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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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”.

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

EXCEPTIONAL X-MEN #1
Writer: Eve L Ewing
Artist: Carmen Carnero
Colour artist: Nolan Woodard
Letterer: Joe Sabino
Editor: Tom Brevoort

THE X-MEN:

Kate Pryde has retired as a superhero and is working in a bar called Lulu’s Tavern in Bridgeport, a district of Chicago. According to Wikipedia, Bridgeport used to have a reputation for racial intolerance but is now one of Chicago’s most diverse areas. We saw Lulu’s Tavern before in X-Men #35.

Kate is depressed, anxious or both. There are a couple of points in the issue where she seems to break the fourth wall, though you could rationalise that she’s talking to herself out loud if you want. She’s taking the fall of Krakoa badly. While she describes Krakoa as her home “sort of”, presumably referencing her semi-detached status as the one mutant who couldn’t use the gates, she evidently feels it as a loss. She worries that the more hubristic aspects of the Krakoan age are going to come back to bite the mutants now, and she’s appalled by her dark-and-violent phase as Shadowkat in Gerry Duggan’s X-Men. Being around other mutants strikes her as living in “the shattered remains of the life I knew”, and since she can pass for human, she’s going to drop out of all that, live a normal life, and try not to think about it.

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

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

THE CORE CAST:

Wolverine (Laura) gets the spotlight in this issue. She’s investigating the disappearance of thirty mostly homeless mutants over a few days (though the one we see at the start of the issue seems quite well dressed). As it turns out, they’re all being enlisted voluntarily by Local, of whom more below.

Laura narrates the issue and spends a lot of it reminiscing about Kiden Nixon, one of the main characters from the original NYX series. We hear so much about Kiden in this issue that it seems likely she’ll be showing up in the end. So far as I can see, Kiden hasn’t appeared since an X-23 one-shot in 2010 – at that point she was living on the streets, but that was 15 years ago, so who knows where she is now.

Laura is living in a dilapidated building in East Harlem, which is presumably why Kiden is on her mind. Back in the original NYX, Laura is a teenage prostitute; she kills a client who draws a knife on her, and meets Kiden shortly after. Her pimp then comes after her, and she kills him. Honestly, she doesn’t do a great deal more than that – the first run is only seven issues long, focusses on Kiden, and spends most of its time just introducing the cast. They move into Bobby Soul’s apartment at the end of the series, and most of Laura’s actual friendship with Kiden presumably takes place off panel after NYX #7 and before Laura shows up in Uncanny X-Men (which, due to insane delays on NYX, had actually happened before NYX finished). So basically, this friendship was always implied more than actually depicted.

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

X-FORCE vol 7 #2
“Igubu Lika-Anansi”
Writer: Geoffrey Thorne
Artist: Marcus To
Colour artist: Erick Arciniega
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Editor: Mark Basso

As I said at the beginning of the “From the Ashes” era, I’m not necessarily planning to do annotations for all ongoing titles – we’ll see how the second-tier books are looking after the first few issues.

X-FORCE:

Forge helpfully illustrates the limitations of his powers by confidently building a device that will allow X-Force’s plane to get past Wakanda’s defence systems. Presumably it works, but it has no effect on the magic spell that he actually needs to worry about. In other words, Forge has built a perfect solution to the wrong problem. He spells out later in the issue that he needs to understand what the problem is in order to solve it. (Presumably he could always define “understand the problem” as a second-order problem, but then he’d have to build an entire machine before he could even start solving the main problem, which might take a while.)

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

PHOENIX #2
Writer: Stephanie Phillips
Artist: Alessandro Miracolo
Colour artist: David Curiel
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Annalise Bissa

PHOENIX:

She’s still running around answering every interstellar distress call she can find, and she’s still terrifying to all the aliens she’s trying to rescue. We’re told that she doesn’t require food, oxygen and so forth, but that she’s still “exhausted” – presumably emotionally, though I suppose it could mean that because she has a human mind, she still needs sleep. She doesn’t much like or trust Corsair, but see below regarding this book’s take on Corsair.

SUPPORTING CHARACTERS:

Corsair is rescued by Phoenix from a damaged spaceship which is about to explode. According to Corsair’s account – which it’s strongly suggested that we should be very sceptical about –  the Starjammers have abandoned him “for no good reason”. This has prompted him to try and become a hero. He started investigating a series of disappearances from Gameworld (the casino planet that featured prominently in Gerry Duggan’s X-Men run), and discovered that the captives were being smuggled away by the Black Order to a small moon in a nearby star system. He says that the Black Order shot at his ship, which is why it was damaged when Phoenix found him.

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

X-FACTOR vol 5 #1
“Red Carpet”
Writer: Mark Russell
Artist: Bob Quinn
Colour artist: Jesus Aburtov
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Editor: Darren Shan

X-FACTOR:

This is the fifth volume of X-Factor, a name which has been attached to all sorts of unrelated concepts. Volume 1 started as a reunion book for the original X-Men and changed direction completely in the early 90s to become a book about a team working for the US government. Volume 2 was a miniseries about the Mutant Civil Rights Taskforce, volume 3 was Jamie Madrox’s X-Factor Investigations, and volume 4 was the Krakoan group who investigated mutant deaths. (EDIT: For those asking in the comments, the book about a corporate X-Factor team isn’t in the volume count because its official title was All-New X-Factor.)

This new version of X-Factor is essentially the 1990s government team, but hybridised with Peter Milligan and Mike Allred’s X-Force/X-Statix – though tonally, a better comparison might be Justice League International. That said, it repeats the trick from the first issue of X-Force of introducing a team and promptly killing most of them off, which feels like it might be a homage. To be fair, what we’re actually told is that the team members are “dead or clinging to life”, which leaves a back door for anyone who wants to bring the characters back.

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