The X-Axis – w/c 19 August 2024
X-MEN: FROM THE ASHES INFINITY COMIC #11. By Alex Paknadel, Phillip Sevy, Arthur Hesli & Clayton Cowles. Part 2 of the Omega Red arc, which seems to be mostly concerned with giving the guy a home town and some sort of vaguely normal background. Given the way he’s being used these days, that seems like a worthwhile exercise. There’s a bit of rustic Russian cliche going on here, and maybe it takes itself a little seriously, but on the whole I’m enjoying the way that this story is letting Omega Red do something more grounded and low key than we’re used to seeing with him.
SAVAGE WOLVERINE INFINITY COMIC #4. By Tom Bloom, Guillermo Sanna, Java Tartaglia & Joe Sabino. Another depressed small town arc, and this one is turning out quite well too. Logan finds himself in a town where somebody’s been using anti-mutant paranoia to “innoculate” the locals with a supposed cure, with predictably disastrous results. The weird body horror designs are well done and the take on Logan is nicely understated. Okay, there’s an action sequence with an overturning car that doesn’t work at all – I honestly can’t figure out what’s supposed to make it flip. But that aside, this arc is much better than I expected from a Wolverine Infinity Comic.
PHOENIX #2. (Annotations here.) Hmm. I generally liked the first issue, but I’m rather less convinced by this one. The art is generally fine, aside from a burial sequence which looks very odd indeed – are those rocks floating or something? But the book’s take on Corsair is genuinely baffling. I can see how you might look at the “space pirate” angle and decide to play him up as a real pirate rather than some sort of genre swashbuckler, which is what he’s generally been. What you really can’t do and get away with it is suddenly decide that the X-Men don’t trust him an inch, and that doing something noble and heroic is wildly out of character for him. Literally decades of stories say otherwise.
The other thing with this issue is that it doesn’t make a great case for Jean Grey as a compelling lead. With Corsair at least as a strongly defined rogue, and some genuinely intriguing subplot build with Perrikus and Adina, Jean is in serious danger of being the least interesting character in her own book. I am interested in where the book is going with Perrikus, though, who was a one-dimensional bruiser in his previous appearances, but seems to be developing a more philosophical bent here. You could argue that he’s as out of character as Corsair, but the difference is that Perrikus only has a handful of previous appearances, and he spends most of them being obsessed with revenge on Thor – it’s much easier to persuade me that he has other sides we haven’t seen before.
WOLVERINE: REVENGE #1. By Jonathan Hickman, Greg Capullo, Tim Townsend, FCO Plascencia & Cory Petit. Well, this isn’t what I expected from a Jonathan Hickman Wolverine story. There’s not a diagram or a spreadsheet in sight. It’s also very obviously out of continuity, which I don’t remember Marvel mentioning in the solicitations. But whatever. I never thought the book would have any wider impact.
This is, in fact, basically Jonathan Hickman doing an action story. An electromagnetic pulse has wiped out all technology in the northern hemisphere. Millions of people are dead. (And if that’s not non-canon enough for you, the original Nick Fury is running SHIELD.) The Russians have the only working power source in the northern hemisphere, so America needs it in order to survive. Wolverine, Captain America and the Winter Soldier try to get it back, facing a mixture of villains and Colossus, who points out that America has no greater claim on the thing than Russia does. Anyway, it’s a heist/action issue, simple as that. I wouldn’t think of this as playing to Jonathan Hickman’s strengths, but it’s actually very good. It gives Capullo plenty to do, the set pieces are nicely set up without being overly elaborate, and it’s just a well told, well paced affair. Not what I was expecting at all, but I liked it.
“It’s also very obviously out of continuity, which I don’t remember Marvel mentioning in the solicitations”
As I mentioned in the Phoenix thread, Marvel didn’t just not mention it in the solicitations, Breevort outright lied about it:
https://tombrevoort.substack.com/p/125-can-you-see-the-moon
“And finally, a big deal book edited by Mark Basso, WOLVERINE: REVENGE, a series that combines the talents of writer Jonathan Hickman and artist Greg Capullo to deliver a brutal and uncompromising tale of Wolverine in the near future”
It’s not taking place in the near future- it’s out of continuity. Triumph and Torment, for example. was a Graphic Novel featuring Doctor Doom that was published while he was exiled from Latveria but took place shortly after he took over Latveria again. That’s “in the near future”. Wolverine: Revenge is just out of continuity.
I believe that as in the case of Doom’s one-shot, in Wolverine: Revenge Hickman was mainly concerned with developing the script from the penciler’s plot. It is clearly a story designed to allow Capullo to draw whatever he wants to draw.
Well, whatever. Perhaps Brevoort was just confused at time of writing. Regardless, as someone going into the issue completely cold, part of what made WOLVERINE: REVENGE a good time for me was the gradual reveal that the story was so out of continuity. I’m glad they didn’t tell people what it was about.
As for PHOENIX, I agree: I picked up the first issue on a lark and was surprised enough at what I found to buy this second installment, but I’m less interested now than I was.
You say that Wolverine: Revenge doesn’t play to Hickman’s strengths, but to me it gives off the same sort of vibes as elements of Secret Warriors, such as the Last Ride of the Howling Commandos arc, and the fate of Mikel Fury’s Caterpillar team… that same sort of high stakes, action/thriller feel.
“…it doesn’t make a great case for Jean Grey as a compelling lead.”
Hardly surprising. I mean, she’s vanilla. And just like vanilla, she’s always been immensely popular, but never exciting (except during the Dark Vanilla Saga).
I think the idiom “near future” is maybe being read overly literally. In pretty much any other storytelling medium, calling something a story of the near future is flagging its DIScontinuity with today. They’re stories that explore what could happen if we do/don’t stay on the path we’re on, not literal predictions of the future. You know… a what if.
Actually I probably have just said “in the near future” means “a cautionary tale”, which certainly seems to be the vibe of that one-shot!
@Joe I – Breevort also referred to it as “a big deal book”. Nobody who’s been in comics as long as Brevoort has would promote an out of continuity story, no matter how good it is, as “a big deal book” unless they’re either mistaken, or lying. Describing a story as such suggests to readers that it’s going to be a status-quo-changer, and Brevoort knows this.
Yes. I took it that Wolverine: Revenge would be set in an alternate future, but the existence of the original Nick Fury in the story sort of precludes that possibility. Unless the original Fury returns in an upcoming Marvel book.
It seems almost as if the Jonbar point here is around the time of X-Men (vol. 2) #1, with the original Fury and Asteroid M.
The series was also described as “one of the defining takes in Wolverine’s storied legend” in marketing material. That sets up expectations which don’t include “a Wolverine story that never really happened or will happen”.
@Moo: After reading a few months of his Substack in the run-up to this era of the X-Books, I will definitely agree that in his role as PR/hype-man, Brevoort does a lot of things I consider peculiar.
@Chris V: Original Fury is back, but I can’t see anyone trusting him enough to run SHIELD again any time soon.
@Joe I- the difference is that the comic industry has terms for stories that don’t fit in to regular continuity- “out of continuity”,”Elseworlds”, or “What if?”
Plus, the comics industry frequently publishes stories that take place after stories published later. For example the FCBD X-Men story was published in May but takes place after Uncanny X-Men 1, which was published in August. So “near future” in the comics industry means something different that in other mediums.
@Scott B: I thought Original Nick Fury had been sent off to other dimensions or something in the Al Ewing Fury one-shot.
@Chris V: Phrases such as “storied legend” and “defining take” can also suggest a self-contained, creator-driven project, like The Dark Knight Returns or All-Star Superman.
Or maybe this will turn out to be a trailer of sorts for a big crossover event at some point in the next year or two.
It’s hard for me to see a premise that relies on a complete loss of electricity and tech in half the world working in a Wolverine solo miniseries unless it’s an event thing or an alternate continuity.
To be fair, Jean’s only “vanilla” because writers keep writing her that way. They’ve added 900 new character traits to Wolverine over the years, you’d think they could spare a couple for Jean.
Also, this isn’t the first time someone’s hyped a book by fibbing about it. I’m sure Brevoort is going to catch hell for this on his Substack, though.
@Omar: Yeah, he’s off in the multiverse but he’s back to normal and can come back whenever a writer wants to use him.
Omar-That’s true, although I didn’t consider it for this series in the same way as DKR being an alternate future for Batman or the timeless feel of All-Star Superman. Those were certainly defining tales of the two characters though.
It would be unusual if this did set up a near-future crossover as it would need to end with a resetting of the timeline, which would definitely give that label to Jonathan Hickman after Secret Wars and Krakoa.
Ah, OK. I did read the Ewing Fury one-shot. I’m not following everything from Marvel closely, so I considered that original Nick Fury may have been active on Earth-616 again.
Wolverine: Revenge 1 was a fun comic that looked great. Whether it is in- or out-of-continuity doesn’t affect my enjoyment in the least.
In Avengers 21. Cyclops’s X-Men will be fighting against the Avengers. Because everyone liked AVX so much. I really can’t believe that anyone would try another Avengers vs. X-Men story after the reaction to AVX.
Then again, maybe the problem is just Scott. Because the cover to X-Men 8 has Rogue punching Scott. Scott is really displaying his excellent people skills. 🙂
In other news, the preview for Avengers 21 states that “Scarlet Witch and Magneto finally confront their history!” What does that mean? They’ve met since Magneto came back, in Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver 4. Maybe the twins are getting re-retcooned into Magneto’s children?
Re-retcooning sounds offensive
I thought maybe Marvel was going to reveal that they were the love children of Magneto and Rocket Raccoon. I think I could get behind that reveal.
Hard pass. I do not like the idea of Wanda and Pietro turning out to be the children of Magneto and a rabbit.
It’s funny, because the Avengers cover has Captain Marvel punching Scott. Maybe it’s just Avengers and X-Men vs Cyclops. For no reason, both teams just stayed up talking real late, and decided they all think he’s a jerk with a really punchable face.
@Thom H.- Louise Simonson tried not to write Jean as “vanilla” but her run included Scott shooting his optic blasts at Jean with enough force to blow a hole in a wall and Jean pelting Scott with balls of ice which Warren and Hank had to dodge being hit by when they ricocheted. You couldn’t get away with that today. Writers don’t seem to be able to write Jean as “non-vanilla” without making her and Scott the poster children for domestic violence.
@Michael: I agree that the Scott/Jean dynamic tends to veer dramatically from bland to abusive. (If Scott needs to be paired up with someone, I honestly think it should be Emma.)
But I also think Jean has a lot of potential on her own. I won’t write an essay here, but in short: Morrison and Taylor both wrote her as a mutant visionary and truth teller. It would be nice to explore those traits further.
I don’t think the way forward for the character is by setting her on the edge of the galaxy, away from mutants, in a book where she’s doing basic space heroics.
It’s that bloody Phoenix she can’t seem to be rid of that made someone think it was a good idea for her to be a cosmic, space-faring adventurer.
Obviously, I think the Phoenix needs to be kicked to the curb once and for all, but plainly that’s never going to happen since Jean seems to be regularly passed between those creators who share my opinion and those who prefer her as Phoenix and not just Jean Grey:The Codenameless Wonder.
By way of an alternative suggestion, I always thought that “Fury” would be a good codename for Jean. I think that notion was influenced by how Marvel Boy (Vance Astrovik) used to be described in the preamble for the New Warriors series as a “telekinetic fury”.
And yes, you might be thinking calling her Fury could be confusing because of the existence of Nick Fury, but I think it could work. Besides, way, way back when Wein and Cockrum were creating Storm, they were initially hesitant to give her the name Storm because, and this is true, they thought it might cause confusion due to the existence of Susan and Johnny Storm.
Just mentioning this, but Captain Marvel (Carol Danvers) was sometimes nicknamed “The Female Fury” very early on her superpowered career. It make the covers of most of issues #6-10 of the 1970s “Ms. Marvel” series.
I suppose the problem with trying to call Jean “Fury” is that you’ve got Nick Fury who casts a much larger shadow over the name, and The Fury, which has a small but lasting impact upon a certain subset of the Captain Britain/X-Men fandom (since for all intents and purposes, Brian and his extended circle were coopted into the mutant sphere by Claremont, Davis, etc.) It’s not necessarily a confusion thing as a distinctive thing.
Plus, to my mind it just doesn’t feel like a term associated with her. Kind of like any time they try to give Rachel a new codename–she was Phoenix long enough for it to stick, and names like Prestige and Askani don’t seem to really feel like her either.
Frankly, Marvel Girl and Marvel Boy both demonstrate the difficulty of finding good codenames for telekinetics or telepaths. They’re rarely “flashy” powers which evoke flashy names, so… (not that “Justice” or “Major Victory” for Vance’s various iterations are particularly -explanatory-)
Jean might not have been Phoenix for a particularly long time given her overall history, but her rise and fall under that name pretty much ensured she’d never escape it. (yeah yeah, cosmic retcons, blah blah, it was Jean for all that counted at the time.)
Moo: it would explain the “ears” of Pietro’s hair…
@The Other Michael – So, two Marvel characters can be successfully named Fury (Nick Fury and The Fury) without difficulty but three is somehow problematic?
I think Morrison squeezed the last juice out of the Phoenix concept 20 years ago. Writers since then have just used it as shorthand for “really powerful.” Not interested.
When I hear “Fury,” I think of the character from DC’s Infinity Inc., but that’s a little more obscure.
Marvel Girl is obviously not useful anymore. Marvel Woman is awkward and terrible. Maybe she could use one of Kate’s castoffs?
Let’s be honest, at this point in her existence, any superhero codename applied to Jean Grey that isn’t “Phoenix” is likely going to have most readers thinking, “Ehh… doesn’t suit her.” (whether it’s Fury or something else). That’s understandable. But you don’t throw a new pair of shoes away just because they’re not immediately as comfortable as your previous pair. You gotta break them in.
Is it worth considering that none of the apocalyptic events in Wolverine: Revenge are actually shown on the page?
The cleverest name for a telekenetic villain I’ve seen was the crazed Jean counterpart in the Chosen of Mindfire (X-Men 2099 villains who were recruited by a bald telepath as exact counterparts to the Original Five): Psycho Kay.
…I was thinking “telekinetic character”, and then I thought “but maybe that only works for a villain” as I was typing, so I ended up saying villain, even though we were talking about telekinetic heroes.
If she were Deadpool’s partner they could call her Jeanpool.
Breevort had this to say about Colossus on his blog-“Colossus is coming. In fact, you’ll see just a little bit of him before you even realize”.
Some people think this means Tank is Colossus.
I’ve thought for a few years that Phoenix, as a concept, not necessarily Jean, needs to be put on ice for a while, especially after when you had multiple Phoenixes running around and/or whatever Jason Aaron did in Avengers.
Agree with @Thom X. X-Men Red with Jean as mutant visionary was last best use of her. And unfortunately, I do think she works better “dead” and as an emblem, than as a usable character! She’s just too powerful.
Also I think most X-Men characters can’t really support a solo book. We’re interested in them mostly for their relations to the other X-characters. It’s very hard to break them out of it otherwise.
I very much enjoyed how the first issue inverted tropes with Scott being written in the story position that is usually relegated for “the girl.”
So my reading is that Scott trusts Corsair with the X-Men, and has for decades. Scott telling Jean that he doesn’t trust him is to inform us, the readers, that he doesn’t trust his father around his wife. Telling us that when Corsair creepily hits on his own daughter that we are supposed to take this as him acting in character and not revealing something new. Stephanie Phillips is bringing her perspective, which uhm… fits with how various male writers have written the other swashbuckler, Nightcrawler. So it is also a trope for her to address.
I did not enjoy this, finding it just as uncomfortable as the original. This is not my Corsair.
There isn’t much of a point to giving Jean a new codename that isn’t “Phoenix” or some derivative of that until and unless a firm editorial decision is taken to allow her to grow beyond being defined by hosting the Phoenix Force or contrasting herself to it.
A situation that I would welcome, but that I do not expect to happen anytime soon. IMO the Phoenix has well outlived its welcome, but it is readily recognizable and seems to promote sales, so it keeps returning even if the full picture does not make sense.
I assume that it is a similar situation to that of Symbiotes, but I won’t know. I don’t expose myself to Symbiote stories if I can help it, and it has been so since the 1990s.
@Luis Dantas: I’m not a fan of the symbiote characters as a whole, but I came across the latter half of Al Ewing’s Venom comics for cheap recently. They’re pretty good, even if the story doesn’t resolve. Lucky me, there’s a mini-series being released now to wrap it up, Venom War. If you come across it on Unlimited or in the cheap bins, I recommend it.
@Luis Dante – Hypothetically speaking, if some future writer wanted to propose a rebrand of Jean Grey, they wouldn’t have to wait around for someone in editorial to finally slap a restraining order on the Phoenix. Besides which, editorial decrees are usually only as permanent as the editorial regimes that make them. Even Bucky’s longstanding “do not resuscitate” order was eventually thrown out, so there’s really no point in anyone laying down some law that Jean must never be Phoenix again. If the next editorial regime would prefer to disregard that, then they absolutely will.
Back to that hypothetical situation, in such a circumstance, that writer would only have to pitch the rebranding idea and whatever new codename it entails and hope that whoever their editor happens to be at the time would be game for at least giving it a try.
@Luis – My autocorrect butchered your last name, sorry.
Speaking of Bucky, is his codename really “The Revolution” now? Terrible.
@Ronnie Gardocki: Maybe Bucky and Doug can hang out.
Seriously? That’s what he’s calling himself now? The Revolution? Bucky named himself after Prince’s band?
Well, no. Bucky calls himself that after the previous man who called himself The Revolution.
And that man was Gavrilo Princip, the assassin of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
Comics, everybody. Gotta love them.