The X-Axis – w/c 29 July 2024
X-MEN: FROM THE ASHES INFINITY COMIC #8. By Alex Paknadel, Phillip Sevy, Arthur Hesli & Clayton Cowles. Havok’s demon nurse takes him to Limbo to try and get him healed, but it turns out that the plan is just to do a deal with N’astirh. Fair enough, and it’s all done quite efficiently. I raise an eyebrow at Havok actually taking the deal, but then he’s always been a flawed hero at best. What surprises me more is the reveal that the Goblin Queen didn’t botch Havok’s magical resurrection, but did it this way on purpose. I get that From the Ashes seems to serve the function of repositioning some characters for the relaunch and saving the regular books the need to do the job, and I get why they want to extricate Havok from this plot before he shows up in the new X-Factor, but it does feel like we’ve had two stories in a row rather obviously trying to re-write plots from the outgoing regime. And even if the specific things they’re doing are fine, there’s a sense of being able to see the strings here.
X-MEN: HEIR OF APOCALYPSE #4. (Annotations here.) This was a patchy miniseries. The basic idea of Apocalypse deciding to withdraw to Arakko but being egotistical enough to think that he has to anoint somebody to shepherd mutantkind on Earth seems reasonable, and it’s done in a way that avoids just resetting him to villain status. The art is very 90s but quite readable, and it has some strong moments – I really like the page of successive teen teams hanging out. The eventual choice of Cypher as the heir works for me; the story makes a convincing argument that Cypher was much more closely bonded to Krakoa than even the other mutants, and is accordingly much more traumatised by its loss. (It’s also much more recent for him, since he was in suspended animation for the whole of “Fall of X”.) And while his redesign doesn’t look great, there’s something in the idea of Cypher as someone both peaceful and very angry, with Bei and Warlock still hanging around as his followers. On the other hand, the actual contest which has provided the A-plot of these four issues feels mostly like busy work that doesn’t have a great deal to do with the outcome; the attempt to tie the final four to the Horsemen in this last issue is too strained; and twelve characters was probably too many to try and juggle. Still, I think the end result has potential.
X-FORCE #1. (Annotations here.) So if I’m being honest, I found this book a real slog to get through, and I’m not sure why. The premise is reasonable enough: Forge has decided to save the world by building a world-saving machine to tell him what needs to be done. “Random device hands out mission of the week” is basically Exiles, and “hero rounds up guest star who he somehow knows is needed for this particular mission” is… well, it’s Secret Defenders, but let’s not hold that against it. I’m more sympathetic to the idea where Forge is concerned because there’s an interesting little idea about how far Forge actually understands what he’s doing and how far he’s just placing blind faith in his own powers. I’m a little more sceptical about everyone else being quite so willing to get with him, but perhaps that’s the logic of bringing in Sage, who ostensibly vouches for his scheme while acknowledging to the reader that she doesn’t quite understand Forge either. That’s the dimension that makes this a promising concept to me. And Marcus To’s art is pretty good – I’m always happy to have an X-Force that isn’t going overboard on the grim and gritty, and really, there’s not much grim about this book at all. I’m not convinced that Betsy and (especially) Rachel are in character, though, and when we descend from the high concept to the details there’s something about it that just doesn’t engage me. Maybe it’s a bit too arbitrary, maybe there’s a bit too much hand-waving technobabble. The explanation of how feeding Deadpool to the monster leads to the monster dying is… well, it’s so far removed from making sense that it just isn’t satisfying. If the monster feeds on biomass, why does Deadpool’s cancer stop him counting? Why is the monster just going to stand around and starve for three days instead of wandering off to eat something else? I don’t get it. I kind of want to like this book more – the art’s good, the big ideas are quite interesting to me – but I can’t honestly say that I had much fun reading it.
HELLVERINE #3. By Benjamin Percy, Julius Ohta, Frank D’Armata and Travis Lanham. This sequel to Benjamin Percy’s Wolverine/Ghost Rider crossover has turned out to be good fun in a grindhouse sort of way. It’s deadpan silliness, if we’re being honest, but there’s nothing wrong with that as a take on Wolverine. I like the idea of the US military trying to weaponise Hell and screwing it up – it’s a nice classic idea, with General Harms getting fleshed out just enough to take him beyond the generic. To be honest, Daken as a reanimated Ghost Rider is almost relegated to a B-plot, at least up to the cliffhanger. But Percy is writing to his strengths and Julius Ohta’s designs for the General Harms and the Destroyer cyborgs are great.
MS MARVEL ANNUAL #1. By Iman Vellani, Sabir Pirzada, Giada Belviso, Yen Nitro & Joe Caramagna. This would be the third Ms Marvel Annual #1, if you’re wondering. I don’t know why they don’t just stick years on them. I swear they only do it to annoy me. Anyway, does this count as an X-book? It’s not from the X-office but Ms Marvel seems to be an X-books character by default these days. This issue is part of the Infinity Watch crossover, which is barely a crossover at all – it picks up on a subplot from several years ago about each of the Infinity Stones having bonded with different obscure characters, and each annual is actually a more or less freestanding story about the title character having an encounter with one of those characters. There doesn’t really seem to be much of a through line beyond using these chapters to reintroduce the admittedly ultra-obscure characters. Ms Marvel gets to meet Multitude, the current holder of the Soul Gem, who debuted in the 2021 Avengers Annual and has only appeared once since then (in an issue of Guardians of the Galaxy). Kamala stumbles upon him trying to work as a medium in Atlantic City, and the confused rookie helps her out against some of her villains. It’s a perfectly good Ms Marvel story, though it’s fair to say that the best bits are about Kamala and her supporting cast, while Multitude himself seems more like a nice guy than a particularly compelling character.
I’m going to mostly hold off on commenting on the Maddie reveal until next issue.Remember, it’s N’astirh that reveals that Maddie did this deliberately, and with demons, you have to be careful what they DON’T say. I’m sure that Maddie did this deliberately in SOME sense but it’s not yet clear if this is as monstrous as it seems or if it was something like “the spell required Maddie to choose between Alex turning evil or Alex turning into a zombie and Maddie chose zombie”.
For what it’s worth, Breevort has claimed that he has a plan that will explain both Scott’s behavior in the first two years of X-Factor vis a vis Maddie and Jean and Scott’s affair with Emma. So hopefully Maddie will not be evil when Breevort’s plan is done.
I am wondering if this ties into Paknadel’s upcoming Sentinels series, since the rumors are that the human Sentinels won’t be human volunteers but humans that actually DIED in superhero battles.
Aside from that, I’m not sure that I buy Alex agreeing to free a demon that tried to kill babies so easily. You’d think he’d try to find Illyana or Clea first.
[…] Source: https://www.housetoastonish.com/?p=10266 […]
On a non-X subject (but kinda X-related because it ties into Storm joining the Avengers next week)- am I the only one who couldn’t believe how stupid Strange was in Blood Hunt? Doom tells Strange he needs to surrender the mantle of Sorcerer Supreme to him and promises to give it back once he has saved the world. And Strange agrees!?! Doom is famous for his use of Exact Words and we’ve seen in past stories what Doom’s idea of saving the world is, and Strange falls for it? I think every reader knew what was going to happen as soon as saving the world was mentioned. Strange encounters demons daily- he shouldn’t be this gullible when it comes to loopholes in a promise.
Yeah, given how many times Strange and Doom have tangled around magic stuff, Strange should have been a lot more careful about precise wording and loop (Doom) holes.
I mean Strange should be smart enough to NEVER enter into ANY magical bargain with ANYONE or thing without absolutely precise wording. Not when he deals with gods, demons, djinn, extradimensional beings on a regular basis and knows full well that in magic, both wording and intent mean everything. Hell, every D&D player who’s tried to use a Wish spell knows FULL WELL what happens if you don’t rules lawyer the heck out of your wording…
Stephen Strange messed up big time. Again.
I feel like Marvel has run out of ideas to the point that they’re listening to pitches from 8-year-olds:
“What if Spider-man was actually Doctor Octopus?”
“Oh, that’s not a bad idea.”
“What if Spider-man was the Green Goblin?”
“Well, that seems a little derivative…”
“WHAT IF DR. STRANGE WAS DR. DOOM???”
“Hey, I played a cool side scroller computer game where this bad guy took over the world and you had to kill about a thousand baddies before you got to the boss. What if every superhero had to do that?”
A lot of the writing problems around Dr. Strange stem from the 1970s idea that “Sorcerer Supreme” is a power level and not a job title. He’s a long way from the Ditko character, who won through wits against overwhelmingly powerful foes.
More broadly, Strange, Spider-Man, and Reed Richards frequently seem to be written as if they are driven by the flaws that preceded the experiences that made them heroes.
So Strange keeps being written as arrogant, when his origin story is about his overcoming that flaw. Spider-Man, likewise, is written as flaky and irresponsible when his origin is all about guilt.
And Reed is often written as merely arrogant, secretive, and domineering, without the other shades of guilt (about Ben) and insecurity (about being a good father and a partner, and about his usefulness as a ‘superhero”) that add texture to his character. (He’s not supposed to have the same flaws as Doctor Doom.)
Reed and Spider-Man are supposed to be flawed characters, but also characters who struggle against their flaws rather than eagerly leaning into them.
And Strange was originally conceived as a person who had learned his lesson and struggled against vast forces due to his human limitations and often triumphed by being humanistic. He’s practically become the opposite of that over the decades as writers kept powering him up and needed reasons he couldn’t just win with a wave of his hand.
The comparison to Octopus-Spider has been brought up elsewhere, and it caused me considerable surprise.
I don’t think this is a similar situation at all. Doom is not pretending to be Stephen, and he certainly is not trying to emulate Stephen’s methods. He just found himself in a position to grasp power through blackmailing.
Granted, early indications strongly suggest that he will attempt sell others on the idea that he is worthy of that title. Slightly out of character IMO, but then again it has been a while since we dwelled on Doom’s insecurities, and that is good plot material. In that respect, yes, I can see the parallels to Superior Spider-Man.
Maybe we will see some elaboration on what the title even means. Blood Hunt #5 had Doom and Stephen state that it comes with a form of duty. That wasn’t all that clear from previous stories. IIRC Stephen lost the title twice before and once recovered it essentially off-panel and mid-story. It is not quite as vague as “Omega Mutant”, but it is close.
I don’t think Stephen was truly fooled by Doom either. He knows Victor better than that – and perhaps more significantly, he has more at stake than just the title of Sorcerer Supreme. We may have some sort of follow-up to the “Triumph and Torment” graphic novel coming up.
Is Doom’s mother still in Hell?
Presumably not. The 1989 Graphic Novel that I mentioned above seems to be her latest appearance, and it was about Doom and Stephen teaming up to free her. They did succeed – for a price.
It is possible that Doom will want to deal with that price now.
And we saw her spirit again in Mosley’s 2021 Thng series- although the continuity with that series is messy.
I couldn’t remember if something happened to her in the Waid/Ringo FF series, good or bad,.
That Doom/Strange OGN is one of the best of the whole series.
Mark-You might be mistaking Doom’s true love, Valeria, with his mother from the Waid FF run. Something very bad happened to Valeria (not Reed and Sue’s daughter who Doom wanted named after his first love) under Waid. As far as I remember, there’s nothing involving Doom’s mother from Waid. She had already moved on by the time Waid started writing FF.
@ Thom H.
I wouldn’t say it’s Marvel running out of ideas. High concept character mash-ups have always been a comic book trope.
– Storm becomes Thor in 1985.
– Jubilee becomes a vampire in 2010.
– Colossus becomes Juggernaut in 2011.
– Wolverine joins the Fantastic Four in 1990.
– Magneto becomes Headmaster of the school in 1985.
– Doom gains the power of the Beyonder in Secret Wars (1984)
– Falcon and Bucky have both become Captain America.
– Rick Jones, General Ross, Betty Ross, Doc Sampson, and Amadeus Cho have all become Hulk-like characters.
– Multiple characters have been hosts for Venom
– Multiple characters have become the Sorcerer Supreme.
– T’Challa, Spider-Man, Elektra, Iron Fist, Nightcrawler have all posed as Daredevil
– How many X-Men have been Horsemen of Apocalypse at this point?
@Maxwell’s Hammer: I think we could argue the particulars of some of those cases, but I take your point. Body swaps, stolen identities, and parasitic villains are all part of the genre.
I guess I’m just tired of all the superhero stories that hinge on “what if this hero went bad?” or “what if this villain took power?” I get it — we don’t trust authority anymore. It seems like beating a dead horse at this point.
Yeah, but I think ‘We Don’t Trust Authority’ has also been a pretty common genre staple for forever. It’s not about not trusting authority _anymore_.
I mean, Captain American protested corruption in government by becoming Nomad in 1974, all of Watchmen in 1986, Hal Jordan becoming Parallax in 1993, Lex Luthor becoming President in 2000.
What amused me about Doom’s betrayal was that I thought he was going to screw Stephen in a completely different way.
“Once the world is saved, you will return to me what is mine.” “Okay, here’s the watch you lost last week. Sorcerer Supreme? No, in the eyes of the Vishanti it belongs to whoever can hold it. Not yours anymore.”
@Michael: Ugh. Early X-Factor was horrible there but we could just.. *not* try to fix it with some plan? Just admit Scott made a terrible mistake at a moment of weakness that he’s really sorry for, actually talks it over with Madelyne, and we put a line under? Maybe the plan is reasonable, but so often these attempts to fix up a bad story seem to just make more of a mess.
@Maxwell’s Hammer: Sure, there’s nothing new under the sun. But the sheer number of “bad guys taking over identities/jobs of good guys” stories lately bugs me. You clearly feel differently, which is great. I just think it’s going to the same well too often. Although, to be completely fair, the current Bad Spidey story has Ed McGuinness’ beautiful art to recommend it.
Cyttorak takes over the vampire guild. Juggernaut becomes Jubilee. He needs comical amounts of help taking care of his adopted dragon child. It writes itself. You’re welcome, Kieron Gillen.
HOW TO CAIN YOUR DRAGON
“Yeah, but I think ‘We Don’t Trust Authority’ has also been a pretty common genre staple for forever. It’s not about not trusting authority _anymore_.”
This really bugged me about that post-9/11 Kitty Pryde miniseries where she discovers maybe she can’t trust the US government. (Mechanix? Something like that, I think?) 20 years before (realtime) when she was what, 13 and a half years old, Kitty literally engineered an alien computer virus to wipe out any mentions of the X-men, and her friends invaded the Pentagon to plant it on the computers there. Just a little before that she was a key part of Days of Future Past. I just don’t see how she can be making that “discovery” about the government again, it’s been baked into the X-men concept her entire time on the team!
Aww, the From the Ashes story has the sweetest ending I think I’ve ever read in a story about a zombie in Hell.
I think there are two reasons X-Factor #1 fell flat for me. The first is that there doesn’t seem to be a guiding mission statement beyond ‘save the world from the problem of the week’. Which is fine, as far as it goes, but you need a little more than that even if it’s just ‘save the world from the problems only I can forsee with my genius, hope this hubris doesn’t come back to bite me’. The other reason it didn’t work was the team aspect. Forge didn’t need a team for this. He just needed to feed Deadpool to the monster. So Sage, Rachel, Betsy, Tank, and Surge just ended up feeling surplus to requirements and had me wondering why they were there other than because a Forge solo book with a rotating guest cast wouldn’t sell.
@Gwysdion- I’m going to defend Forge bringing an entire team along. First, Tank was needed to toss Deadpool into the monster. Second, Tessa was needed to find out where the monster came from. Third, the other team members were needed to protect civilians from the monster. And finally, Forge was aware there were other threats in Wakanda and the Well of All Things. The team’s powers might not be useful against the master but they might be useful against the other threats. When you take all these factors into consideration, bringing a team along is the only logical option.