The X-Axis – w/c 18 November 2024
X-MEN: FROM THE ASHES INFINITY COMIC #24. By Tim Seeley, Eric Koda, KJ Díaz & Clayton Cowles. Well, we’ve done the Thanksgiving stuff, so it’s time for the plot. There’s a reason of sorts for the Bohusk family to show up at the Factory without anyone expecting them, though it doesn’t exactly work. One of the kids is seriously ill, and the Beast is meant to be finding them a solution. But it turns out that conversation was back on Krakoa, and the current version of the Beast doesn’t know anything about it. Now, on a mechanical level, this doesn’t really work – what, the Beast said “drop by wherever I happen to be at Thanksgiving next year”? And if you stop to think about it, would that version of the Beast have actually done anything about it anyway, or would he just have been fobbing Beak off? But even so, it’s a good moment as Beast tries to bluff his way through the conversation and the penny drops for Beak that nobody’s been looking at this problem at all. That works, and Koda’s art really sells Beak as a beleaguered everyman.
EXCEPTIONAL X-MEN #3. (Annotations here.) You might question billing the trainee book as an X-Men title, but the comic itself is working. Okay, yes, there are a few suggestions around the edges here that Eve Ewing has some odd ideas about the extent of Kate and Emma’s early relationship, and the kids are remarkably relaxed about mind control… but the three new mutants are well defined characters, with Carmen Carnero’s art really helping to get their personalities across through their body language. And we have a distinct hook on the trainee book, with Kate wanting to help them to live in the normal world, Emma wanting to draw them into the X-Men’s orbit, and the kids having their own views on matters. It’s basically a character driven title relying on the regular cast for conflict, but it’s making that work. One of the successes of the “From the Ashes” period.
WOLVERINE #3. (Annotations here.) Back to basics can be riskier than you might expect, at least from the standpoint of longtime readers – you need to restate the themes from time to time, but at the same time, what, this again? Wolverine is getting away with it, though, because even if Saladin Ahmed is playing the hits of Wolverine doing hunter and hunted things in the wilderness, he’s hitting the details. I like the shift of emphasis away from Wolverine being unable to control his anger and towards him being a creature of instinct, which seems easier to fit with the way he’s developed over the years. Cóccolo’s designs for the Department H soldiers are neat, and the subplot about Cyber and his adamantine points to something less well trodden coming in future issues. Nothing complex, but it’s playing the hits successfully.
PHOENIX #5. (Annotations here.) Hmm. The cosmic stuff isn’t my thing, but I can see why you’d go in that direction with this character. It’s the only real option for her. Part of the direction here seems to be: does she ascend to become a cosmic being or does she try to hold on to her humanity? That seems reasonable enough as far as it goes. The details, I’m less convinced by. If you want me to buy the rulers of the galaxy handing everything over to Thanos, you’re going to have to work a lot harder than this. And I’m not convinced you can just blithely assert that Jean can control the Phoenix power when, you know, the whole iconic status of the thing rests on the Dark Phoenix Saga. Maybe you could argue that the lesson of the Dark Phoenix Saga is that things go wrong when the Phoenix tries to be human, and so Jean needs to surrender her humanity for the good of all, but… that’s not really the story we seem to be doing. Equally, I don’t buy a fight with Gorr as something that has that much impact on the Galactic Council – isn’t the bigger point here that no matter what she does, they don’t trust her because they’ve seen Dark Phoenix? The general idea of all this seems sound, but the specifics are starting to lose me.
STORM #2. (Annotations here.) This isn’t working. It’s beautiful – I could happily read Lucas Werneck’s scenes of animals being fed all day – but there are some weird writing choices in here. You’d think we’d be setting up the premise of Storm as a solo character, instead of doing a reactive story where she gets radiation poisoning. But given that that’s where we’re going, why is a character based in Atlanta (who isn’t well) randomly fighting pirates in Nigeria? How do we jump from “bit of a cough” to “six hours to live”? The hidden superhero hospital is a nice enough idea, as an extension of Night Nurse’s clinic, but what’s the point of having the doctor hate the X-Men for not contributing to his budget and then resolving the whole thing in one scene? The story doesn’t even make clear whether the X-Men knew about the hospital, or (if they did) why they didn’t contribute. And as in the first issue, there’s a dearth of actual characters as opposed to bit parts who move the plot along. It’s all weirdly disconnected, feeling both rushed and strangely empty.
SENTINELS #2. By Alex Paknadel, Justin Mason, Federico Blee & Travis Lanham. Not bad at all. I’m not sure about the way it uses Sebastian Shaw, and he doesn’t normally balloon with muscles when he gets powered up. But there’s something quite charming about the roughness of the art, which also takes the edge off what could otherwise be bland character designs for the cyborg Sentinels themselves. And the book is successfully pitching the idea that the Sentinels are sympathetic enough people who’ve stumbled into this for various reasons. Poor Lockstep seems like a basically nice guy who can see that there are problems with the whole set-up but, hey, they’re hunting down actual villains, aren’t they? It’s likely to get lost in the shuffle, not least when it ships in a five-book week, but it’s quite decent.
The weird thing about the Sentinels issue is that the story has the characters wonder what Shaw did to wind up in a prison on Baglia but we never did find out what Shaw did.
Note that the Sentinels issue is important because we finally see the robot dogs we’ve been seeing in the flash forwards.
“Part of the direction here seems to be: does she ascend to become a cosmic being or does she try to hold on to her humanity? That seems reasonable enough as far as it goes. The details, I’m less convinced by.”
Another part seems to be “Jean lets a Z-list villain go in order to save lives and the Z-List villain turns out to be more dangerous than she anticipated and causes incredible death and destruction.” Again. this is a good idea in theory. But the execution just doesn’t work.
The plot in the From the Ashes Infinity Comic just doesn’t work at all. So we’re supposed to believe that Kara got sick and none of the healers on Krakoa could help her and simply neutralizing her powers wouldn’t cure her either. So Beak goes to Beast. shortly before Beast left Krakoa, and Beast agrees to help. And then Beak and Angel don’t follow up with Beast AT ALL until this story.
For starters. didn’t everyone on Krakoa know that Beast had gone nuts? In Immortal X-Men. Doug told Professor X that appointing Beast as head of X-Force was one of the reasons that the populace of Krakoa no longer trusted his judgement. So if they knew that Beast was unstable, why did Beak and Angel not follow up when they had no contact with him?
There’s also the fact that everyone on Krakoa knew that the resurectees lost some memories. So why didn’t Angel and Beak consider the possibility that Beast had been resurrected and forgot about Kara?
And most damning, when Angel and Beak had no word from Beast. why didn’t they just call him on the phone after everything settled down? If they just called the X-Men five minutes after Enigma was defeated and asked how the cure for Kara was coming, then the X-Men might have been able to find a cure for Kara for now. The X-Men lost months in finding a cure for Kara because Angel and Beak couldn’t pick up the phone. The story tries to paint this as a tragic consequence of Kara’s resurrection but Angel and Beak just look like negligent parents.
As a side note, what does the general public know about Beast’s resurrection? In X-Factor 1, Beast seemed to have a lot of fans, which is odd if they know it’s the same Beast who committed all these crimes, but maybe they just assumed that Beast committing crimes was another of Ochis’s tricks. It’s odd that Beak didn’t know about Beast’s memory loss, since Beast didn’t seem to be hiding his memory loss from the police chief in X-Men 1, but then again Beak seems incapable of picking up a phone. Maybe we’ll get some more clarity on who knows about Beast’s resurrection during Raid on Graymalkin.
Some interesting bits from Breevort’s blog:
The original pitch for Weapon X-Men involved Doom and Latveria from the start. so it was decided to make Weapon X-Men 1 a tie-in with One World Under Doom. Which is probably why it launched so much later than the other team books.
(And I have to wonder why Breevort couldn’t just say this from the start. If he just said, “Cable’s book will be delayed because it ties in with a crossover” instead of the ridiculous “We don’t want Cable because we don’t want to use characters from the future but we’re using Rachel in X-Force”, fans would be much more understanding.)
A non X-tidbit- Breevort claims that contrary to what Tom Breevrot claims, the original plan for the Clone Saga was for Ben to be the original Spider-Man and not Peter.
And finally. Breevort shows his usual tact in dealing with fans while responding to complaints about the Rogue/ Savage Land mini:
MB: Right, except you’re going forward with a five issue Savage Land Rogue mini series. And you haven’t responded to or addressed any of the negative feedback and concerns Rogue fans have about this series. So many of us have contacted the X Office email and no one has said anything, but I guess that’s expecting too much.
TOM: You’ll have to forgive me, MB, but I don’t spend many of my nights sleeplessly concerned about some fans being upset about some upcoming release that they really know very little about. I’ve been doing this for way too long, and I know that if you announce absolutely anything, there are going to be fans that are unhappy—especially before it comes out and all they have to go on is their own greatest fears about it. Just look at how much the-sky-is-falling chatter there was when we announced that From The Ashes was coming. So I’m sorry that we’re doing a project that you don’t like the sound of. And might I suggest that he best way to express your displeasure might be to not buy the project in question? On the other hand, if you do wind up reading it, there’s a not-zero chance that you might actually end up enjoying it, and that your fears were all things that you or others invented in your minds and then assumed would be true. Apart from that, I don’t think there’s anything to address. We’re publishing a project, Read it, don’t read it, that’s entirely up to you.
I saw no hint of anything being a tragic consequence of Kara’s resurrection. I don’t even know that she went through ressurection at any point.
I think that the current “From the Ashes” story means to show that, while Beak has a warm and caring personality with many upsides, he often fails to take what to other people would be obvious precautions against misplacement of efforts and hopes. Angel points that out once or twice in #22 in the way only a loving wife could, and in #23 we have Juggernaut of all people being the first to point out to Cyclops that this is the time for Scott to borrow a page from Beak instead of the other way around.
In other words, Beak is shown to have an easily relatable real world personality instead of being some sort of eminently logical, predictable, tactically sound person.
I think I can live with that.
While he could not to answer, and thus probably get more/different abuse, he still shows more restraint than he probably feels on a daily/weekly basis from a segment of the fanbase.
I almost feel we need a meta column from Al reacting to Tom’s New Warriors info dumps.
In other news, the solicit for X-Force 8 announces that X-Force will be fighting Colossus. And the cover features Tank fighting Colossus. So I guess this means Tank isn’t Colossus? Or is it some kind of fakeout before revealing Tank as Colossus?
@Luis- Sorry, I meant a tragic consequence of “BEAST’S” resurrection.
I’m not sure if Brevoort flip-flopped on his stance, but I have always heard the plan was for Ben to be revealed as the true Peter Parker, not the clone. J.M. DeMatteis, one of the original architects of the “Clone Saga”, said as much. He said he felt it was a chance to allow the Peter we had been reading about to retire and have a happy life with his wife and child, while the Spider-Man titles could go on. The thought was that fans wouldn’t accept a clone as the superhero, so Ben would need to be revealed as the true Peter Parker. That was the plan DeMatteis (and I’m sure some other creators) wanted.
Somewhere along the way, other editors (not sure all the details) started to hesitate with the idea. They felt it would alienate a large portion of the current fanbase if the Peter they had been reading about for years was revealed as a clone, leading to a lot of the confusion with the never-ending “Clone Saga”.
@Chris V- I meant contrary to what “Tom DEFALCO” claims. I don’t know where my head is today.
I’m liking Sentinels. This issue did a good job differentiating the characters, and the art looked better. After Exceptional and NYX (until issue 5), it’s the FtA book I’m enjoying the most.
While I don’t like how Brevoort responds to fans at times, the person who wrote the question came off as needlessly rude and entitled. In this case, Brevoort’s dismissiveness was warranted.
I think Brevoort is showing a ton of tact there, to be honest. Making the fans and online media feel like participants definitely engendered a ton of good will for the Krakoa era and there’s part of me that grudgingly admires Brevoort’s willful determination not to do the same. But even leaving that aside, saying “how about you read the book before complaining” like he’s doing here seems perfectly reasonable to me.
Thank god that there are still some people in charge who do not go “thank you please like and subscribe” to literally everyone.
@Chris V: Depending on your stamina for loooooooooooooooong web-series you might like ‘The Life of Reilly’, a 35 page look at The Clone Saga, which on page 2 has a quick chat with Mark Bernardo who gives responsibility for the idea to Terry Kavanagh, who was writing WoSM at the time and the office was under pressure to do a ‘Death of Superman’ size story.
https://www.benreillytribute.x10host.com/LifeofReilly1.html
I have always thought the original plan was Ben from all I read. What threw me on his clone saga response was calling the marriage a millstone. This view in corporate marvel as been the opposite of most fans love of MJ and Peter and drove us to first One more day and now to the banal evil that is Paul.
I still remember that time when Beak saved the multiverse from EVIL HYPERION by making friends with GOOD HYPERION. Beak’s true supowerpowers are basically being just a little dim and a lot good-natured.
No wonder he blindly trusted Beast to follow through on a promise made by his older deader eviler self.
Oh, and as far as the whole Spider-Marriage goes?
Spider-Man has always been a balance of masochism and wish-fulfillment. Nerdy, scrawny, bullied teen gets amazing powers and becomes confident, wise-cracking, strong, and a hero. (But tragedy and misery still rain down upon him at every turn!)
So of course he grows up and becomes handsome, popular, and marries a gorgeous redhaired supermodel/actress. Because again, ultimate in wish fulfillment.
(But still, tragedy and misery rain down upon him at every turn)
So to eliminate the marriage and throw him back into the single scene is… not the wish fulfillment most grown-up/middle-aged fans are looking for, I’m sure. And there just aren’t enough -young- fans, I’d imagine, honestly going “wow, Spider-Man’s got a hot wife, that’s awful, we don’t like that, he should be single and miserable.”
I did use to accept Quesada’s logic for ending the marriage that Spider-Man had strayed from his time-tested formula—even if OMD largely severed my personal emotional connection with the 616 version of the character.
But while the formula does seem to work quite well in other media, I find it notable that ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN, wherein an old Peter with children has been having pleasant and relatively drama-free adventures for eleven issues now, has been outselling the main title since its run began. Perhaps comic book readers, skewing older, no longer prefer that original formula.
Of course, if that’s the case, I suppose the solution is exactly what we’ve got now: a title perennially featuring a younger, unmarried Spider-Man and one starring an older version.
Works for me.
@Adam: I don’t disagree with you completely regarding why Ultimate Spider-Man outsells Amazing Spider-Man, but I think there’s more to the comics’ differences than the set-up. Ultimate Spider-Man is also being produced by a writer with a significant fan following and really good artists. The just-concluded Amazing run was highly divisive, and JR Jr’s art might not have as broad appeal as the art on Ultimate. Style and perceived quality make the Ultimate set-up feel fresher, more interesting, and more entertaining.
@Mike Loughlin: Well, the recent run was divisive in no small part *because* it re-separated Peter and MJ from the outset, so once again we’re talking setup.
You’re certainly right, though: the fan-favorite writer and the quality of the artists are also important factors.
I just chalk it up now to a generational divide on when you started reading/consuming the media.
I think it’s largely the same with Lois and Clark.
“I find it notable that ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN, wherein an old Peter with children has been having pleasant and relatively drama-free adventures for eleven issues now, has been outselling the main title since its run began”
Could it be that the entire creative team has been responsible for putting out almost a dozen consecutive issues? I find there’s little that immediately puts me off an ongoing series more than an inconsistent creative team, especially one not tactfully divided up by separate arcs.
Plus, y’know, the OG Spider-Girl ran for over a hundred issues with a happily-married Peter and MJ as supporting characters…
Wow, I’m thinking about the Spider-marriage more than I have in a long time.
It’s hard to say how much the Spider-Man & MJ marriage affected sales or reader interest. It’s worth noting, however, that MJ was written out of the book during the Howard Mackie run and didn’t come back immediately. I think it’s accurate to say a lot of comic book creators didn’t like the marriage.
One More Day was justifiably reviled, but the JMS-written Amazing Spider-Man had been faltering for a while. Brand New Day was an instance of a new-ish direction (Spidey’s an unmarried adult, new villains) and new-ish approach (one title w/ multiple creative teams released 3X/month) that, from what I remember, readers found engaging. I wonder how much the Spider-marriage played into the comic’s peaks and valleys, as opposed to or in conjunction with the creative teams and direction.
“I wonder how much the Spider-marriage played into the comic’s peaks and valleys, as opposed to or in conjunction with the creative teams and direction.”
It seems pretty clear-cut to me: If they were essentially rebooting the title with a new status quo, new villains, and new (and generally exciting) creators, you want to optimize the title for creative freedom. A single Peter is less hamstrung in terms of storytelling opportunities than a married one.
A married Peter inevitably comes home to his wife.
A single Peter may come home alone, or may come home with a friend, or come home with a date, or may stay out all night voluntarily or against his will, in which case there’s no one at home agonizing about where he could be.
I’m not saying this necessarily leads to better stories. It’s just one element (the spouse) that the writers aren’t obligated to check in on.
@Josie: A married Peter only really eliminates the possibility of Peter bringing a date home. All the others could work quite well, but I suspect most comic book writers don’t know how to write a happily married superhero effectively.
“I suspect most comic book writers don’t know how to write a happily married superhero effectively.”
Which is just pathetic, really. In real life, every superhero I know is happily married.