him playing long distance chess in X-Men).

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

There are a ridiculous number of new titles out this week – eight ongoing titles in total, plus one miniseries – so I won’t be doing annotations for all of them.

EXCEPTIONAL X-MEN #6
Writer: Eve L Ewing
Artist: Carmen Carnero
Colour artist: Nolan Woodard
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Tom Brevoort

THE CORE CAST:

Axo. He’s the only cast member sympathetic to the stated goals of Sheldon Xenos’ Verate app. He identifies with Xenos as a fellow visible mutant and feels that his teammates don’t know what this is like. He’s receptive to Xenos’ attempts to befriend and mentor him, and inclined to trust him. He understands why people are sceptical about the data privacy issues, but makes an impassioned argument (no doubt informed by his connection with Xenos) that everyone else is being too insular and paranoid in dismissing the possibilities offered by a fellow mutant and his technology.

Axo uses his powers to save Xenos from two apparent muggers; they turn out to be stooges at the end of the issue, but Axo’s powers apparently don’t pick up on this. It’s possible that the whole thing is an act and that Axo doesn’t realise this, but the idea seems to be that their true emotional state is consistent with what they seem to be doing. It’s still a risky play by Xenos, since Axo uses his powers to make them talk about how much they hate what they’re doing. Luckily, their answers are consistent with both their cover story and the truth.

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