The X-Axis – w/c 11 December 2023
Gosh, are we winding down for Christmas? Well, maybe not – there are five books out next week, plus Unlimited. But this is another light week.
X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #117. By Steve Foxe, Steve Orlando, Guillermo Sanna, Java Tartaglia & Travis Lanham. This is the end of the Firestar arc, and it goes pretty much how you’d expect. Firestar has successfully screwed up Judas Traveller’s PR event to the point where he’s outlived his usefulness to Orchis, which is a problem when he’s a mutant. He’s lost control of the story he was telling, and nobody else in Orchis realises that it’s because Firestar was messing it up for him. That’s a nice angle for Firestar, and I rather like Sanna’s low-key art on it, which gives Firestar a nicely impassive look. Do I buy Orchis putting her in Traveller’s place? It doesn’t really fit with Gerry Duggan writing scenes in X-Men about the Orchis higher-ups viewing her as expendable. I suppose she’s meant to win the doubters round by throwing Judas under the bus, but it still seems a stretch. I’ll put that one down as a case of dubious inter-title continuity, though, rather than being a problem with this arc in itself.
X-MEN RED #18. (Annotations here.) The final issue, although part of the plot feeds into Resurrection of Magneto. Still, this is the wrap-up of the main series, and … well, it runs up against the fact that it’s an Arakko story. Al Ewing sold me on Martian Arakko as an interesting location, but only by reinventing it as something subtler and more nuanced than the one-dimensional original concept. The war storyline is presumably meant to contrast Arakko as it developed under Storm and co with the original version of Arakko, and that runs up hard against the problem that the original concept of Arakko was very dull, and the nature of the plot makes it difficult for this story to try and convince me otherwise – the comparative flaws of Arakko Classic are a large part of the point, after all.
So… yeah, I have problems with this storyline. It doesn’t feel like we’re going back to Arakko as it stood at the start of X-Men Red – the start of Ewing’s retconned interpretation, in other words – but to Arakko from “X of Swords”, where it was mostly just a bunch of violent morons. Genesis is not a very interesting character. Annihilation is somewhat more intriguing but remains a weird, abstract thing. The White Sword and his hundred champions who get resurrected daily are the sort of thing that I can kind of get into as a throwaway detail but they’re completely unrelatable as actual characters. And… ultimately, didn’t this fight come down to Storm zapping a staff, rather than anything to do with the way the people of Arakko had changed, or even with the raising of the land itself as a new Krakoa? Ironically, we’re left with a version of Arakko that seems worth keeping around in the Marvel Universe, but not for anything that it still retains from the original “X of Swords” incarnation of Arakko, of which there is (mercifully) precious little.
DARK X-MEN #5. (Annotations here.) End of the miniseries, with Madelyne Pryor resisting the temptation to sign on with her multiversal counterpart and go on a rampage together. I like that basic idea – Madelyne kicks back at anything she sees as an attempt to determine her role for her, even when it comes from her own counterpart. And she comes round to realising that trying to position herself and Havok as the new Scott and Jean was really just another way of letting her role be determined by someone else. Nice art, too – heavy on the contrast but not going too heavy on the darkness. The main issue with Dark X-Men is that it tries to cram in too much, and some storylines never get enough space to be truly satisfying – the whole thing with Zero, Albert and Elsie-Dee seems particularly hard done by. But that just means I wouldn’t have minded seeing this mini run a bit longer.
The Traveller arc shows exactly the problem with the Orchis plot- there are too many characters. Traveller had exactly four appearances before this, and he never played a major role in any story that wasn’t written by Orlando. So we had to devote an entire arc to getting rid of him. Then why was he added to Orchis in the first place? Writers just keep adding characters to Orchis without thinking about it too carefully. Another example is Coven Akkaba, which haven’t been seen since Heralds of Apocalypse, despite supposedly being allied with Orchis.
I ultimately think X-Men Red and this arc in particular were a pretty dismal run. There were moments of promise which generally went nowhere. Remember how Thunderbird was in this series? We had a bunch of buildup of Sunspot as being a schemer and playing politics, and in the end, it all ends being irrelevant. He does a superpower stunt, beats up a gimmicky bad guy, and we’re done.
More specifically to this issue, the Ironfire storyline’s a complete failure. In Sins of Sinister, we’re told that he regrets something he did during the Genesis War, which was almost certainly killing White Sword. Which he doesn’t do in this timeline because he “trusted in the Storm.” Except that Ironfire’s been arguing with Storm this entire time and he’s specifically not following her orders by fighting White Sword. She even comments that she’d have to kill him to stop him. Why does he suddenly trust in her? This isn’t just unearned emotional catharsis, it’s anti-earned. As written, Ironfire has no reason to suddenly be misty-eyed about Storm.
Allan M-
Generally I’m a Ewing fan, but boy did Sword and Red both bother me with how many characters were introduced and then left completely by the wayside.
Remember when Frenzy became a punching diplomat?
I feel like Al Ewing might be worth reading if he stuck to scripting someone else’s plots. Maybe if teamed with Hickman, whose scripts are awful but is all about long-term plotting?
I really liked X-Men Red, but agree there were too many characters and plots going on. It reads to me as if there should have been more issues to the series. Be that as it may, X-Men Red was one of my favorite reads of the era. I’m sorry to see it go.
Another weird thing about the Traveler arc- we never got to see him use his powers against Vance or Angelica or whoever.
Red felt very ambitious, and I love Ewing as a writer, but it definitely felt like Ewing was trying to do more than 22 pages would let him. The cast was too big, too many moving parts, it could have been three separate books. Where it’s leaving off doesn’t feel like a conclusion — it feels like it’s ending on the status quo for the next book, and I do think New X-Men was supposed to be an “X-Men of Arakko” book led by Apocalypse. Still, to miss like this, you have to swing hard, and I’m grateful Ewing had the opportunity to do that. I can only hope Brevoort continues to offer those opportunities.
@Mathias X- I still say New X-Men was supposed to be the Weapon X-Men book, especially since one of the Wolverines appearing is the Wolverine from Age of Apocalypse:
https://bleedingcool.com/comics/scoop-marvel-to-launch-weapon-x-men-series-in-march-2024/
Is that teased New X-Men book with the AOA font dead?
@Uncanny X-Ben- We THINK that the New X-Men book with the AOA font became the Weapon X-Men series. The logic is as follows- the New X-Men book had the AOA font, Bleeding Cool claims the Weapon X-Men book will feature the AOA Logan. But this is just a guess- no one at Marvel has confirmed it and Mathias X still thinks New X-Men was supposed to be an Arakko book.
Yeah — my logic is really that if it’s using the AoA font, it’s either AoA related, or Apocalypse related, and my guess is Apocalypse.
But since they missed the “will have more information in November” “deadline”, who knows if it’s even happening.
It’s not the AoA font, it’s the original X-Men font from the 60s.
Didn’t Annihilation have to remain in some form to keep the demons from running amok?
@neutrino- Hickman and Ewing seem to have had different ideas on what Annihilation was. Hickman seemed to think Annihilation was native to Amenth and its purpose was to keep the demons in check. Ewing revealed in X-Men Red 18 that Annihilation was not native to Amenth- it was drawn there from “the lands beyond”. (It was implied the Adversary was also from “the lands beyond”.) So when Storm banished Annihilation back to “the lands beyond”, Orc carves out his own space for the demons but doesn’t actually attack the Arakki. The implication is that leaders would have emerged among Amenth who would have reached some sort of compromise with the Arakki if it hadn’t been for Annihilation.
This New X-Men logo has/had the AOA font. There is a yellow circle behind the X of New X-Men, the same as the AOA font on X-Men. The original X-Men logo did not have a circle behind the X.
I just looked over X-Men Unlimited 117 and now I’m wondering something- what happened to Traveller after he was injected with Blighstwill? In issue 116, it’s explained that Traveller can project illusions that affect people but not cameras. In issue 117, Stasis injects Traveller with Blightswill, neutralizing his powers. Stasis then says “Oh my, aren’t we looking frail? Those illusions of yours were doing some heavy lifting.” My first thought was that Traveller was using his powers to make himself look younger and stronger. But if his power couldn’t affect cameras, shouldn’t they have known what he looked like all along? Or did he somehow use his powers to convince himself he was younger and stronger, and it had a psychosomatic effect?
That scene was a bit hard to follow, especially since he didn’t really look any different in the art. But I suppose he’d use his illusions like a bald man uses a combover. Everyone knows, but his vanity still demands he try.
“Where it’s leaving off doesn’t feel like a conclusion…”
Well, there is still Resurrection of Magneto mini, which for all intents and purposes to be the final arc of the SWORD/Red saga, from the looks of it.
Anyway, count me as (the only?) one who didn’t have a problem with the “rotating ensemble” nature of the book, where characters would fade out of the spotlight as the plot demanded. Title of the book aside, I always saw it as more a book about a place/community than a specific team.