The X-Axis – w/c 7 April 2025
ASTONISHING X-MEN INFINITY COMIC #17. By Alex Paknadel, Phillip Sevy, Michael Bartolo & Clayton Cowles. There’s not much more I can say about this arc that I haven’t said already. I completely get why we’re doing stories about radicalisation and how the understandable worries of normal people can be turned to hate while they believe they’re acting in self-defence. it’s a fairly natural theme in the USA right now. But it’s making for rather repetitive stories, and using it as the vehicle for a partial Generation X reunion isn’t adding much spark to it – Skin’s a nice enough character but there’s not really that much interest in seeing him reunited with Husk. It’s a perfectly competent story in plot and artwork but there’s nothing lifting it above that.
UNCANNY X-MEN #13. (Annotations here.) Crossover season is in the rear view mirror and David Marquez is back for the first part of “The Dark Artery”. Obviously, that means the issue is worth your time for the art alone – okay, the dragon looks more stone than ice, but that panel of the Outliers approaching the Dark Artery through the swamp is wonderful, and the flashback pages of Henrietta Benjamin is lovely throughout. There was a time when the X-books worked on the principle that mutants had only started to appear in serious numbers at the start of the Silver Age once the post-nuclear generation hit puberty – that was the point of the “children of the atom” tagline – but that’s been downplayed for many years and doesn’t really make sense anyway given the sliding timeline. So embracing that change and doing stories about the secret history of underground mutant communities is a nice idea. Yes, it begs the question of why we’ve never heard of this pre-X-Men mutant history before, but… well, the current state of continuity does that anyway. I’m not quite so sure how I feel about doing the actual history of racial segregation at the same time – it risks equating the real with the fictional, and has the odd effect of presenting the mutant experience right next to the very thing that it’s a metaphor for – but I think the first chapter gets away with it.
PHOENIX #10. (Annotations here.) This is the end of the Adani storyline which has been running since the start of the series. It started off promising some sort of thoughts about gods and religion, but winds up doing a fairly routine finale in which Adani is persuaded to reject power and enjoy her childhood. There’s some interest to that idea because of the clear subtext that Jean wishes she had done the same thing, but it really doesn’t have very much to do with the more interesting themes that the book began by gesturing to. Alessandro Miracolo does some quite nice surrealist landscapes with reality collapsing, and the story does pull off a decent sense of resolution, but it all feels very slight for ten issues.
STORM #7. (Annotations here.) I really cannot get my head around this book. Luciano Vecchio’s art is lovely, but it’s an absolute chore to read. Cosmic power-ups rarely make for interesting stories, but that’s not the real issue here. It’s just so choppy, so hard to follow, so incredibly difficult to simply make sense of. What the hell is that scene with Dr Voodoo, for example? Is it a vision? I figured out that the word Storm says is a reference back to a magical spell mentioned in issue #1, but I still don’t know what’s actually happening on the next page as a result. I’m genuinely baffled by how hard this book is to understand considering that it’s edited by Tom Brevoort, who ought to have the experience to smooth over this sort of thing. It’s certainly a book I’m far too busy struggling to comprehend to actually care about. And yet… it does seem to be doing pretty well, and there’s certainly an audience there who really like it, so maybe it’s just doing something that fundamentally misses my wavelength. I rather respect its perverse distinctiveness, in fact. But I don’t enjoy it at all.
LAURA KINNEY: WOLVERINE #5. (Annotations here.) The second half of a two-parter with the Revolution – that’s what the kids are calling the Winter Soldier these days – is… well, it’s a fairly straightforward fight scene and a bit where they kill the Nazi scientist. There’s a sort of token hook based on the idea that Bucky is an older and wiser figure who’s come to terms with his past life as a weapon in a way that Laura can learn from… except that doesn’t really make sense, because she’s been free of the Facility for longer than he’s been free as the Winter Soldier. Mostly, though, it’s a really simple story that relies on the art to carry it, and yes, there are some neat panels in here – but I honestly have no idea what’s meant to be happening in that spot with the land mine. It’s meant to be a set-piece but it’s really not intelligible. That aside, it’s another issue for the “Fine, I guess” category, which doesn’t make a compelling case for the book’s existence.
It seems like most of the solo character books are not getting across their central premise very clearly or consistently. In the case of Phoenix, there’s definitely been some kind of shift in focus from the early issues.
But Storm and Laura Kinney: Wolverine seem like writers telling a story about a different character dressed up as the X-person in the starring role. LK:W seems to be doing a kind of watered-down version of Logan, exactly the thing you’d probably want to avoid with Laura’s character. And Storm’s book is built on an abruptly introduced new status quo that’s hard to connect to any previously existing central concept of the character.
This is shaping up to be an odd era of malaise for the X-Books, something that was marketed (and likely intended) as a “back to formula/back to basics” setup, but in which only McKay’s X-Men is really doing the old hits.
Simone’s title is tied up in an extended plot focusing on the Outliers and Endling, and Ewing’s Exceptional is almost like the DeFilippis/Weir era of New X-Men v.2, with its focus on the younger characters’ interactions and experiences to the near-exclusion of action plots.
The rest of the line is made up of odd little misfires like the tonally indecisive X-Factor, the eager but nauve NYX, and the puzzlebox plot of X-Force, both of which are cancelled, along with some solo books that are all over the place.
Exceptional and NYX are the only books that have done much of interest with the standard mutant metaphor, albeit with divergent quality in terms of execution. And both are the books with characters who actively reject the whole “X-Men” concept. There are efforts at setting up a shared background for all the books, such as Graymalkin and O*N*E* and the “Midnight M” sign but these elements aren’t particularly strong concepts on their own.
I wonder if everyone’s just waiting around to see what the MCU decides to do with the X-Men, art which point everything will be abruptly retooled or relaunched in that direction.
@Paul: Not a facetious question: Why do you find it odd? I feel like telling all these stories about the struggles of Black people *without* properly representing Black people or POCs has been a complete disservice to the analogy because of it has lacked true intersecionality.
So I’m going to give Simone some credit for doing something genuinely surprising: Putting Black people at the forefront of the mutants-as-Black-Civil-Rights-social-justice-fighters analogy–the same Black people whose pain and suffering and victories the mostly white X-Men have been piggybacking off since Claremont took over–and directly, inextricably, and unambiguously linking the mutant analogy to the Black struggle (whether she meant to or not!)–taking us way beyond the 1960s grassroots Black civil disobedience all the way back to the late US 1800s Jim Crow era whisper networks resistance led by a Black mutant subculture.
This can potentially be quite a good and challenging story, and one you absolutely cannot tell without Black people (and really, Marvel should not have been able to crib the Black Civil Rights Movement for so long without acknowledging Black people for the last 50 years, but yet here we are). The fight for mutant freedom and equality is synonymous with the historic Black struggle.
And yet! Simone’s track record with writing rounded, realistic people of color still gives me pause:
• She gave us Corina Ellis, who never grew beyond a remarkably boring, Black podcast influencer who reads Russian novels cautioning against the existence of prisons and slave labor camps and the same, intellectual Black woman proceeds to enact said prisons and slave labor camps against fictional stand-ins for historically oppressed people, for no reason other than to suggest that Black People Can Be Racist, Too, I guess?
• I mean, just look at the Outliers.
• By extension, she graced us with Ransom, which various eyewitness reports state is supposedly Black and Argentine and latino, but who so far could not present as any less Black or Argentine or latino.
• UXM, in general, has been pretty bad.
Based on that–and the sheer nuance, complexity, and TLC required to execute a story based on the post-slavery, Jim Crow era Black struggle–Simone hasn’t earned my benefit of the doubt. Not only has she not shown any capacity to write non-white voices in an authentic way on this run, but now she’s probably going to be juggling various Black voices throughout this arc, on top of significantly expanding the mutant analogy in a way that still honors and does justice to the struggles of Black people of yesterday and today (beyond hollow references and shallow lip service). Naturally, I’m scared this is going to go completely tits up (especially if this Henrietta character just ends up going on a moustache-twirling laser-eye white people rampage).
That’s the only part that really gives concerns me–is that Simone is way out of her depth and hasn’t shown a propensity to do even the most cursory or superficial cultural research on her own subjects. But if we’re headed for a a trainwreck, it’s at least on the back of easily the most interesting idea that’s come out of this entire FTA era.
Marvel doesn’t usually follow the synergy between the movie and comics route anymore. It hasn’t for a while. They might relaunch a series back to issue #1, launch a bunch of extra minis, or include the main villain of the movie into a comic story-arc, but nothing further. Look at the Fantastic Four. It’s getting relaunched from a new #1, but it is continuing Ryan North’s prior narrative. Unless you think the movie is going to revolve around a plot where the FF get stranded in time. Marvel is also launching a Fantastic Four Fanfare anthology mini-series, featuring stories with popular past writers on the characters.
Meanwhile, the FF movie is described as taking place in the past of the MCU, featuring Galactus as villain, and an origin for the Silver Surfer.
The scene with Brother Voodoo seems to be a flashback to his appearance in issues 2-3- he made the same point about her relying on her powers to the exclusion of magic in those issues. I have no idea what the spell was supposed to be doing in that scene either.
I don’t know what you found confusing about the land mine scene- Bucky stepped on the land mind and pushed him off it quickly knowing she’d be caught in the explosion but heal.
Bleeding Cool’s bestseller list is out. Uncanny X-Men came in at 4 and Storm came in at 7.
Phoenix and Laura Kinney didn’t make the list at all. Not a good sign- they got beat by Daredevil and Strange of Asgard.
(And in case anyone’s wondering. Amazing Spider-Man 1 did come in number one.)
@Omar- Magik seems to be the book that’s the most successful in getting its point across and the one that’s selling the best. Illyana’s opponent in the opening arc is a kid who was turned into the ruler of a demonic realm because he was an unwilling human sacrifice, the conflict between Illyana’s human side and Darkchylde side is stressed and the upcoming arc involves Limbo and Madelyne Pryor.
Psylocke also seems to be doing relatively well. Unfortuantely, as Betsy fans are complaining, the result seems to be that Kwannon has become THE Psylocke while Betsy is now relegated to the role of Rachel’s girlfriend. The X-Force series which featured Betsy has been cancelled while Kwannon is appearing in the main X-Men book. And to make things even more ridiculous, a storyline featuring Revelation has been announced in the MacKay’s X-Men book and so far there’s been no mention of Betsy. Because if you’re doing an Evil Doug Ramsey storyline, the Psylcoke you would expect to appear would be Kwannon. not Betsy, right?
@Chris V- Hank Pym is still stuck looking like Michael Douglas, though.
@Moonstar: I think the short answer to your question is that it doesn’t play to me as a story about intersectionality. I agree that’s a worthwhile theme to explore – after all, the alternative is either that all the mutants are white (and it’s not the 1960s any more) or that all other differences between them are irrelevant or flattened out (which is kind of what happened in Krakoa, but that’s another matter).
But so far this feels as if it’s really just saying “here is American racial segregation, here is anti-mutant persecution, aren’t they similar”. To which the answer is “well, yes, that’s the metaphor”. It may well resolve into a story about the significance of being both, and I’m giving it the benefit of the doubt on that, but it plays to me as a story that’s comparing an Actual Thing with something that was always designed to be a Metaphor of the Actual Thing and, unsurprisingly, finding some similarities.
Wonder if we’ll finally get more of The Promise, the canonical pre-Xavier mutant group.
I have to agree with Paul. That’s the purpose of metaphor.
It’s like creating a metaphor for issues faced by LGBTQ peoples, and then deciding that all the fictional metaphor are attracted to their own gender.
Also, it creates a problem similar to Chris Claremont’s forgetting that he is writing fiction when he used the N-word as an example of why “mutie” is hurtful. Umm…no. Either it should be the inverse (teaching a real-world lesson by showing that it’s wrong to use racially derogatory terms) or, to the better, been avoided altogether.
Think about writing a story featuring mutants being rounded up in concentration camps for genocide by a nation at the same time as Nazi Germany was doing the same in the real world. It would be read as trivializing a real-world horror.
I am all-for the idea of introducing new mutant characters in the past who are non-white. Something along those lines could be an interesting story, similar to the fact that Magneto was both Jewish and a mutant facing persecution in Nazi Germany.
@michael: Yes, Betsy and Doug have history, but I can’t imagine Marvel is eager to remind people of the time Betsy had a love connection with a teen boy.
The time is just right to compare and contrast mutant issues with ethnic racism, IMO.
If anything, the ethnic metaphor has all but vanished in the last few decades, if not been inverted outright, what with all the talk of fear of Homo Sapiens losing ground to Homo Superior and even threatening the other communities.
We could make a stronger case for sexual or even political minorities these days – although I personally would much rather welcome making the franchise a warning against the evils of nationalism, given the current political climate and the recent story of Krakoa.
Ransom isn’t a bad character – nor are the Outliers more generally – and I have no problem with seeing them more than the more ancient characters. I would like to see more of Nightcrawler, but new characters are fine too.
But I have to wonder if Gail Simone realizes how unusual and unlikely it would be for a character such as Roberto, with an established upper class Brazilian background, to have an Argentinian cousin, particularly one with African ancestry – let alone keep contact with him when they would be unlikely to even have a language in common. It would not be impossible, but it would be good subject matter for a reveal of past history storyline. Let someone who is not Wolverine have one of those.
Being descended from Agamotto is more than a fair bit different from having an ancestor that was Agamotto’s disciple. Just saying.
But I suspect that we are just not aware of some of the premises that Murewa Ayodele is working with, and it is conceivable that he has not fully realized how unlike the mythological context is from anything that the typical reader will be familiar with. In short, it may be a fine story, but it is not a story about Ororo, even taking into account the free ranging characterization of the last few years. I suspect that it does not really fit Marvel’s established cosmic repertoire either, but I guess we will see.
Betsy and Doug had a bit of a crush towards each other back in the 1980s – and really, it was nearly all from him and not even for very long. I don’t think that is all that cumbersome to handle. It is barely any more serious than the average teacher crush. Good for a laugh, at most a blush. These people have been dealing with mass murderers and worse for years; they can handle a bit of silliness and awkwardness.
No, Betsy admitted she shared the same feelings for him. Dani caught Betsy alone and naked with Doug. It was one of those Three’s Company misunderstanding scenes, but yeah. No way in today’s climate would anyone ever agree that it’d be ok for a student who saw his teacher naked, with the two admitting to having a crush, to get very close to each other again.
Maybe. But I sure find that excessive.
I researched a bit and apparently the whole situation never went beyond the pages of 1986’s New Mutants Annual #2.
Maybe one or both of them ever acted on that crush, or there was any other form of follow-up, but I sure am not aware of that ever having happened. And both have been through so much since, up to and including literal death…
Heck, you can probably attribute those panels to temporary confusion after manipulation by Mojo and, you know, the circunstance of having just been in physical contact due to no choice of their own. People tend to feel a bit weird when they are thrown over each other while naked… I think. I am not certain, unfortunately.
Due to Anglosphere, especially USAmerican , contemporary pedopanic paranoia , Marvel’s not going to touch in Betsy and Doug’s almost near-May-December relationship as much as possible , to avoid getting cancelled by Western Generation Z moral hysteria , which for me is too bad as I’m a of “forbidden love” romances , which nowadays you can read mostly only in East Asian comics (mainly manga, manwa, manhua)
And I bet that considering their different Family names , which is currently still passed along patrilineal lines in Latin America , as well as the fact that Argentina is considered to be the “Whitest” country in LA (reportedly 97% of the population self-identifies as “White”) Ransom’s Black Brazilian parent (he must have in order to be Sunspot’s Cousin , since in Big Two capecomics , “cousin” usually doesnt extend much further than the 1st degree) must be his mother , who is likely the sister to Sunspot’s father
Could Ransom be related via Sunspot’s white, American mother?
It is certainly _possible_, @Si.
But it would be rather unusual.
Then again, I am talking about what would be unusual about the birth family of a character that is already of unusual birth in two different ways – in a fictional world, no less.
I’m pretty sure the Doug/Betsy thing was during Claremont’s big “pair them up” period, where he was trying all kinds of potential partner combinations.
Storm/Wolverine happened not too long afterward, I want to say, also in an annual. Kitty/Storm and Kitty/Rachel were more implied (because it was still the ’80s) over in the monthly Uncanny book.
First Flight, Claremont’s first novel, was full of X-analogues who could finally get it on without objections from Marvel. So I think it was just how his particular interests were being expressed at that moment. Before they veered into mind-control BDSM more or less full-time.
New Mutants Annual #2 was also where Betsy retained new eyes that were given to her by Mojo, another storyline that basically went nowhere, if I recall correctly.
Apparently it went nowhere indeed, although by the end of that Annual it feels like a big deal. Presumably Mojo could spy everything that she did from that moment on, and logically that extended to Revanche later.
But I don’t think anything was done with that.
What is the origin of Psylocke’s current body? Do we know whether Mojo’s eyes survived into it?
No one outside of the comics themselves are calling Bucky “The Revolution.” That codename will never get over.
@Luis Dantas
Didn’t Revanche rip the Mojo eyes off her face shortly before asking Matsuyo for a mercy kill?
Anyway, Betsy’s current (white) body was made by, um, telekinetic assemblement of free floating atoms back in Mystery in Madripoor. She left behind the Asian body she died in an issue earlier in that miniseries.
Then Kwannon got up and disappeared in that very same body.
Which I think was created by Jamie Braddock when he resurrected Psylocke (in Claremont’s third stint on Uncanny X-Men) after Vargas killed her (in Claremont’s X-Treme X-Men).
This was done with zero research, so I could have mixed up everything and made the rest up. And a normal person wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.
I don’t really know why I asked.
Realistically, the Mojo spy eyes were either let go of and will never come back, or they will come back whenever a writer decides that they can serve a story function and his editor agrees, regardless of past stories.
All it takes is a one-panel retroactive scene explaining that Betsy died and was ressurrected by the Five in Krakoa at some point. That explained why X-23 now has Adamantium lacing in her bones, and can just as easily explain why Mojo’s spy eyes no longer exist. Frankly, it is just very slightly harder to conceive an explanation for why they might still be there and working.
But odds are that they were removed decades ago and I just don’t know how.
Maybe she’s made as the same goo as Matrix Supergirl.
You can always read Robert Heinlein to enjoy some wacky perverted sex, especially of the hebephilia or incestuous type. Claremont got the majority of his ideas from reading Heinlein and Piers Anthony.
Me, personally? I enjoy Anais Nin for that sort of thing. She’s the best.
I’ve long maintained that I prefer art that sacrifices things like pacing and structure in order to chase a unique idea. Storm is that type of book for me. I was confused about the order of the issue, but it is still presenting strong characterization, great art and intriguing themes. Emotionally this book works wonderfully for me. It is one of the highlights of From the Ashes for its audacity and innovation. I much prefer this to something that just feels like another standard X book.
Phoenix, while not as strong, is one I enjoy in a similar way. I like these two heady books. Especially since they are fairly self-contained and able to explore the beat of their own drum.
@Paul, small point: it appears that the link directing to the annotations for Laura #5 is missing.
So this recently happened: Murewa Ayodele has deactivated his Twitter/X account. From what was said, there was a fight about Jean’s actions and him. He commented on a podcast that he canceled Jean’s participation in the next arc to avoid some issues.
And he also communicated with a troll, who was difficult. Besides, I was already expecting that this would happen sooner or later, he has been looking for these conflicts whether he wants to or not, and he got involved with fans of Jean, Wanda, and T’Challa, not that it justifies the harassment he has been suffering
I am pretty sure “Revanche” cut out the spy eyes when she decided to commit suicide-by-ninja rather than get taken out by the Legacy Virus. So… Three decades ago? Adjectiveless #31?
Sadly,I’m not surprised that Ayodele has run into issues online. One thing I’ve noticed over the years is that something in Nigerian cultural upbringing and influence, especially with regards to Nigerian men, causes friction when dealing with Western audiences. Couple that with Ayodele firing up the Storm fanbase in a way I never actually thought existed and that’s a lot of energy on a site no longer regulated or moderated in any real way.
tl;dr this conflict was bound to happen. I hope he’s okay.
Uncanny X-Men Annual #12 revealed that after Fall of the Mutants and the death of the X-Men in Dallas, Mojo lost the link with Betsy’s eyes, causing him to create the X-Babies.
@Thom H: Claremont only had Storm and Kitty in a mother daughter relationship, which Storm ended when she got her mohawk. Kitty and Rachel were just on the same team in Uncanny. Rachel went on an adventure with Amara, not Kitty.
Why do people insist that the X-Men were inspired by the Civil Rights Movement? Claremont himself rejects the so-called mutant metaphor. As with the original series, most the enemies the X-Men fought in his run were evil mutants. They do nothing like the movent did, such as leading marches or protesting unjust laws. Xavier’s approach is more like Booker T. Washington’s, and is derided as “respectability politics”.
There are so many ways to get things wrong by tackling real-world issues in stories that are usually metaphors for those issues.
Every time a real-world war or conflict or genocide is mentioned in superhero comics, the first question is always, WELL WHY DIDN’T THE SUPERHEROES DO ANYTHING? It makes seem completely inept for their world to have suffered exactly the same problems as ours.
And then in the case of prejudice, you’re comparing the real and ongoing struggle of real people with the fictional struggle of fictional people. Are the X-Men somehow more brave and noble for being more oppressed, or are they more brave and noble for being less oppressed, or less brave and noble for being either, than real-world groups facing oppression?
@neutrino
“The X-Men are hated, feared and despised collectively by humanity for no other reason than that they are mutants. So what we have here, intended or not, is a book that is about racism, bigotry and prejudice.”
—Uncanny X-Men writer Chris Claremont, 1981
Oh yeah, *Amara* and Rachel. I totally misremembered that. They probably wouldn’t have made a very good couple back then — both too volatile. Now that they’re a little older, though…one from the future, one from the “past.” That could be interesting.
The “mutant metaphor” is inevitable compromised IMO by how it is something that emerges over the history of the X-Men and retroactively gets defined in public consciousness as the “core concept.”
It’s a very occasional theme in Lee/Kirby that mutants are objects of fear and suspicion (and when that’s the case, it’s not at all clear that marginalized ethnic or sexual minorities are the referent — the original Sentinels story reads more as a “Reds under the bed” sort of thing, not least because Stan Lee explicitly says that the problem with Trask is that he was a fanatic who went too far with what was basically a correct point of view.
And there are countervailing elements that look like a different metaphor entirely: the X-Men are students at an elite private school in a mansion, the only one with a completely identifiable class background is Warren, and that background is wealthy WASP aristocrat, Magneto is a Nazi figure who believes that he’s racially superior, and so on. All that reads much more like a centrist liberal metaphor about people who are born into privilege (=with superpowers)and how their duty is to use their privilege for the benefit of others. Some elements from that — the mansion, the school — had a long life after that early period as part of the furniture that people associated with the X-Men.
(But coherence should not be overstressed. The IIRC third villain, the Blob, is portrayed as distinctly further down the class spectrum from the X-Men, for instance. The point is that the initial concept was muddled.)
You get an uptick in the emphasis on the recognizable mutant metaphor with Roy Thomas (both periods). And Steve Englehart stresses it quite a lot in his use of mutants in Secret Empire. If you’re looking for a connection with the Civil Rights era, that’s the time to look for it, in the decade after the passage of the Civil Rights Act.
Early Claremont X-Men marks a step backwards from that, if anything. The idea that mutants are the object of prejudice is barely present in his first few years. The only story where it’s foregrounded is the Stephen Lang X-Sentinels story, and that’s very much saying goodbye to the Thomas X-Men, not looking forward. After that, you get globetrotting soap opera and space opera. (A certain amount of associating mutants with markers of privilege in this period; the Hellfire Club, especially, but also Banshee as lord of a @#$%ing castle, and look who Proteus’s dad is.)
Claremont only really picks up the theme in the post-Dark Phoenix period that brings stories such as DOFP, GLMK, and also the change in the characterization of Magneto. And at that point he obviously does run with it. But if he’d left the X-Men with Scott Summers, I don’t think anyone would associate the theme with Claremont at all.
Mutants are certainly a metaphor for any sort of persecuted minority group and that’s clearly a theme in Claremont’s approach to the book – though he also uses it as a vehicle to do all sort of other things like space opera.
I think the metaphor Claremont is disavowing the specific notion of Professor X as Martin Luther King and Magneto as Malcolm X which you used to see, and which was always misconceived – Martin Luther King did not attempt to bring about social change by hiding in a mansion until things improved of their own accord, and Malcolm X was not a terrorist.
Luis Dantas: But odds are that they were removed decades ago and I just don’t know how.
Kwannon, in Betsy’s original body, removed them and left them for Betsy before leaving the mansion, returning to Japan, and cajoling Matsu’o Tsurayaba into killing her before she died of the Legacy Virus. The next issue, Betsy, in Kwannon’s body, threw the cybernetic eyes into the lake near the mansion.
IIRC, this all happened in X-Men (1991) #31-32.
According to Breevort. Warlock and Bei will be showing up with Doug in X-Men 19. This is making me nervous. Because if Doug is the mastermind behind 3K, they’re going to be going along with some pretty evil stuff- just look at this week’s Infinity Comic for an example. Bei is a fairly new character and she was raised on Arakko, so I could see her going along with ruthless measures to create a “better” world. But Warlock is supposed to be one of the gentlest New Mutants. Him going along with Doug while Doug has basically turned into Apocalypse Jr. would be character assassination. Alternately, if Doug has reprogrammed Warlock into obeying him. that would be more character assassination for Doug- he’d be horribly violating his best friend.
@Chris V- But Betsy was never Doug’s teacher- she didn’t started teaching the younger mutants until decades later. It’s still inappropriate because Doug was under 18, though.
@Luis- We did see Betsy wondering how she felt about Doug in issue 213 and then we saw her thinking about him a couple of times after he was dead, like in Uncanny X-Men 256 and she mentioned “poor lost Doug” in X-Men 23.
@sagatwarrior- I’ve sometimes wondered if Nigerian culture has something to do with the way Ayodele is writing Storm. She is more ostentatious than ever before as evidenced by the Storm Sanctuary. She’s reluctant to let Xavier stay with her because he’s a wanted criminal. even though she’s sheltered wanted criminals like Rogue and Magneto before. The teaser for the next issue says “Storm does not lie. We all know that.” Which is odd, since she helped the Quiet Council cover up resurrection throughout much of the Krakoan era, has ordered telepaths to alter people’s memories, etc. I’m not sure if these changes to Storm’s character represent something in Nigerian culture or if Ayodele is just a bad writer. Does anyone with knowledge of Nigerian culture have any idea?
@Michael, as an observer of Nigerian culture over the years, IMHO that theyre like a IRL version of Wakanda in that theyre one country on their continent whos not afraid to stand up and push back against everyone else , even to the point of getting confrontational and being embroiled in conflict. After all, theyre large geographically, theyre rich in oil, theyre smart in part due to historically being colonized by the British and also having had their own native advanced civilization that reached the stage of Empire ecen before that, so theyve got the confidence that theyve got the capability to be as good as or even better than anyone else. Africa’s arguably currently most globally famous native writer in English is Nigerian (so much so that he even got referenced in the Simpsons decades ago) . Nigerians were among the first notorious characters of the Global Information Age so much that theyre now a recognized stock figure archetype/stereotype trope of the Internet. Its been said that Nigeria is Africa’s Brazil for the same reasons (likewise its been said that South Africa is Africa’s Argentina , but thats a different story) .
Headcanon: its been revealed that somehow Kwannon was actually in her body for years while Betsy was in control of it / possessing it (ala Peter and Otto in Superior Spiderman) . How did this even happen when the bodyswap was supposed to be perfected by Kwannon herself when she suicide by hara-kiri due to the Legacy Virus ? No-Prize: when Maddy Pryor’s Sisterhood of Mutants resurrected Betsy’s OG body (now cured of Legacy Virus due to Colossus’ sacrifice) during Matt Fraction’s run, they put Betsy’s soul back into it (causing Kwannon’s body to be empty) but there was surprisingly a “dark presence” in it that attacked Betsy , which Betsy fought , causing her to eventually commit suicide in her own body , reverting her spirit back to Kwannon’s body . What or who was that “dark presence”? Kwannon’s soul , who else , since she died in Betsy’s OG body. Why did Kwannon then attack Betsy ? Because she was furious that she got suddenly resurrected when she was already resting in peace . Why wasnt Kwannon able to control her own body until Betsy’s spirit left it? Because Betsy was the better psychic due to constant usage and thus practice with her powers.
We are getting an “X-Men: Hellfire Vigil” one shot in July, where the mutants gather to reflect on the loss of Krakoa on the one-year anniversary. The writers are MacKay. Simone, Ewing, Paknadel. Kelly, Lanzing, Thorne ,Loo. Ayodele, and Philips. According to Thorne, the vigil was planned from the beginning. He says he’s participating because it’s his last chance to write a character he had plans for.
(My guess is that Loo is only here to resolve the saga of Dazzler’s hair loss.)
“The challenge is to see themselves at the school as minorities, That’s Charlie’s job. That’s Magneto’s job. From my perception what they are is a half-dozen, maybe a dozen kids, young people living together, but looking on themselves as ordinary people.”
Chris Claremont at a panel at CCXP 2024
https://www.thepopverse.com/comics-x-men-chris-claremont-minorities-marvel
@Voord 99: Roy Thomas moved the X-Men further away from the “feared and hated” trope and made them more like regular superheroes, with the exception of unknowing mutant Larry Trask. The Secret Empire was a criminal organization that wanted to capture mutants to use their energy, hardly anything like the civil rights struggle.
GLMK seems to be Claremont’s final word on anti-mutant prejudice. Like before, it wasn’t resolved with a boycott or a sit-in but by defeating the evil mastermind’s plans, who is then arrested. DOFP was mostly Byrne’s plot, but the character Claremont created for it, Sen. Kelly, is based on liberal Ted Kennedy, not a demagogue like Strom Thurmond. Xavier admits he has good reason to be scared. The day is saved by defeating the self-proclaimed Brotherhood of Evil Mutants from assassinating him.