The X-Axis – w/c 23 September 2024
X-MEN: FROM THE ASHES INFINITY COMIC #16. By Alex Paknadel, Phillip Sevy, Michael Bartolo & Clayton Cowles. Ah, so apparently the appearance of a duplicate Beast last issue wasn’t meant to come across as a new villain, which is how I read it… but the plot of this issue is basically that he turns out to be a villain. So that doesn’t exactly work for me. Still, I see what we’re doing here: the duplicate Beast is a mutant who simply takes on the persona of whoever’s around him, with little underlying personality of his own. And the idea is clearly to test the idea that something about the Beast inherently dooms him to become a villain by confronting him with another copy. The idea makes sense but I’m not entirely convinced – I think the issue for me is that the mimic character is just a bit too obviously contrived to fit the theme, so it’s hard to buy him as an actual person.
Oh, and no issue of Savage Wolverine this week, so apparently it was a miniseries. I’m quite relieved about that, to be honest, even though I liked the book, since Marvel seem to be determined to restore Wolverine to the level of overexposure that plagued him for so many years.
UNCANNY X-MEN #3. (Annotations here.) Four ongoing titles in a single week! It’s been a while since that happened, but that’s mainly because they’ve taken their time on rolling out the relaunch. Still, we’re back down to two next week.
Uncanny is still a bit of a mixed bag at this point. The art is lovely, and the Outliers seem like interesting characters. Most of this issue is basically more introduction for them, with a bit more interaction with the established X-Men, and some outline origin flashbacks for them all. I’m still much less convinced about the villains. Sarah’s magical angle goes some way to addressing my concern that the book’s bad guys were just a straight retread of Orchis, but I can’t say the concept is really my thing. Still, Uncanny‘s main strength so far is in the character work on the X-Men and Outliers, and that side of the book is working rather well.
X-FORCE #3. (Annotations here.) Mmm. There’s a theoretically interesting idea in here about Forge having blind faith in the product of his powers, and going on essentially arbitrary missions simply because he trusts that his powers must be sterring him right. In practice it all feels very episodic and random. I suppose you need to have everything go smoothly for a while before you can pull the rug out or start having the Analog steer the group to less clear cut threats – so far, it’s just sent them to places where the threat is obviously real and the team need to intervene. I can see it picking up as that theme gets developed, but for now the book feels like a series of random encounters which aren’t especially strong ideas in and of themselves. It’s a nice looking book, there’s the occasional good character touch, but I don’t think it’s working.
PHOENIX #3. (Annotations here.) This two parter really doesn’t get Corsair at all. Playing him up as a rogue or having him be mainly interested in stealing something valuable – that’s all fair enough. But the idea that it’s some sort of new development for the Corsair to be doing heroic things, even as basic as “flying the rescued slaves back home”, is just completely nuts. Still, the bigger problem here is that the book isn’t making a case for Jean Grey as an interesting solo lead. Perrikus, Adani, Hakan and even the book’s oddball take on Corsair all feel like stronger and more engaging characters than Jean, who feels by far the blandest person in her own book.
I said when the relaunch started that I probably wouldn’t do annotations for all the secondary ongoing titles, but we’d see how it went. Right now, it ain’t looking good for X-Force or Phoenix, but I guess I’ll give them both a little more time.
NYX #3. (Annotations here.) Now this is more like it. It’s Anole’s spotlight issue, although really it’s more a story to introduce the latest version of the Morlocks. Anole fits in here because he’s the only visible mutant in the core cast, just like the other Morlocks. But the Morlocks themselves are the more intriguing element here, since it’s not just a straight revival of the old 1980s concept. This version are also positioning themselves as a sort of continuity Krakoa, and it makes sense that the original mutant separatist community would do that – even if most of the actual Morlocks left for Madripoor rather than staying on Krakoa. But for the most part these aren’t even the original Morlocks, and the story off handedly raises some intriguing questions about where they came from. How did Caliban turn into a solemn leader figure? What on earth is Sobunar, of all people, doing in this group? But it doesn’t feel random – there’s just enough done to suggest that this is meant to strike us as odd, even if it doesn’t register quite that way with the cast. Mortarino’s art has an understated charm to it, and really does sell the quietly dignified, slightly off kilter nature of the new Morlocks.
WOLVERINE: REVENGE #2. By Jonathan Hickman, Greg Capullo, Tim Townsend, FCO Plascencia & Cory Petit. Well, it’s a story about Wolverine in the post-apocalyptic USA looking for revenge on the guys he fought in issue #1. I do quite like the fact that it avoids the usual post-apocalyptic tropes; it’s just a rundown world without power, except for the bits that Forge has got working. It’s newly post-apocalyptic. But it does look to be mainly a book about letting Greg Capullo draw what he wants to draw, rather than a story which is about anything in particular beyond the surface. There are certainly worse reasons to have a miniseries than to showcase Capullo’s art, though, and it’s a decent enough tale on its own terms.
The one thing about the Paknadel story that I didn’t like was that it made Scott look like an idiot. He knows Blank Slate duplicates the powers of nearby mutants but can’t control it. Scott knows he can’t control his optic blasts. So of course he walks near Blank Slate and is shocked when Blank Slate develops optic blasts and can’t control them. Scott’s not supposed to be THAT stupid.
There’s a weird confidence to this relaunch of the X-books that readers have a lot of time and money to throw at it before anything of import happens. X-Force is still setting the stage for something to go awry, Phoenix has yet to really focus on its main character, Uncanny hasn’t locked down its new characters’ powers even after a couple of issues of introductions.
It’s actually an intriguing tactic to not start with a bang like usual. I don’t know that a lot of the books I’ve read so far are *good*, but I’m interested to know where this is all going. Maybe *that* will be good?
In my opinion, they need to the replace the creative team on Phoenix pdq, dump the current storyline, and pair Jean up with an adorable green space baby with a bounty on its head that Jean must protect if they want this series to have a hope in hell of making it.
Isn’t the usual deal with Scott’s powers that he cannot control those powers, but rather than being an aspect of his powers, that’s because he suffered brain damage, so people who duplicate them usually can control them?
Though of course that’s still a bonehead move if Blank Slate cannot control the powers he duplicate…
Sorry, I should have been more clear- Blank Slate seems to uncontrollably duplicate the powers. as well as appearances and memories, of nearby mutants. But he can control the powers as well as the people he duplicates can.
My point was, when Blank Slate was near Hank, he turned blue and furry, so Scott should have realized that Blank Slate was copying people based on their current status quos.
There’s definitely something odd going on with various characters’ powers across the line, and I hope this is a mystery which is cleared up sooner rather than later. We’ve seen hints of it in just about every major book, so it’s definitely an issue, but I want concrete answers soon.
Meanwhile, Beast’s answer to preventing himself from giving in to his mad science urges and becoming a monster is to… set up a way to upload a backup of himself from before he goes evil mad science monster.
Even though he’s already an uploaded backup of the original Beast from before he went evil mad science monster.
I don’t think restoring oneself from backup every time they go evil is a winning strategy.
“I don’t think restoring oneself from backup every time they go evil is a winning strategy.”
Sounds like he’s approaching life like a videogame. If he screws up, he just reloads an earlier save.
The deal with Blank Slate is they don’t change shape like Mystique, they don’t copy powers like Synch, they essentially become the person nearby, with a few tiny scraps of whoever they actually are down below the surface. Which no doubt feeds into the story, whatever they do ehile in the form of Beast is probably what Beast himself would have done. So they might do something awful further into the story, but more likely they’ll choose heroism and selflessness, proving to Beast that he’s not fated to be bad.
But this does make you wonder, when Blank Slate became Cyclops, why didn’t they know to instinctively shut their eyes? Maybe the change takes a minute, wasn’t complete yet, and Cyclops was assuming it would be? I mean, the real reason was to add a bit of action to an episode that is otherwise about people talking at a table, so yeah.
@Si- We’ve seen the same thing happen before with Rogue. When Rogue absorbs a person’s powers, she also absorbs their memories, so you’d THINK she’d be able to use them as well as the person she absorbed them from. But, for example, in Uncanny X-Men 175, Rogue absorbs Xavier’s telepath and needs Scott’s help to control it.
Though there was that one story, maybe Legacy? It was Rogue-centric anyway. She was Cannonballing with Cannonball, and he said people had been complaining that she uses their own powers better than them.
It is reasonable to expect that this serial doppelganger character, as well as Rogue, acquire powers without necessarily having the skill or even the basic knowledge with which to control them – particularly when it is a power that they never borrowed previously. It is even reasonable that Rogue would later in her career develop a good general ability to deal with a wide range of powers. And it has been established in the early New Mutant stories that Cannonball struggled with maneuverability at the time.
Incidentally, it is a nice touch that even in-history the X-Men apparently neglected the obvious need to give the doppelganger at least a temporary name. Furthers the perception that he is being treated as plot device even by the characters themselves. It will be nice if it turns out that he has a deeper role despite this (possible) feint.
As for Phoenix, I agree to an extent with Alexx Kay’s comment in the annotations for #3. Phoenix is indeed far too powerful for a certain kind of story – particularly after the ascension to Deus Ex Machina device at the closing of the Krakoa Era – and that in itself is not all that new in comics; it is a common criticism of Superman, but he managed to be published for well over 80 years regardless. I suspect that we just haven’t fully realized which kind of story Stephanie Phillips _is_ telling. It may well be one that gives Adani a bigger and more surprising role than we can see right now.
I think Blank Slate is quite profound. An individual with no name, ethnicity, gender, or personality, trying on the personalities of other people, having other personalities thrust upon them, there’s a lot of potential. A pity then that at the end of they’ll go away, and Beast will say “Well I learned something about myself today, but I won’t let that affect me over in my main storyline. Let’s never mention these events again.”
Sounds like Amazo or Super Adapotoid or similar robots over the years.
On his blog, Breevort wrote “you’ll see some other classic X-titles return again as 2024 becomes 2025.” I guess one of them is New Mutants, since we haven’t seen most of the New Mutants characters except Illyana.
But what are the others? Excalibur? Generation X?
I wonder where Bishop will end up. He’s the highest profile non-New Mutant character that hasn’t been announced in either a regular series or a mini at this point. Since Fitzroy will be the Sugar Man’s agent for the forseeable future, the obvious place for Bishop to appear would be MacKay’s X-Men. But maybe not.
There have been many similar characters to Blank Slate, but the only one I can think of that really has the same theme is that character from Halo Jones that everyone kept forgetting. Maybe Taskmaster, when the writer feels like mentioning his ongoing amnesia. I’m not talking about a character who can shape shift or gain powers, I mean a person who has lost their very identity.
Re: Bishop, There’s a solicitation for something called “Timeslide” coming out in December, about Bishop and Cable trying to stop some X-enemy from eating time to make the X-gene never appear(?), but I don’t know if it’s a one-off, a mini-series, or what.
@CalvinPitt- it’s a one-shot. Ever year, Marvel has a preview of next year’s stories. Usually it’s called Timeless. This year, it’s called Timeslide and features Cable and Bishop. Cable has a miniseries after this called Love and Chrome. But we don’t know what happens to Bishop.
Timeslide, lol. That name brings back bad memories. Timeslide was also the name of an Avengers one-shot that introduced the teenaged version of Tony Stark during The Crossing storyline the late ’90s.
@Moo: Odd that no one’s drawn the most obvious comparison to Sinister and his Moira Engine “save points”…