The X-Axis – w/c 3 July 2023
I’m still on holiday, but time for a quick round-up of this week’s X-books anyway.
X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #94. By Jason Loo and Antonio Fabela. Okay, I see where this is meant to be going. Madrox wants to impress Reed Richards by showing how far he’s come since his debut in Giant-Size Fantastic Four – he conspicuously doesn’t care that much about the rest of the FF – but finds himself in a storyline involving his own evil renegade dupes. And those dupes are part of him, and therefore that’s embarrassing. I kind of get that, but there’s something a bit odd about positioning Reed as the paragon family-man that Madrox aspires to be – aside from the fact that he’s never come up before, Reed has always been defined more by his awkwardness in that role. Still, he is the patriarch of the MU’s top family-themed superhero team and I guess you could see how Madrox aspires to that… ish? There’s something in that angle, but the A plot with the dupes and Blastaar really isn’t doing much for me at all.
X-MEN #24. By Gerry Duggan, Joshua Cassara & Frank Martin. We’re firmly into the build for the Hellfire Gala now. Kid Cable returns to try and take down Orchis and change history, but gets nowhere. The kidnap of Manifold – which happened in Rogue and Gambit, a book that isn’t actually finished yet – is apparently a bigger deal than its positioning in that side series implied. Destiny tries to get Rogue to do something unspecified to avert something she can’t or won’t explain. Scott and Jean argue some more and Jean wants to leave the team; Jean talks to Polaris for some reason. Sunfire finally gets around to hunting for Redroot, which is apparently going to be an X-Men Unlimited arc.
And… for some reason none of that is the A-plot, which appears to be a fight with Pogg ur-Pogg on Gameworld? That doesn’t really seem to have much to go with anything else, and it only runs from pages 10 to 17. I’m happy enough to see the guy back, to see if we can do anything with him now that we’ve had the gag reveal that it’s a guy in a suit. But this feels decidedly pointless, unless it’s to give everyone an excuse to talk for a bit about mysterium, which hasn’t come up much in this book.
As an individual issue, it’s terribly scattershot. We’ll see if it all comes together as the Hellfire Gala hits.
X-MEN: BEFORE THE FALL – SINISTER FOUR #1. By Kieron Gillen, Paco Medina, Edgar Delgado & Fer Sifuentes Sujo. As with the Heralds of Apocalypse series, this is basically an issue of an ongoing series – Immortal X-Men – without the burden of having to include the regular cast. The focus here is on Dr Stasis and Mother Righteous, and a fuller exploration of the idea that she’s a re-creation of Essex’s beloved wife Rebecca.
There’s a lot going on here; Stasis is being positioned as the Sinister closest to the original Nathaniel Essex, because his whole thing is that he doesn’t change with time. Consequently, Stasis is immediately smitten by this re-creation of his ex-wife, and also struggling to account for the ways she’s changed. (“I’m sorry. It’s no longer the nineteenth century. I should respect your career goals.”) It’s basically an issue of conversation, but it does a massive amount to flesh out Stasis and actually humanise him somewhat as an echo of his long-dead creator. Medina’s art really sells him letting his guard down around Righteous, too. As for her, Rebecca Essex has previously served mainly to be disappointed in her husband in a handful of origin appearances; making her into an Eliza Doolittle figure adds a lot to her, and to their relationship. Very good.
X-23: DEADLY REGENESIS #5. By Erica Schultz, Edgar Salazar & Carlos Lopez. The final issue is much what you’d expect from the rest of the series: X-23 and Haymaker team up to rebel against Kimura and the Kingpin. The bad guys get away, and X-23 kind of learns a lesson about living with her past which was really part of her character anyway. The art’s a bit stiff in some of the action sequences, and and it winds up acting as if it was setting up Haymaker as a supporting character, which obviously he wasn’t. But it’s perfectly okay; if you want more of X-23 from this period of her continuity, well, it does what it says on the tin.
To be fair, everyone in the Lee FF was an awful person, except Sue who was just written awfully. Lee was trying to write humanized, realistic characters, but he ended up writing awful human beings.
Reed was arrogant, cold, and condescending.
Ben had anger management problems (probably from having a passive-aggressive best friend) and was on the verge of becoming a full-fledged supervillain half the time.
Johnny was annoying and dangerous.
Sue had to be the long-suffering, passive mother figure trying to pick up the pieces of being stuck with such awful people.
They had a very dysfunctional family dynamic.
Don’t think we’ve mentioned 70s Reed, who ended up separated from Sue for a while and there’s the Brute, the Reed from Counter Earth.
Also, Sue’s interactions with Namor probably help Reeds poor behavior.
I presume Alicia might be the only person without a glaring personality flaw, and she had to deal with her super villain dad.
Lee was specifically trying to write flawed characters — as opposed to the perfect pantheon over at DC — so the flaws were front and center.
Also, everyone is flawed, so I can’t imagine a comic book following anyone over time isn’t going to capture some unflattering — and possibly downright unpleasant — moments.
Imagine that amplified by the possession of superpowers and the responsibility to save the entire world every 30 days or so. Lots of opportunities to stress out and look like an asshole.
“Also, everyone is flawed”
I dunno, dude, I’ve never turned my best friend into a monster and failed for over 60 years to cure his condition, while performing dangerous experiments on my own children and patronizing my wife for barely keeping up with me.
I don’t know Josie
That’s not what I heard
Um, if you look carefully at the last page of Before The Fall: Sinister Fall, which announces upcoming releases and has the Hellfire Gala cover in the background, they may have spoiled the X-Vote winner (which would be the option I like least), given what Duggan had said in this interview:
https://aiptcomics.com/2023/03/27/x-men-monday-197-gerry-duggan-x-men-iron/
Ha, good catch. And yeah, it’s probably the most boring option. Maybe earlier in the Krakoan era it would have been interesting, but now, not so much.
The most boring option has won the last two times. I like Polaris, but she isn’t the wildcard Marrow or Tempo would have been. I’d much rather have the wacky/obscure characters be part of the roster already, not part of the vote.
I don’t keep up with Previews so I don’t know if this is the first time we’re seeing “Rise of the Powers of X” as potentially the name of the next phase after Fall of X… But if it is, I’m surprised they didn’t get the full symmetry going by using “Fall of the House of X” instead.
FotHoX/RotPoX just seems like the sort of formalism that Gillen delights in, and it makes a fun counterpoint to HoX/PoX.
So the spoilers for the new Thunderbolts series are out and US Agent is a member. So it looks like US Agent isn’t Captain Krakoa. Since Destiny said that Captain Krakoa’s rank was “truly earned”, it looks like Captain Krakoa is William Burnside.
Michael said: So the spoilers for the new Thunderbolts series are out and US Agent is a member. So it looks like US Agent isn’t Captain Krakoa. Since Destiny said that Captain Krakoa’s rank was “truly earned”, it looks like Captain Krakoa is William Burnside.
If so, I have to wonder how baffling that will be for X-books readers, given that Burnside is a rather minor character even within the context of Captain America, the only title he’s ever appeared in that I’m aware of (barring some Cap-themed issues of What If?.
I’m wondering if it won’t be another military-themed character with more X-book ties. Nuke, perhaps? Or maybe someone managed to bring Stryker back yet again?
The “false captain, his rank earned” line basically eliminates Nuke from contention – he’s never been depicted as being high ranking. Stryker doesn’t fit – Captain Krakoa is superhuman, Stryker isn’t, and more importantly, Cyclops would definitely recognize Stryker. Burnside fits the clues best.
Burnside won’t be super familiar to X-book readers, but then again, it’s a pretty simple core idea – ultra-conservative former Captain America turned villain who wants to overthrow the US government. And he was last in the Brubaker run, which has an excellent reputation and remains in print. He seems very workable for an Uncanny Avengers villain, especially with Steve on the roster.
My out-there theory is that it could be General Ross resurrected/brought out of the mothballs and de aged. Or a resurrected Major Glen Talbot. Burnside is a much more likely candidate, but the Hulk fan in me wants what it wants.
As mentioned here recently …
Colonel Buzz Baxter aka Mad Dog aka Patsy Walkers ex husband (the one thats not Damion Hellstrom).
I suppose it could also be HYDRA Cap from the Secret Empire crossover, resurrected somehow.
Or maybe it’ll turn out to be Captain Hook in some Disney synergy 🙂
I don’t have an opinion about Reed, but I feel like I’ve been in conversations about Xavier that were exactly the same. I was in Luis Dantas’ position, and everyone else was arguing Xavier’s an arrogant, immoral jerk.
@Omar- Hydra Cap is also a good candidate. It was Selene who supposedly murdered Hydra Cap and she just joined forces with Orchis.
@Allan M- Stryer has been gone from normal human to Phalax-infected to cyborg to supernatural- but he never rose above the rank of sergeant and Scott would recognize him, so yeah, he doesn’t fit.
Burnside had plastic surgery to look like Steve Rogers and of course Hydra-Cap does, so Scott would have thought it was Captain America.
But Steve said Burnside was getting a new identity the last time we saw Burnside- that could include plastic surgery.
I hope it isn’t Burnside (50s Cap), if only because I think it would be a poor use of the character.
50s Cap works best as a commentary on toxic nostalgia for a lost America, and as a guy who thinks he is the Captain America the country really needs.
In plotting terms, it wouldn’t be hard to write him into the role, but it would probably mean either having him brainwashed into it or turning his very specific kind of reactionary, paranoid American nationalism into generic fantasy world bigotry.
I wonder how many people have had plastic surgery to look like Steve Rogers – probably at least half a dozen and now we have the easy cop-out of multiverse versions of Steve.
Karl_H> I don’t keep up with Previews so I don’t know if this is the first time we’re seeing “Rise of the Powers of X” as potentially the name of the next phase after Fall of X… But if it is, I’m surprised they didn’t get the full symmetry going by using “Fall of the House of X” instead.
FotHoX/RotPoX just seems like the sort of formalism that Gillen delights in, and it makes a fun counterpoint to HoX/PoX.
Looks like you were just ahead of the game! FotHoX/RotPoX is the combo-follow up to FoX.