The X-Axis – 15 July 2024
X-MEN: FROM THE ASHES INFINITY COMIC #6. By Alex Paknadel, Diógenes Neves, Arthur Hesli & Clayton Cowles. Hmm, so we are indeed already retconning the bit from Fall/Rise about Professor X killing the crew of the Agnew. I’m not especially hostile to the retcon in principle – I’m willing to buy that he fakes it if he has the chance, and that he’s convinced himself that the best thing he can do for mutantkind is to present himself as the villain and draw fire from everyone else. And the way in which he’s trying to cover his tracks hardly tries to rehabilitate him as a straight hero, rather than just getting rid of the single worst thing he did in Fall/Rise. But… honestly, blowing up one ship doesn’t seem so extreme in a world where Wolverine is a hero as to call for urgent reversal. And this does feel way too early. It only happened a couple of months ago and even if you do think it was a beat too far, it’s not obvious what’s so urgent about undoing it. That aside, the story makes a reasonable fist of selling it, but I don’t get why we’re doing this now.
DEADPOOL VS. WOLVERINE: SLASH ‘EM UP INFINITY COMIC #5. By Christos Gage, Alan Robinson, Carlos Lopez & Joe Sabino. Serviceable movie tie-in romp, innit? Decent for what it is, has some good lines, looks perfectly decent, but there’s not a great deal going on beyond that.
PHOENIX #1. (Annotations here.) If you’re going to go down the line of making Jean Phoenix, and making Phoenix a full-on cosmic force, then you might as well follow that to its logical conclusion and send her out to do actual cosmic stories, Silver Surfer style. And that’s basically what this book seems to be doing, with Jean out in space with a rather hazy agenda of redemption and finding herself or whatever. I’m willing to credit that the vagueness of Jean’s agenda is part of the point, because Stephanie Phillips has some decent ideas and themes being introduced here. It’s not laboured, but the opening scene of Phoenix saving a world by stabilising is literally the inverse of what Dark Phoenix did to the D’Bari, and there’s no suggestion of it making any real difference in terms of redemption. The angle seems to be that she can never lose a fight but she can make wrong choices, and that her potential downfall lies in thinking like a superhero when she’s working on a larger scale now. That can work, and giving her an apparent foil in an anti-religious narrator seems interesting.
On the other hand, while Alessandro Miracolo’s art is generally quite pretty, there are some clarity issues going on here – the story really needed a clear visual indication of which character is the narrator, and god only knows what I’m supposed to take from that final page of Jean, Corsair and the Black Order. Oh, and once again, the decision to stick an epilogue page behind a QR code gimmick only makes it less effective than it would have been in the actual comic. It’s a story, not a menu. I could understand the thinking if it really was a big surprise reveal that they didn’t want leaked, but it’s not.
Still, I quite liked this, and I’m interested to find out where it’s going. Whether it’s what people want from an X-book, we’ll see.
X-MEN: BLOOD HUNT – LAURA KINNEY THE WOLVERINE #1. By Stephanie Phillips, Robert Gill, Nolan Woodard & Travis Lanham. Boy, that’s a title. They seem to have run out of punctuation marks about 75% of the way through. Anyway, this is very skippable and doesn’t make a huge amount of sense. The plot is meant to be that since the sun went out, a group of vampires have been abducting mutant children in the hope that mutant blood will give them extra powers. Gabby and Laura get drawn into this in some way, and somehow or other Gabby is already aligned with Xarus, who is apparently on the good side in this crossover. I’ll assume all that got covered somewhere in the wider crossover, but… what? Isn’t the whole premise of Blood Hunt that the vampires are just roaming free and attacking everyone in sight? How does targetting mutant children even work in that context? Are there really enough of them around for it to be viable? And since when do vampires gain powers from drinking mutant blood? It’s not like this is the first time. It’s got quite good art, but the only real story hook is another “you’ve escaped being a killer so you ought to believe that vampires can too” bit, which we’ve had already in these one-shots, and it doesn’t really feel like it nails Laura’s character. Not very good.
Along with the Dracula redesign, which also dates back to “Curse of the Mutants,” the name “Xarus” feels more like it belongs with a generic evil species from the fantasy genre than with vampires.
I’m not buying the Xavier retcon. For starters, the entire point of the Enigma story was that Enigma could observe anything in Earth’s dimension and the only way to avoid its gaze was in places like the White Hot Room, so the heroes couldn’t talk openly about the plan on Earth. So Enigma should have known the crew aboard the Agnew was fake. Why didn’t it tell Moira that when it was trying to get Moira to avoid Xavier?
Also, Xavier supposedly did this to ensure that he would bear the burnt of humanity’s hatred. The problem is that if you read X-Men 700 carefully, it’s clear that Xavier surrendered himself BEFORE the exiles in the White Hot Room returned. So for all Xavier knew, Krakoa would continue existing indefinitely. Why would Xavier think that he would bear the brunt of humanity’s hatred if Krakoa was still around?
Also., the retcon in many ways makes Xavier WORSE than the original story. In the original story, Xavier did something horrible in a moment of desperation to stop a near-omnipotent being. Here he’s doing something terrible on the flimsiest of justifications.
For starters, the founder of the X-Men murdering a dozen humans and selling humanity out to killer robots is bound to INCREASE hated against mutants. Who knows, maybe Dr. Ellis wouldn’t have been able to come to power if Xavier hadn’t lied- maybe the X-Men would have been perceived as heroes for stopping Orchis.
Next, we have the fact that Xavier got Hope to agree to this plan. And Rachel and the Dead X-Men told him to implement his other plan instead of killing Moira. So Hope, Rachel and the Dead X-Men would all feel guilty about the crew’s death when in reality it was a trick.
Then there’s the fact that Wolverine nearly killed Xavier because he didn’t know the deaths were fake.
I understand they wanted to retcon Xavier’s murders but I don’t understand why they couldn’t come up with a better reason for Xavier to keep up the ruse after Enigma was defeated than “this way, I will bear the brunt of humanity’s anger”. It might have worked if, for example, Siryn had been captured by Dr. Ellis and Destiny told Xavier the only way to rescue her was to frame himself for murder. But the rationale they came up with was lame. If they couldn’t think of anything better, then they probably should have asked White to rewrite X-Men 700.
I understand why they retconned this so quickly- the point of Xavier destroying the ship was to set up a story where Xavier and Magneto switched places. But Breevort didn’t like that, so we have Magneto scaring the human police chief Beast was interested in in MacKay’s X-Men and Xavier back to being manipulative but interested in equality.
Re: Xarus on the good side of the crossover- Dracula’s been helping the heroes against Varnae and his hordes throughout Blood Hunt. It’s not clear if he just doesn’t want Varnae ruling the vampires or he’s got something more in mind. Presumably, Xarus has been helping Dracula behind the scenes.
Xarus quips that he’s glad he’s an only child but Dracula has been shown to have children other than Xarus.
I don’t think we had heard of Xarus since the “X-Terminators” series of just over a year ago. Apparently this is the first mention of him during “Blood Hunt”.
No-Prize Time:
Xavier is just merely continuing his lifelong MO of being fallible and flawed genius in large part because he doesnt bother to consult at all with anyone else for his plans , which is also what his own son Legion said repeatedly was his among his biggest problems.
And as per Breevort’s 1990’s-Nostalgia-Baiting, editorial is obviously giving Xarus a face-heel turn making him into a “grey” ally of X-mutants is because anti-hero/anti-villain vampires were popular in the 1990’s , especially if they were blond white guys (Spike from Buffy) , plus Xarus actual name already begins with the letter “X” and remember how virtually literally all X-Books in the 1990’s , the team ones particularly , either had to be spelled starting OR ending with the letter “X” !
And Xarus probably meant he was Dracula’s only child WITH Xarus’ mother i.e. he has no “true” (i.e. fulll-blooded) siblings LOL
Also in X-news, in this week’s Invincible Iron Man 20, Emma and Tony break up.
One thing to note- this issue confirms that the Hellfire Club has been destroyed.
Tony left Feeling trapped on Arakko. Arakko where Apocalypse is setting up shop. I see no way this could possibly go wrong.
Valentin Shatalov, one of the Crimson Dynamos, shows up. I have a feeling Fraction got his Communist villains mixed up. Shaalov was a backstabbing pragmatic sort. But here he’s treated as a Communist fanatic.It was Boris Bullski, the first Titanium Man, who was a Communist fanatic.
Tony mentions that he originally thought the money Emma gave him came from the coffers of the Hellfire Club, and Emma gave it to him to keep it out of the Kingpin’s hands, but it really came from villains like Doom, Tombstone and Darrio Agger. That raises the question, though-what was the point of dragging the Kingpin into Fall of X? I realize that the Daredevil books wanted him back so that he could be possessed by Matt’s Greed but what was the original point of dragging him into this? It’s odd because he only has two appearances after Uncanny Avengers 5- X=Men 31 where her reunites with Typhoid in an interlude that lasted only a few pages and Iron Man 15, where he tosses Tony a Mysterium cane, which anyone could have done. Tony was said to owe Fisk a favor but that was completely forgotten about.
@Luis Dantas- we actually did see him briefly in Dracula: Blood Hunt 1, where he kills one of Dracula’s spies and uses her blood as part of a spell to enable Dracula to travel to Atlanta.
According to Wiki, Valentin Shatalov “…was the founder of Remont-4, a group of Russian superhumans who sought to return the Soviet Union to Stalinism,” and was both military and KGB. But it seemed like he and Tony kind of had a mutual respect frenemy situation going on… so I can see him being indignant about Tony’s book and maybe a bit antagonistic about it. Since AFAIK it’s been a while since he’s been seen — he was relieved of the suit for a while — maybe he’s been subjected to some good old-fashioned gulag reprogramming between appearances.
I’d love to see a whole team of former/current Crimson Dynamos (those who’ve survived, anyway) assembled as some sort of Crimson Dynamo Corps. Infighting, backstabbing, all sorts of political squabbling between the hardliners, moderates, and radicals… there’s been enough of them to make it a real thing. Also, it will never be.
I am so irritated that my reaction to the idea Shatalov was brainwashed to be a hardline communist at some point between 1995 and 2024 is “Yep, makes sense for Marvel Russia.”
The Avengers Academy Infinity comic that came out this week has Wolverine calling Colossus a commie. Which, I suppose, he may well be even if he was born after the fall of the USSR, but it’s still weird.
Marvel Russia is always USSR.
Or ought be
“The Avengers Academy Infinity comic that came out this week has Wolverine calling Colossus a commie. Which, I suppose, he may well be even if he was born after the fall of the USSR, but it’s still weird.”
Well, since Piotr was raised on a collective farm in Siberia, we can always postulate that his family was a throwback to older Communist ways even after the fall of the USSR… holding on to old traditions, so to speak. That would keep in line with his general persona and demeanor and outlook. He was a pretty sheltered farm boy when he joined the X-Men, after all.
And well, Logan’s just old and cranky. He fought through the entire Cold War, even if he doesn’t always remember it. 🙂
I suppose for the purposes of comic storytelling, we should just assume some political developments either took longer, happened later, or held on a little harder in some parts of the world. Especially where all of those Communist/Soviet/Iron Curtain/etc characters are concerned… (95% of Ant-Man’s villains, 78% of Iron Man’s villains, the Soviet Super-Soldiers, and so forth… I exaggerate but there were a -lot- of evil Commies in Marvel in the ’60s.)
Yep. It seems like Marvel Russia elected a Communist government around 2005 which became a dictatorship lasting for around six years before things became like post-Soviet Russia again (or however long ago the sliding timescale puts the birth of the Marvel Universe now).
Mark Waid or someone will come along and decide that the USSR featured in the Marvel Universe was a Communist society established on Mars, the Red Planet.
Some interesting stuff from Tom Breevort’s blog:
We’ll see Banshee “in an interesting position in a project that hasn’t been announced yet, but which you should hear about before teh year is out.”
The Phoenix series “gives us a platform from which to being to reconstruct our cosmic area of titles—but I’ve said too much, you’ll hear more about all of this in the days to come.”
And finally an interesting back and forth about whether Beast is real:
Mungho:You’ve maybe heard of me. The Beast fan. I just wanted a little clarification. People insist to me that the Beast now in X-Men #1 is just a clone with no connection to the original but implanted memories, while the original is burning in the MU’s hell. Mostly because they said he didn’t go through proper Resurrection Protocols. I do tend to get caught up in the minutiae of comics, but this is really preventing me from enjoying Beast’s return. It’s been a very bad five years to be a Beast fan. Even if you can just say, ‘Don’t worry about it, just keep reading.’, or ‘MacKay’s got it well in hand.”, I’d just like some confirmation from an official source.
Tom: I think you can rest easy, Mungho, in that the Beast who is appearing in X-MEN is every bit as real and legitimate as the rest of the characters—all of whom are fiction, and so can survive such stories. The question of how resurrection worked in terms of continuity of individual is one that the Krakoa era mostly tended to sidestep, so I don’t feel the need to try to make sense of it all after the fact. We’ll simply accept what the texts told us, which is that the assorted resurrected mutants were the same people that they had been before, and in the Beast’s case, he got resurrected with his memories of the last bunch of years effectively erased from his mind. But still Henry McCoy.
(Presumably Breevort’s answer applies to Laura as well.)
That seems to be a very sensible approach to Beast. Though I suspect the evil version is going to turn up again and yet again in coming decades, either in person or as a “is this my destiny?” thing, until that’s all people know about the guy. Beast will probably be redeemed five or six times. He’s too popular to just go away, but not popular enough to get past such a thing.
If Hank Pym can’t survive backhanding his wife we know Hank McCoy won’t survive being absolute evil.
Spider-Man, of course, rage- punched his pregnant wife across the room with strength that can bench a locomotive but he starred in a children’s cartoon at the time so it’s fine.
Of all the O5 X-Men, Hank is the one with the least integrated dark side. Sure, Jean has never been able to fully subsume Maddie, but Hank has (potentially) two evil doppelgangers running around. If I were a writer, I wouldn’t be able to pass on that opportunity. That’s at least a miniseries-worth of material, right?
I’m surprised that Beast doesn’t have more dopplegangers, considering.
I just noticed- another weird thing about the From the Ashes story- we learn that Scurvy is a telepath whose power rivals Xavier’s and he’s why Xavier has trouble communicating with the outside world. It’s odd that such a major reveal was done in a webcomic.