As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

X-FORCE vol 7 #1
“Where Monsters Dwell”
Writer: Geoffrey Thorne
Artist: Marcus To
Colour artist: Erick Arciniega
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Editor: Mark Basso

X-FORCE:

The new X-Force is a team put together by Forge to deal with a hazily defined problem of “fractures” that are causing the world to break apart. Aside from the fact that Forge and Sage were both regulars in the previous run, it doesn’t have much connection to previous versions of X-Force. (In fact, the book was apparently pitched under a different name and assigned the “X-Force” name after the fact.)

Forge is effectively the lead character. When we first see him, he’s replaying some sort of video or simulation of a 1980s X-Men team fighting the Brood, for some reason or other. The art doesn’t really match up with any specific event. Forge is apparently obsessed with this, enough to spend over a day watching it and losing track of time.

Forge’s main project is “the McCoy Project”, which Forge says is inspired by the Beast’s research into mutantdom – i.e., the work that led to him become blue and furry back in Amazing Adventures #10 (1971). Forge claims that the Beast was “tr[ying] to run away from his mutation and stumbled into a power-up”, which is not what happened in the original story – the Beast was just investigating the “chemical cause of mutation”. Perhaps Forge construes any investigation into that topic as some sort of attempt to create a cure. In the context of an X-Force book, any suggestion that Forge is following in the steps of the Beast should probably be seen as some sort of warning.

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As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

X-MEN: HEIR OF APOCALYPSE #4
Writer: Steve Foxe
Penciller: Netho Diaz
Inker: Sean Parsons
Colour artist: Alex Sinclair
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Annalise Bissa

APOCALYPSE:

Well, he selects an heir. Or at any rate, he refers to it as “my decision”. But it’s not clear how much choice he actually has in the matter, beyond selecting the contestants in the first place. The function of the contest seems to be to whittle the field down to four. But before Apocalypse goes off to speak to the final four one at a time, he also says that “my heir must accept their role”. On one view, only one of the contestants actually does accept the role (or perhaps Apocalypse is exercising some judgment about what amounts to acceptance). Note that in their dream scenes, Apocalypse appears to the three “losers” in his pre-Krakoa villain design, while only the winner sees him as Krakoan Apocalypse – which is how he still appears in the real world.

Once again, Apocalypse says that his heir will continue his work, but also that he expects them to oppose him. It’s not clear how this squares in Apocalypse’s mind; perhaps he wants someone who thinks for themselves, but has such confidence in his agenda (or in the effects of the power-up he’s going to give them) that he’s sure they’ll wind up on his track in the long run.

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As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

PHOENIX #1
Writer: Stephanie Phillips
Artist: Alessandro Miracolo
Colour artist: David Curiel
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Tom Brevoort

I haven’t decided yet how many of the second-tier X-books I’m going to do in the “From the Ashes” era, but I’ll probably cover at least the first issues of everything and see where we go from there. So: this is the first Phoenix series, although there was a short-lived Jean Grey ongoing about the time-travelling Silver Age version of the character.

PHOENIX

Phoenix is Jean Grey, and following Rise of the Powers of X, she’s now at full-blown cosmic power – but presumably without the risk of going mad like in the Dark Phoenix Saga. At least, nobody seems very worried about that. As foreshadowed in the X-Men: From the Ashes Infinity Comic, Jean is off in outer space, doing cosmic things.

Her power levels are pitched as insanely high here. She can stabilise a star by absorbing energy from it. She can stabilise a black hole by… dancing with it? It seems to be a way of trying to visually represent her being in harmony with the universe, and it’s certainly more interesting to look at than a page of her thinking really hard. She can casually hold telepathic conversations with Cyclops back on Earth. It’s suggested that – much like classic Superman – the risk with Jean is not that she gets outpowered by anyone, but that she’s tricked into doing the wrong thing or overlooking the real threat. Specifically, there’s a suggestion that she’s a god who still thinks like a mortal and risks getting her priorities wrong as a result. She’s still too inclined to save the lives right in front her rather than look at the bigger picture. Or so the narrator suggests.

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As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

X-MEN: HEIR OF APOCALYPSE #3
Writer: Steve Foxe
Penciller: Netho Diaz
Inkers: Sean Parsons & Lorenzo Ruggiero
Colour artist: Alex Sinclair
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Annalise Bissa

APOCALYPSE

We get another recap of Apocalypse’s fight with the X-Men in X-Men #35 – which the footnote insists on calling Uncanny X-Men #700, just to make absolutely sure that there’s no danger whatsoever of readers being able to find the bloody thing on Marvel Unlimited or Amazon. Apocalypse attempts to explain what the hell was going on there and doesn’t really make matters much clearer. He starts by claiming that Krakoa was Professor X’s vision (which it wasn’t, and that was a large part of the point of Immortal X-Men). He accepts that he was rejected by mutantkind, but conflates mutantkind entirely with the X-Men (and Xavier’s vision), and utterly ignores the fact that he was trying to claim control of a Krakoa which had developed without him for several years (which seemed to be the point of X-Men #35). Nor does it really explain why his selection of contestants is predominantly made up of the very people who he claims rejected him.

Charitably, let’s assume that Apocalypse is simply reinterpreting his rejection in the way least humiliating to him. At any rate, he recognises that he is no longer welcome as a mutant leader on Earth and needs to find someone else for the role – essentially what he said in issue #1.

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As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

X-MEN vol 7 #1
“Fire-Baptised Species”
Writer: Jed Mackay
Penciller: Ryan Stegman
Inker: JP Mayer
Colourist: Marte Gracia
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort

We’ve been in the post-Krakoa era for a month now, but in the form of a sort of season break. Unless you count the Free Comic Book Day one-shot, which was more of a teaser, this is effectively where the “From the Ashes” era begins.

THE X-MEN

Or one group of them, anyway – there’ll be another group over in Uncanny X-Men. But in this book, we’re interested in Cyclops’ group. The field team is Cyclops, Juggernaut, Kid Omega, Magik, Psylocke and Temper, with the Beast, Magneto, Xorn and Glob Herman back at base. Because of the time jump from the previous issue, we don’t yet know how this particular line-up came together.

The group are openly operating as the X-Men, from a former Sentinel factory in Merle, Alaska, on which they’ve daubed an enormous X logo – it looks like we’re calling this place the Factory. They moved in in the epilogue to X-Men vol 6 #35. The Factory was smashed up by the Avengers in Avengers #12, a tie-in to Fall of the House of X. The X-Men have invited local police chief Paula Robbins to see the facility, in what seems to be a broadly genuine attempt to set up relations with the local community – although as we’ll see, they also seem to have chosen the location to send a message.

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