The X-Axis – w/c 12 August 2024
X-MEN: FROM THE ASHES INFINITY COMIC #10. By Alex Paknadel, Phillip Sevy, Arthur Hesli & Clayton Cowles. This is the start of another three-parter, and this time it’s an Omega Red arc. Thanks to Krakoa, Omega Red has been somewhat rehabbed to the point where you can now write a relatively sympathetic story about the guy. Arkady has been mellowed by his time on Krakoa to the point where he decides to go back and see his home town again. He gets a rather mixed reaction, and the story deals with that reasonably well. It looks like we’re getting some kind of story about odd things happening to local kids over the years, which feels like it could be looking to retcon some of his back story, but we’ll see where that goes. I’m not particularly up for toning down his history, I have to say. Anyway, all this is ultimately a lead-in to Sentinels #1, which is the real context for anything we’re doing.
X-MEN #2. (Annotations here.) The X-Men head to San Francisco to help a new mutant whose powers have emerged in the middle of an apparent alien invasion, which remarkably enough turns out not to be a coincidence. Actually, that makes more sense than you’d think – even in Marvel Universe logic, “his powers created the alien invasion” is a lot less likely than “it’s a stressful event that triggered his powers manifesting”, so I don’t think the X-Men come across as too silly for not jumping straight to the right conclusion.
Jed MacKay’s X-Men is quite similar to Gerry Duggan’s run in terms of being built around one-off stories – it’s going primarily for the straightforward superhero angle while building some things more subtly in the background. Maybe a little too subtly, since I’m not sure how many people will actually pick up on the fact that the new mutant’s powers have emerged in adulthood, which was the same oddity as the previous issue. He’s done similar things in Dr Strange and Moon Knight, and it’s worked there. This book is a bit less triumphalist in tone than Duggan’s run was, too, which is for the best. I’m starting to get into Ryan Stegman’s action sequences and his alien invasion splash page, but he does make everyone look awfully young – which is not ideal when a major plot is based around new mutants being older than they’re supposed to be.
X-FACTOR #1. (Annotations here.) So I liked this, but I can absolutely see it dividing people. It’s the government-sponsored X-Factor team crossed more or less with X-Statix, except that tonally it’s closer to JLI than to Milligan/Allred. So maybe it’s actually government sponsored X-Factor meets Maxwell Lord, and the plot evoking X-Statix is unhelpful? Most of the first issue is devoted to an initial team led by Angel getting wiped out – and I’m not sure I’d have chosen Feral and Rusty Collins for that role, but the story does expressly leave open the possibility that they were just badly injured. And hell, people had the whole Krakoan era to write stories about Rusty Collins, and nobody wanted to.
Mark Russell isn’t always exactly subtle as a satirist, but I like the fact that all his characters seem to be well aware of the problems with this media-sponsored set-up, and they’re trying to make it work. Xyber, the one newbie who survives the first team, has some promise as a rookie who’s completely out of his depth and knows it, but might actually turn out to be useful if he lives long enough. Havok is the only team member from the replacement squad who gets real page time here, and Russell makes a convincing enough case for him being willing to give this a go, if only because he’s never been a mutant separatist. Bob Quinn’s art is nice and clean, and fits the character comedy. It’s the issue #1 I’ve enjoyed most so far in the current line relaunch, but I can’t help suspecting it’ll be taken by a lot of people as a watered down X-Statix, even though I think it’s going for a very different tone.
HELLVERINE #4. By Benjamin Percy, Julius Ohta, Frank D’Armata & Travis Lanham. This miniseries turned out much better than I expected. It’s a sequel to a Wolverine/Ghost Rider crossover that was decent enough, but the basic idea of the Pentagon trying to weaponise Hell and screwing it up is a nice hook. It contrasts all of that with the mundane and normal very successfully, and Julius Ohta’s art avoids some of the usual cliches of Hell-linked character designs. And ultimately it gets Daken back into circulation, though I’m not sure I would have left him as a Ghost Rider permanently. That feels a bit gimmicky as a long term status quo. Still, it wouldn’t be hard for another writer to get rid of, and it gives him something to do in terms of leading his little group of Project Hellfire escapees.
WOLVERINE ANNUAL #1. By Ezra Claytan Daniels, Yildiray Çinar, Frank D’Armata & Cory Petit. This year’s annual theme: shoehorn in the characters who have the Infinity Gems right now. It’s a bit of a stretch to work that into a Wolverine story, and a lot of this issue is taken up with a subplot about the Prince of Power losing his mind, which never really feels like it belongs in this issue. Still, the Soul Gem provides an opportunity for Logan to get a moment with the ghost of Rose O’Hara that feels more meaningful. This is alright within the parameters of the crossover, but those parameters feel pretty limiting.
SAVAGE WOLVERINE INFINITY COMIC #3. By Tom Bloom, Guillermo Sanna, Java Tartaglia & Joe Sabino. I don’t know why we need another X-Men Infinity Comic, but this is turning out to be a good story about weird stuff in a small town. Nothing extraordinary or ground breaking here, sure, but it’s a well paced, nicely delivered middle chapter to build the tension. Very solid.
Hellverine and Ben Percy don’t work at all for me, so I was saddened to see both are getting an ongoing.
Hey, the US government trying to weaponise Hell was done a few years ago,in the New Mutants revival. The babies from the original Inferno were being raised in Limbo.
I’d be willing to not treat X-Factor like a watered down X-Statix a lot more if it didn’t spend it’s first issue going over a lot of ground that X-Statix did already, a lot better. It’s possible that it’ll mature into it’s own thing, but I don’t understand how nobody at Marvel looked at that first issue and didn’t see the direct comparisons. I also felt like Angel throwing Xyber out of the plane was slightly out of character; why not just fly him down from the start?
“I also felt like Angel throwing Xyber out of the plane was slightly out of character; why not just fly him down from the start?”
Maybe Warren was looking at from a mama bird’s perspective. You know, throw him out of the “nest” so he learns (not to fly, obviously, but to get used to jumping out of planes).
Or maybe he expected him to turn into the Hulk on the way down.
I think that one major problem that people had with X-Factor is turning Darkstar into a generic Evil Villainess without explanation.
I agree that it would be a mistake to try to claim that Omega Red wasn’t a serial killer before the KGB experimented on him. The entire point of his arc in Percy’s books was that Omega Red was a serial killer BEFORE he became dependent on the life forces of others- his need to kill was psychological, an addiction like Sage’s alcoholism. However, many readers understandably find it difficult to sympathize with a protagonist who was a serial killer. And while some of the information about Omega Red being a serial killer comes from John Wraith, who is biased in favor of Wolverine for obvious reasons, Banshee claimed to have met Omega Red before the KGB experimented on him and that he was one of the most vicious killers he’d ever met. Besides, Wolverine interfered with the KGB’s experiments on Omega Red and if Omega Red wasn’t evil before Wolverine interfered, it rains the possibility that Wolverine turned Omega Red into a serial killer.
That being said, supposedly the first issue of Sentinels involves Larry Trask sending the Sentinels to capture Omega Red because he knows from his precognitive visions that Omega Red is a danger to the world, so we’ll have to see how this plays out.
Hellverine will be getting an ongoing series in December written by Percy.
Regarding the Wolverine Annual, I thought it was an effective twist that while Rose forgave Wolverine, the Prince of Power’s parents didn’t forgive him.
Percy: “I love Wolverine and I love Ghost Rider and since I can’t write those series why not combine them…” presumably. I wonder if he has blackmail material on someone at Marvel.
I think this iteration of X-Factor manages to ping all the previous eras of the title, and despite the formal similarities it is doing something more meta than X-Statix. Milligan and Allred seemed to be more interested in commenting on reality TV and social media, and those stories worked with all new characters fighting for attention and equally likely to be canon fodder. Russell needs to use recognizable C and D listers, in part because that’s what X-Factor has always been, or at least since the first PAD era. I’m willing to see where this goes.
I like that X-Factor referenced the Milligan/Allred X-Force opening. It’s an iconic first issue that deserves its due as a touchstone in the “main” X-books. If we’re not going to get the X-Statix characters in anything but retro miniseries, then at least we’re getting their messy, ironic spirit.
Also, referencing the Milligan/Allred X-Force run makes the idea even more meta. When Feral is possibly dying it’s shocking because this is the first time death might be real again. But also maybe it’s a winky in-joke for readers of 20-year-old comics. Except it’s serious because this time it’s not a nobody, it’s a character who’s been around for more than 30 years.
I’m not saying it’s a work of genius, but it was fun and has provoked some interesting discussion. In the same way the debut issue referenced past X-Factor iterations, it also referenced multiple eras of death/resurrection in the X-books. Which, now that I think about it, ties it into the killed-too-soon Williams/Baldeon iteration of X-Factor.
I realize tastes may vary, but I think it’s worth at least another issue or two of consideration.
So that makes the Hood, Daken, and future Frank Castle all characters who have become Ghost Riders. And two of those are from Benamin Percy stories.
A few things from Breevort’s blog:
Wolverine: Revenge takes place in the near future.
if we want to see X-characters reacting to Hope’s sacrifice, “then you’ll likely need to wait until early in 2025, when we have something coming up that’ll touch on that subject at least a little bit.”
And an odd exchange about the villains in NYX:
ALISON: Was it intentional that all of NYX’s antagonists were former students of Emma’s, or was it just a coincidence?
TOM: it was intentional in that Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly along with editor Annalise Bissa selected them to be their Quiet Council. But I would say it had more to do with which characters were in the orbit of the cast of that series than anything else, and I don’t know that Emma’s involvement really factored into those decisions.
That’s odd- I mean, it would be like if the villains of a Marvel book were Red Skull, Crossbones and Cobra and the editor denied that it was because they were Captain America villains or if the villains of a DC book were Joker, Scarecrow and Bane denied that it was because they were Batman villains.
OT and many weeks too late, but Tony Stark in Iron-Man 20 has a prescient line:
“My agent said people are kind of “super hero’ed out” right now? But I think I’ll get good buzz.”
Update to what I wrote yesterday- after the Cerebro interview with Kelly and Lansing, it’s clearer what Breevort meant. Apparently, the Krakoan was originally supposed to be Quentin Quire but he got grabbed up by MacKay, Hellion was substituted for Quentin. So what Breevort meant is that it’s only all Emma characters because Hellion was substituted. That makes more sense.
In other news, Ayodele said in an interview that one of the themes that he will explore with Storm is that she has a criminal past she’s seeking redemption for, like Wolverine and Gambit. She was a thief when she was TWELVE. Wolverine was a killer. Gambit was a party to the mutant massacre. I mean, Storm’s done several questionable things as an adult, like stabbing Forge, nearly drowning the X-Men to stop Mastermind, considering killing Alex for no real reason, etc., but the idea that she needs to atone for stealing when she was twelve is just ridiculous.
To build on what Michel said, has Storm ever shown any indication that she regrets having been a thief?
@Talibak- The one example that comes to mind is Uncanny X-Men 305 by Scott Lobdell. Xavier asks Storm to steal for him and after doing so, Storm tells him not to ask her to steal for him again- they have to be better than that. Scott Lobdell received a lot of criticism for that. That being said, Storm seemed to be angry at Xavier for trying to exploit her past. It’s never come up unprompted.