The X-Axis – w/c 10 July 2023
X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #95. By Jason Loo & Antonio Fabela. This is the end of the FF team-up arc and it’s what you’d expect. You can see the idea – the rogue dupes are a way of externalising Madrox’s inner doubts about accepting responsibility, becoming a family man, and so on. And that’s a pretty good idea. But it winds up being tagged on to a rather routine action story, and the FF’s role as guest stars never quite clicks. Yes, they’re the superhero family so they offer something Madrox can feel insecure about… but along with Blastaar they wind up cluttering the plot more than helping it.
IMMORTAL X-MEN #13. (Annotations here.) There are only twelve members of the Quiet Council, so with issue #13 we move on to Cypher, the low key observer. Once again, Lucas Werneck does great work with his reactions, and generally in bringing visual life to an issue that’s almost entirely conversation. The big surprise here is that the collapse of the Council continues to run faster than you’d expect. I’d assumed things would be building to a head during the “Fall of X” event, but instead the Quiet Council is imploding already, At first glance there’s something a little awkward about Professor X dutifully playing along with his non-voting role in the previous issue, only to turn around here and decide to help tear everything down, but I suppose the key distinction is that he still isn’t trying to put himself into a position of power. And there’s a very good scene here that finally confronts head on the question of what Krakoa ever had to do with Xavier’s dream of coexistence. Excellent as ever.
X-FORCE #42. (Annotations here.) The conclusion of “The Ghost Calendars”, which doesn’t really work. This whole arc feels like a way of giving the rest of X-Force some sort of pay-off for the Beast plot even though the real story has been shunted over to Wolverine. And while I quite like the idea of Beast setting up a surveillance state as the logical extension of his agenda – and justifying it as an extrapolation from Cerebro – the actual defeat of Nimrod Beast is cursory in the extreme. Paul Davidson does some good work on the Nimrod Beast design, though, and on the jester Deadpool – though the Beast’s alternate future feels a bit too generic for my liking.
ROGUE & GAMBIT #5. By Stephanie Phillips, Carlos Gomez, David Curiel & Fer Sifuentes-Sujo. The miniseries wraps up, and the plotline about Manifold does wind up figuring into the wider line, for what that’s worth. Otherwise, this is patchy. It is nice to see Rogue and Gambit together again, and the relatively light tone is welcome, but there’s a lot of power-of-love stuff about Rogue breaking free of the Power Broker’s control Just Because. And Gambit is played as a bit of a klutz in this issue, more than in previous ones – reckless is fine, but sometimes it strikes the wrong tone and lands on dim.
X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST – DOOMSDAY #1. By Marc Guggenheim, Manuel Garciia, Cam Smith & Yen Nitro. The latest in Marvel’s endless array of nostalgia minis, this is not quite what you might expect from the cover. It’s not the X-Men at war with the Sentinels in the rubble – it’s the X-Men still doing X-Men stuff as the DoFP timeline is just starting to go off the rails, with the Sentinels still under human control but starting to get ideas of their own. If you’re going to do a story filling in the back story of DoFP then this is certainly a period that’s largely been glossed over – and there’s certainly room for a topical angle about democratic slippage here. On that level, it’s actually quite decent, and sensibly sticks to a standard superhero style instead of cranking up the grit. On the other hand, we all know how this ends – that’s the premise, after all – and so the question is how you turn that into a compelling story. I’m not entirely convinced the book has an answer to that, but it was more interesting than I expected.
The art on the new Days of Future Past mini is so rubbery, but in a way I kind of like? It weirdly reminds me a little bit of John Bolton’s time on Classic X-Men. And/or Paul Smith’s looser style?
I typically like a “the whole team dies” alternate timeline story, but we’ve seen mutants die so many times recently that I’m kind of over it at this point.
The thing about doing a prologue to Days of Future Past is that you’re locked in to what’s already established–who lives and who dies is hardly a surprise at this point. It’s just a case of -how- they die.
Also, you’re locked into whatever characters existed at the time of the original story’s conception, which means ignoring decades’ worth of newer creations. Unless you want to go the route of “oh, these characters were around at this time anyway” in which case they don’t survive to the end stage.
(Case in point, how do Sinister and Apocalypse factor in to a DoFP scenario? What about characters who would have been active during this time frame? And yeah, I did notice that Forge and Gambit are active here, as examples of later additions… Also, seeing Storm and Scott in their 90s era looks…)
DoFP, like so many future-set stories, is weird because it postulates a roster almost identical to “present day” only 30 years later or whatever… while in the real world, rosters undergo massive changes in a fraction of that time.
It’s interesting that Guggenheim also fits in characters like Stane as Ironmonger, Songbird, Walker as Captain America, and Titania — suggesting that certain stories must have happened in some form in that timeline anyway. (Doom empowering Titania, Zemo reinventing Mimi, Stane’s rivalry with Tony.)
I find this sort of thing interesting, though Guggenheim has a lot of heavy lifting to keep the journey interesting, given how well-known and solidified the end point is.
The Rogue and Gambit limited series teaches us the valuable lesson that English people and white Southerners must make decisions for men of color because men of color do not know what is good for them. Seriously, I can’t believe that in 2023, nobody realized how bad the optics were for a 19th century Englishwoman and a Southern woman to enslave Maniford.
Am I the only one that thinks it’s weird how the Rogue and Gambit series didn’t spell out what’s going on with Manifold? We saw in X-Men 24 that Moira told Stasis that if their plan is going to succeed, they need to take Manifold off the board, we saw in Rogue and Gambit 4 that Reuben Brousseau, a member of Coven Akkaba, was with the Power Broker and we saw in X-Men Red 12 that Coven Akkaba is working with Orchis. So if we put that all together Brosseau hired the Power Broker to capture Manifold at the behest of Moira and Stasis. But why wasn’t this spelled out in the script? If this were the 80s Destiny would say “Moira and Stasis have realized that Manifold is the sole obstacle to their plans (**See X-Men 24- Ed.) and Coven Akkaba has joined with Orchis (**See X-Men Red 12- Ed.)”
Why does anyone care if removing the gizmo kills Rogue? Can’t they just resurrect her?
Rogue just doesn’t want to die and be resurrected and who can blame her? I mean… it’s nice to see a mutant who doesn’t treat death as a momentary inconvenience, who still acknowledges that it’s not a fun experience.
Maybe she’s afraid of being tainted by Sinister, assuming she wasn’t already.
Yes, everyone has to be careful about being resurrected now due to the question as to if the Sinister gene will still infect the person. It’s what led up to the fall of the Council.
Thom-I saw a heavy Alan Davis influence, circa the Claremont/Davis Uncanny X-Men days with the art.
The bonus page for the Fallen Friend issue feauturing Ms. Marvel featured Scott outside Ms. Marvel’s funeral being confronted by the Champions. Now we know the X-Men are going to resurrect Kamala in a couple of weeks as an Inhuman- mutant hybrid. The fact that an Inhuman-mutant hybrid its possible was foreshadowed in Judgement Day- we saw that mutants and Deviants were closely related and we know that an Inhuman- Deviant hybrid is possible. (Maelstrom, the villain who killed Quasar’s father, was one.)
However, I’m wondering if we’ll get a good explanation as to why Scott and Emma insisted on keeping this a secret. If Emma had just resurrected Kamala as soon as she heard she was dead and sent her home directly via the gates her family wouldn’t even have known she was dead.For that matter, why couldn’t Scott just tell the Champions “Kamala’s part mutant, I’m planning on resurrecting her?” And what was the point of Scott avoiding the funeral but standing right outside it? I could see Scott skipping the funeral if the Mandrill tried to take over Zimbabwe, for example, or Scott avoiding the funeral because he didn’t think he could convincingly feign grief, but standing outside the funeral where he could run into people Kamala knew makes no sense.
Maybe Scott is lying because he’s worried that people will conclude Kamala is as much a monster as Maelstorm if they learn that she’s a hybrid. But that doesn’t work. Everyone loves Kamala. Besides, it’s not like Quasar reacted to his father’s death by attacking all Inhumans and Deviants having sex.
Once the Krakoa era finally ends, I have a new project proposal for Paul: to create an “essential” reading order of the Krakoa era.
There are way too many books, and I’m sure nobody actually needs to read Fallen Angels to figure out what’s going on in Inferno, for example. I propose establishing the central narrative (likely the Hickman and Gillen books), and including any series or individual issues that are necessary for following that narrative.
The Scarlet Witch series is (very slowly) doing something with Magneto maybe. Issue 5 had a panel of a Magneto looking dude. Then there was the annual setting up an unrelated annuals crossover. And in issue 6 (which otherwise was a monster of the week story) we got a page of Wanda reacting to the Magneto looking dude, confirming that he did indeed look just like Mags.
I wonder if it will be the return of Joseph…
“I’m sure nobody actually needs to read Fallen Angels to figure out what’s going on in Inferno”
I’ve actually skipped a lot of the Krakoa era books, and I was mildly shocked how little context you’d miss going directly from HoxPoX to Inferno, probably because Inferno is a Moira story and her plotline really didn’t progress in the interim.
What are the main, ongoing plotlines of the Krakoa era? Moira/Orchis/machine future, Mystique/Destiny (tied into the previous), Apocalypse/Arakko, Sinister Shenanigans, Beast’s ongoing moral decay, maybe Colossus/Chronicler and the ongoing storylines of Captain Britain and Nightcrawler…
@Chris V- it’s definitely Joseph- Darcy refers to him as JOE in a letter at the end of the issue.
@Michael: That, and the scar across his neck from when Kwannon/Betsy/whoever decapitated him
The one thing to take from ‘The Ghost Calenders’ is that, eventually, finally, Beast manages to have a scheme that doesn’t fuck up and backfire in his own stupid face.
I’m not reading the Unlimited Series, so I wonder, how does this X-Men/Fantastic Four series relate to the whole ‘Xavier blocks Reed’s cure for mutants and lets him know that Xavier has done so’ thing, and will it sit awkwardly when the real books decide to address that at some point in the future?
@Loz- Yeah, but even in the Ghosr Calendars storyline, he’s dumb enough to keep a hostile assassin nearby. Although, in fairness, Deadpool probably would never have been able to kill him if he hadn’t been attacked by Cerebrax.
“What are the main, ongoing plotlines of the Krakoa era?”
That’s actually one of the hardest questions to answer, isn’t it? X of Swords derailed every single book in the line, but its story and concepts are barely relevant to the line going forward. In the context of Inferno and Immortal X-Men, X of Swords may as well not have happened.
In retrospect, I am underwhelmed by the Krakoa era.
Lots of interesting ideas and opportunities running around, but hardly any was well developed. My general feeling is that its main accomplishment was bringing back nearly all dead mutants of note.
Other than that?
The creation of ORCHIS as a new, highly technological and slightly self-conflicted main nemesis.
Some attempts at character development that IMO have largely been overextended while also underdeveloped and just plain puzzling (to be fair, that may be unavoidable at this point in the main characters’ history).
A big opportunity for reflection on what the X-Books should be or attempt to be, now that the status quo was changed in a fairly malleable way.
And the status quo change proper, which I can’t help but feel to have fizzled quite hard. Far too many things were teased but never had nearly enough logical consequence. Outside of Immortal X-Men and arguably X-Men Red and Way/Legion of X we rarely saw even attempts at truly exploring the logical character beats to arise from such a deep change. Tina Howard tried but failed badly IMO. Laura is back to calling herself “Wolverine” just when it made the most sense for her to break out of that bad habit. Scott is more of a cypher than ever, just as he had every opportunity of developing as a character. X-Force returned in a particularly pointless form whose main accomplishment is making Beast unredeemable.
All in all, I expect to remember this going forward as that time when Nightcrawler had a bit more exposure, Storm was particularly full of herself, and Wolverine was a bit less overexposed.
I think had there been greater concentration on the core themes developed by Hickman in House/Powers as a throughline across the era, with Hickman’s ideas being kept in the main as far as Orchis (i.e. not turning them into another bunch of anti-mutant supervillains), it would have made the Krakoa experiment far more rewarding.
It still may not be perfect. Some other problems addressed above would still be noticeable. The fact that one could read House/Powers, a few issues of Hickman’s X-Men, and Inferno while failing to miss one plot point is certainly problematic. For a line that was supposed to be closely coordinated, that makes for a great deal of filler (regardless if one enjoyed some of the stories told).
It would, at least, give a greater purpose to the Krakoa era, where the reader could parse down the main themes of Krakoa other than “mutants live on an island, mutants bring back dead mutants”.
There’s also the themes of:
– an outside culture assimilating or not, and whether they should be expected to (X-Men Red).
– fairness in the criminal Justice system (Sabretooth, Hellions, Immortal X-Men),
– generational conflict and trauma (New Mutants).
– how society treats people who do not fit social norms (Hellions).
– people vs. societal systems (Immortal X-Men).
– how the media and those controlling it shape public perception (X-Men).
I’m sure I’m missing some key themes – I’m not sure how to describe Legion of X’s themes because the storytelling went in obtuse directions- but they’re present in the comics themselves. I wish they had been better developed in some cases (Duggan’s X-Men, I’m looking at you), even if I think some series handled them well.
Those are themes which describe certain series, rather than the Krakoa era as a whole, and they are themes which can be explored outside of the Krakoa status quo.
Hellions theme is one that encompasses (or should encompass) the core theme of mutants, in general.
New Mutants theme could have been explored at the Xavier Institute as well as any other setting.
Also, for the most part, those are themes picked up by writers on books after Hickman had left. I was mostly concentrating on the line between House/Powers and Inferno, to set an overarching narrative to the Krakoan experiment. After Hickman left, writers have taken the series in their own directions to try to find some purpose in Krakoa (some better than others). That was also the point where Orchis degenerated from the themes touched on by Hickman to becoming another anti-mutant supervillain group.
If only Hickman had an ongoing title he could’ve used to better develop those themes between HoXPoX and Inferno.
Alas, we can but dream.
@Loz: “I’m not reading the Unlimited Series, so I wonder, how does this X-Men/Fantastic Four series relate to the whole ‘Xavier blocks Reed’s cure for mutants and lets him know that Xavier has done so’ thing”
Unlimited makes no mention whatsoever of the events of the X-Men/Fantastic Four mini. It doesn’t even mention Xavier. It’s literally just ‘the Richards family visits the Madrox family (plus Guido), then Blastaar happens and there’s a trip to space to fight rogue dupes’. Forge is mentioned when conversation briefly turns to Krakoan tech, I believe.
@Chris V: the themes of the individual series contribute to and make up the overall themes of the era. That some of them could be explored outside of Krakoa doesn’t invalidate their presence or importance to the era. Technically, some of the themes central to Krakoa (enemies learning to work together, trying to prevent a bad future, forming a utopia being harder than it seems) have been explored in pre-Hickman X-books.
I understand wanting to see how Hickman’s vision would play out. The (admittedly imperfect) post-Hickman X-books aren’t lacking in themes, direction, or ambition, however.
To me, the things in the Krakoa era that were unique shone through pretty clearly:
– Mutants were united, beyond even the Utopia era. Most teams had at least one villain working with the traditional heroes.
– Death was no adversary. It let them tell new stories without taking characters off the board.
– An end to the endangered species era. For the first time since “No more mutants”, humanity is seeing mutants as the new inheritors of the planet.
There have been plenty of bad books in the Krakoa era (Fallen Angels, X-Corp, Excalibur and both sequels, New Mutants under later authors), but most of the books were treating new ground.
I’ve been rereading parts of the “main” Krakoa books, and the one thing that stands out to me more than anything else is that most of these characters aren’t characters anymore.
Cyclops, Storm, Jean, Cable, Rachel, even Doug for the most part, they all cheerfully go along with literally everything and without any qualms, questions, or personal agenda. They don’t want anything, they don’t fear anything, nothing bothers or upsets them. They might as well all be robots.
@Josie: when you say “main” Krakoa books, are you talking about X-Men, Immortal, Red, and maybe X-Force? Storm was a background character until SWORD, with the possible exception of the Giant-Sized comics (don’t know if they count as “main”). I think it’s clear that Storm has a character arc in Red (figuring out how to live as a part of Arakki society while mutants become a political force in the galaxy) and explicit conflicts with Xavier. She has expressed sorrow at the deaths Uranos caused and worry about messing up on Arakko.
Cypher has been a background character in various series, but he initiated the break-up of the QC in Immortal 13. Oh yeah, he also got married to a mysterious woman and likes her. I don’t remember if Bei was in the main books other than cameos.
Other than that… yeah, Jean and Scott have been good little X-Men, even if their relationship has become strained. I think they make the most sense in that role due to their history of usually being closely aligned with Xavier. I think Cyclops having his family around him and a chance at mutant unity made him happy, which could come off as cheerfully “robotic.”
Rachel hasn’t been in the main books too often, so she comes off as undeveloped if one wasn’t reading X-Factor or the Howard titles. Teen Cable wasn’t given much to do in the main books either- he was in those first two weak issues of Hickman’s X-Men & I don’t remember him having much to do.
To be fair, infra-Krakoan conflict didn’t start ramping up in the main books until at least Inferno. The catalysts for said conflict were Mystique and Moira. Brand and Sinister became the next antagonists. With everything falling apart, most of the characters you mention are not players in that story currently.
I’d add that X-Factor was wrestling with themes of death and resurrection as they relate to difference (sexuality, mutation). For my money, it was the book that most closely mirrored/continued the off-kilter tone of HoXPoX, accompanied by Hellions and Sabretooth.
Once the X-office changed direction and Hickman departed, the books lost a lot of their connection to HoXPoX. They drifted into a more straightforward superhero narrative with cartoonish bad guys like Robot Moira. Or they continued to spin their wheels in ways that barely connected to Krakoa at all.
Gillen seems to be picking up some of the pieces laid down early by Hickman: allying with maniacs like Sinister leads to disaster, the Quiet Council is a compromised form of government, resurrection protocols can be abused. But it’s taken quite a while for the books to return to the self-awareness that something is off about Krakoan society.
I agree that Hickman did himself no favors with his post-HoXPoX books. He should have continued the forward momentum of his thesis statement. Instead, he wrote everyone as if they were on drugs (as others here have mentioned) and dripped out small plot points to be picked up later to no great effect.
Overall, I’d say that the Krakoa era was a great idea poorly managed. I assume that’s mostly editorial’s fault for not reining in Hickman’s tendency to wander away from his own stories even as he’s writing them.
Storm’s character when Hickman was first writing the books until Giant Size X-Men was that she had become a true believer in a cult. Somewhere along the way, that presentation of Storm got swept aside, but it wasn’t replaced with anything else. She wasn’t used again until SWORD. Yes, Storm has been used better and as an actual character since that point.
The reason for that was most likely that Hickman apparently did have a plan for Storm, but he dropped the idea. You could reasonably declare Storm as “robotic” prior to the more recent direction for Krakoa.
Doug Ramsey was written in a creepy manner during the Hickman issues. It seemed he had an ulterior agenda. We know from “Inferno” that he didn’t trust Xavier and Magneto. I’d say he was one of the better written characters from the Hickman era.
We really don’t know Hickman’s eventual endpoint for his presentation of Krakoa. It reads that being on Krakoa with access to immortality had pacified most of the mutants, which did fit with Moira’s plans for betraying mutants. We didn’t see it play out on the page though. As pointed out above, Hickman wasted his time on the books between House/Powers and Inferno when he could have been developing his themes.
Of all the original New Mutants, Doug does seem to have come out the best during the Krakoa era. Maybe Hickman has a special affinity for him because they share an interest in language. Too bad all the hints that Doug and Warlock were hiding something went nowhere.
Thom-There was a payoff in Inferno. Doug revealed he had Warlock entwine himself with Krakoa, so they could spy on everything taking place on the island. They had discovered that Moira was alive and that Xavier and Magneto were keeping her involvement with Krakoa secret from everyone.
I liked the initial mystery surrounding Cypher and Warlock, but it kind of fizzled. Why didn’t Doug want anyone to know about Warlock? Probably, in hindsight, because of the trans mode virus infecting the island giving Doug the ultimate spy network. But then… Warlock started showing up, with little or no questions asked, and I was confused.
I’ve been reading Hellions for the first time too, since everyone here keeps talking about how great it is, and it’s just boring. Because the characters are supposed to be broken and psychotic, they all tend to say wacky things, but they don’t really have any clear agendas either. They die all the time and don’t get particularly upset about it.
In this Krakoa era, there really aren’t any characters, just chess pieces. I don’t know how anyone finds this compelling.
Greetings all! I have a random question, since I am still in the process of catching up to present day on things (currently just getting to Sins of Sinister, where I jumped back in before deciding to go back to HoX/PoX to see where it all started).
Just finished the second volume of Marauders (that weird Kate and the mystery box plot). My question is: was there ever an explanation given as to why Kate couldn’t use the gates? Or was it just supposed to be something tied into how hard it was to resurrect her?
Thanks to you all, I have loved reading all the annotations and all the comments on the annotations during my reading! Hope to be caught up sometime soon, haha.
I think it was a dropped plot. It seemed Hickman had a plan for it, something related to Sinister…or that was my theory based on one of the “Sinister Secrets” hints which was never solved. I believe it was simply given a handwave brief explanation that it was due to her phasing powers.
Chris, thanks! I was almost thinking, after finishing that Marauders run, since Kate is responsible for Krakoa becoming into being:
she sent the data in the box back
Grove came about because of that
Grove became Okkara
Okkara split into Arrako and Krakoa
(I think I got that all right)
that Krakoa was behind it somehow, to spur her along on a path that led to their own creation.
But who knows? It was an interesting point to start off the series, and I would have loved to have gotten more on it.
Oh well, back to Legion of X and then Sins a second time.
It might still be explained, considering it was brought up again – and upended – in the Hellfire Gala oneshot.