The X-Axis – w/c 17 July 2023
By normal standards, a very quiet week.
X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #96. By Alex Segura, Alberto Alburquerque & Pete Pantazis. This is the start of a Polaris story. And it’s a pretty reasonable angle which I don’t think has been done before – after reminding us rather heavily at the start that Polaris has spent a distressing amount of her career under mind control of one sort of another, she gets dragged by an old college friend into investigating a cold case where the murderer seems to be her in the days when she was possessed by Malice. I get that we don’t want Polaris to be a character overshadowed by this sort of thing, but it’s a reasonable enough hook. There are also some pretty blatant hints that all is not as it seems, since something is very obviously up with the old college friend – subtlety is not this story’s strong point – but it’s pretty dense and it hits the ground running.
X-MEN RED #13. (Annotations here.) The parallels here with the collapse of the Quiet Council are presumably intentional, as we build to Hellfire Gala 2023. This is Genesis confronting the Great Ring, and everything more or less falling apart instantly. I’m still not all that interested in Genesis in her own right, but the contrast between her and the regular cast works better here, as she tries to drag Arakko back to the way it was before Al Ewing started rehabbing it. There’s a certain sleight of hand going on here – Genesis is asserting the sort of one-dimensional Arakko that X-Men Red was at pains to emphasise was never a fair reflection of their rounded culture, but evidently it’s a pretty good reflection of Genesis herself. At any rate, she’s a great foil for the regulars here. It’s a very talky issue – essentially an extended meeting in one location – but Jacopo Camagni makes it work. New Great Ring member Lycaon is fun but it seems an odd place to bring in what’s effectively a comedy character.
NEW MUTANTS: LETHAL LEGION #5. (Annotations here.) The end of this odd little coda to New Mutants, and the end of Charlie Jane Enders’ Escapade arc. It may be one of the more obvious cases of a book being handed over to the new writer’s pet character and the regular cast getting sidelined as a result, but I really don’t have a problem with that – New Mutants had a fairly diffuse cast in the first place, and Escapade is a good lead. Obviously a core aim for Anders is to create a high profile trans character, but Escapade also offers a web of other character relationships and an outsider perspective on Krakoa which is something that’s been missing from the books. There’s a lot of it, but it all fits together nicely. The art veers to cartoony, and can get a little busy at times – and the action climax could admittedly flow better – but it brings a lot of charm to the characters. It’s not really New Mutants, but I liked it.
I don’t know if it’s a good idea to lampshade Polaris’ mind control history. You can do the same with most characters written by Claremont (though the Malice plot lasted a long time). And really, this is Jessica Jones territory.
Seems like there could be a decent story in foregrounding Lorna’s history of mind control in order to allow her to definitely assert her autonomy. There needs to be some kind of twist, but in the meanwhile her self-doubt (“could I really have been the murderer?”) makes for the kind of tension that the story needs. The art really isn’t great though, which would be my main complaint so far. Not great in general but also doesn’t really make good use of the vertical scrolling format.
It’s not like it hasn’t been lampshaded before. There’s an X-Factor issue from the 90s where Lorna goes over her history of being mind controlled with Rahne as a means to help her with having been a Genoshan mutate. I can’t recall if it goes anywhere though.
She has been though the manipulation mill more than most characters though, even under Claremont – Mesmero, Magneto, Eric the Red, Malice, Zaladane, Apocalypse…
I get that in a setting where mind control is a reasonably persistent threat, there’s a story to be told with a character who has gone through it more than most, but it feels quite icky when it’s the sole story you tell with them. It’s a shame Leah Williams didn’t get more time with her (and Siryn too, but that’s just because Siryn is the best).
Do we even know what Genesis’s power is?
@M prog rock.
@M- she can control plants.
I like the Polaris spotlight it feels a bit late with Malice being rehabbed and given a body over a year ago in Hellions.
Oh yeah I’d forgotten about the Malice gets a body story. Maybe she’ll turn up in this arc…. At least that’s be something new.
But yea, I don’t disagree with The above comments, it certainly should t be the only well writers keep returning too. Polaris on the Gifted worked so well because she had a distinct voice as a character that she has often lacked in the comics, and Williams has done more than most in trying to push the character forward. I know Duggar made an effort but very few Lorna scenes are coming to mind off the top of my head besides using Laura as a puppet and a vague recollection of Game World
I just got caught up with Immortal X-Men, and I don’t really care about the Quiet Council disbanding, because . . . what have they actually done, post-Inferno?
As I see it, they’ve done exactly two things: 1. Planned and executed strategies during the horrid Judgment Day crossover, 2. Voted on members. And in terms of the latter, all the drama is over who is voted in or who drops out, but I have no idea why we should be invested in this when the book doesn’t show the council actually doing anything. What changed after Magneto dropped out. What changed after Hope joined? Who cares?
Reminds me uncannily when I tried playing a Vampire the Masquerade LARP. In theory a wild ride through fantasy and metaphor. In reality a smallish group scheming gothily until the next external event came along for them to briefly react to, while everyone else hung around outside and chatted out of character.