Dark X-Men #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
DARK X-MEN vol 2 #1
“There is a Kingdom” / “Do You Love Me”
Writer: Steve Foxe
Artist (“There is a Kingdom”): Jonas Scharf
Artist (“Do You Love Me”): Nelson Dániel
Colour artist: Frank Martin
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
DARK X-MEN. This is the second Dark X-Men miniseries, but it has no connection to the first, which was a Dark Reign tie-in about Norman Osborn’s rival X-Men team.
COVER / PAGE 1. The cast pose. We’ll get to who all these people are shortly.
PAGE 2. Madelyne Pryor dreams.
Madelyne became the ruler of Limbo in New Mutants #25-28.
The Grim Reaper figure in her dream is holding the headdress from Havok’s costume.
PAGES 3-4. Alex Summers and Madelyne Pryor wake up.
The Limbo Embassy. This improbable location was debuted in the epilogue to Dark Web: Finale #1, after Madelyne Pryor regained control of Limbo and put a stop to its attacks on New York (even though she’d been complicit in them to start with). According to that issue, Krakoa helped talk the USA into accepting the embassy, but Madelyne more or less threatened to keep causing trouble unless the Limbo Embassy was tolerated in New York.
That issue ends with Madelyne giving the following speech to a somewhat sceptical Scott and Jean: “For too long, Limbo has held the spirits no one wants to face. The parts of us we condemn to darkness. Nothing heals in darkness. I will open my arms to the rejected ones. The ones who have fallen so far, they’ve been starved of light… I will lead them out of the cold. I will show them they have a home. No more hiding.”
The protestors here are presumably prompted by the anti-mutant sentiment whipped up by Orchis, in particular after X-Men: Hellfire Gala 2023. Certainly there’s a kid there with a cuddly Nimrod. On the other hand, if there’s any outpost of mutantdom that New Yorkers might have good reason to take against, the tower of black magic that was responsible for Inferno and Dark Web seems like it. Alex does seem to understand that, at the very least, Madelyne hasn’t been doing much to win hearts and minds. He also seems to be the only person in the building wearing street clothes, as opposed to either a costume or demonwear. We’ll see on the next page that he’s arguing rather ineffectively for a more conciliatory approach to the humans, with a view to holding on to what they have left – basically, over correction in the other direction.
PAGE 5. The lobby of the Limbo Embassy.
Other than the demons, we’ll see where all of these characters came from in the back-up strip. Starting with Alex and Madelyne and continuing down the stairs, they are:
- Emplate. Marius St Croix is M’s older brother, and was the main villain of the original Generation X series. He feeds on other mutants. He was a resident of Krakoa for a while – he can be seen arriving in House of X #5, and X-Men #3 (2019) mentions him as one of the power-feeding mutants involved in monitoring Krakoa’s own power feeding. He hasn’t been seen since and evidently didn’t find Krakoa especially attractive.
- Azazel. Debuting in Uncanny X-Men #428 (2003) – part of the notorious “Draco” arc – Azazel is the immortal demonic father of Nightcrawler and many other mutants. His only other appearance of the Krakoan era appears to be a non-speaking cameo in House of X #5, page 29 panel 5, as one of the villains arriving on the island – the guy on the far left of the panel has demonic shoulder pads and a goatee and at least could well be Azazel. Azazel is asserting that he has some sort of control over Emplate, who is disputing it; we’ll come back to that (a bit) in the back-up strip.
- Zero. Part of the original cast of Generation Hope, Kenji Uedo’s body is a weird mix of flesh and machinery which can change shape. He’s something of a tortured artist. Rarely seen since Generation Hope, I think his last appearance was as the villain in Storm #11 (2015).
- Infestation. The girl in the red shirt is Infestation, one of the students from the Hellfire Academy who debuted in Wolverine and the X-Men #31 (2013). She’s full of insects, basically. She supposedly joined the Jean Grey School after the Hellfire Academy was shut down, but was never seen again – until Marvel’s Voices: Pride (2023), of which more later. She’s still wearing her Academy uniform.
- Infectia. The woman in green is Infectia (real name Josephine something), who turns people into loyal monsters by kissing them. She debuted in X-Factor #28 (1988) and had a fairly major storyline which culminated in her turning Beast back into his blue and furry form. She dies at the end, but presumably got resurrected on Krakoa.
- Animax. The woman in the red supervillain costume is Blake Schiell, a throwaway villain from X-Men: Battle of the Atom #1 who somehow made it into the crowd scene in House of X #5. She can summon up monsters to control. She’s a complete nobody.
- Solarr. The guy in the trench coat is Silas King, a 1970s villain with no real connection to the X-books. He debuted in Captain America #160 (1973), where he says things like “Now I’ve absorbed the raging, searing fire of the daystar into my veins, into my brain!” His origin story involves him inexplicably getting powers after contracting sunstroke, which somewhere along the line got rationalised into him being a latent mutant. He died in Power Man & Iron Fist #113 (1984), but he was previously mentioned as living on Krakoa in X-Men Unlimited Infinity Comic #20.
- Snot. The guy in the red shirt with no nose. Another of Infestation’s classmates, and the same comments apply.
- Fantazia. The woman hovering in the purple cape is Eileen Harsaw, who controls electromagnetic energy in some vaguely defined way. She debuted in X-Force #6 (1991) as a member of Toad’s Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, and she’s done very little of note. She was last seen in House of M. New Avengers #15 (2006) mentioned that she was in S.H.I.E.L.D. custody, apparently with some memories of House of M, but nothing came of that.
- Reaper. The guy with the scythe at the table is Pantu Hurageb, a recognisable member of the Mutant Liberation Front from early X-Force.
- Fatale. A former henchman of the Dark Beast. She was last seen, depowered, in All-New X-Factor #12 (2014). Presumably she got her powers back somewhere along the line. Mainly she seemed to do invisibility and teleportation.
“I lost almost everyone I’ve ever cared about the night of the Hellfire Gala.” X-Men: Hellfire Gala 2023.
PAGE 6. Recap and credits.
PAGE 7. Madelyne introduces her demonic Cerebro.
“I wasn’t among the living when Xavier’s parasitic twin annihilated Genosha.” Genosha was annihilated by Sentinels sent by Cassandra Nova in New X-Men #115 (2001). Madelyne was indeed out of circulation at that point.
Madelyne claims that the only life she felt ending at the Hellfire Gala was Jean’s, and therefore mutantkind must not have been slaughtered as people fear. She’s right, but a couple of points are worth noting. First, it’s apparently taken her ten weeks for her to tell Havok this, despite the loss of everyone he loves. Maybe she’s only recently figured it out. Second, Jean wasn’t the only person to die at the Gala – several of the newly elected X-Men were killed, along with all the human guests. But Madelyne’s point seems to be that if there had really been a mass slaughter, she’d have sensed that. That’s… not necessarily right either, if the mutants died on the other side of the gates. But, as noted, she is right.
The shape of the “Mercy Crown”, and Madelyne’s reference to how Jean would act, seem to confirm that Jean is trying to take the opportunity to fill the void left by the X-Men. This is partly about doing the right thing, but it’s also in large part about Madelyne getting the chance to claim the life that she always thought she deserved, without any competition from the real X-Men.
PAGE 8. Carmen Cruz visits Buddy Bartholomew.
Carmen Cruz is Gimmick from Children of the Atom. She’s using her shapechanging powers to disguise herself as Benny Thomas (Marvel Guy). The Children cast always had an interest in picking up second hand superhuman paraphernalia on the web. Gimmick has just come from visiting Gabe Braithwaite (Cherub).
Gimmick moved to Krakoa at the end of that series after turning out to be the only actual mutant on the team. Her last significant appearance was a solo story in – again – Marvel’s Voices: Pride (2023), where she was training under Bishop and helping to fight Snot and Infestation. That story was also written by Steve Foxe, and ends with the two bad guys escaping and seeking refuge in the Limbo Embassy. A reference in the back-up strip creates a continuity problem here, but we’ll get to that.
Buddy Bartholomew is Cyclops Lass from the same series, the devoted X-Men fan. We’ve not seen her bigoted father before. She and Carmen have been a couple since Children #6.
PAGE 9. Data page – an exchange of text messages among Marvel Guy, Cherub and Daycrawler.
PAGE 10. Orchis capture Gimmick.
PAGES 11-15. Gambit, Archangel and Maggott rescue Gimmick.
So… are we taking seriously the bit about “Orchis might kill people if they find any X-Men”, or aren’t we? Some books seem to have Emma deliberately avoiding detection by Orchis, and then we’ve got, well, this. Maybe the answer is just that different characters have different views on the matter.
Gimmick knows who these guys are – even Maggott – because of her background as a fangirl in Children of the Atom.
Albert. The bashed-up Wolverine android is Albert, a duplicate Wolverine who debuted in Wolverine #37 (1991). Like his little-girl partner Elsie Dee, he was part of a scheme by Donald Pierce to lure Wolverine into a deathtrap, but the two robots broke free of their programming. We last saw them in the 2020 iWolverine miniseries, which did indeed end with Albert and Elsie-Dee escaping to Macau. Apparently, they fell into the hands of an Orchis contractor, where Elsie was “scrapped” there and Albert was “reprogrammed.” Albert won’t be happy about this, and he keeps trying to say Elsie’s name in this scene.
PAGE 16. Data page: the Orchis internal report on the preceding scene.
Agent Pequod is the Orchis agent dealing with Bobby Drake over in Astonishing Iceman, which is why he doesn’t get assigned the response here.
PAGES 17-21. Madelyne’s “X-Men” arrive.
This is proper X-Men type behaviour – which is why Gambit, Archangel and Maggott are doing it already – but Madelyne has brought the improbable team of Havok, Azazel, Emplate and Zero. Despite Havok’s plaintive bleatings, her team are happily killing everyone from Orchis.
It’s actually a little out of character for Azazel to take quite so much pleasure in killing people hands-on. He’s more of a long-term schemer character.
Zero “keeps” Albert, presumably leading to Zero using his powers to free him from Orchis control – intentionally or otherwise.
Anyone, Gambit, Gimmick and Maggott leave with the “X-Men”, but Archangel is captured by Orchis.
PAGES 22-23. Archangel is delivered to the Orchis black site.
The other Goblin Queen is the counterpart of Madelyne Pryor who ruled the “Inferno” section of Battleworld during Jonathan Hickman’s Secret Wars event, as shown in the 2015 Inferno mini. After Secret Wars, she and some of her demons wound up in the mainstream Marvel Universe where she had a couple of altercations with the time-travelling Silver Age X-Men in All-New X-Men #12-16 and X-Men Blue #11-12 (2016-2017). She hasn’t been seen since. The creature behind her is the Bamf Dragon, her world’s demonically transformed Nightcrawler. I’m, um, a bit sceptical that many readers will remember that these two are still out there. But I guess the cliffhanger still kind of works if all you get is that there’s a duplicate Goblin Queen running around.
PAGE 24. Trailers. The Krakoan text reads: HOLD ON TO THE THRONE.
PAGE 25. Flashback: She-Hulk visits the Limbo Embassy.
The back-up strip consists of a series of flashbacks, mostly showing how various characters became involved in the Limbo Embassy. The pattern is already established here of Havok pleading with Madelyne to be a little less violent and being completely ignored.
Borghus is a new character.
PAGES 26-27. Flashback: Azazel and Emplate arrive at the Embassy.
Azazel claims that Emplate is serving him because he’s called in a debt. For all that Emplate denies in the main story that he owes Azazel anything, Emplate certainly doesn’t give the impression of being here by his own choice.
The mayor that Havok is talking to is Luke Cage.
“[M]y blue bastard saw to it that I was barred from entering any of the … Hell Realms…” In Amazing X-Men #5 (2014), though what Nightcrawler actually says in that issue is that he used to bind Azazel to the Earth forever, so that he couldn’t go to any other realms. Maybe Azazel can get around that with the help of the ruler of another dimension.
PAGE 28. Flashback: assorted mutants arrive at the Limbo Embassy.
Most of these characters were already seen in the main story.
Fatale had numerous encounters with Havok in the late 90s in X-Factor while she was working for the Dark Beast.
The Fenris Twins are rejected even by Limbo, because they’re Nazis. Unfortunately, this creates a continuity problem:
- This flashback takes place on “Wednesday.”
- Since Fenris are at large, it must precede Bishop: War Academy #5, where they go into the Pit (and stay there until Uncanny Avengers #1).
- Therefore it must precede the epilogue to Bishop: War Academy #5, where Bishop takes on a new group of students, including Gimmick.
- That group then appears in the Gimmick story in Marvel’s Voices: Pride (2023), where Gimmick says they’ve been training for some time.
- That story takes place outside the Limbo Embassy and ends with Snot and Infestation claiming asylum in the Embassy…
- …which happens in the next flashback in this story, marked “Thursday.”
To square this away, you either need to say that Bishop was training Gimmick’s squad before Bishop: War Academy, despite appearances, or that the “Wednesday” and “Thursday” in the flashback headers aren’t actually consecutive days, so that the whole of Bishop: War Academy plus a few training sessions with Gimmick’s squad can take place between those two flashbacks.
Which works, but it obviously isn’t the creative intent. Still, the precise days aren’t that important, so let’s go with it.
Mastermind and Lady Mastermind are Martinique and Regan Wyngarde, the daughters of Mastermind – supposedly, the reason why we have two of them is to cover for an editing mix-up which resulted in Lady Mastermind being used in two conflicting storylines in Uncanny X-Men and X-Treme X-Men at the same time.
Infectia has one of her transformed “Anti-Bodies” behind her.
The Kangaroo. The guy shown here is the second Kangaroo, Brian Hibbs, who is a guy in armour and debuted in 1993. The original Kangaroo, Frank Oliver, was indeed a Spider-Man villain circa 1970. He died in Amazing Spider-Man #126 (1973). He has a ludicrous origin story in which he learns to jump like a kangaroo simply by practising really hard; the Official Handbook gently suggests that since bodies don’t work that way, perhaps he was a mutant. Given that everyone else here is a mutant, it would make more sense for this to be the original Kangaroo resurrected on Krakoa… but that’s not what the art shows. The two look nothing alike.
PAGE 29. Flashback: Madelyne visits Chasm.
Chasm is Ben Reilly, the clone of Spider-Man; as seen in Dark Web, his main motivation is to reclaim his sense of identity after losing many of his memories in a heroic sacrifice at the end of the “Beyond” arc in Amazing Spider-Man. Chasm blames Spider-Man for this because he doesn’t remember how the memory loss came about either. The basic hook of “Dark Web” was that Madelyne and Ben were both damaged clones of more popular characters who were driven by a desire to reclaim the lives that they’d lost to the originals. Madelyne comes to her senses (ish) during the arc. Chasm doesn’t and remains a villain.
PAGE 30. Flashback: the Gimmick story viewed from the Mansion.
See above.
PAGE 31. Flashback: Scott and Jean visit the Embassy.
Cyclops tries to persuade Havok to come back to Krakoa, but – perhaps understandably given his time on the Hellions – he feels he has a role here at last. Meanwhile, Madelyne is making deals with S’ym while a defeated Belasco serves as their table.
PAGES 32-33. Flashback: Madelyne takes Havok on a mission.
So the basic idea is that Havok knows Madelyne is dangerously violent but feels that supporting her has given him a meaningful role in life, and clings to the hope that he can change her. Fair enough, though the art really oversells his gormlessness here.
“Demonwear”!
To be fair part of Azrael’s established power set is to simultaneously not be able to, but also be able to travel to other dimensions.
Solarr’s origin story was supposed to involve him gaining his powers from peyote. Englehart knew the comics code would never allow him to reference the drug, so that part of Solarr’s origin remained obscure. Englehart was interested in Carlos Castaneda at the time.
The Ladies Mastermind visit Madelyne because apparently they’ve remained friends since they were in the Sisterhood of Evil Mutants during the Fraction era, I guess?
The deal with Sym and especially the defeated Belasco are a reference to the Dark Web: Mary Jane & Black Cat mini written by Jed MacKay, which was delightful like every other MacKay Black Cat story.
As for this issue – I liked it! It was slightly nonsensical, but in a fun, campy way. And Maddy already figured out the quarter milion mutants are still alive.
Which I guess means we’re entering another era of ‘mutants don’t know what a phone is’, since I guess other groups won’t learn this vital piece of information for quite some time.
Maddie talking about “the humans” is odd, since she’s never had anything against humans- in this issue, she gives shelter to Kangaroo, who’s human.Foxe acknowledged that in an interview.
Arguing the Dark X-Men were using excessive force against the Orchis goons would work better if Captain America wasn’t sanctioning lethal force against the Orchis goons in Uncanny Avengers.
Infectia turning dozens of humans into antibodies was played for laughs but that was shown to be eventually fatal for the humans.
Steve Foxe said there was something in this issue that will develop in Uncanny Spider-Man before appearing in Astonishing iceman. Anyone have any guesses as to what?
@Chris V- getting super powers from peyote is still stupid- if peyote can give you super powers in the MU, then why doesn’t every peyote user have powers in the MU?
Brian Hibbs is I assume named for the Brian Hibbs.
Michael-It says that he survived by drinking muddy water and solely eating cactus shoots. It mentions that anyone else would have died, but he survived. So, there was something different about Solarr.
@ Michael Continuing the Chasm storyline, maybe? He’s in the backup strip so he’s not the A-plot here. Evil Fake Spider-Man versus Good Fake Spider-Man is a solid concept for Uncanny Nightcrawler. Iceman could be anything, Chasm vs. Iceman vs. Firestar?
Alternately, any of the villains from the montage (aside from Fenris), e.g. the Mastermind sisters could turn up in the other two books.
I quite enjoyed this issue. I like the glimpses Foxe gave us into Alex’s state of mind, the weird team, and the focus on Gimmick. I wish Schaf had drawn the whole issue, his art (as colored in a moody, painterly style) was a highlight. It reminded me of Stuart Immonen mixed with Mike Deodato, Jr. on a good day and a smidgen of Franchesco Francavilla.
I wasn’t crazy about the structure, and would have put the second half after the 2-page establishing shot. The art on part 2 wasn’t nearly as good as part 1. Still, I had fun reading this comic and look forward to the rest of the series.
A bit of context for Animax: she was created by the daughter of Brian Michael Bendis and the son of Kelly Sue DeConnick and Matt Fraction.
“She’s full of insects, basically. She supposedly joined the Jean Grey School after the Hellfire Academy was shut down, but was never seen again – until Marvel’s Voices: Pride (2023)”
Damn, one more thing to put on the flag.
@Michael – Steve Englehart clearly meant to imply that some unusual circunstance was involved in Solarr’s origin.
If the origin of the first Moonstone (which came about a year later in the same book and also by Englehart) is any indication, Solarr may indeed be a mutant and may always have meant to be. Lloyd Bloch himself (Moonstone) says out aloud that several scientists had previously handled the Moonstone without incident. I don’t know why he is so certain, but he says that. He goes on to guess that he has “unusual bodily chemistry” which made the Moonstone react differently. If I am not mistaken, in the Real World(TM) that would make him a mutant. Not that we ever get confirmation either way; it is just his guess.
I liked this one quite a lot. I was worried that Fall of X meant ignoring all the obscure background characters, but we get plenty of them hanging around here!
We did get a glimpse of Buddy’s father in Children of the Atom #1, and I really loved the text conversation between the gang. They need another series!
And the Fenris and Kangaroo confusion is nothing compared to Albert Louis in this week’s Alpha Flight…
Correction: the page 16 data page is NOT referring to the previous scene; rather, it is the *context* for that scene. Gambit’s trio did a previous raid, during which there were “ZERO” Orchis casualties (quite unlike the previous scene), but significant property damage. Because of that, Killian Devo, believing (correctly) that Gambit’s team would try for a repeat, authorized the use of Stark Sentinels going forward (and the Sentinels were clearly visible in the previous scene). Further, this report makes no mention of the Dark X-Men, nor of Archangel’s capture.
I genuinely appreciate some of these obscure deep cuts as far as dredging up characters not seen in years. If just because I love this era of “every mutant ever is up for grabs again.”
As for Azazel and Emplate… this actually ties into a theory I was just considering, which is that someone in the St. Croix family, at some point, might have made a deal with -someone- or -something- for all four of their kids from this generation being mutants. And more specifically, for Monet to have won the freaking genetic lottery with her obscenely good power set.
So maybe the St. Croixs made a deal with Azazel and he somehow imbued their line with genetic potential which was both awful (Emplate) and awesome (Monet) and in-between (the kids?) It’s certainly not the stupidest idea to explain how Monet got one of the best all around power sets imaginable.
And now Azazel has called in the favor by having Emplate do his bidding.
One of the things I hate most about this era of comics publishing (at both Marvel and DC) is that I have no idea who the creators on this book are, and am therefore uninterested in reading something from a pair of unknowns. Or more accurately, there are so many new series from so many unknowns that I can’t spare the money or curiosity.
Re: Solarr’s powers: It’s not just peyote, but also the long trek through the desert and near-death experience, plus the sun bearing down on him.
Wikipedia sez that Castaneda’s (fictitious) book A Separate Reality includes a line about how a true shaman must begin “perceiving energy directly as it flows through the universe.” The stuff in Solarr’s origin about the sun somehow getting into his brain is probably supposed to play off of that idea. (Quite how a moment of shamanic enlightenment translates into Solarr’s generic villainy remains unclear.)
Engelhart definitely read that Castaneda book; he stole its title for a Doctor Strange episode, and one of the TPB collections of his run on that book uses the Castaneda title as well.
@Josie: I hear you, I have no idea who the better writers are until I read the reactions of critics I trust and fans. In Foxe’s case, I was impressed by X-Men: House of XCII enough to pick up this comic, and I’m glad I did. I trust the talent coming through the X-office enough to try nearly everything they put out, but if a writer on a series disappointed me in the past I feel safe leaving their work on the shelf. The exception is Duggan because his comics are currently central to the line, but he usually ends up writing meh-to-decent comics rather than complete trash.
Foxe’s almost-recent X-Men Annual – the Firestar spotlight issue – was also quite good.
Incredibly nitpicky correction: Infectia died in X-Men 27 (1993), the first full appearance of Threnody. She was one of the first mutants to die of the Legacy Virus.
I’ve always liked the idea of Fantazia and surprised that she’s received almost no character development at all in the last 30 years. Really, except for an appearance in X-Men Unlimited 2 it wasn’t entirely clear that she had arms and legs (she does). I’m hoping we’ll get more insignt into her personality in this mini.
Luis Dantas said: If the origin of the first Moonstone (which came about a year later in the same book and also by Englehart) is any indication, Solarr may indeed be a mutant and may always have meant to be. Lloyd Bloch himself (Moonstone) says out aloud that several scientists had previously handled the Moonstone without incident. I don’t know why he is so certain, but he says that. He goes on to guess that he has “unusual bodily chemistry” which made the Moonstone react differently. If I am not mistaken, in the Real World(TM) that would make him a mutant. Not that we ever get confirmation either way; it is just his guess.
Moonstone’s claims in that flashback from Captain America (1968 series) #170 is one of those “unreliable narrator” bits. The idea is that he’s giving a phony PR version of his origin, while the art in the panels shows the truth.
So Moonstone’s narration over the flashback is about how he was a humble janitor who accidentally touched the stone. But the art shows that he was a criminal breaking into the lab to steal the stone. A guard shot at him and hit the stone instead, causing it to merge into his body and granting him his powers.
Later retcons in Fabian Nicieza’s Thunderbolts change some of this, but not in ways that would make either Moonstone into a mutant.
Omar-Considering the zeitgeist of the time, I always took what Englehart was trying to do with Solarr’s character in relation to a Charles Manson figure. He was representative of the “dark side of the Age of Aquarius”.
@Ben Hunt: The early X-Force issues were some of the first X-books I ever read, and having also randomly seen Pryde of the X-Men, I assumed that Phantazia, alongside Toad, Blob and Pyro, was a major baddie in the franchise.
It took years of piecing together random issues to realise she was a nobody, but something in my brain still insists she will have her day. Perhaps this is it!
This was a good read. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, one of my favorite themes of the Krakoa era has been “hero and villain mutants working together,” and it’s fun seeing them bring back some deep cuts here.
I could do without the Gimmick stuff, but it’s nice to see more of some of the classics who haven’t had much love in the last few years (Archangel, Gambit, and Havok).
Infectia also appeared in X-Factor #55 as the mastermind behind Mesmero. Next we saw her was the issue Ben Hunt mentioned, where she died.
Funnily enough, I had a discussion about Infectia this weekend with a friend, who thought that she died in an explosion when she kissed the Beast.
The issue where Infectia died was a notable one (for a certain definition of “notable) where Hank felt a lot of sympathy her. If a writer was trying to make a serious effort at rehabilitating him, running into her might be something to include.
“In Foxe’s case, I was impressed by X-Men: House of XCII”
Ah, that guy. I’d forgotten about that series.
If the 1990s were the decade of the artist, and the 2000s were the decade of the writer, what are we at now? It feels like the publishers don’t do much to promote the writers or artists.
Josie said: If the 1990s were the decade of the artist, and the 2000s were the decade of the writer, what are we at now? It feels like the publishers don’t do much to promote the writers or artists.
Maybe this is best understood as the decade of the platform? Things seem to be driven as much by multiple platforms for consuming comics — digital, singles, TPBs, multimedia — as by anything else.
Or perhaps it’s the decade of the rebrand, with the writers, artists, and editors being less important than a kind of linewide, common marketing and trade dress as the focus?
I’d say the 2010s were the decade of the reboot. DC went through several of ’em, and Marvel repeatedly teased one.
Maybe the decade of the high concept?
@Josie: if we’re talking Marvel/DC, maybe it’s the decade of the brand extension? We’ve been seeing a lot of multiversal variants, clones, and character/concept-centered events lately. That’s been reflected in the MCU & DCEU, then back to the comics. The X-books have been their own thing, mostly, but have been reusing and remixing a lot of names (like this issue being a new version of Dark X-Men) amid the newer concepts.
“maybe it’s the decade of the brand extension?”
I don’t think that’s it, but I think you’re on the right track here. It has something to do with the salability of the IP, regardless who’s working on it.
Like the new Alpha Flight series. Ed Brisson has been working at Marvel for almost a decade now? He should be a name writer, his name should be marketable. But I had no idea he was the writer on Alpha Flight until Paul reviewed the book. It’s not a vehicle for Brisson to show off his ideas and make a bigger name for himself, it’s Marvel’s attempt to rehabilitate the Alpha Flight concept.
Marvel is now owned by Disney, which like the rest of the Hollywood right now in 2023 AD, is in a ConservativeKTM period so is currently much more content to fall back on franchises with established reputations already , which is why there are endless sequels, prequels, spin-offs, side-stories, remakes, reboots, revisits, rehashes, rethreads, remixes, etcetera of existing IP instead of exploring and experimenting with new ideas and concepts
Azazel told Monet in Weapon X 25 that he had dealings with her family. So in other words. Monet knew that Azazel had dealings with her family and the Quiet Council didn’t think to demand that he release Monet and her siblings from any hold he had over them before granting him sanctuary and amnesty on Krakoa? Yup, that sounds like the Quiet Council.