The X-Axis – w/c 8 July 2024
X-MEN: FROM THE ASHES INFINITY COMIC #5. By Alex Paknadel, Diógenes Neves, Arthur Hesli & Clayton Cowles. Hmm. So from the look of this, where we’re going is that Professor X didn’t actually kill the crew of the Agnew, but wanted it to look as if he had – and he’s psychically trying to cover his tracks, leading to anomalies which Sally Floyd has been misinterpreting as something to do with her alcoholism. That’s interesting, even if I have my doubts about teasing the reversal of such a major plot point that quickly. Then again, it also raises the question of what Professor X is really doing in a cell, having framed himself for murder. I’m certainly intrigued, though I’m not sold on the timing.
X-MEN #1. (Annotations here.) The thing about “From the Ashes” is that it doesn’t have a unifying theme, unless you count “diaspora”. And it’s broadly intended as, if not an outright reset, at least a restatement of the core idea. I don’t have a problem with that; you need to go back to the themes from time to time. But it’s going to come across as fairly conservative (with a small C) and it’s never going to create the same sort of first issue excitement as something like House of X.
And that’s pretty much what we have here. We’re setting up Cyclops’ X-Men team, we’re establishing the cast, we’re introducing the new location, and we’re fighting some bad guys. I’ve read enough of Jed MacKay’s Marvel work to have some confidence in him, but taken purely on its own terms, this is a good-but-not-great issue. The new team go into action so we can get a sense of the team dynamic. The immediate villains are the Fourth School, basically an Orchis faction who’ve reinvented themselves as the U-Men; the bigger picture is the introduction of 3K, who are obviously the main villains of MacKay’s run.
The issue could probably have used a bit more of 3K and a bit less of the Fourth School. While they do provide some link with what came before, they’re basically the U-Men. The U-Men were always one step above bozo status, and the Fourth School are firmly positioned here at the same level – which is an odd way to start a series. 3K are meant to be the real point of interest, but they get so little space in the story that we don’t find out anything very concrete about them – which means the story is basically teasing the fact that this superhero book will have villains in it. MacKay is usually decent with big ideas, but it’s that track record rather than the content of this issue that has me interested in where he’s going with 3K.
I’ve always been a bit lukewarm about Ryan Stegman’s art, which can feel to me both a bit cartoonish and a bit constrained, and I’m not wild about the costume designs here. But I liked his scenes at the Factory, with the Beast showing the police chief around, quite a bit. Those parts work rather nicely, and the relationship with the town is the part of this story that seems most promising to me. I’m not so sure about getting Stegman to do pages of 3K’s council in moody shadow – that really doesn’t play to his strengths.
(Oh, and do we have to have this annoying QR code gimmick for bonus pages? I get that they’re trying to do something different, and create a sense of occasion around them, but honestly, these things are an absolute chore. I’m meant to – what, use my phone to follow the link and then view the page on my phone? But it’s not laid out for a phone screen. So what do you want me to do? Manually zoom in to read it? Just stick it at the end after the “next issue” page. That always has a surprise factor and it doesn’t kill the momentum. And the page is easily readable, which is not a small thing.)
X-MEN: HEIR OF APOCALYPSE #3. (Annotations here.) Oh dear. This series started reasonably enough, but we’re now deep in Idiot Plot territory. Mr Sinister is openly betraying the rest of the group, but they insist on keeping him around because… why, for god’s sake? There’s really not much more to this issue than that, and it’s one of those awkward middle chapters where it turns out that this four issue miniseries only had three issues worth of plot. It needs the extra issue to pick off some more of the 12 contestants, but it doesn’t do anything very interesting with them. Netho Diaz draws quite a good Mr Sinister, and I quite like his Apocalypse too, but the story feels increasingly half-formed.
WOLVERINE: BLOOD HUNT #3. By Tom Waltz, Juan José Ryp, Guru-eFX and Cory Petit. Pretty much just an extended fight scene. There’s a tiny bit of actual plot in here, but this issue really stands and falls entirely on how keen you are to see Ryp drawing an extended action sequence. It does look very good, to be fair. You could make a case for it as good old fashioned decompression, something which we haven’t seen in a while. There are a couple of creative spots along the way. But the bottom line is that it’s a four-issue miniseries which looks to have only enough story for an annual at a push. If you’re into it as an art showcase, fair enough.
DEADPOOL VS WOLVERINE SLASH’EM UP! INFINITY COMIC #3. By Christos Gage, Alan Robinson, Carlos Lopez & Joe Sabino. Behold, corporate synergy. It’s a very basic plot which is an excuse for Deadpool to ramble on, and Wolverine to ignore him, while they do random fight scenes. But Deadpool’s extended monologue about his lost memories of his back story has some good gags, and Wolverine plays off it rather well by completely ignoring him and attempting to focus on the plot for the vast majority of the issue. It’s entertaining fluff and perfectly happy to be that.
X-Men: Heir of Apocalypse seems as if it shares several flaws with that Fall of X Infinity Comic about Gideon, Sunspot, and a cast of cast-offs.
Ryan Stegman’s art is obviously very ’90s influenced, but in certain moments reminds me so much of Nick Pitarra — especially his rendition of Beast. I wish he’d lean into Pitarra and Bachalo more and Liefeld less.
in an interview about the upcoming X-Factor series, Mark Russell made an odd comment about Havok:
https://www.cbr.com/x-men-x-factor-marvel-exclusive/
. “Havok is a great character to thrust into this position because he was, until recently, dead. And now that he’s been alive for all of fifteen minutes, he’s being asked to risk his life on a daily basis. He’s a character I’ve really grown to feel for and respect during the writing of this series.”
What does he mean about Alex being dead? Alex is currently a zombie- is that what Russell means by “dead”? Yes, I know. zombies are technically dead but they can walk and talk. Maybe what he means is that after Alex is finally back to normal, he’s nervous about risking his life again. But it’s still an odd way to word it.
Simon Garth, The Zombie couldn’t talk.
All the mutants have died at least once. I’m sure there’s enough mutants who have never spent any time dead in their history to make a small team of X-Men, but overall, I wouldn’t be drawing attention to it with Havok in particular.
Yeah, Warren, Rusty Collins, Pyro, Frenzy and Feral are appearing in X-Factor and all of them have been resurrected at least once by the Five. Making a big deal out of it with Alex seems odd.
I don’t know why Russell would emphasize dying and being resurrected for Havok in particular, but I wonder if he figured that was just an easier way to describe what he had planned than, “he was a zombie, but now he’s not.”
Weird as this probably is, I find it less difficult to accept a character dying, where their body is cold and still or incinerated or whatever, and being brought back from that, than them being a zombie and then somehow made Not-a-Zombie.
I take it that you mean “without first ‘fully’ dying (so that he can be brought back to life)”, right, @CalvinPitt?
It does sound weird, but I guess I agree. In the MU death-and-ressurrection is a legitimate, tried and true line of medical treatment for… irreversible conditions.
Euthanasiatherapy, if you will. Ought to become a full medical specialty there, leading to very busy law counseling.
That aside, IIRC when we last saw Havok he was not a zombie in the Romero or Voodoo senses; he had died or at least gone through a lot of serious harm and Maddie somehow patched him up enough to have a semblance of functional life. That is unusual enough to be treated as a special case; I am assuming that Maddie (or someone else) simply had better success in later attempts at treating him. There was no need to respect the rules of zombieness, because Havok was outside their scope in the first place.
Breevort has a few interesting things to say on his blog:
Cian McDarby:I have to enquire further about the Cable sidelining. I get something like Nate Grey, X-Man getting sidelined. His solo might’ve lasted #75 issues and was only cancelled due to a direction change, but that was 20 years and he’s pretty obscure and kinda confusing. Ditto for most of the children of future’s past. But Cable?
Tom:Sure, Cable, Cian. Each of these characters has their fans and advocates who think that they’re all very simple to explain to people. But as I’ve said in the past, for years, X-MEN has had a rap for being impossible for new readers to get into because the amount of lore is just so vast and just so dense. I see it every day, as readers who are intrigued by one of our announcements ask the same question: “I haven’t read X-MEN before, where do I start, how can I even get in?” And no matter how many times we tell people that we’ve spared no effort to provide a ground level entry point in all of our new books, that’s a tough thing for people to accept and believe, apparently. So taking a bunch of the most complicated, most difficult-to-quantify characters off the board just makes things a little bit simpler at the outset. And these characters aren’t gone forever—in fact, you’ll see a couple of them before the year is out. But at launch, like the Corner Box conversation above, their upside wasn’t enough to override their downside—so over the side they went!
Manqueman:I feel like I missed some but it’s irking me being unable to find the answer: when and how did Quentin Quire get a body after Wolverine/Sabretooth?
Tom:The situation that we were going to be left, according to Jordan White, was that any character that we wanted resurrected would have been resurrected by the end of the Krakoa era, Manqueman. They may not have made everything screamingly clear, but Quentin was no doubt one of the five million mutants who were brought back while Krakoa was away on its sojourn before reappearing in UNCANNY X-MEN #700.
Nichelle:Is this wave officially finished or can we expect books to be announced ?
Tom:We’re going to continue to launch new projects moving forward, but after October we’ll stop talking about FROM THE ASHES. So on that level, yes, we’re done, But new books are still in the offing.
Also, Murewa Ayodele has said that one of those “new books” is a team book and Synch is in it.
Good to know that the X-books will no longer feature any characters with convoluted backstories.
Tom Brevoort did not say that. He said that in this early phase he is avoiding featuring them.
Apparently, Brevoort has also said that the QR code bonus pages are so they don’t leak before street date?
@SanityorMadness- yeah, but the problem was the difference in time zones. So the bonus page was posted Tuesday night Eastern Standard Time by someone who had unlocked the bonus page when it was after midnight Wednesday in whatever country they were in.
Worse than the lack of a unifying theme is the apparent lack of direction. It seems that the current remit is to return to a simple status quo, predominantly following the Grant Morrison era as well as the Krakoan era. But that is not a direction.
I accept that it is a good idea to publish something that will attract new readers and have some trades ready for the upcoming X-Men movies, but there needs to be something more. Krakoa reminded us how great the X-Men can be, after 15 years of absolute mediocrity. Now, we seem to be back to that.
The only redeeming quality of the new relaunch is basically an after effect of Krakoa, the fact that the effects of M-day, the fall of Genosha and so many other disasters have been reversed and there is still life and hope in the comics. Let’s see how long it takes for them to start killing off characters again