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

WOLVERINE vol 8 #6
“Lineage”
Writer: Saladin Ahmed
Artist: Martín Cóccolo
Colourist: Bryan Valenza
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso

WOLVERINE.

This time, he experiences the Adamantine’s call as a vision of being buried alive. Nightcrawler snaps him out of it, but it’s not clear whether he would have broken the spell on his own. For Wolverine, the call seems to be coming from the Earth itself.

When Laura shows up, he says that he didn’t realise until now “how much I needed to breathe the familiar scent of kin” – a slightly odd comment given that he’s next to Nightcrawler, whom he’s known far longer than Laura, but evidently the point is that he appreciates his family once they’re around.

SUPPORTING CAST.

Nightcrawler. He’s the only character aside from Wolverine that can get Leonard the Wendigo to calm down, and so he winds up babysitting the poor guy while Wolverine pursues the main plot.

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

PHOENIX #8
Writer: Stephanie Phillips
Artist: Alessandro Miracolo
Colour artist: David Curiel
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Annalise Bissa

PHOENIX.

Despite what it says on the recap page, Jean isn’t in the Blue Area of the Moon, but in a floating fire cocoon in space, which Nova and Rocket Racoon are keeping watch on – they were on a planet last issue, but let’s assume they saw it shoot up into the sky and followed. The Blue Area stuff is all just a hallucination as Jean converses with the Phoenix itself. The recap page says that this was caused by Adani on purpose, but the actual story seems to be saying that it’s some sort of side effect of the Phoenix being “fractured” when Adani resisted giving up the Phoenix power, and managed to hold on to fraction of it.

In keeping with Rise of the Powers of X, this story takes the line that Jean and the Phoenix are, if not literally identical, at least two sides of the same coin. The Phoenix presents itself as an embodiment of the cycle of life.

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

PSYLOCKE vol 2 #3
“Lady-Killer”
Writer: Alyssa Wong
Artist: Vincenzo Carratù
Colour artist: Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Editor: Darren Shan

PSYLOCKE:

Her first instinct is to call Devon to get an analysis of the weird cyborg robots, even though she’s actually in the Factory. Presumably most of the X-Men are off on a mission, but we know that the Beast’s in the building. Either she’s turning to Devon as a first port of call generally, or she wants to keep this separate from the X-Men because it involves Greycrow – but she has no apparent qualms about bringing him to the Factory for medical treatment, so it’s probably the former.

She recognises the butterflies left in the Factory from the display in Shinobi’s apartment, and naturally sees him as the next lead. In the circumstances, she’s surprisingly restrained in challenging him on it, although she doesn’t seem to attempt to read his mind once she’s in range – instead she confronts him and demands “to know what your game is”. (Maybe she figures that Shinobi has decent psychic defences and that she’s not the greatest stealth telepath in the world.)

She takes a bit of prompting to give Greycrow a hug after she finds him alive, but not much. He’s clearly much more in touch with his emotions than she is – which makes it a little odd that she takes the opportunity to lecture him and Shinobi later in the issue when they squabble over her. (This may just be a misjudged scene. Although they’re clearly rivals in some sense, the main reason they fight is that Greycrow grabbed Shinobi from behind and held a knife to his throat, which by all appearances is what Greycrow and Psylocke had planned. Did she not expect Shinobi to defend himself? For that matter, how was this ever a remotely sensible way to ambush a guy with phasing powers?)

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

X-MEN vol 7 #10
“Brinkmanship”
Writer: Jed MacKay
Penciller: Netho Diaz
Inker: Sean Parsons
Colourist: Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort

THE X-MEN:

Cyclops. Naturally enough, he was expecting retaliation for the X-Men’s attack on Graymalkin over the last two issues. His solution to this problem is, as he says, brinksmanship: he hires the Hellions to wreck O*N*E’s resources, and openly threatens mutually assured destruction unless O*N*E back off. He literally says that if he’s killed then the X-Men will slaughter the US government, and that Phoenix will probably raze the Earth in revenge.

How far Cyclops is bluffing is open to debate – the message he wants Lundqvist to take from this is that he’s demonstrating the amount of damage that a fight between the two sides would cause, and that he’s giving Lundqvist the arguments he needs to back off. He’s certainly exaggerating the risk of his death driving Phoenix mad – when Quentin asks him about it, he simply says that “I can’t rule it out”, which is a lot less definitive than his threat to Lundqvist, and feels like a “well, I wasn’t completely making it up” justification. But does he have plans for a retaliatory strike on Washington? Possibly – he’s certainly selected a team of X-Men relatively likely to be on board with such a plan. Then again, when Quentin asks him “Is it true?”, Scott has to ask him to specify which bit, which implies that the whole speech was news to Quentin. (In contrast, Quentin clearly does know about the Hellions.)

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

HELLVERINE vol 2 #2
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Raffaele Ienco
Colour artist: Bryan Valenza
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Mark Basso

HELLVERINE:

Akihiro talks about Hellverine as if he was a different character, in much the way that Johnny Blaze talks about the Ghost Rider. He generally uses “Hellverine” to refer to himself in Ghost Rider form, and “Bagra-Ghul” to refer to the demon inside him which enables the transformation, but he’s not entirely consistent about it.

Akihiro considers “Hellverine” to be an “uninvited guest” whom he can usually keep under control, but the demon can force his way to the surface if he really wants. The demon allows him to sense evil. When attacked by Evan, who’s simply scared and trying to defend himself, Akihiro recognises him as non-evil and remains in human form to subdue him. Despite the signs of demonic possession in the area and his own inability to control Bagra-Ghul 100% of the time, Akihiro assures Evan that “You can trust me” – it’s a white lie to try and calm the kid down, but it’s certainly not entirely true. (Akihiro repeats several times that Evan can trust him, and it’s clearly not just a throwaway line.) It’s possible that Akihiro is using his regular old mutant pheromone powers to Evan too, since Evan belatedly realises that he’s being rather trusting for no sufficient reason towards the end of the story.

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

PHOENIX #7
Writer: Stephanie Phillips
Artist: Marco Renna
Colour artist: David Curiel
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Annalise Bissa

PHOENIX:

She tries to earn Adani’s trust by showing her the edited highlights of her origin story (see Footnotes for the specifics). This was foreshadowed back in issue #1, where the older Adani’s narration talked about Jean sharing her story.

Even though Jean is the Phoenix, she can also separate herself from its power and transfer it to someone with whom she has a psychic link. She’s also able to take that power back again, though it’s not like Adani has any relevant psychic training with which to resist. Whether the Phoenix has a mind of its own in this regard isn’t clear. For some reason, this leads to a flash of energy and Jean being transported to the Blue Area of the Moon.

She sees parallels between herself and Adani as a child suffering “corruptive pain”, which makes her want to trust Adani. As a psychic she should arguably know better, but apparently she convinces herself that Adani will make the right choices.

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

UNCANNY X-MEN vol 6 #9
“Off the Leash”
Writer: Gail Simone
Artist: Andrei Bressan
Colour artist: Matthew Wilson
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort

THE X-MEN:

Rogue. She’s willing to lead the team but wants “everybody” to have a say in decisions – which in practice seems to mean just the established team and not the Outliers. She assigns each of the veterans to mentor one of the kids. Wolverine endorses this decision and calls her a “pretty fine leader”, though she seems genuinely unsure whether he’s being backhanded by comparing her to Professor X and Cyclops. (This seems like paranoia on her part, since there’s no obvious reason for him to be sarcastic.)

Gambit. He’s annoyed that Nightcrawler didn’t buy the beer he asked for in issue #6. Other than that, he doesn’t have much to do in this issue.

Wolverine. He’s sure that each of the Outliers is hiding something – that’s fairly obvious in the case of Ransom and Calico but less so with Jitter and Deathdream. As in issue #2, he doesn’t trust them, but he now thinks the bigger problem is that they don’t “trust themselves”. He approves of Rogue’s mentoring scheme and volunteers to take responsiblity for Ransom. Logan seems to identify to some extent with Ransom as a triggerhappy loner. He apologises for being less than welcoming to the newcomers, and gives Ransom some praise as a lyncphpin of his group. His instinct is to keep an eye on the Outliers when they’re sent to the mall, but Jubilee talks him out of it, with the predictable disastrous consequences.

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

LAURA KINNEY: WOLVERINE #2
“The Devil in Me, part 1”
Writer: Erica Schultz
Artist: Giada Belviso
Colour artist: Rachelle Rosenberg
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso

WOLVERINE.

It’s a “they clash then they team up” story. Laura isn’t surprised that Elektra doesn’t want her help, and tries to talk to her at first. But she loses her temper when Elektra says something about not wanting to work with mutants – see below. (The art seems to have Elektra throwing the first punch, but if so, it’s not clear why – and besides, the whole story revolves around Laura being the impulsive one.) Laura clearly finds Elektra condescending, and not without reason.

As usual, she feels strongly about any sign of children being used as weapons, and all the more so when anti-mutant forces are involved. Charitably, this might explain why her self-control and planning skills seem to be at rock bottom in this story, giving Elektra plenty of opportunity to play the older and wiser role. Laura also yells at Luke Cage for not banning an anti-superhero march (see below). Elektra regards Laura as impulsive.

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

STORM vol 5 #4
“Flame in the Wind”
Writer: Murewa Ayodele
Artist: Lucas Werneck
Colour artists: Alex Guimarães & Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Tom Brevoort

STORM:

She dresses up for her dinner with Dr Doom, in the dress that she borrowed from Rogue last issue – which might explain why it’s in Rogue’s signature colour of green. Apparently Rogue and Storm are exactly the same size, or close enough that the dress can be really quickly altered. (It’s hard to imagine Rogue getting much use out of this ballgown, but if she owns one at all then fair enough, she’ll probably have it at Haven at the moment.)

A flashback shows a five year old Ororo eating her father’s gumbo and loving it. Young Ororo is remarkably precocious, to the point where it seems that it has to be a plot point – her father does remark on it, and she replies “Well, I’ve lived a long life.”

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

EXCEPTIONAL X-MEN #5
Writer: Eve L Ewing
Artist: Carmen Carnero
Colour artist: Nolan Woodard
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Tom Brevoort

THE CORE CAST

Kate Pryde. The issue opens with several pages of flashback that take place during X-Men #25 (2023), immediately after the fall of Krakoa.

Page 4 panel 1 shows a flashback from that issue, which took place immediately after X-Men: Hellfire Gala 2023, where Kate found that she could now use the Krakoan gateways. She fell into an Orchis station where she was surrounded by Orchis soldiers, and initially gives them a chance to surrender. The Orchis soldiers strongly imply that they’re going to kill her, at which point she kills them all singlehandedly. The narration in that scene justifies her actions as keeping secret her ability to use the Krakoan gates. However, at the end of the scene she does kill one Orchis soldier who is explicitly trying to surrender.

In her narration, Kate accepts that she could make a case that she acted in self-defence, but thinks that something “broke” inside her when Krakoa fell. This is basically the idea that the original scene was going for.

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