The X-Axis – w/c 14 October 2024
X-MEN: FROM THE ASHES INFINITY COMIC #19. By Alex Paknadel, Diógenes Neves, Arthur Hesli & Clayton Cowles. Well, here’s something I wasn’t expecting: a Lifeguard story. Lifeguard is a character who appeared in X-Treme X-Men in 2001-2002 and has essentially done nothing since then. As in, she had a minor speaking part in one issue of Excalibur in 2004 and had two background cameos during the Krakoan era, and that’s literally it. Her brother Slipstream is in the same boat, but he’s quietly packed off to White Room Krakoa in a flashback, leaving Lifeguard behind on Earth to look after their ailing stepmother. The story is basically Heather trying to resume a normal life in Australia despite the awkward gap in her CV, while people keep going down with a weird skin condition in her presence – I guess we’re meant to be wondering if it’s a threat that her powers are reacting to, or something that she’s actually doing to defend herself against the outside world. I’m quite happy to see obscure characters get an outing in the Infinity Comics, but it’s not really clear yet where all this is heading. And the art is unusually wonky – it really feels a bit rushed, with strange neck angles and fixed grins.
UNCANNY X-MEN #4. (Annotations here.) The penultimate issue of the “Red Wave” arc, and it’s built mainly around Sarah Gaunt fighting Rogue to build her up as a top tier physical threat. She’s starting to click for me as a villain – straight mystical threats don’t always fit in the X-books, but while Sarah has a lot of the magical trappings, it’s not actually clear quite what she is. And it feels like a deliberate piece of mystery, which the story can carry, since it’s starting to give us a clearer idea of what she actually wants. She strongly implies that Charles Xavier abandoned her with his child, but she’s also clearly mad, and there are at least some indications that there’s more to the story than that. I’m also pleasantly surprised to see the Graymalkin Prison characters – who have been decidedly one-dimensional so far – show a bit more range, and start to distinguish themselves from Orchis a bit more. Marquez’ art has enough cartooning to carry off Sarah’s exaggerated design (I suspect some artists might struggle with her in future), but the flashbacks are nicely pitched too. Good issue.
WOLVERINE #2. (Annotations here.) So we’re not picking up on the first issue cliffhanger at all, as it turns out. Instead, we’re going to a Wendigo story first. I can’t honestly say that I find the Wendigo particularly interesting as a concept – there’s not really that much you can do with the guy, and stories built around him can be very similar. If it wasn’t for the fact that he happened to be in Wolverine’s debut story, I suspect he’d have been long since forgotten, lying in the continuity dumpster next to Woodgod. But hey, it’s been a good while since anyone did a trad Wendigo story. The hook here is that the latest Wendigo is still holding on to some of his humanity, and Wolverine wants to help him – which is perfectly fine, but still very much a trad Wendigo story. It also seems to be a backdrop to get some Department H characters into play for future stories, and to re-establish what Department H actually is these days – which feels like it could head somewhere. Still, if you’re going to do a Wendigo story, this is a pretty good example of how to do it, with solid pacing, a nicely sorrowful look on the big guy’s face, and some nice chasing through wintery landscapes. And I quite like the formal trick of representing the guy’s diary as a comic (I mean, I assume we’re not meant to take it literally, surely?). I’m just not sure the Wendigo is a strong enough hook for the start of a run.
MYSTIQUE #1. By Declan Shalvey, Matt Hollingsworth & Declan Shalvey. So it’s Mystique as a spy story, playing up the angle that any character might be Mystique. But other shapechangers are available, so even characters who appear to be Mystique might not be Mystique – after all, she can’t be in two places at once, and one Mystique in this story doesn’t seem to recognise the name Raven. Meanwhile, SHIELD is apparently in straitened financial circumstances, and Nick Fury Jr seems to be the main point of view character as he tries to hunt Mystique down. I don’t remember the story where SHIELD found itself in this state, or when Nick Fury Sr got back into circulation, but okay. It suits the story we’re doing. I kind of like the approach of restoring some distance with Mystique and bringing back some doubt about what’s going on, and Shalvey draws her with a curiously inscrutable face that works rather well. If I’m being honest, though, it’s the sort of issue where I find myself admiring the details more than getting drawn into the story, and wondering if the whole might be less than the sum of its parts. The cliffhanger doesn’t land for me, because you really can’t tease killing Destiny in 2024 and expect me to buy it. Of course they’re not going to kill Destiny. Come on now. But by the nature of what we’re doing here, the big picture won’t become apparent for a few issues, so we’ll see how it comes together.
The current SHIELD is basically a division within CIA, I think. The original organization was closed down off-panel IIRC.
It was mentioned as being decommissioned in Secret Empire: Omega, after Steve Rogers used his position within SHIELD to declare himself a dictator (under the SHIELD Act).
I liked the art in Mystique. Matt Hollingsworth has a Mike Mignola-esque style. But I looked up his bio, no. he hasn’t done anything in the Hellboy sphere that I could see. Maybe he’s just a fan.
I *think* Bucky took over being The Man on the Wall from Nick Fury Sr., but I’m not positive.
For a while I was thinking they were turning Nature Girl into the new Woodgod, honestly.
Nick Fury Sr. was thought dead and Bucky took over the Man on the Wall role, which story was told in the amazing Winter Soldier series by Ales Kot. That was such a good series. At the end of that series, Bucky no longer had the role of the Man on the Wall. Nick Fury Sr. was eventually revealed as still being alive at some point, but I think I lost the trail after the Winter Soldier series.
“…lying in the continuity dumpster next to Woodgod.”
Surprising, really. Seems to me that a guy called “Woodgod” should be extremely popular with the ladies if nothing else.
Wolverine 2 was among the most generic Wolverine stories I’ve ever read. It wasn’t bad, but I’ve seen every beat multiple times before.
Uncanny X-Men seems to get better every issue, in no small part because of Marquez’s beautiful finishes and facility with action. The “off” beats bothered me less, and I liked most of the character interactions.
I enjoyed Mystique 1 as well. We the readers should be put off-balance due to the shape-shifting and moral flexibility of the title character. I hope the rest of the series is as twisty.
Chris V> Nick Fury Sr. was thought dead and Bucky took over the Man on the Wall role, which story was told in the amazing Winter Soldier series by Ales Kot. That was such a good series. At the end of that series, Bucky no longer had the role of the Man on the Wall. Nick Fury Sr. was eventually revealed as still being alive at some point, but I think I lost the trail after the Winter Soldier series.
He was reset-buttoned by Dan Slott out of the pseudo-Watcher role in F4, albeit still bald. Then Al Ewing put him on a multiversal bus in a Fury one-shot, and AFAIK that’s the last seen of him.
The obvious suspicion is that “Fury Sr” here isn’t the real Nick Fury, of course, in a book with (full of) shapeshifters. Especially since he looks like classic Col. Fury here, rather than being bald and/or white-haired.
@SanityorMadness- Yeah. Note that Fury Jr says “So what brings you back down to Earth? Literally, I’m assuming.” The clear implication is that as far as Fury Jr knew, his father was still off-planet.
The X-Men: From the Ashes Infinity webcomic will be relaunched in December as Astonishing X-Men. Banshee, Husk and Skin will appear.
In other news, the One World Under Doom crossover will involve Doom declaring himself Emperor of the World and all of the world leaders agreeing to submit to him.It’s not clear if it’s mind control (again) or Doombots or whatever.
This is where I wish Maddie wasn’t been sidelined. Because in a situation like this, it might be interesting to see how Doom handles the ruler of Limbo having a foothold in his dimension, when no other rulers but Doom are allowed.
The Unlimited story is a bit threadbare in art and plot, but man does it ever nail the Australian patois. I actually checked if Paknadel was Australian. The only misstep was the guy saying they were patriots. We have more than our share of nationalistic goons, but even they don’t use those words.
Lifeguard is a funny one for me given she and her brother are depicted as coming from my home city of The Gold Coast.
I remember following along with Paul’s reviews of those early X-Treme X-men issues in 2001-02 and the growing frustrating with the Khan storyline.
Larroca’s inkless pencils with the colour by Liquid I always thought looked cool as hell.
I’m pleased to see Lifeguard get a spotlight in Infinity comics: isn’t this exactly what the format is meant to do?
I didn’t think she was an inherently bad character, and we’ve since had characters with adaptive powers (Darwin?) be much more accepted. But Claremont was very influenced by fan forums at the time and the very negative reaction meant Lifeguard and Slipstream were shuffled off stage left with immediate effect. I always thought she had a cool design with Larocca’s visuals. And her brother being self-loathing could have been an interesting angle too.
But yeah! Let’s see what this story does.
@Joe : Hollingsworth is “only” the colorist on MYSTIQUE ; Declan Shalvey is writing AND drawing the book.
(One of his main claims to fame is designing and drawing Warren Ellis’s “Mr Knight” MOON KNIGHT relaunch, but he’s been around as both a writer and artist for a while.)
I laughed at the part in the afterword where he says he pitched this book as ‘Mystique can be anybody so she’ll never appear as herself’ and was shot down by the editor.
Photos of Kurt and Rogue next to the writing desk were a nice touch.
It’s not a huge drawback but there’s this weird thing with Fury Jr – Shalvey is using him as the new kid on the spy block, and that makes sense given his unintentionally funny origin story. He was a soldier drawn into the superspy games against his will. (That’s not the funny part, the funny part is, who was it, Strucker ordering his goon to take his eye out so there would be family resemblance).
Except he was also the black Nick Fury ‘as seen in the movies’, so immediately after that – especially when Fury Sr was removed in Original Sin – he was pushed into the standard Nick Fury role. He was the all-knowing superspy he claims here he’s not.
It’s even weirder with comic book Coulson.
Basically they both debuted in the present as new kids on the spy block only to immediately be written as long in the tooth veterans. It never made sense. And they both could easily have been introduced in a continuity implant story – they could have simply been part of a SHIELD division so secret that we haven’t heard about them before. Easy.
@Kryzsiek- Coulson is weird. He was introduced as an army ranger who’d just joined SHEILD but shortly after his introduction Waid threw in flashbacks of Coulson working for SHIELD “ten years ago”. Presumably he went from SHIELD to the Rangers to SHIELD again.
But yes, the problem with Nick Fury Jr is that for synergy reasons, the plot required all the characters to treat him like Nick Fury Sr. The problem, of course, is that he lacked Nick Fury Sr’s connections with the other characters. Nick is one of Cap’s oldest friend, helped Mockingbird go from scientist to super spy, etc. The idea that the other chapters would treat Fury Jr the same way they treated Fury Sr just because he’s Nick’s son is ludicrous.
Fur, Jr. also has the problem of being relatively young, which means he can’t slot into Fury, Sr’s role as a grizzled, seen-it-all spymaster.
In contrast, Ultimate Fury was given Nick Sr.’s WWII history, and both he and MCU Fury were established as having been in the spy game for decades.
And, of course, they were both already around— and experienced — when their universe’s Captain America is revived and their Avengers equivalents first appear on the scene. This lets them have knowledge and experience that the heroes don’t, which also explains how they immediately command respect and credibly outfox people.
Perhaps Earth-616’s Fury, Jr. might have benefitted from being the one sent into the multiverse. He could come back some years older just minutes later and be played as having seen a lot and learned a lot, including secrets the other characters don’t have at hand.
Nick Fury (now “Sr.”) was one of the first imitations that Mystique ever made on panel (in the later half of the original, 1970s “Ms. Marvel” series).
It was nice to see Lifeguard again in the Infinity comic. I enjoyed Xtreme more than most, and wished she’d been reused a little more than the occasional background appearance Paul mentioned.
Mystique seems good, though I agree that it’s implausible that they’d immediately kill of Destiny again.
“I didn’t think she was an inherently bad character”
I believe Paul’s words were “Break out the confetti” when Claremont finally kicked her out of the cast, lol.
Personally, I thought she was awful, and I didn’t care for Darwin either, for similar reasons. I just don’t care for the idea of a character who can toss up whatever power/ability is needed in any given situation.
It looked to me like Claremont was already in the process of dropping Heather’s lifeguard schtick and repositioning her as Deathbird’s daughter and opposite number: “Lifebird.” I also think that entry in one of Destiny’s diaries (“Born of war…”) was originally supposed to refer Heather, but the character was so poorly received, the plan was scrapped, and when Claremont later wrote “The End” he decided to have the diary entry refer to Aliyah Bishop instead. This is all just speculation, though.
I cancelled my Unlimited sub so I’m out of date with the Infinite comics, but…
Early in the Krakoan era there was a double-page spread of the Green Lagoon, IIRC, that seeded a bunch of mysteries and potential stories, many of which were never picked up on. One of them teased a romantic pairing, two shadowy figures that may have been Eva Bell and Slipstream. Is that right? They’re both from the Gold Coast, and that might explain why Slipstream wanted to stay on Krakoa?
As for Fury Sr., I also suspect the character is meant to be a shapeshifter, possibly Mystique herself, but it’s also been a full decade since Original Sin, so quite surprised they’ve largely kept Fury off the board since then. Reasonable enough to get him circulating again.
I really like that Uncanny X-Men cover, even though it doesn’t correspond all that well to the story. The series has had nicely throwback-feeling covers in general with their active imagery and eye-catching use of text.
Whenever they do a series with the Infinity Stone people they have a Fury jr backup strip, where he is in super spy mode. Most recently was this years annuals (the last one being less than a month ago), so his “I’m just a widdle guy doing paperwork” portrayal in Mystique felt a quite odd. Apart from that I found it entertaining.
I think it has more to do with the times they were published, but Fury Sr. always seemed more of a honest, gun-totin’ sheriff type, while Fury Jr. was more of a duplicitous greater good type, probably influenced by Amanda Waller.
By the way, this Jr. Sr. stuff is tiring, can we just call them Hasselhoff and Jackson?
@ ASV
I thought the same thing about the cover. It felt like I was looking at an honest to goodness issue from 1987 or something.
” and one Mystique in this story doesn’t seem to recognise the name Raven. ”
I read this as simply bullying, forcing him to play her hurtful game. It wasn’t my interpretation that she did not actually know the name. It might be a more interesting story if that isn’t actually Mystique though.
@Si: I associate the duplicitous characterization more with Ultimate Fury and with late-period Nick Fury, Sr. as written by Bendis and Aaron. My sense is that Ed Brubaker stubbornly refused to go along with the darkening of Fury, Sr.’s characterization.
The bigger takeaway for me is that Marvel has made a tangled, unappealing mess of all of its Nick Fury iterations. Even the MCU version has been diminished immensely by the terrible Secret Invasion streaming series.
Nick fury is basically Marvel’s Hawkman at this point in terms of being a continuity tangle. It amazes me that they could have probably just handwaved all of this away after Secret Wars… and actively chose not to.
Breevort was asked a question on his blog today and didn’t seem to understand what he was being asked:
Stiles:Tom, the final pages of the From The Ashes books tease three mysterious new books that are on the way. Some people were theorizing that they could be Magik, Wolverine and Cable (titles already announced). Is there a bit of truth to this or are more new titles really on the way?
Tom: if I understand what you’re speaking about STILES, then I can tell you that the three books that weren’t a part of that initial announcement and promotion were DAZZLER, MYSTIQUE and SENTINELS, all of which you’ve seen already. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t have more stuff coming down the way, as I’ve teased in at least one X-MENTIONS page so far.
Stiles was referring to the X-Mentions page which reads “As you’ve been seeing with PHOENIX, DAZZLER, STORM. MYSTIQUE, and now PSYLOCKE. we’ve been attempting to place a greater emphasis on solo titles” and then lists three solo titles whose names are blacked out.
In other news, Breevort reveals that in April of 2003, Jemas submitted plans to “ultimatize” the entire Marvel line. it was only Jemas getting sacked that saved the Marvel Universe from a New 52 style relaunch.
And Breevort says that for an Avengers lineup to feel like the Avengers, it has to have at least two founding members. And Hank and Jan weren’t enough by themselves. Which is kind of funny, since even if you count Steve as a founding member, the current Avengers has only 1 founding member.
@Moo
Yeah – I’m probably being too rose tinted. X-Treme was truly an incoherent mess at the time but hey, it gave us a more fully formed Sage by the end?
Even if it’s unclear if she grew up in the wartorn Balkans, or wartorn Afghan or Hindu Kush, or was Welsh-Greek as suggested by Claremont on the forums (?!) only to be kidnapped by Bogan and rescued by Storm before going to the Hellfire club… Hmm, maybe some tighter editorial control wouldn’t have gone amiss…
Gotta agree with those who’ve mentioned enjoying X-Treme (despite the name). At the time, the other choices were unappealing, and the series started strong.
The problem with Claremont at the time was that he kept setting up AMAZING premises for series, and then completely ignoring them, usually for TERRIBLE rambling storylines (someone here mentioned the Khan cluster-smeg).
The “Rogue takes a team to look for and use Destiny’s diaries” angle that started X-Treme was a great idea. Combined with them taking a low-tech world tour approach, it had so much potential. Shame we never got to see it after the first half of the first storyline.
The same thing happened later when he returned to Uncanny, with the XSE/X-Men-as-mutant-lawmen premise. What a great idea, them as part of the system, having a role and place at the table, but facing potential compromises as the price for that…again, would have been great stories if only someone had written anything with the premise!
PS – I am aware that this is not ALL Claremont’s fault, editorila mandates, line reshuffles, the ungodly disaster of House of M, etc, etc…but Claremont still showed that he was dropping his own premises two issues in.
I’ve heard Claremont and Sage compared to Mantis and Englehart. Englehart shilled Mantis relentlessly- he even had her defeat Thor. He used her in everything he wrote, even when he was at companies other than Marvel. And no other writer than Englehart used her much until she was revamped during Annihilation.
And that’s pretty much Sage to a T. Claremont insisted that she was Xavier’s spy inside the Hellfire Club, even though she never did anything useful. At one point in X-treme X-Men, he even had Sage tell Rogue that “unlike you, I never tried to kill the X-Men”. No, she just tried to mind control X-Force into killing Caleb. Much better. Claremont dragged her into every book he wrote. even Exiles. And like Mantis, no writer other than Claremont used her much until Percy revamped her.