X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #136. By Steve Foxe, Steve Orlando, Phillip Sevy, Yen Nitro & Travis Lanham. I’m sorry, but this is part sixteen and I lost the will to live long ago. Go see previous instalments if you want a fuller explanation of why, because nothing is changing.

RISE OF THE POWERS OF X #4 (annotations here) and X-MEN: FOREVER #2 (annotations here). Over at the main event, the heavily intertwined Rise of the Powers of X #4 and X-Men Forever #2, both written by Kieron Gillen, come out at the same time. I know Marvel like a number #1, but it would probably have made more sense just to bill X-Men Forever as the last four issues of Immortal X-Men, in terms of cueing readers on what to expect from it.

Unavoidably, they cover a lot of the same plot ground. But for the most part Kieron Gillen manages to avoid it feeling repetitive by shifting the emphasis between the two books, or just by letting one book carry a fuller explanation of something that the other one can afford to skip over. Principally, though, Rise is the Professor X story, as Xavier seems to be burning all his bridges in an effort to occupy Orchis and thwart Enigma in what he apparently conceives to be the Krakoa-friendly manner of throwing the humans under the bus. Precisely what he’s trying to achieve remains somewhat mysterious, but it looks like he’s trying to get to Moira one way or another, and get her to redeem herself in some way.

In Forever, meanwhile, the emphasis is more on the exiled Quiet Council members and on Atlantic Krakoa, as the X-Men reinforcements make their grand return to the real world. The big moment of hope (“spring is here”) actually comes in Rise, but then that book probably needed the moment of lightness more. Forever has more space for the character aspects of the cast members in the White Hot Room, with Rachel belatedly figuring out that none of the people in charge here is really much of a hero, and a real possibility being set up that Krakoa itself and its exiled population of background characters might end the storyline stuck in the White Hot Room. I can see why you’d go with that ending – it takes Krakoa off the board without destroying it, exactly – but I’m not convinced that’s where we’re actually heading.

The Phoenix/Enigma stuff remains… well, Phoenix can often be a hazily-defined cosmic thingy that does whatever happens to be convenient for the plot, and it’s kind of forced into that role here, as the most powerful thing that the X-books have in their armoury to take on the Dominions. Gillen’s half of the event is still pulling off the epic feel that you want for the end of this era.

WOLVERINE #48. (Annotations here.) With only two more issues to go, this is taking its time to come together – the whole subplot about Graydon Creed doesn’t really feel like it’s heading anywhere just yet. And this is one of those issues with a cover so utterly divorced from anything in the interior that you can’t help wondering when the rewrite happened. I’m underwhelmed by the way the Exiles are being used in this story – Third Eye in particular really deserves better – and Wolverine’s opening monologue is a little too sentimental. But there’s still something about Sabretooth’s character at the core here, and how he contrasts with Wolverine, that does offer a new angle on him. The arc has settled down to be okay, even decent, but it’s not in the league of the earlier two LaValle series.

WOLVERINE: MADRIPOOR KNIGHTS #3. By Chris Claremont, Edgar Salazar, Carlos Lopez & Cory Petit. A book that invites the Jean Brodie review: For those that like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing that they like. That’s more meaningful here than it is for many titles. If you’re buying this book at all then you’re evidently in the market for Chris Claremont doing a sequel to a very specific Wolverine/Captain America/Black Widow story from late 1980s X-Men, and spending some more time in his version of Madripoor – and yes, this is indeed more of that sort of thing, feeling more like a throwback than an imitation. It helps that Claremont didn’t do all that many stories with Wolverine in this set-up before moving on, so that it feels like he’s returning to something he never fully explored rather than strip-mining something he completed the first time around. And while Captain America’s inclusion in the story feels rather arbitrary, he does add something different from Claremont’s traditional palette. The art is okay to good, though there are moments in the conversational scenes which bring to mind Steve Dillon’s miscast Wolverine: Origins run for some reason.

AVENGERS #13. By Jed MacKay, Francesco Martarino, Federico Blee & Cory Petit. The second half of the Avengers Fall of X tie-in. MacKay’s Avengers run has tended to be build on sweeping high concept threats, and Orchis are a little more prosaic than that. But as a tie-in book which doesn’t have to worry about the plot, it can afford to go for the simple satisfaction of the heroes smashing up Orchis and have fun doing that. It’s more satisfying on that level than the equivalent scenes in X-Men and Fall of the House of X have been, though to be fair, it doesn’t have the wider set-up to worry about. I’m less sure about the hook of 3-D Man being an Avengers sleeper agent within Orchis – it’s a perfectly decent idea in itself, but it feels too close to the main books’ arc with Firestar to make it the centrepiece of an Avengers story at the same time.