The X-Axis – w/c 23 December 2024
You’d think Christmas Day might be a quiet one for new releases, but here we are…
ASTONISHING X-MEN INFINITY COMIC #4. By Alex Paknadel, Phillip Sevy, Maichael Bartolo & Clayton Cowles. And yes, this came out on Monday, I know. Anyway, the link between the two plot threads is someone who’s been giving shonky cyborg upgrades to low-rent Purifer types, which makes sense. Still, the main interest in this arc lies more in the material about radicalisation than the actual plot, and this issue (unavoidably, for plot reasons) tacks away from that to some interrogation cliches with Sean and some more sentimental stuff with Paige’s brother. All fine as far as it goes, but it’s more on the mechanical side of this story.
X-MEN #9. (Annotations here.) Part 3 of “Raid on Graymalkin”, and I’m kind of fascinatined that both books have wound up doing partial fill-in art on what you’d think would be a priority storyline. Then again, I still see this arc as something of a distraction from the more interesting things going on in both books because – repeat after me – I’m still not sold on the Graymalkin prison as bringing anything new to the table. I guess I’m mildly interested in why Scurvy is on their side, and I’m cerainly interested in Scott’s rejection of Professor X – though I really don’t buy him being willing to leave Xavier in this particular jail. There are a few moments with the two casts meeting, but there are also a lot of characters running around and, aside from the Outliers, seeing them interact with one another isn’t really that much of a novelty.
EXCEPTIONAL X-MEN #4. (Annotations here.) This is more like it, though – it’s partly a spotlight issue for Trista and her audition for the school play, and partly about Bobby’s clumsy attempts to figure out what Kate doesn’t want anything to do with the X-Men. By X-standards, the stakes are low; the closest thing the story has to a villain is a monster passing through from X-Force #5, which gets beaten by Trista alone in three pages. But that’s a good thing – the X-books need a title that feels more grounded in the real world, and it also offers more contrast with the story we’re apparently getting about Kate’s trauma following Gerry Duggan’s X-Men run. Carnero’s art brings a lot of charm to a talk-heavy story, and the closing reaction shots do a great job of selling the kids’ reaction to learning that Kate has a body count. The book is starting to pile on civilian supporting characters who are all broadly nice, and it could maybe stand to do a little more to distinguish between them all, but this is a good title.
MYSTIQUE #3. By Declan Shalvey, Matt Hollingsworth & Clayton Cowles. This is a crossover with Sentinels, of all things, since it explains the second Magneto from Sentinels #3 and picks up the thread about Fabian Cortez’s powers acting differently. It’s a funny place to do a crossover and results in an issue which feels rather less oblique than the first two issues – frankly, it feels a lot like something that was nailed onto the series outline after the fact. It’s still a good looking issue, though, and the purple lighting in the opening scenes is a nice choice – it sets a mood, and cleverly takes the edge off the Sentinel designs so that the characters feel more natural in the context of this book. But it does feel like a detour.
SABRETOOTH: THE DEAD DON’T TALK #1. By Frank Tieri, Michael Sta. Maria, Dono Sánchez-Almara & Joe Sabino. I don’t know who was asking for a sequel to the 2020 one-shot Ruins of Ravenscroft: Sabretooth, but here it is. Mind you, Sabretooth was only just killed off at the tail end of the Krakoan era, so if you want to do a Sabretooth book right now, a flashback story seems a better option. And this is certainly something different: feeling unappreciated by Mr Sinister at Ravenscroft, Creed quits his henchman job and heads off to appear in a 1909-era crime story. Sure, why not? It’s a blank space in his back story and you can’t say it’s something that the line is already covering. The crime angle itself seems somewhat by the numbers, but it’s a nice looking book which uses violence sparingly enough to keep it effective, and I’m kind of intrigued by a story about a Sabretooth who hasn’t yet quite figured out that being an underling isn’t for him. And relatively straight crime is one of the things that I thought worked better for Frank Tieri on his Wolverine run back in the day. Better than I was expecting, to be honest.
TIMESLIDE #1. By Steve Foxe, Ivan Fiorelli, Frank D’Armata & Joe Caramagna. The annual one-shot comes from the X-office this year, with Bishop and Cable in the lead. Continuity afficionados may wish to note the first return of a character from the White Hot Room, though it’s an alt-future version of Tempus, so it doesn’t really count for much. The rest of the story is a bit of a runaround through history to stop the Children of the Vault from destroying the timeline, and it’s serviceable annual stuff, but I’d probably have matched Bishop and Cable against a different thread instead of retreading the one from their last series. It’s perfectly okay, it’s an easy read and it looks polished, but it’s really just a random annual-type story, serving as a delivery vehicle for the obligatory list of “coming soon” bullet points.
I wasn’t sold on the Bishop and Cable art. They need to look more grizzled. They’re too smooth.
And Wolverine in the Sabretooth comic! They don’t normally draw him like Hugh Jackman, but clearly this was a special occasion.
There’s been distributor issues that has kept my local shop from getting Marvel the past two weeks so I’m super behind.
It has been about 20 years since I started reading Marvel (and Paul’s reviews) and it feels really weird that we’re still getting Frank Tieri Sabretooth stories. Glad it sounds like it is decent. But these extraneous minis and ongoing are making this era feel more bloated than it should. I stand by supporting most of the output in From the Ashes, but minis for Sabretooth, Rogue, Hellverine, and the ongoings of Deadpool/Wolverine and Weapon X-Men feel like unnecessary noise.
Regarding Raid on Graymalkin, I think the problem is that it doesn’t focus on the right character interactions. The two most interesting interactions are Wolverine and Beast and Wolverine and Quentin. Wolverine was horribly violated by Beast Prime, so how does he feel about NuBeast? And Quentin feels abandoned by Wolverine. But we don’t get to address any of this. Instead, we learn that Idie hates Wolverine for something that wasn’t his fault because she’s an idiot.
Am I the only person that thinks it was a mistake to establish that Mystique can duplicate powers as well as appearance when boosted by Cortez? Spurrier had Dr. Nemesis say that in theory, Mystique should be able to duplicate powers. Now Shalvey is establishing that Mystique can duplicate Magneto’s powers when her powers are boosted by Fabian Cortez. This follows logically, but it’s setting a horrible precedent. The Scarlet Witch was only able to create her twins because her powers were boosted by the magical energies of hundreds of sorcerers. But by the time Bendis got ahold of her, she was warping reality on a planetary scale. I have a feeling the same thing is going to happen with Raven. Shalvey might say “It’s only this one time due to Fabian Cortez” but soon she’ll be duplicating Magneto’s magnetism or Storm’s weather control whenever the plot requires. It was a mistake to have Dr. Nemesis say that she could duplicate powers in theory in the first place.
The interesting thing about Sabretooth: The Dead Don’t Talk is that Wolverine is returning from the funeral of someone he hates, and even though Tieri has said in interviews that it’s Sabreooth, that’s not stated explicitly in the story itself.
One interesting thing about the Timeslide series is Kamala’s presence with the X-Men at the time of the Dark Phoenix Saga. At first I thought that it was a result of the Children of the Vault messing with the timestream. But one of the teasers is Ms. Marvel:Second Genesis. Second Genesis, of course, was the tile of Giant Size X-Men 1. And the Free Comic Book Day Fantastic Four/ X-Men solicits read “And on the eve of the birth of the ALL-NEW, ALL-DIFFERENT X-MEN, there is one extra mutant in attendance. WHO is it? Only Collin Kelly and Jackson Lanzing can tell you!” Colin Kelly and Jackson Lanzing are the writers of NYX, where Kamala is a leading character. So it looks like Kamala will be traveling back to the early days of the New X-Men. I hope this doesn’t turn into a continuity disaster.
The Timeslide one shot also teased Doug taking over the world, with Warlock as his agent. I mean, obviously the story is going to be whether the heroes can stop Doug and Warlock before they cross the Moral Event Horizon. And I can see how Bei might be influencing Doug toward accepting Apocalypse’s philosophy but Doug was an idiot for agreeing to become Apocaylpse’s heir in the first place.
What I really don’t like is the idea that Warlock would go evil just because Doug went evil. Yes, they’re best friends but Warlock has shown independent moral judgement on many occasions, and he seemed to think in Heir of Apocalypse that Doug accepting Apocalypse’s offer might not be a good idea. This was just a possible future- we’ll see how it goes down in the actual story.
As an aside the scene where Vacuna was defeated showed a mixture of past scenes like CapWolf and upcoming scenes like the upcoming Red Hulk mini. One of those scenes showed the Mad Thinker and some mysteries figures. Is that an upcoming scene?
In other news, Joe Casey has said that originally he proposed Sabretooth as one of the members of Weapon X-Men. But then he found out Sabretooth was killed at the end of Sabretooth War, so he had to find another character. When he found out Thunderbird was back from the dead, he decided to use him.
I think it’s a good thing Sabretooth isn’t on the team- I can’t see Wolverine voluntarily working with a non-inverted Sabretooth at this point.
In sorta X-related news, in this week’s West Coast Avengers, the good Ultron says to Firestar “Let me re-introduce myself. Glad to have you on the team” and puts his hand on her shoulder. Am I the only person that thinks that sounds like someone who’s worked with Firestar before, not someone who’s only interacted with Firestar as a villain? I think Ultron’s body is being guided by the mind of someone Firestar knows. Maybe Hank Pym? But why wouldn’t Tony and Rhodey just tell Firestar that?
In other news, Belasco appeared in this week’s Iron Man. He’s now free from servitude to S’ym and Tony resolves this issue’s plot by handing Mysterium to Belasco’s new masters.
@Scott- Hellverine is now an ongoing.
“So it looks like Kamala will be traveling back to the early days of the New X-Men. I hope this doesn’t turn into a continuity disaster.”
I say we go all out. Kamala as the sixth member of the original team and there throughout the team’s entire history. Massive retconned continuity disaster which leads all the way up to modern day with an older, much more experienced Kamala on the same level of accomplishment as Cyclops or Jean. There for the Sentinels, the Dark Phoenix Saga, the Outback, the Blue and Gold resurgence, the Morrison era, the Decimation, Utopia, Krakoa…
Sure it would be a total nightmare but eh, let the timeline burn.
Wouldn’t Kamala travel back in time with the intention of wanting to stop Moira X? Using her powers of inspirational speech, “Intersectional powers, activate!”, she’d convince Moira X that Krakoa was a bad idea. This would eliminate Krakoa from the timeline and also do away with any need for “From the Ashes”. Instead, we’ll get a more captivating relaunch of the X-line. Kamala saves the day once again.
Hey, Cyclops argued to leave Xavier in prison because he subverts everything for his dream, and he killed everyone on that ship. Except all that Krakoa stuff, even him killing those people, was done while he had abandoned his dream and followed Magneto’s instead. Cyclops shares a toilet with Magneto, but Xavier is too dangerous to even put in a regular supervillain jail not run by brainwashing psychos?
Oh, and I really could have done without the story of Banshee beating a confession out of a mortally ill guy.