The X-Axis – w/c 5 August 2024
X-MEN: FROM THE ASHES INFINITY COMIC #6. By Alex Paknadel, Phillip Sevy, Arthur Hesli & Clayton Cowles. Pretty much what you’d expect from the previous two issues: yes, Madelyne deliberately botched Havok’s magical resurrection in Dark X-Men, but she says it was to keep him safe by making sure he stayed by her side. If you’re going in that direction then this is handled perfectly well, even if the art seems to be struggling a bit to sell Alex’s decay in a PG way – I buy it for the characters, and that’s the key thing. Still, it’s obviously a story that exists primarily to extricate Alex from a fairly recent storyline and free him up for X-Factor, and there’s an unavoidable issue here of being able to see the strings. Needs must, I suppose.
UNCANNY X-MEN #1. (Annotations here.) So there’s a lot to like here, but I’m not entirely sold yet. On the plus side, Gail Simone has always been strong on characterisation and interaction, and I like her takes on the main cast. Rogue as leader has been done before, but it’s still fair enough to play her as someone who doesn’t see herself as suited to the role, and I like the idea that she’s mainly looking to reassure herself that the whole X-Men thing had some sort of point to it. It’s good to see the X-Men doing some normal things in the real world for a change, and put them more in the everyday. David Marquez’s art is absolutely fantastic, and if I’m not quite sure why we’re devoting so much of issue #1 to a fight with Sadurang, the establishing shot of him on the pyramid is just beautiful.
On the other hand, there’s the perennial problem of From the Ashes that the post-Krakoa X-books don’t have a premise as immediately striking as what came before, and that makes a first issue a tough sell; it’s something of a slow start in that regard. Still, I’d expect the strengths of this book to lie more in the longer term. From the Ashes isn’t trying to compete in the realm of high concept, after all.
More of an issue for me is that I still don’t get Corina Ellis as the apparent main villain for the series – so far, she seems to be just a standard issue anti-mutant ranter, and I don’t think you can go back to that well so soon after Orchis. I guess you could make something of the idea that Orchis, like the mutants, had everything for a little while during “Fall of X” and then lost it all – so that both sides find themselves in the same regrouping phase – but that doesn’t seem to be the angle, and honestly, I’m puzzled about what’s supposed to make this character different from the many, many similar ones we’ve seen in very recent stories.
WOLVERINE: DEEP CUT #2. By Chris Claremont, Edgar Salazar, Carlos Lopez & Travis Lanham. This is basically what issue #1 would lead you to expect – it’s Wolverine going after the Marauders, and pushing Claremont’s original idea that they’re all clones who don’t necessarily realise that fact. In practice, that means it’s an extended fight scene. And while Edgar Salazar sells the idea very well, this just isn’t how Scrambler’s powers worked first time round, and I can’t help feeling that if the target audience is people who want a Claremont retro books set during the 1980s but also don’t care much about Scrambler’s powers working in a completely different way, then that might be awfully niche.
SAVAGE WOLVERINE INFINITY COMIC #1-2. By Thomas Bloom, Devmalya Pramanik, Javier Tartaglia & Joe Sabino. Two issues of this were posted today. I’m not exactly sure the world needed a Wolverine Infinity Comic – I rather liked the fact that the Infinity Comics tended to do some more obscure stuff – but if we’re doing one then this is a perfectly fine start. Logan gets stuck in a small western desert town and the local radio station seems to have been taken over by a conspiracy-minded talk radio host who’s also some sort of monster. The henchmen who seem to be made largely of fingers are certainly an odd visual and the art sells it rather well. It’s inessential, but hey, the Infinity books are basically a bonus for Marvel Unlimited subscribers, and it’s better than it needs to be for that remit.
I’m not buying the retcon that Maddie deliberately botched Alex’s resurrection. I get what Paknadel was going for- he wanted to have Maddie do something wrong based on her pre-S’ym motivations and one of her major pre-S’ym characteristics was worrying about Scott and the X-Men whenever they were in danger.
But it still doesn’t work. For starters. Maddie says that she knew Krakoa would fall violently. But Alex didn’t get stabbed until AFTER Krakoa fell. More importantly, Maddie thinking that Alex would get killed because he wanted to play superhero is the exact OPPOSITE of the way their relationship was portrayed in Dark X-Men 1. Maddie wanted them to rescue their friends and Alex wanted them to stay put in the embassy. Moreover, after Alex is healed, she sends him on missions with the Dark X-Men. That makes no sense if her motivation was to keep him safe. Plus, we saw Alex in Web of Spider-Man 1, and if he was a zombie, it didn’t seem to be hampering him.
Besides, it was a major point during the Dark X-Men and Web of Spdier-Man 1 that Maddie had learned not to keep people at the embassy against their wills.
And besides, the major reason why Foxe had Alex suffer consequences when Maddie resurrected him was to establish that Maddie isn’t a powerful enough sorceress to resurrect the dead without consequences. If Maddie could have resurrected the dead without consequences, then the next time an X-Man dies, they can just have Alex ask Maddie nicely to resurrect them. (And if Maddie can just resurrect Alex, then why was she worried about him so much?)
We’ll have to see what the future holds for Maddie. Breevort has said that he has a grand unified theory of Jean and Scott’s relationship that will explain both Scott’s behavior in early X-Factor and Scott’s affair with Emma, so we’ll have to see if Maddie will be evil when Breevort’s plan is done.
Another interesting question is whether she’ll play a role in World Under Doom. Doom has reasons to be interested in Maddie. During the Promethium Exchange, Doom tried to seize control of Limbo. Maddie became the Goblin Queen because she was tricked by a demon. Doom’s mother died and lost her soul because she was tricked by Mephisto. ( Mephisto told her she would have the power to strike back against the Romani’s persecutors- he “forgot” to mention that the power would kill every infant in the town.) So Maddie, like Wanda, plays into Doom’s mommy issues.
Re: Corina Ellis- I think the major problem with her is that her assistant, Philip, is much more interesting than she is. Philip’s a telepath and possibly a mutant (Xavier called him a “butterfly broken on the wheel of my dream”.) So why is he helping Ellis persecute mutants?
In fact, Philip is an Evil Counterpart to Xavier. He’s a telepath in a weak body but instead of helping mutants, he helps humans persecute mutants. So why go to the trouble of creating an Evil Counterpart to Xavier and have him be the ASSISTANT to the Big Bad, instead of the Big Bad?
Unless the twist is going to be that Philip is controlling Dr. Ellis, playing the role of reluctant helper when he’s really the mastermind. But if they don’t go that route, I’m not sure how they’ll make Dr. Ellis work.
Philip reminds me of Jason Stryker from the second X-Men movie. It’s weird how similar Marvel is portraying this character to Jason, even with the anti-mutant villain taking over the mansion alongside the telepathic mutant helping to persecute mutants.
Is the reveal going to be that Philip is Ellis’ son, Ellis wants to persecute mutants because her son is a mutant, and she wants revenge on Xavier because she enrolled Philip in the academy hoping Xavier would cure mutation only to discover Xavier was teaching Philip to accept his X-gene?
Re: Wolverine: Deep Cut- the other major continuity error is that Wolverine says that a side effect of the spell that makes the X-Men invisible is that people forget about them a few minutes after they leave. Except that’s no how it worked. Psylocke had to wipe the memories of people if the X-Men wanted them to forget. Tyger Tiger, Jessica Drew, Karma and Lindsay McCabe all knew Logan was alive during the period the X-Men were believed to be dead. Did they forget when they left him and suddenly remember when he they saw him next? Even worse, this limited series leads into the X-Men being ambushed by the Reavers and the Reavers were only able to do that because Skullbuster, Pretty Boy and Bonebreaker remembered where they last fought the X-Men.
If the spell worked that way, the Reavers would have never been able to ambush the X-Men.
In other news, Storm joined the Avengers this week in Avengers 17. It looks like Thor is leaving next issue. There’s a reason why Storm and Thor have never been on the same team before- their powers are redundant. Even in the original Secret Wars, the plot often contrived to make sure they were never in the same place.
The Falcon asked Storm to join the Avengers so that she could be the voice of mutants on the Avengers. Opinion on the net was divided over whether this was a good idea.
Look, the Havok story was obviously a last-minute ending to an abandoned storyline, which doesn’t make enormous sense. But it’s kind of sweet in a sick way, which is what you want from a demon queen. And the alternative is just dropping the storyline with no explanation at all, and that always annoys the hell out of me. The story isn’t great literature, but I’m not sorry it exists.
As for the X-Men spell (speaking of annoyingdropped storylines), I’m pretty sure that was how it worked, for an issue or two. Something about memories twisting and fading like a dream until only vague facts could be recalled. So Dazzler started burning star symbols in places they visited, to remind people. The whole spell was problematic and started getting ignored wholesale almost immediately, but that bit went first.
@Si- No, the spell didn’t work that way. What you’re thinking of is Uncanny X-Men Annual 12, one of the first stories where the X-Men interact with people after being brought back to life. Betsy says to Storm:
“I’ve also mind-touched everyone here, as you asked. So that they’ll remember what happened and that someone helped them but not quite who. This will become not so much a battle in reality, but out of legend.”
It’s clearly Betsy’s powers, not the spell that’s interfering with people’s memories.
Just a reminder to anyone who misses Immortal X-Men: Gillen’s “The Power Fantasy” #1 came out this week, and it rocks.
It’s a little surreal to me that there’s a character in the X-books who goes by “Warden Ellis” these days. Will a hallmark of the new X-era be supporting characters whose names could be easily mistaken for those of past X-writers? If so, I’m eagerly awaiting the debut of Juggernaut’s rival Granite Morrison and, I don’t know, tempo-obsessed supervillain Meter Milligan.
Yeah I’ve been wondering if there’s something metatextual about her name being Ellis. Time will tell what, if anything, her storyline says about her and the other Ellis.
If it’s anything like the other Ellis the reveal will be very slow in coming, will most likely be disappointing, and may not ever see publication.
“Her name? Sis Claire Mont. A gifted telepath with the power to make you live your darkest fears… And desires.”
The sum totality of her psionic capabilities would amount to bad puns and sly homoeroticism.
“Gillen’s “The Power Fantasy” #1 came out this week, and it rocks.”
I second this sentiment. I’ve read it 3 times already. It’s a good reminder of what Gillen can do when he’s not shackled by other writer’s ideas. Also — to connect it back to the X-Men — it made me think about Omega-level mutants more than once.
“The sum totality of her psionic capabilities would amount to bad puns and sly homoeroticism.”
And dropping subplots.
I’d expect Warden Ellis to drink and swear, be surrounded by a bevy of goth girls and later be revealed to be a creeper.
I’d assume that if it was saying anything at all about W Ellis, it would be the creeper bit. It seems unlikely that something this crass would be done, but it seems equally unlikely that Gail Simone of all people would use the name randomly. Maybe it’s a subtle(ish) homage, but that would also be an odd choice. I’m not sure of their current relationship.
It would be incredibly subtle if the name wasn’t slapping you in the face. An African-American female bureaucrat who persecutes mutants would be a very odd homage for a British hard-drinking rake. Maybe not quite as odd as that Christian millenarian novel whose author decided to name the Biblical Anti-Christ as “Grant Morrison”, only to go on record that he was a fan of Morrison’s comics. Maybe not quite as odd but probably close.
This is why I’m so curious. I can think of three or four explanations, from pure coincidence to a crazy parody, but every single explanation seems wildly unlikely. Hell, maybe it has to do with numerology or something. I was hoping someone here might know the answer.
Michael> And besides, the major reason why Foxe had Alex suffer consequences when Maddie resurrected him was to establish that Maddie isn’t a powerful enough sorceress to resurrect the dead without consequences. If Maddie could have resurrected the dead without consequences, then the next time an X-Man dies, they can just have Alex ask Maddie nicely to resurrect them. (And if Maddie can just resurrect Alex, then why was she worried about him so much?)
He was DYING when Maddie did her thing, he wasn’t DEAD.
@SanityOrMadness- that was what Foxe originally intended but both the From the Ashes Infinity comic and X-Factor 1 treat Alex as having been resurrected from the dead:
From the Ashes 7: “Then that crazy cyborg turned Havok into a shish kebab, so the queen decided to RESURRECT him”.
X-Factor 1: Lorna: “You were JUST DEAD, Alex!”
“An African-American female bureaucrat who persecutes mutants….”
Gail has written Amanda Waller before right? Presumably in secret Six or Suicide Squad?
And Waller is the big bad over at the Distinguished Competiton at the moment, I think.
Coincidence? I hate to say zeitgeist, because It would be a weird look if both comics companies had a Person of Color Woman bureaucrat/politican as a super villain at this particular moment in time.
Ouch. In their defence, the Waller story and the X-Men story would have been in planning for months before any of the latest America nonsense. But watch out Kamala Khan I suppose.
That’s why I was saying coincidence, because they’d have no way of predicting the Veep would now be running for Prez. Plus, given the perception (rightly or wrongly) that the Big Two are more overtly progressive these days, if anything, you’d think they be bringing back the Byrne era Luthor as a surrogate for criticisms.
(Maybe they have, I really don’t read many current books anymore.)