ASTONISHING X-MEN INFINITY COMIC #6. By Alex Paknadel, Phillip Sevy, Michael Bartolo & Clayton Cowles. This is the end of the “Back to Roots” arc, in which Banshee and Husk deal with anti-mutant thugs who’ve been getting budget cyborg upgrades. I’m not sure it really works. The good stuff in this arc was mostly the radicalisation angle, and I kind of like the idea of a cobbled-together middle ground between the real world and Kirbytech. But when you actually get to the climax, you’re basically left with a fight against henchman-level bad guys. In fairness, the story is trying to set up the villain behind the tech for future use. I’m not thrilled about this take on the X-Cutioner – whose original schtick wasn’t so much that he hated mutants as that he resented mutants who thought they were above the law – but I guess it was established in Marauders and we’re running with it. Still, the first half of this arc was the stronger part.

UNCANNY X-MEN #8. (Annotations here.) So the “Raid on Graymalkin” crossover was a weird thing, and not a particularly successful one. I generally like both X-Men and Uncanny in their current incarnations, but this story doesn’t play to either of their strengths – the best material in this crossover is the character stuff with Calico. The Graymalkin prison still doesn’t feel like it’s bringing anything we didn’t see (at grinding and inordinate length) with Orchis last year. I’m kind of interested in Scurvy, but I’m not seeing what distinguishes Corina Ellis from a thousand other anti-mutant types. And the whole hook of the two X-Men teams fighting just doesn’t work – if we’ve got past the first major conflict between the two groups and I still don’t really understand what the disagreement is meant to be, we’ve got a problem.

WOLVERINE #5. (Annotations here.) This is a refreshingly straightforward book, isn’t it? The Adamantine story is an odd idea – a sentient mythical metal thinks adamantium is an impostor – but if that’s the direction then it’s probably a smart move to put it a book which is otherwise playing the hits straight. Snowy wilderness! Fighting in trees! Leonard the Wendigo! And… one core idea which isn’t from the standard playbook. I still haven’t really figured out whether it’s a good idea or not, but it’s a nice looking comic that has the confidence to do something simple and seems to know what it’s doing.

NYX #7. (Annotations here.) The NYX community centre (or whatever it is) is finally opened, though we already saw it in an Infinity Comic a couple of weeks ago. A rather out-of-character Synch then shows up to pick a fight about the whole thing. I’m genuinely baffled about the choice of Synch for this role, which doesn’t seem to play off anything in his back story – in fact, Hickman’s insertion of centuries of time in the Vault into his back story feels like it makes him almost perfectly unsuited to a book about the mutants trying to find a place in the real world. I guess you could do something about his perspective being so far removed from everyone else, but that doesn’t really feel like it’s what they’re going for. Still, I like the caricature quality to Balám’s art, and Cousin Bilal trying to be a supervillain – and somewhat pulling it off – is a great visual.

MAGIK #1. (Annotations here.) So like I said in the annotations, my stance on Magik is that her story ended perfectly well in “Inferno” and nothing published since then has come anywhere close to changing my mind about that. It’s also a magic-driven book (well, of course it is), which is rarely an angle that does much for me in the X-books. So with the caveat that I am very much not the target audience for this book… it’s not bad, actually. Ashley Allen gets across her approach to Illyana and puts more emphasis on an actual character beneath the persona. Germán Peralta’s crow demon is lovely stuff, just because he seems so relaxed, in an understated kind of way. I really wish they’d get rid of that costume, which sort of worked in the Chris Bachalo period but feels out of place in what this book’s trying to do. But… yeah, perfectly solid.

SENTINELS #4. By Alex Paknadel, Justin Mason, Federico Blee & Travis Lanham. So it turns out that the dodgy technology that’s been implanted into the hapless Sentinels has actually been copied – badly – from the body of Juston Seyfert, who is not a character I was expecting to see reintroduced. In fact, there are a couple of odd twists here that feel a bit choppy in terms of the story, but they’re at least interesting calls. We’ll see if the book can pull it all together for an ending next issue, though. It feels a bit out of control here, but you never know.