I read all* of the new X-books so you don’t have to!

* Except for those with Wolverine and Deadpool, because they never get rebooted, and who really cares about them, right? Kill kill kill honor honor honor fourth wall breaking fourth wall breaking fourth wall breaking. Let’s move on!

Yes, last July, Marvel relaunched the X-books after the FKD**, and I decided, in the spirit of new beginnings, to buy every single one of the new series and mini-series*** until I got a chance to write about them all. Well, things happened, and it turns out that I didn’t get a chance for a while, and then I decided to wait until this July (well, I started this in July!), so that would be a nice year of X-books. So let’s take a look at what Marvel has been doing in their Little Mutant Corner! I was going to write about these in the order they came out, but then I decided to do it a bit differently. First up, we’ll do a one-shot and the mini-series, then I’ll write about the already-canceled books, and then the books that are still trucking along. Won’t that be fun?!?!? (Obviously, some SPOILERS, but I do try to not do too much of that!)

** Fucking Krakoa Debacle.

*** I ended up skipping the Cable stuff, too, because who cares about that dude, amirite?

First up, let’s take a look at X-Men: Xavier’s Secret, which is by Alex Paknadel (the writer), Diógenes Neves (the artist), Arthur Hesli (the colorist), and Clayton Cowles (the letterer). It’s $6.99, but to be fair, it is 40 pages. At least it’s a bit longer than your usual comic! For some reason, it came out in January, even though it’s about events that happen before (or right at the beginning of) the reboot. I guess Marvel wanted to keep Xavier’s secret a secret a bit longer!

This poorly-named special (it features two stories, both the same length, both that feel of equal importance, but only one deals with Xavier and his secret) is pretty good, especially on the artistic side. Neves does a nice job with his angular style, as both stories are a bit off-kilter and need a bit of strangeness in the art to work. The first one deals with a creepy dude who lures people out into the Norwegian wilderness, where, you know, they have some issues. Neves draws a really good Phoenix (it’s a Scott and Jean story) and he does nice work with the weirdness inside Scott’s mind. There’s more weirdness in the second story, which is more like a paranoid thriller, and Neves does well showing Sally Floyd’s disintegration as she thinks her world is falling apart around her. It’s a nice-looking comic.

Paknadel does the two stories, which are set between the end of the FUCKING KRAKOA ERA and the beginning of this new X-Era that we’re doing right now. The first one is unnecessary, really, because there’s no reason good enough for Jean to ditch Scott and go off into space except that the X-editors wanted a Space Phoenix book, but Paknadel can’t really just write that. So he kind of ignores the reason and gives us a bit of a horror ghost story, which is neat, although Scott succumbs to the bad guy far too easily. Scott was being a whiny bitch, though (throughout his history, Scott has swung between only two poles: whiny bitch and absolute dick, so Paknadel chooses the former), so fuck him. It’s a bit creepy, sure, but kind of unnecessary. In the second story, we find out why everyone thinks Xavier is an evil dude, and of course it’s not what you think (I mean, the book is called “Xavier’s Secret,” after all). What’s cool about it is that Paknadel focuses on Sally Floyd (I know I’ve been out of the loop with Marvel for a while, but is Sally a regular appearer in Marvel comics, because I haven’t seen her in quite some time), who’s trying to write a story on Xavier, but she’s an alcoholic mess and she keeps blacking out and having memory problems and Ben Urich, who gave her the assignment, is less than sympathetic. It’s a pretty cool story with an interesting twist, and it’s the kind of story I’d love to see in a regular X-book instead of hived off in this special. Remember when Claremont would do this kind of story occasionally, where the X-Men were more a mysterious presence than actual stars in the book? It’s ok to do that once in a while, Marvel! This feels more important than it seems, showing up as the second story in a one-shot. I dunno. Maybe I’m just crazy.

Anyway, it’s a decent comic. I don’t know where it will be collected, but it feels like it should be!

Moving on, we have the X-mini-series. I don’t mind mini-series; they can be very good, and if Marvel wants to give some of the lesser characters the spotlight for a brief time, more power to them. Two of them feature two of my favorite comics characters, so of course I’ll love those, right? RIGHT?!?!?

First up is Dazzler #1-4, with the Concert of Champions one-shot basically serving as a 5th issue. Dazzler came in September-December, with CoC arriving in April. Jason Loo wrote the series and the one-shot, Rafael Loureiro drew it (with some help from Alan Robinson in issue #4 and Ruairi Coleman in the one-shot), Java Tartaglia is the colorist of the mini-series, Yen Nitro and Fer Sifuentes-Sujo colored the one-shot, and Ariana Maher is the letterer for everything. And as much as I love Dazzler, this is just not a good series. It’s dull, it’s far too focused on “woke-ness,” and it has nothing compelling to say about Alison or any other character. I can ignore some of the dumb stuff Loo puts in here — I know next to nothing about popular music these days, but even I know there’s no way Dazzler would have the #1 album nine weeks in a row, plus her tour schedule is absolutely ridiculous (even if you factor in that she can move very quickly around the world thanks to mutant tech) — but I can’t ignore the dullness of it all. Alison is out on tour, and a very lousy villain (who isn’t revealed until the last issue, probably because he’s so lame) wants to sabotage her. For a very stupid reason. I mean, really stupid. In the one-shot, there’s a rock festival crashed by a band that tries to open a portal and let an evil entity through, which is a bit better, but really only in comparison to the terrible villain from the mini-series and also because the band features Ruby Tuesday, and who doesn’t dig Ruby Tuesday? Also, for someone who wants all mutants and humans to get along in his comics, Loo seems anti-metal? What the heck? Anyway, the whole point of this series isn’t the bad guy, I get that, it’s that everyone should love everyone else, because we’re all just trying our best to make life livable. Isn’t that nice? Loo brings in the dumbest anti-mutant stuff he can think of (in the Marvel Universe, that’s saying something) and gives us dumb threats just so Alison can talk about how we’re all unique and we should celebrate that. Yes, it’s a great message and I don’t disagree with it, but it doesn’t have to be this freaking boring. As the series goes on, Alison starts losing her hair because she feels under so much pressure to be a role model, and that might — might, mind you — have been an interesting place for this series to go, but it’s a Marvel comic, so we need bad guys like Scorpia and Arcade causing trouble and things blowing up instead of the real psychological damage that causes Alison’s hair to fall out. Marvel wants to keep it light, but dull, and Loo — whether he would even be capable of writing something dark and disturbing, I don’t know — has to go along. Plus, there’s a lot of “singing” in this series, and as we know, YOU CAN’T FUCKING DO FUCKING MUSIC IN FUCKING COMICS!!!!!! Loo’s lyrics are as banal as you can get, and, you know, there’s no fucking tune to go along with it, so the “songs” take up a lot of valuable page space and add nothing to the story. Look, if you want to see Marvel celebrating diversity because you live in, I don’t know, West Virginia (93.5% white people!), and you love this because Dazzler is dating a handsome black dude and there are lots of non-white people in this and it makes you feel all good inside, more power to you. It’s still fucking pablum, and I’m very sad about that. Dazzler is such an interesting character, and Loo wanted to turn her into Taylor Swift, so he did. When I write the X-Men, she’ll be much more interesting, I promise you that! Also, the art is fine. It’s certainly nothing special about it — it has a very Tom Grummett vibe — but Loureiro’s storytelling is fine and his lines are nice and clean. It doesn’t elevate the story, but it’s fine.

Let’s move on to Sentinels #1-5, which came out in October-February. This is written by Alex Paknadel, drawn by Justin Mason, colored by Federico Blee, and lettered by Travis Lanham. It seems like these mini-series are supposed to be under the radar a bit, which allows the writers to be a bit funky, and while Loo did not really take advantage of that, Paknadel did, and this is a terrific series. He gives us human-Sentinel hybrids, who are hunting down mutants to bring back to “Graymalkin Prison,” which used to be Xavier’s school. Paknadel, presumably freed from having to put up big numbers in the sales department, turns this into a body horror story, which is fun. The hybrids are unstable, so they are occasionally put down before they become completely non-human, and this takes a toll on all of them. They’re supposed to be the “bad guys,” of course, because they’re doing evil things, but Paknadel does a good job showing us that they’re just soldiers doing a job, and as they begin to realize what’s going on, they realize that they just might be on the wrong side. Larry Trask is in this comic, and Paknadel does a nice job humanizing even him, as he also begins to understand he’s made a deal with the devil (in this case, Corina Ellis, the woman running the prison). The team leader, Sergeant Bradley Hansen, has an estranged son that he’s trying to reconnect with, the new recruit, Patricia, keeps seeing Onslaught everywhere, and things get dire when the “Sentinels” start thinking for themselves and trying to make their own lives better — Hansen wants to rebuild his relationship with his son, for instance, and he can’t do that if he’s “evil.” Paknadel does a good job bringing in some less-than-sympathetic characters — the Blob, Omega Red, Sebastian Shaw, Magneto — and making us sympathize with them because even they shouldn’t be treated like animals, and while this is still a “humans hate mutants” story, he does a lot of more interesting things with the subtleties of that than, say, Loo does. (It’s also fun how the Magneto section is shown from a different angle in another mini-series, which I’ll get to below.) He ties it into Marvel history and the current stuff without upsetting the apple cart, which is probably what was asked of him. Mason’s angular art is the tiniest bit cartoony for the tone of the book, but generally, it’s quite good, and he nails some of the more disturbing images, which is nice. This is a very good mini-series, which surprised me a bit, and as always, I do appreciate Marvel at least trying to do a bit weirder stuff occasionally. Paknadel digs around in the darker corners of the X-Universe, and what he finds is kind of mean and nasty. Who doesn’t love that?

Speaking of the dark corners of the X-Universe, Declan Shalvey does that a bit with Mystique #1-5, which also came out in October-February. Shalvey writes and draws it, with Matt Hollingsworth on colors and Clayton Cowles lettering it. Shalvey notes in the back of the book that “a MYSTIQUE spy series was offered” to him, which is interesting. I get that Marvel and DC “offer” books to creators, but I was under the impression that mini-series like this were cooked up by creators and then had to be approved by the higher-ups. However, Shalvey says that someone in the editorial office came up with the idea of “Mystique-as-spy” and then searched around for someone to do it. That’s interesting. I figured that happened occasionally, but it’s interesting that we get confirmation of it here. Or maybe everyone already knew that and I’m late to the party. I’m not very bright, after all.

Mystique isn’t that great, though, which makes me sad, because I tend to like Shalvey, although I like his art more than his writing. Here, he gives us a lot — a lot — of smoke and mirrors in service of a story that doesn’t really deserve it. Mystique has a scheme, Nick Fury Jr. has a scheme to stop her, Mystique outthinks him constantly, but in the end, she’s in a far worse place than where she started, but we never exactly learn what happened to her. Are we supposed to know because it’s part of recent X-lore? Something happens to Mystique that Shalvey shows but never explains, and I’m really not sure what it is. It’s very frustrating. Also, Shalvey seems to waver on whether Mystique gets the powers of those she mimics or not. Halfway through the series, she kidnaps Fabian Cortez, who can boost powers, and when he does it to her when she appears as Magneto, it gives her magnetic powers but it aslo messes her up, yet later, she’s juggernauting around like Cain Marko and flying like Warren Worthington and it all seems good in the hood. So what’s the deal? Shalvey does have fun with Mystique changing her appearance, and the book is fun to read because of that, but it just doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense, at least not to me. I mean, her scheme is simple and it works, but it seems like it could have been accomplished far more easily than Mystique made it look. I guess the entire series is to show what a cool-ass bitch she is. I do like that Shalvey never shows Destiny’s face, although it’s clear she’s the “de-aged” version of the character rather than the elderly woman she once was — I still think this is part of an age-ist thing at Marvel, but whatever. Overall, though, it feels like a lot of sound and fury (so to speak). I also don’t love his art on the book, although some parts of it are terrific. When Avalanche … avalanches? … the scene is wonderful, and the way Shalvey draws Mystique changing personas is nicely done. There’s nothing really wrong with the art — it’s well drawn, Hollingsworth’s colors are nice, and nothing is wonky in any way — but it’s just … a bit too abstract, I guess. When Shalvey wants to be detailed, he can do it, but his default style these days is a bit blockier and less detailed, which doesn’t always lend itself to superhero comics (despite the fact that this is a “spy comic,” it’s still a superhero comic). Shalvey has never been the greatest at action scenes, so the fact that he gives us a lot of them is frustrating. I like his art in general, but it just doesn’t seem to fit the style of story he’s telling here. It’s too bad.

I do like that Marvel wanted to do this book, though. As I noted above, we need more of these kinds of things in the Marvel Universe! (I almost forgot, and now I can’t fit it in anywhere. Issue #3 of this series, which came out in the same month as Sentinels #3, shows the fight with Magneto from a different angle … and, of course, it’s not Magneto, it’s Mystique. If you only got Sentinels and not Mystique, you would never know. It’s both kind of neat and a bit odd. But mostly neat.)

Finally, to round out the mini-series section, we have Rogue: The Savage Land #1-5, which is by writer Tim Seeley, artists Zulema Scotto Lavina and Von Randal, colorist Rachelle Rosenberg, and letterers Ariana Maher and Joe Caramagna and came out in January-May. This is another disappointing mini-series, which, like Dazzler, cuts me to the core because I dig Rogue so very much. I mean, I kind of suspected I wouldn’t like it, because I really do not like going back and “inserting” a story into old continuity, which Seeley does here (this takes place between, roughly, Uncanny X-Men #268/69 and #274 — at the end, Marvel directs us to issue #274 so we can find out what happens next!), but I was committed to my little experiment, and here we are. The problem, of course, is that we know what happened to Rogue in the Savage Land — she fought Carol Danvers (which Seeley shows here briefly), Magneto killed Carol, and then they all fought Zaladane with Nick Fury’s help. Easy-peasy! But Seeley wants to expand on that, so Zaladane is still the bad guy in this series, even though we know her evil plan won’t exactly be thwarted (I mean, it sort of is, but not really) and that she’ll get away to fight another day. Zaladane has an evil scheme that does need to be thwarted, sure, and Seeley actually does something clever with Rogue’s power that helps her win, but it still feels like wheels spinning in mud, because nothing will come of this and he can’t even change the characters all that much, because we know what happens with them. He could have even done a little bit with the sort-of romance that Claremont wrote between Rogue and Magneto, but he doesn’t, so that feels like a missed opportunity, as Claremont just hinted at it, which made Magneto’s “betrayal” when he skewers Zaladane not hit quite as hard. It’s just a fairly dull story that was done better and in fewer pages 35 years ago. Seeley would have been about 15 when he read these issues of Uncanny X-Men, and I get that seeing a Jim-Lee-drawn Rogue in that yellow-and-green ripped bikini-thing would probably leave quite an impression on a nerdy 15-year-old, but that doesn’t mean he should just write a dull story with Rogue spending most of the time in said yellow-and-green ripped bikini thing. Plus, the art annoyed me. Lavina’s work is fine — it has a weird Paul Pope vibe, and some of the stuff, like the zombie dinosaurs, are pretty cool. Some of her storytelling is wonky, though, and she couldn’t finish the entire thing, and Randal’s low-rent Mark Texeira-like art in issue #4 is a bit jarring. Marvel couldn’t have waited a month to make sure Lavina could do the entire thing? It’s not like it was tying into anything in the present!

This series, like Dazzler, bums me out. Look, I like the old-school design of the covers and Kaare Andrews channeling Jim Lee for the cover art, but that’s not enough. Rogue is such an interesting character, but she’s been tied to Gambit for so long that she’s lost a lot of what made her neat in the first place, and when Seeley gets a chance to do something with her, he goes retro and it just doesn’t work. How annoying!

Moving onto the “already-canceled” portion of our post, we come across NYX #1-10, which is the latest attempt by Marvel to do a New Mutants book. I mean, good for them, but they don’t seem to stick these days, do they? Anyway, Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly are the writers, Francesco Mortarino is the artist (on issues #1-3, 5, and 8-10), Enid Balám is also the artist (on issues #4 and 7), Michael Shelfer is also the artist (on issue #6), Elisabetta D’Amico is the inker (on issues #5 and 6), Raúl Angulo is the colorist, and Joe Sabino is the letterer. This ran from July-April, and it’s first because it came out first of the next three titles.

Kelly and Lanzing use Kamala Khan as our POV character, as Inhumans are no longer popular so Marvel made her a mutant, and she’s trying to figure out what to do with her life. She starts hanging out with Sophie, one of the Cuckoos, and eventually they start hanging out with all the hip young mutants that you and I are far too uncool to be seen with, like Laura Kinney, David Alleyne, Victor Borkowski, and other semi-recurring characters. It’s a pretty good book, actually — Kamala is so very earnest, so she’s always trying to solve problems without fighting, which fits in with Prodigy’s mindset too, but he’s reached a point where he doesn’t want to get involved at all, so there’s some tension there. Sophie is always connected to her sisters, so nobody knows if they can trust her, but once she proves it, she has a different problem with her sisters which the writers handle pretty well. Kamala’s cousin turns out to be a bigot, which both works in the context of the book — he’s a fundamentalist Muslim, he’s part of her family so when she starts agonizing about telling her parents who she is, she has to take into account his reaction, as he has some influence over her brother — but it also feels like a bit of a cheat by the writers, kind of a “Look, not all racists are white people!” which I know is true but also seems a bit weird, given the current political situation where Bilal might be a bit too nervous about his own situation to worry about mutants … but it still works, is my ultimate point. Mojo, of all … people, is the Big Bad of the entire book (although he’s just lurking for a lot of it), and I love Mojo, so I don’t mind, and Lanzing and Kelly do some nice work with him, given his weird status as a creature who cares about ratings above all (and I wonder how much Kelly and Lanzing were having a joke putting a creature who thrives on ratings in a book that they had to know wouldn’t move the meter too much). As it’s a “New Mutants” book, we also get Hellions, which is always fun to see, and using Empath and, um, Hellion (who calls himself “The Krakoan” now) is a good idea because, well, Empath is a very good evil villain, especially in a book like this where all the hipsters want to talk about their feelings, and Hellion’s history is tragic but not irredeemable, so the group can use their kumbaya skills on him (he was, after all, romantically involved with Laura) and contrast that way of thinking with Empath’s more evil way. Lanzing and Kelly also wanted to make New York a more major part of the book, and they do that pretty well — this feels more “urban” than a lot of Marvel’s comics, many of which are set in New York. Of course, it’s a very hip part of New York — were I writing the book, I’d set in on the southern shore of Staten Island, probably, because I’m so square — but they do a good job showing us what an urban landscape filled with mutants might look like. There’s a lot of tension between the mutants and the humans, of course, but Lanzing and Kelly do a nice job showing that there would probably be a lot of human allies, too … it’s just that the extremists are always louder. As you might recall, this is kind of the superhero comic I like — a bit weirder, a bit less “punch-punch-punch,” some nice character interaction — and I know going in that those usually don’t last. Every once in a while one of them hits, but this is not that time, I guess. Oh well.

The art is pretty good, too — Mortarino has a good, smooth style that fits well with superhero comics — but more importantly, all the artists do good work with the city itself. If Kelly and Lanzing wanted to make the city a character in the book, their artists had to do a lot of the heavy lifting, and they all do a good job with it. Laura’s romp through the dark corners of the city in issue #2 is pretty keen, and the memorial service for a murdered mutant in issue #3 feels heavier because it’s set on a city street (one where gas is inexplicably $1.30 a gallon, but maybe, in the Marvel Universe, Roxxon is so nefarious they’re able to keep gas prices low so that no one looks too closely at their nefariousness). These people live in real places and confront each other in real places, and that makes the book more interesting. When they finally start sort-of calling themselves a “group,” they set up a headquarters, and Balám does an excellent job making it like an art collective/assistance center, just like those hipsters would do, wouldn’t they? All of this work makes the final issue hit a bit better, because Mojo is trying to conquer/destroy what has become a real-feeling place, so the stakes feel a bit higher. Mortarino does a really nice job with the final three pages of the series, showing scenes from what the group is still trying to accomplish even though their book got canceled and showing how far away Kamala is from both a resolution to her secret identity issue and from being her own independent hipster. It’s neat.

I’m going to write more about the thought process behind this and some of the other series below, because I can’t help but think this was doomed from the get-go. Marvel really wants a New Mutants book, and I imagine that Kamala’s trip through the X-Men’s history going on right now (see below!) might lead to a reboot, because that’s what we do these days. Beats me. This isn’t the greatest comic, but it has more on its mind than you might expect, and Lanzing and Kelly do a nice job trying to fit a coming-of-age story (which is all any New Mutants iteration is) into the bigger X-Universe. It feels like they succeeded, but nobody cared, so we must bid farewell to NYX. Adieu!

Moving on, we find X-Force #1-10, another canceled book which also launched in July and died in April. This was written by Geoffrey Thorne, drawn by Marcus To (issues #1-5, 8-10) and Jim Towe (issues #6-7), colored by Erick Arciniega, and lettered by Joe Caramagna. I’ve liked Thorne’s writing in the past, and To’s a solid superhero artist, so this was a bummer, too. Thorne definitely had a very long-term plan in mind, it seems, and this feels rushed from the get-go. Thorne clearly wanted this to be Marvel’s “Planetary”-type comic, as Forge discovers early on that there are “fractures” in the world and he and his team — Sage, Betsy Braddock (whatever we’re calling her these days), Rachel Summers (whatever we’re calling her these days), a dude named Tank, and Nori Ashida — have to fix them and figure out why they’re happening. Thorne clearly wanted to do the kind of thing Ellis did on Planetary, with issue-long stories that gradually built up to the Big Bad, but that went by the wayside very quickly, presumably because sales weren’t there. I don’t get it — this was clearly going to struggle to sell, yet Marvel allowed Thorne to do his thing but gave him almost no rope. What did they think was going to happen? Thorne sends Forge and his group around the globe, interacting with some of the odder members of the Marvel Universe, and the book has a weird, off-kilter vibe which is fine — it’s not a great comic by any means, but who knows how much of that is thanks to Thorne’s accelerated timeline? In issue #6, however, Thorne introduces (as it turns out, only one of) the Big Bad, and it kind of comes out of nowhere with no build-up, which makes the reveal, which is kind of neat, far less impactful. When the other Big Bad is revealed, it also doesn’t have much of an impact, because it’s not only a pretty deep cut (a cool one, certainly, but still deep), but there’s been no laying of the groundwork. The scheme the Big Bads have is a bit generic, too, and again, I wonder if it comes off that way because Thorne didn’t have time to get into it more. Yes, part of it is Thorne’s fault — it’s hard to launch a second- or third-tier X-book and expect to have all the time in the world to develop your plot — but it’s also Marvel’s fault, because they knew this would be a tough sell, and they didn’t tell Thorne to maybe take it easy with the giant plot until they could see what’s what. This is always the problem with launching a new book, I get it, but it’s still frustrating. The wreckage of so many potentially interesting comics lies in our past, and X-Force becomes just another one. Thorne has some interesting ideas about the powers of his characters, and any focus on Betsy is fine with me, and Thorne’s use of Deadpool in the first issue is hilarious. There are plenty of intriguing bits in here, but it never really added up. To and Towe do solid work, but the book does lack a visual flair that might have made it stand out. Perhaps if Marvel had gotten an artist whose work was just wacky, it might have caught more eyes. I doubt it, but you never know. Both Thorne and To deserve better.

X-Force goes the way of the dodo and is mourned by none. Life goes on!

The last canceled book probably had even less of a shot than X-Force, and that’s X-Factor #1-10, which ran from August-May. Marvel wanted it to be satirical, and these days, if you want good satire, you get Mark Russell to write it, so they did. It’s drawn by Bob Quinn, colored by Jesus Aburtov, and lettered by Joe Caramagna. Quinn drew all 10 issues, and it says something about the sad state of comic art speed today that that’s pretty impressive!

Russell does what he can, but this iteration of X-Factor never really finds its footing. It’s a tough row to hoe, because people take their superhero comics so very, very seriously, and while satire can work very well with superheroes, it’s tough to squeeze more than a few issues out of it, especially when you’re using established characters. Peter Milligan got away with it for a while on X-Statix because he wasn’t using established characters, so if he killed them off, nobody really cared, plus it was the Bill Jemas Era, and things were a bit more loosey-goosey at Marvel back then. These days, everything is connected and everything matters and people take that so seriously, so if Russell kills off a couple of Z-level mutants in issue #1 (which he does), somebody is going to take umbrage! Russell creates a few characters, too, and brings back lower-than-Z-level mutants like ForgetMeNot (who is, of course, awesome), so it’s not like he’s being cruel exclusively to others’ creations, but still, it’s a tough sell to today’s audience. Russell does a decent job, turning the team into a government strike force … that’s also driven by social media popularity. It’s not a bad hook, and it allows Russell to dive into a bit of why mutants fight each other instead of just taking over the world, and Russell is a good enough writer to get into that … but it also feels like something that belongs in a more serious book, albeit one that could use humor as well. Russell, it feels, went into this doing a humorous book, but realized he could address serious topics as well, and the tone shift doesn’t quite work. It feels like if he went into it as a serious book and then added in humor, it might have worked better. Maybe. I don’t know.

Still, it’s nice to see Alex Summers and Lorna Dane have a nice arc, as they struggle to figure out how to live in the post-Krakoa world, and Russell turns Angel back into Archangel (with him controlling the change), which, I guess, yay? I always appreciate writers showing us “downtime” with characters, so the bits and pieces we get of that are fun. Granny Smite, the Character Find of 2024, is a lot of fun — she’s an octogenarian who did not realize she was a mutant until she experienced two deadly tragedies and figured out that her power is, simply, immortality (there’s a funny scene in which Henry McCoy simply tells everyone to ignore her, because she’s literally not a threat in any way). Like a lot of these low-level superhero books that no one reads, Russell is able to put a lot of interesting stuff in the comic, because it doesn’t really matter. Anyone can do this, sure, but in the bigger books, the focus tends to be on plot churn, while here, Russell does go through plot, but he’s able to show a bit more of the characters’ lives when they’re not punching someone.

Like most Russell comics, this is a cynical book with a heart of gold. Russell has great empathy for his characters (well, except for those he callously slaughters) and no time for fools, which is why his bad guys — in this case, it’s partly the general who runs the operation and the social media consultant who comes up with the scheme — are often cartoonish (funny, but cartoonish) and don’t have the same depth as his good guys. Sure, he can kill off characters humorously, but the way he deals with Alex and Lorna drifting apart is very nice. He doesn’t do quite as good as job with Cecilia Reyes and her beau, but that’s kind of supposed to be played for laughs, so I’ll allow it. He gives us a weird, wacky, mutant-filled world, and one nice thing about this relaunch is that by putting mutants back in the “real” world, writers can show how bizarre that world really would be. I dig that kind of comic, but I certainly understand readers who don’t.

I don’t have much to say about Quinn. He’s fine. His action scenes are slightly stilted, but not too bad, and he does facial expressions well, which is a plus in a book like this. I do like his social media guy, Rodger, who’s always eating corn dogs and trying to keep an upbeat countenance even when everything is going to shit. Quinn gets to draw a lot of interesting mutants, and he has fun with those. It’s unspectacular art, but it gets the job done. Sorry I don’t have more to say about it.

So that’s the three already-canceled comics. One was competing against another “New Mutants”-type book (which I’ll get to) that had better name recognition, and two had no big names and mission statements that felt a bit too weird for Marvel. Is it any surprise that none of them are still with us? Not really, but it would have been nice if one of them could have lasted!

(I do like that is issue #8, which Marvel claims is the 300th issue of X-Factor, they show all the covers of the title from over the years — they did this for X-Force “#300,” too, by the way. They pointedly did not include the four-issue 2002 series, which bums we out because that’s pretty darned good. What the hell, Marvel?!?!?!?)

Ok, now we’re onto the ongoing series that have not been canceled yet, although if we wait a bit, I’m sure some of them will join the previous three on the chopping block! I’m saving the “main” two titles (which Marvel clearly wanted to be three, but the third just isn’t doing it) to the end, so let’s begin with Phoenix, which has shipped 13 issues as of this typing (I’m typing this on the 23rd of July, and issue #13 came out today!). Issue #1 came out in July 2025 2024, and it was the second of the “From the Ashes” book to launch, so you know Marvel had high hopes for it. I, on the other hand, did not, because X-Men In Space Does Not Work!!!!!!, but I figured, Stephanie Phillips (who writes this) isn’t bad, so let’s see. It’s drawn by Alessandro Miracolo (issues #1-5, 8-10), Marco Renna (issues #5-7), and Roi Mercado (issues #11-13), colored by David Curiel (issues #1-10) and Java Tartaglia (issues #11-13), and lettered by Cory Petit (issues #1-8 and 10-11), Adriana Maher (issues #9 and 12), and Joe Sabino (issue #13). Sadly, also, it’s not that great. Is it because X-Men In Space Does Not Work?!?!?!? Well, that’s certainly a consideration!

There are two, and only two, things working against modern superhero comics. Yes, art styles change and writing styles change and character don’t act the way they should and the Blob eats the Wasp and Wonder Dog eats Marvin and Wendy and Geoff Johns likes decapitating people, but those are all easily fixable or easily adapted to things. In modern comics, the two things that probably aren’t going away and which really make modern comics somewhat un-fun to read are the length of the issues and the devotion to plot churn. Issue #1 of Phoenix is 30 pages, and it feels like Phillips takes good advantage of the length to give us a lot of interesting set-up. Each subsequent issue is 20 pages, and I know it’s only 2 pages, but the drop-down from 22 to 20 pages an issue has still, after so many years, felt like we’re getting a lot less in each issue. Part of this is, of course, writing styles — if you look at panels-per-page from a modern comic as opposed to one from the 1980s or before, they’re probably about the same, but there’s probably more text in the older comic — but part of it feels like writers still haven’t adjusted. This means that it feels like we get less in each issue, and with modern comics’ devotion to plot churn, this makes things even worse. Marvel seems more committed to this than DC, but in modern superhero comics, the forward momentum is almost overwhelming. No one can stop and smell the roses at all, and we just get one hyperactive event after another, and it’s exhausting. These two factors lead to a lack of character development and a lack of emotional investment on the part of the reader. It’s frustrating, because if you get a writer who knows what they’re doing — and Phillips might not be the greatest writer, but she knows what she’s doing — you can almost see them straining against these artificial impositions, and it becomes even more frustrating.

Phillips throws a lot into this series, and there’s no time to catch your breath. As I noted above, the reasons Jean gives for leaving Earth, both in the Special and early in this series, don’t really convince us — clearly someone at Marvel wanted to do a Phoenix series, and Phoenix is so powerful you have to send her to space, and that’s the reason — but we move on from that quickly enough. In issue #1, Perrikus escapes a prison perched on the edge of a black hole that’s collapsing, and Jean saves the prison while letting Perrikus go, which has consequences. He lands on a planet where people that Jean saved from a dying sun live, and he kills their religious leader, which upsets the religious leader’s daughter, Adani. Adani is an important character in the series, yet it’s hard to care about her because she’s not really a character, just a plot device. She hates Perrikus because he killed her dad, but she really digs power for some reason, so she becomes Perrikus’s toady for some reason, hating Phoenix for letting him escape and saving hundreds of other people, so that he was on the loose to kill her dad … whom she didn’t really love, so there’s that, too. Adani veers wildly in her characterization, and we’re never quite clear on why she does what she does. Phillips tries, but again, the issues are too short and the devotion to plot churn too powerful. Meanwhile, the Galactic Council doesn’t like Phoenix because she’s, you know, super-powerful, so they try to stop her, and to do that, they ask for help from Thanos, who just takes over the Council in return for his help. Thanos is a pretty powerful dude, but there’s no build-up to him being named galactic dictator — he just shows up and is appointed — and even though he has a pretty powerful way to keep Jean from figuring out what he’s doing, she still defeats him pretty easily. Perrikus and his buddies the Dark Gods are supposedly the Big Bads for the first 10 issues, but the others — besides Perrikus — don’t do much, and I have no idea who any of them are (I didn’t know who Perrikus was, either, but at least you can sort-of figure it out because he’s in the book a lot), even though Jean seems to know them all very well, and she defeats them a bit easily, too. I mean, I don’t miss half the panels being taken up by text, but, come on, Marvel — a nice, short block of information: “Perrikus and his Dark Gods fought to replace Odin and the Asgardians, blah blah blah” — wouldn’t hurt anyone, you know! Phillips also crams in a lot of guest stars — Nova, Carol Danvers, Sif, Rocket, Corsair — which takes up space, as well. I mean, we know that space in the Marvel and DC Universes is much smaller than in our universe — it sometimes feels like it’s about the size of Paraguay — but man, these people zip around easily! Plus, all the guest stars means we get less time with Adani, as I noted above. It’s frustrating, because Phillips does try — in issue #4, she spends a few pages just hanging out with Carol Danvers, and in issues #11-13, Jean’s sister, Sara, returns from the dead and we get the tiniest bit of down time between them — but it’s not enough and the rest is so breakneck it just wears you out. Phillips, as I noted, does slow a bit in the current story, but it’s basically just to be an infodump — how Sara acted when she was a girl (a cliché-filled childhood, of course), how she survived, and, in issue #13, what Cable thinks is really going on — and the lack of staight-up action doesn’t reveal much of anything about the characters, just sets us up for more action. It’s frustrating.

The art, unfortunately, veers from pretty decent (Miracolo) to annoying (Mercado), with Renna falling somewhere in between. Miracolo has issues — his figures are often a bit too abstract and clunky — but he has a decent handle on the action and draws a nice Phoenix, which is kind of important. Mercado’s art looks like it should be in some mid-level Boom! title instead of a high-end Marvel one, as his line work is sturdy but uninspired, his points of view are occasionally iffy, and his action scenes are stilted. We get a lot of art like this in Marvel and DC books these days — almost not-ready-for-primetime-players who might be good after they’ve worked out some kinks, but they’re doing it on higher-profile stuff, and I wonder if years of Marvel and DC treating creators like shit is coming back to bite them. I hadn’t heard of any of these artists before I started reading Phoenix, but looking around, it’s clear that none of them have been in comics very long, and I wonder if Marvel employs them partly because they’re cheap. It’s not bad art, certainly, and I get that it reflects the styles of the times to a degree, but it’s also not great art. Marvel needs to publish one kajillion titles a month, though, and if a more established artist actually wants money, they can hit the bricks!

The Sara Grey story seems to have one more issue left, and then I’ll probably drop the book. I know it’s my own bias, but space opera, for me, only works in very limited instances, and this isn’t it. This comic is filled with a bunch of characters hardly anyone cares about, and Phillips doesn’t do quite enough to make us care. So, really, there’s no point in continuing!

The title that Marvel clearly wanted to be the third of the “Big Three” is Exceptional X-Men, but my retailer and sales figures say otherwise. This got going a bit later (the first issue shipped in September) and Marvel isn’t spamming us with issue after issue (only 11 have come out as yet), which is fine with me (I hate that a year in, the two main titles have almost gone 20 issues) but which, I suppose, doesn’t help thanks to the readers’ short attention span? “It’s been a month since this book came out — I don’t remember it all!!!!!” Anyway, Eve L. Ewing writes this, Carmen Carnero (issues #1-10) and Federica Mancin (part of issue #10 and all of issue #11) draw it, Nolan Woodard colors it, and Joe Sabino (issue #1) and Travis Lanham (issues #2-11) letter it.

I mentioned above that NYX might have failed because Marvel wanted two two two “New Mutants”-style books, and this is the other one. Except they gave this book the more historically and emotionally resonant “X-Men” title, while “NYX” does sound, after all, like some mustache-having, overalls-wearing, vaping hipster named it, plus they put Kitty Pryde and Emma Frost in this one (plus Iceman, who might not be the most popular dude, but he’s been around a long time), so this was always going to “win” against the other book (although, again, I guess it’s not selling like gangbusters, but it’s still around for now!). And, even though I quite liked NYX, Exceptional X-Men is better. So that’s something, right?

Unlike what I wrote above about “plot churn” with regards to Phoenix, Ewing doesn’t seem to care too much about that and is able to resist it to a large part. I mean, stuff happens, of course, but it doesn’t feel rushed, and Ewing spends a lot of time with small moments, which makes this a much more satisfying and interesting read. The big epic stuff is fine, and I know some people love that, but I only like it when it’s not relentless, and that’s not Ewing’s remit, anyway, so she spends a lot of time creating the three new characters — Bronze, Melee, and Axo — and filling out Kitty’s life in Chicago now that Krakoa is no longer a concern. Kitty just wants to be left alone, but she can’t turn away from fellow mutants in need (no matter how hard she tries), so she takes these three under her wing, mainly so Emma, who’s very interested in mentoring young mutants, doesn’t spirit them away from their lives and turn them into soldiers. The book, so far, is about how these kids learn about their abilities and how to live in a world that can be pretty scary. It’s the basic template of the X-books since time immemorial, but Ewing does a very nice job with it. Kitty, for instance, is haunted by what she did during the Fucking Krakoa Age (which Ewing doesn’t spend too much time with — just enough to let us know that Kitty is not dealing with it terribly well), and that’s why she wants to be left alone. However, she knows that these younger mutants are going to keep showing up, and she knows that her experiences with being a teenage X-Man weren’t the best, so she wants to guide them as best she can. Meanwhile, she’s bisexual now and dating a nice lady, which Ewing does a pretty good job with, as it’s not moving very fast but it’s clear Kitty digs Nina. The three new characters are interesting, too. Ewing doesn’t think too hard about their powers, at least with regard to Trista — who’s a version of Colossus — or Thao — who’s a version of Kitty herself — but Alex has a neat power in that he can sense others’ emotions and they feel compelled to tell him what they’re feeling if they get too close to him. Their powers might not be great, but Ewing does a nice job making them interesting characters — Thao, for instance, wants to fight everyone in the world who looks at mutants askance, even though those she’s defending might not always appreciate it. I do like how, early on, there aren’t any villains — it’s just some in-fighting between Kitty and Emma and Kitty and Bobby, and ignorant humans being ignorant — because it gives Ewing the opportunity to show us who these people are. When Mr. Sinister shows up (in disguise) in the second “arc,” it’s still more about what it means to be a mutant than the big fight against Sinister, mainly because his genetic manipulation stuff is custom-built for that kind of story. Alex is “seduced” by Sinister’s guise, because he can’t “pass” — that term has become a big thing in the mutant books — and he’s impressed by a dude who can’t either but has still built up a big business and can also offer Alex a way to conceal his nature if he wants to.

Ewing, who’s not 40 yet, does a decent job with “the kids,” as well. Some of it is teeth-achingly earnest (I asked my 20-year-old daughter if “the kids” really go around making sure they get everyone’s pronouns correct, and she said no, but these characters do!), but overall, she does a nice job capturing the weirdness of being a teen and the issues that might go along with being a teen mutant. The book isn’t gloomy at all, despite Ewing dealing with some heavy issues, and she finds a good balance between that heavy stuff and the more light-hearted stuff. The book is often funny, which is nice — Ewing does a good job making Sinister, well, sinister, but also remembering that the current version of him is not all there thanks to all the experimentation he’s done on himself. It’s nice that she’s not afraid to be a bit goofy — these kids aren’t battling major super-villains, after all (yet), and Ewing is trying to show that they can have a … relatively normal life? while still trying to figure their powers out. I don’t love that Ewing has her characters address the reader occasionally (not in a Deadpool kind of way, but in a more confessional way), but it doesn’t happen too, too often, and I guess I can deal with it.

The art is good, too, which is nice. Carnero doesn’t do anything too flashy, but she isn’t asked to do that, as the book remains fairly grounded. She does a nice job making this feel like Chicago (I’ve never been there, but it still feels like a real place and not some vague, undefined city in this book) and she does well to show how these kids live in this city, because they all have different circumstances. She does a nice job showing the different ages of the characters, too — in comics, of course, everyone is perpetually young, but Emma is clearly older than Kitty, who’s clearly in her mid-20s, while the kids seem a bit more … unformed, I guess, which is what high schoolers generally are. Carnero does a very nice job with the way the characters look at each other and react to each other, which is fairly crucial in a book like this, where the action doesn’t dominate. Woodard is a decent colorist, and he softens Carnero’s lines quite a bit and uses a lot of shading, which works pretty well to give this a more … I don’t know, easy-going feel to it? It’s like, there aren’t any hard edges in Carnero and Woodard’s universe, so maybe everything will be ok? Mancin has a more cartoony style, and you can see that her slightly sharper line resists Woodard’s attempts to smooth it out. Her work on issue #11 is pretty good, but her weird, Alice-in-Wonderland-with-a-soupçon-of-Jae-Lee dreamworld work in issue #10 is very keen.

I read a few of these comics when they first came out last summer and early autumn, but then I fell behind, so now I’m reading them in this order, meaning I haven’t read most of, say, Uncanny X-Men yet. I don’t know about the quality of the books coming up, just the ones I read above this. Exceptional X-Men might not be a big seller, but so far, it’s my favorite of the “From the Ashes” series. Sentinels is quite good, NYX is pretty good, X-Force had moments where it was good, but Exceptional is just consistently interesting, thoughtful, and nice to look at. I do hope it lasts. That would be nice.

The next current ongoing was apparently a surprise to its writer, Murewa Ayodele, who writes in issue #5 that it would have been the final issue had the series not done so well. I guess Storm (which began in October) resonates a lot with people, because it’s still going strong. Lucas Werneck drew issues #1-5, some of issue #8, and all of #9-10, while Luciano Vecchio drew issues #6-7, and Mario Santoro drew part of issue #8 (over Werneck’s layouts). The book is colored by Alex Guimarães, with help from Fer Sifuentes-Sujo on issues #1, 4, and 7 and Rachelle Rosenberg on issue #6, and lettered by Travis Lanham.

It’s nice that this book found an audience and got extended beyond a five-issue mini-series, but man, is it a mess. It’s not exactly bad, as Ayodele seems to have a good handle on the character — to a degree — and he seems to know how to put a story together — to a degree — and the art, while utilizing a bit too much digital technology, is pretty stunning. However, it’s still a mess, as it veers wildly all over the place, never settling anywhere, as if Ayodele’s ambition is so out of control that he can’t seem to stop piling weird stuff on top of weird stuff. Part of it is that he’s too in love with Ororo, so he writes her as, basically, perfect. Now, we know the hero is going to be the hero, but Ayodele basically turns her into the Greatest And Most Powerful And Wonderfullest Mutant Who Ever Lived Or Ever Could Live, and it’s a bit … dull? I’m tired of writers amping up heroes’ power just because, but that’s what Ayodele does here, turning Ororo into COSMIC STORM so she can fight/ally with abstract beings like Eternity and Oblivion, and if there’s something more boring than Marvel’s abstract concepts in superhero fiction, I’ve yet to see it. Storm keeps getting more and more powerful throughout this series, and it just makes things meaningless, because there’s nothing to challenge her. We’re back to plot churn, too, as we zoom from issue #1, where she saves Oklahoma (and the world) from a nuclear meltdown, through to issue #5, where she has a confrontation with Doctor Doom because Doom rules the world now (or did then; Marvel shifts so quickly these days, so I don’t know what happened with the whole “One World Under Doom” thing) and then off to the Charles Xavier escape thing (I’ll get to that, fret not!) and the current story, in which she’s fighting storm gods while Eternity and Oblivion are also there? It’s tiring and not all that interesting. It’s just another old, universe-destroying threat that’ll get dispatched easily, and it doesn’t feel as epic as Ayodele wants it to be because the characters involved in it just aren’t that compelling. Even Storm, who died and was quickly resurrected in issue #4, isn’t that compelling. She’s brought back to life to be an avatar of Eternity, but Ayodele hasn’t really examined what that means, even though we learn that Eternity is using her body to do some nefarious things. In issue #9, we finally get a hint that this might be bugging our hero, but Ayodele doesn’t really lay much groundwork with it, so that revelation doesn’t hit as hard as it might.

It’s frustrating, because Ayodele teases us with things that might be interesting, then undercuts them with dumb things. In issue #1, a mutant has some issues that cause the near-nuclear meltdown, and when Storm saves the day, people begin to warm up to mutants because they think she saved them from alien technology (which was the cover story put out about the accident). Instead of lying about it, Storm tells the truth, which, of course, changes the way people feel. That mutant does not show up again until issue #10. Ayodele says that Tom Brevoort, in his infinite wisdom, suggested they move this moral dilemma — should Storm tell the truth and ruin mutants’ “good name” or lie and hope nobody finds out — to the first issue instead of having it end the first arc, and Ayodele says that was a good thing (this is the same Brevoort, mind you, who once yelled at me because I criticized his editors because they didn’t know how to spell “prophecy”). I’m not so sure, because it lessens the impact — we don’t really see mutants being treated better, so Storm stepping up and ruining the goodwill they received from her rescue doesn’t mean much, because it’s so very, very short-lived. Plus, we know nothing about this mutant, and they disappear quickly from the book for a long time, so there’s no follow-up and no emotional impact of Storm’s rescue or statement. Then, Storm visits the X-Men in issue #3 for literally no reason except Ayodele wanted to hook her up with Wolverine. Yeah, that happens, and it’s as stupid as it sounds. Why does literally every man/woman combination in fiction have to end in sex? Logan and Ororo have always been written more like a brother/sister pairing, and there’s no reason for them to bang, especially because the entire issue feels like filler — there’s not really a good reason for Storm to visit the X-Men, so it comes off like Ayodele just really wanted Storm to fuck Wolverine, which is a weird reason to write a story. Storm can’t use her powers for a while, and she says that she’s spent “decades” without them, so she knows how to fight, which annoyed me because she hasn’t spent “decades” in comic-book time without her powers — I’m not even sure she’s spent a decade in real time without them! And then there’s the discussions about her hair. Oh, sweet Jeebus, the hair. Look, I’m not a woman, so I have no idea about the psychological hold hair has over those double-X-having people. It’s weird, though, right? Anyway, Werneck draws Storm with a ridiculously giant head o’ curls, which looks cool but wildly impractical. Whatever. Then, in issue #7, someone writes in congratulating Werneck for this depiction, writing, “I’ve never seen her with such unapologetically beautiful natural curly hair.” Now, putting aside the fact that her hair is not “natural” because she’s, you know, a fictional character, why does the letter-writer assume this is “natural”? Storm was originally drawn with straight hair, and yes, Dave Cockrum in the 1970s probably wasn’t going to give her curly hair because Marvel didn’t want her looking toooooo “ethnic,” but why couldn’t her hair be naturally straight and now she’s curling it? You don’t know! And if it is naturally curly, you mean that she had time all those years to straighten it? It’s not a big deal — Werneck just decided to make it curly — and if it makes someone happy, that’s fine, but to say this is her “natural” hair cracks me up. Ayodele claims it’s “natural,” too, by the way, in the response to the letter. In the same issue, #7, she cuts off some of her hair because one of the storm gods grabbed hold of it and wouldn’t let go, and this leads her, in issue #8, to … wear extensions!!!!! Oh noes!!!! Ayodele again goes into some length in the letter column to justify her wearing hair extensions, which … who gives a shit? It’s Santoro drawing that part (over Werneck’s layouts, but who knows how detailed those layouts were), so maybe he just wanted to draw her with different hair? We don’t really need a reason for a different hair style! Then, as a culmination of this saga, Storm confronts the storm god, Sango, in issue #10. She tells him this:

What, Storm, what? Kill an innocent child? Betray your closest friend? Fuck a short, hairy Canadian? Have dinner with Donald Trump? No, good readers, Sango did something even worse:

BWAH-HA-HA-HA!!!! I know this is supposed to be a big moment, but … really? “Unthinkable”? Ayodele knows something about Storm that we all know: she cuts her hair all the fucking time!!!! I mean, really, Ororo — you had to slice off the end of it, but you still had plenty to spare! Come on, now! I don’t know why Storm’s hair saga bugged me so much, but it just felt like an encapsulation of the entire series — focusing on dumb things while ignoring more important things. The book feels like it wants to be important and epic, but Ayodele keeps getting sidetracked into dumb cul-de-sacs. He can obviously write (and, I will say, his writing in the letter columns is actually more interesting than it is in the comic), so it’s frustrating to see a lot of fireworks and empty calories in this book. The art is nice, though. Big and bold and expansive and epic and colorful. That’s neat. I was going to write a bit more about it, but the hair saga consumed me and now I’ve gone on too long about this comic!!!!!

Oh, and Maggott is a big character in this series. Fucking Maggott. And, of course, he’s also an Omega-level mutant. Because why the fuck not?!?!?

I’m on the fence about Storm. I don’t hate it, and I’m kind of curious about it, but it makes me grind my teeth a bit. Storm is in the middle of a story arc — her fight against the storm gods — so maybe I’ll finish that and think about it. As long as they don’t mention her hair too much!!!!

Moving on, if I never read the name “Kwannon” again, I’d be good with that, but Marvel, in its infinite wisdom, gives us a Psylocke ongoing series, so I must see that name far too much! Alyssa Wong is the writer of this series, Vincenzo Carratù is the artist for issues #1-3, 5-7, and 9, Moisés Hidalgo is the artist for issues #4-8, Fer Sifuentes-Sujo is the colorist, and Ariana Maher is the letterer. Wong writes in issue #1 that she’s “excited to tap into [her] roots as a horror short fiction writer,” and Psylocke is a bit more horror-ey than most Marvel books, which is nice. Wong gives us child trafficking, an evil taxidermist, and creepy ghosts, so that’s fun. Kwannon gets her own “guy in a chair” with Devon, a college student whom she rescued from a place that was forcing people to make anti-mutant weaponry, and Devon gets Kwannon information and designs cool things for her that help her out. In issue #1, it appears that Kwannon is taking jobs outside of the X-Men, but she doesn’t do much with that after the first two issues, after which the series becomes much more personal to Kwannon. Wong delves into Kwannon’s childhood a bit, when she was being trained/tortured by the Hand, and that informs a lot of her present in the series. Wong introduces the Taxonomist, a childhood friend of Shinobi Shaw, who enjoys taking animals and people apart and stitching them back together, adding machine parts as well, and he’s a terrifically creepy bad guy who doesn’t seem to have much of a scheme — he just wants to display Kwannon because her history and her history with Betsy Braddock is so fucked up. I mean, it’s weird and disturbing, but he’s still not much of a match for Psylocke, especially once she figures things out. He’s kind of like Cornelius Stirk, a villain I love, in that once you figure him out, he’s not a big deal. So sad. The current arc, in which Psylocke returns to her roots and finds out that things aren’t great with people from her childhood, is kind of creepy, too, which is nice. Wong does a nice job with Kwannon’s relationships with Devon and John Greycrow, whom she’s romancing (I’m not surprised that Marvel doesn’t call him Scalphunter anymore, but I read an article about the name change, and I was a bit annoyed that the writer seemed to ascribe racist attitudes to Claremont and others in the 1980s, when Claremont probably just didn’t think about the racist antecedents of the name and thought it just sounded cool), and it’s nice that she does some stuff with Shinobi Shaw, who was an extremely annoying character when he was first introduced. Both Carratù and Hidalgo do yeomanlike work on the book — their styles are similar, so the art doesn’t shift too much when the artist shifts. They get to draw some interesting ghosts, some weird animal/machine hybrids, some bizarre Japanese demons/spirits, and the creepy thing haunting Kwannon. They do a decent job with the action scenes, too, so that’s nice.

The problem with the series is … it’s just kind of there. It’s possible that I’m biased against Kwannon because I love Betsy Braddock and the old version of Psylocke so much, but Kwannon has never been all that interesting to me. Obviously, I haven’t read much about Kwannon over the past few decades, but she’s always been kind of dull, and this series doesn’t do too much to mitigate that. Wong simply puts her through the motions in this series — sure, she has a dude now, she’s a mentor, and she has to deal with stuff from her childhood, and it’s not bad, it’s just kind of by the numbers. As creepy as some of the things are, they’re just generically creepy, and it’s a bit because Wong simply skims the surface with the stuff. The Taxonomist is a genuinely horrific villain, but he’s also somewhat tragic, and Wong doesn’t get enough into that, which makes him less disturbing than he could be. Psylocke’s issues with her childhood friend could be more emotionally powerful, but Mitsuki — her friend — isn’t much of a character, so her fate isn’t as interesting as it could be and therefore Kwannon’s relationship with her isn’t as interesting. The story is perfectly fine, but it feels a bit shallow. The same thing with the art — it’s fine, but the animal/machine creations aren’t as terrifying as they could be, and the haunting of Kwannon isn’t as bizarre as it could be, because the style is so standard. Hayashi, the girls’ mentor, is supposed to be horrific, but he’s just kind of weird. It’s frustrating, because Wong has some neat ideas, but it’s still a mainstream Marvel superhero book, so either she’s pulling herself back in or the editors aren’t letting her go nuts, so the book is tantalizing but ultimately a bit disappointing. It’s too bad — it’s entertaining enough, but it feels like it could be a lot more.

I know I wrote above that I wasn’t getting any Wolverine series, yet the next one on my list is … Wolverine #1-8 (December-July). Of course, it’s Laura Kinney’s book, so it doesn’t count as an over-exposed Wolverine book, hence, my purchase of it. Erica Schultz is the writer, Giada Belviso is the artist, Rachelle Rosenberg is the colorist, and Cory Petit is the letterer. Belviso has managed to draw all eight issues so far — good for her!

I don’t love calling Laura “Wolverine,” just like I don’t like the fact that “Daredevil” shows up in issues #2-4 is not Matt Murdock, but Elektra. Logan has such a strong presence and Matt Murdock is such a unique character that I feel calling Laura “Wolverine” and Elektra “Daredevil” is just dumb. It’s more annoying for Elektra, because she has a longer history and she had a pretty strong presence as, you know, herself, and Laura is a clone of Logan, so it makes more sense, but it just feels like a cheap money grab. Marvel is cynical, as they clearly want to be more diverse (fair enough) but think (or know) that these female characters can’t make a name for themselves without piggy-backing onto more popular male characters. More than once in this series, a character makes a comment about the fact that there are two Wolverines, and that’s not a feature, it’s a bug. “X-23” is a stupid name, true, but at least it was unique. Come on, creative people, come up with a better name for Laura so she’s not constantly living in a more popular character’s shadow!

I haven’t read a lot by Schultz, but she seems to be a perfectly competent if not great comics writer, and that’s what we get with Wolverine — it’s perfectly fine, but definitely not great. I’m still very curious about the way these things get approved — if we believe Declan Shalvey up there, Marvel comes to creators and say they want to do a series, and then the creator takes it from there. Did that happen here (or with some of these other mid-level X-books)? Did someone think, “We need to a Laura Kinney book” and then go find Schultz? Because this doesn’t read like someone who was super-enthused to do a Laura Kinney book, it reads like a book someone did so they could stay on Marvel’s good side. I don’t mean to be so dismissive of it, but sometimes you can tell when someone pitched something they really dig and when they’re just punching a time clock, so to speak. Schultz sends Laura off to fight evil people who are doing mean things to mutants, digs deep to find an old mutant from the Claremont days (which was pretty neat, honestly), and teams her up with Elektra, Bucky Barnes (who’s now calling himself “The Revolution,” which, come on, man, unless you’re gigging with Wendy and Lisa, you need a better name), and Haymaker … and the results are a mid-level superhero comic. There’s nothing really wrong with it, but there’s nothing really right about it, either. In issue #6, Laura experiences an alternate universe where she lives with her sister (Gabby) and dad (Logan, of course) in a bucolic suburb, and it’s the only issue in which Schultz seems like she’s having any fun. It’s gone quickly in issue #7 because, as we’ve seen with a lot of these books, the plot churn is paramount, but at least Schultz showed that she can do interesting work before getting back to the punching and slashing. Some of the ancillary characters — the aforementioned Claremont mutant, for instance, and Polly, the woman who wants to set up “mutant refuges” around the globe — are kind of interesting, but generally, this is a fairly tepid comic. It just feels like a C-level X-book, right down to Belviso’s clunky art. Her action scenes are a bit stiff and her anatomy is occasionally all over the place. Her storytelling is decent, but she tends toward the melodramatic, and it seems to add an odd level of almost campiness to the art, which is does not need. It tends to undercut her quieter moments, which is frustrating. It works in the alternate universe story, because it’s meant to be a bit over the top, but it doesn’t work very well in the “real world,” which is too bad. Much like the writing, it’s not exactly bad, but it’s not really good, either.

Honestly, there’s no reason for this book to exist. Laura is fine as a character, but she’s not exactly unique or compelling enough for her to be going off on her own, as evidenced by the guest stars that Schultz throws in. Elektra is much more interesting, even as “Daredevil,” than Laura, which isn’t good when the book is Wolverine’s, not hers. Someone at Marvel likes her, so she’ll keep getting chances, I suppose. It would be nice if the comic matched the enthusiasm level of whichever functionary wanted it!

The final minor X-book ongoing series is Magik, which launched in January and so has only shipped seven issues. Ashley Allen writes, Germán Perlata draws (he took issue #6 off), Jesús Hervás draws issue #6, Arthur Hesli colors, and Ariana Maher letters issues #1-3 and 5-7, and Joe Caramagna letters issue #4!

Peralta is a good artist, so this book looks a lot better than, say, Wolverine and Psylocke do, which is nice. He has a better flow to his art, he uses softer lines so that everyone looks a bit less severe, and his creepy things look creepier than Carratù’s creepy things in Psylocke. The softer lines fit a bit better with Hesli’s digital coloring, so the magical parts of it light up nicely and bring a nice contrast to some of the darker aspects of the art. Peralta also knows when to ease back, so when a character rips out someone’s heart in issue #7 (fret not, it’s all magical, so it’s not too icky!), Peralta lets Hesli take the lead in showing the blood, so it looks more like a mist and less like a gusher. His weird stuff is neat, too — in issue #1, there’s a cowboy demon with crow attributes that just looks cool, as the demon looks like he stepped right out of a horror manga and into the Marvel Universe (which isn’t surprising, as Peach Momoko designed it, but Peralta gets to draw it!). Peralta uses motion lines better than some of the other artists we’ve seen, too — they don’t really intrude on the scene as much as blend with it. It’s a nice-looking comic, certainly.

Allen’s story is fine, but like these other mid-level X-books, it feels kind of unnecessary. Allen gives us an interesting villain who basically wants to take over the world (yawn), and of course he’s connected somehow to her “Darkchilde” aspect, which means Illyana has to deal with that. It’s kind of a clichéd way that she does, but it’s not terrible, either. The entire series, so far, has been about this villain, with only issue #6 (an inventory issue?) taking a break from it to give us a rebellion in Limbo that Illyana helps Madelyne Pryor put down. I don’t mind the long-running plot, especially as Allen does try to resolve the immediate threat in each issue immediately, but it still feels a bit drawn out, and it’s not going anywhere anytime soon. That’s kind of a problem with these mid-level characters — they don’t have such depth of characterization and history behind them that they can handle a wide breadth of stories, and so they’re limited. Illyana always has to deal with Limbo and what was done to her, and even writers that like her — like Allen clearly does — keep her within that orbit. It becomes a bit boring, and if you’re not going to let Allen spread her wings and try to do different things with Illyana, why bother? Yes, she changes Illyana’s relationship with the Darkchilde just a tiny bit, but it’s still a big part of her … and that’s fine, but it can’t just be “Oh, woe is me, I’m bonded with this magical being that makes me turn into a monster all the time!” It seems like Allen wants to move Illyana past that, but her epiphany regarding the Darkchilde comes in issue #5, and in the subsequent issues, it doesn’t seem like much has changed. Illyana’s time in Limbo was a plot device way back in the day, but it’s become her sole defining characteristic, and it’s kind of dull. Allen brings in Dani Moonstar as a guest star, because why not, and the two of them resume what has become a complicated friendship, but it’s still not enough. It’s a bit frustrating, as with so many of these solo series that Marvel is putting out. This is better than Wolverine and a bit better than Psylocke, but it’s still kind of spinning its wheels. Oh, another world-destroying threat? Whatever.

One thing that’s always nice about these mid-tier solo series is that the writers do try to expand the Marvel World a bit. I mean, we’ve gotten some decent new villains out of them and some new mutants and old ones that haven’t shown up in a while. It’s too bad they’re not better, but it’s always fun to see how the writers try to show us that the Marvel Earth is just a weird, wild place. They might not be great series, but that’s not a bad thing!

Now, of course, we reach the Big Two — as I noted above, Marvel clearly wants a Big Three, but that hasn’t quite happened yet, so we get the Big Two. They launched the reboot with X-Men in July, and it’s currently shipped 19 issues, because why do something monthly when you can saturate the market? Jed MacKay is the writer, and they’ve had several different pencilers and inkers and colorists: Ryan Stegman (penciler and occasional inker, issues #1-3, 5, 8-9, 14-15, 17), Netho Diaz (penciler, issues #4, 6-7, 10-13, 16, 19), Federico Vicentini (penciler/inker, issue #9), C.F. Villa (penciler/inker, issue #15), Emilio Laiso (penciler/inker, issue #18), JP Mayer (inker, issues #1-3, 5, 8-9, 14-17), Livesay (inker, issues #3, 5, 7, 12, 15-17), Sean Parsons (inker, issues #4, 6-7, 10-13, 16, 19), Marte Gracia (colorist, issues #1-9, 14), Fer Sifuentes-Sujo (colorist, issues #2, 6-7, 9-13, 16-19), Erick Arciniega (colorist, issue #15). Clayton Cowles, meanwhile, is just sitting there, lettering the entire thing.

This is a very good series so far, with a few caveats. The art, of course, is a problem, not only because Marvel wants to ship a bajillion issues a month, but because even Stegman and Diaz can’t keep up with it. Stegman, of course, is a very good artist, and his slightly cartoonish style works well on superhero comics, especially as he’s able to temper is a bit with a strong line and very good fluidity. His line isn’t thin, so the characters have a solidity to them that balances out their slightly cartoonish look, and Stegman uses hatching very well in his action scenes to show motion, so we don’t get digital effects that we sometimes get that don’t mesh well with a stronger line. He’s very detailed, too, which is a decent reason that he’s only been able to do 7 full issues and parts of 2 others out of 19, but what that means is that we get a very good sense of place with him — this team has set up in Alaska, and Stegman does a wonderful job making it feel like Alaska. His attention to detail means we get a tremendous splash page to end issue #1 and a very trippy issue #5, when Kwannon and Quentin go into the mind of a mutant the team rescued in San Francisco. He’s also quite good at character reactions, as whenever the town police chief shows up and is confronted with things beyond her imagination. I do wish Stegman could do more work on the book, but such is life. Although, Diaz has turned out to be a good back-up, even though he too can’t seem to keep up as well as I’d like. He’s not as cartoony as Stegman, and his line work is a bit lighter, so it paradoxically looks a bit less “realistic” than Stegman’s, but he has good command of the action (which is, of course, necessary in a superhero book) and his storytelling is solid. He’s gotten better, too, which is nice — his line has gotten a bit stronger, so his figure work feels more solid (which could be Parsons’s inks, I suppose, but Parsons inked him in the early issues, too, when his lines weren’t as heavy), and he’s gotten a bit bolder, too, which is nice. In issue #13, Quentin battles Xavier in Chuck’s mind, and Diaz uses much softer lines and more hatching, and Parsons inks it much more softly, too, and the result is a gorgeous contrast to the “real” world. Stegman has drawn 7 issues (plus maybe one other, as he does half of two others), Diaz has drawn 9, but the other artists are just kind of there. In issue #15, Villa’s style is a bit like Stegman’s, and it’s somewhat seamless. Vicentini’s line work is more angular, and it’s fine but unspectacular. Laiso’s art is a bit too smooth and sterile, and I do hope it doesn’t come back. It’s frustrating, because Marvel manages to get two artists — Stegman and Diaz — who seem to have similar styles and who both know what they’re doing, but they can’t even make sure those two dudes can keep up and their schedule seems haphazard at best. You would think you’d want Stegman on the crossovers — the “Raid on Graymalkin” and the pursuit of Xavier — but he couldn’t finish the second issue of the Graymalkin Raid and he didn’t draw the Xavier manhunt issue (which is where we get Diaz’s very cool rendering of Quentin and Xavier, so perhaps it’s for the best). It’s just frustrating, because while I don’t love shipping this many issues, it does seem that Marvel at least had two artists in place for it … but it still spun a bit out of control. Come on, Marvel!

Meanwhile, MacKay is doing a good job with the story. The overarching plot features a group that is somehow creating mutants — as Kwannon puts it in issue #5, “They’ve figured out how to force-activate x-genes in abducted flatscans,” which is kind of rude, if you ask me. One of the only nice things about Marvel flooding the market is that MacKay can actually go through a lot of plot churn yet still give us “slower” issues, so we get some good development of, say, Cyclops as a team leader — he’s still a dick, but MacKay writes him as utterly ruthless as he outthinks a lot of the bad guys so far in this run. The composition of the team is decent — Kwannon, Quentin Quire, Temper, Magik, Juggernaut, with Magneto and Beast providing back-up and Glob cooking … yes, that’s literally all he does — and MacKay does a good job with the interpersonal dynamics. Magneto (who’s now called Max for some reason, which I’m sure is stupid) is having issues with his powers, Beast doesn’t know as much because this Henry McCoy was “reset” to an earlier time, so a lot of his knowledge was lost (Jeebus, Fucking Krakoa Nonsense), and the team has taken up residence in a former Sentinel-making factory just to remind the residents of the town that they suck. MacKay does a nice job with the ancillary characters, too, and this feels more like an X-book in that regard, because the mutants actually have to deal with regular humans. Some of the letters are not happy that Fucking Krakoa is no more, but it seems like they might have started with the Mutant Books when Fucking Krakoa started, so they don’t know anything else. This is my kind of X-book, one that puts our mutants in places where they have to deal with prejudice and maybe not punch it all the time. I know that can get stale, hence the initiation of Fucking Krakoa, but that, as we know, was a bridge too far. At least for me. MacKay also has some interesting stories about what it means to be a mutant in the age of social media and how mutants can counter hate speech, and it feels far more grounded than whatever Hickman and his cohorts were doing. There’s a bit of inter-team rivalry when this group heads to Graymalkin Prison and runs into Rogue’s Uncanny group, but we’ll get to that. Issue #5, which is deliberately evocative of Morrison’s “‘Nuff Said” issue (#121), is very neat, as Kwannon and Quentin go inside a comatose person’s head to find out whet he knows about the new, sinister group that’s messing with adult non-mutants. Issue #3, in which Cyclops sits down with a government representative while said representative sends a team into the factory to take out the team, is also very cool. MacKay even does another old-school thing — takes issues to check in on mutants not affiliated with anyone, as in the latest issue (#19), which is all about Doug Ramsey and Warlock and Doug’s … wife? Sure, why not. It’s a standalone story that will, I’m sure, tie in eventually with the rest of the group, and it’s neat to see, because while it’s part of the plot churn, MacKay does focus on the people involved and what they’re feeling rather than just put them through their paces. It’s nifty.

I know I’m an oldster, but I’m just enjoying this more grounded take on the X-Men. You can have your weird islands and resurrection pods and Martian civilizations. I’ll take Cyclops laying down the law to a douchebag from the government any day, thanks very much!

Finally (although we still have a few odds ‘n’ ends after this), we get to the granddaddy of them all, Uncanny X-Men #1-18 (but really what Marvel should have numbered #701-718 — cowards!), which began in August. Gail Simone feels like a bit of a surprising choice to write this, not because she’s a bad writer, but she’s been a DC person for so long, and I wasn’t sure if Marvel remembered when she used to write for them. David Marquez is the “regular” artist, which means he draws issues #1-5, part of 7, 13-15, and part of 16, while Javier Garrón (issues #6, 8, 11), Edgar Salazar (part of issue #7), Andrei Bressan (issues #9-10), Gavin Guidry (issue #12), and Luciano Vecchio (part of issue #16 and all of 17-18) fill in, Matthew Wilson is the colorist for issues #1-16, Rachelle Rosenberg is the colorist on issues #17-18, and Clayton Cowles, the lettering fiend, does them all. Once again, I don’t love that Marvel floods the market, and the artistic merry-go-round doesn’t seem to be as puzzled out as the one on X-Men, but, I mean, Garrón and Bressan are superb, Guidry’s art is a bit reminiscent of Chris Samnee’s, and while Vecchio seems to take some panels off, when he’s on, he has a Nick Bradshaw/Art Adams vibe going on, which ain’t bad. So … not too bad?

Anyway, this comic stars Rogue and Jubilee, two of my favorite comic book characters EVAH, so I must like it, right? Well, it also stars Gambit, one of my least favorite comic book characters EVAH, so that tempers it a bit. I’ve written before that if Kelly Thompson and John Layman, two of my favorite writers, can’t make me like Gambit, it’s going to be hard for anyone, and while Simone is a good writer and gives it the old college try, Gambit’s still a lousy character. He is, however, a different lousy character from when he first showed up — back then he was lousy because he was kind of a douchier Wolverine, and now, writers have tried to counter that by making him the dude sitting on the front porch wearing a cable-knit sweater dispensing wise bon mots and caring about everyone. Blech to both versions.

Anyway, Simone plunks Rogue, Gambit, Wolverine, Nightcrawler (eventually), and Jubilee (eventually) down in rural Louisiana and has them hang out in a home where Gambit stayed for a time when he was a child, and like every other place in the Marvel Universe, there’s some creepy stuff about it that we don’t discover until much later. Four kids — Sofia (Jitter), Valentin (Ransom — hey, he’s Sunspot’s cousin!), Hotoru (Deathdream), and Becca (Calico) — show up asking for help because something is hunting them. Rogue, the leader of this team, takes them in, and we’re off! Simone is doing a lot with the Graymalkin Prison stuff, as the warden — Corina Ellis — is a major character in this book, and at the beginning of the book, she’s in an uneasy alliance with a horrific creature called Sarah Gaunt … which is her actual name, maybe? Anyway, Sarah has a talent for finding mutants and corrupting them in some way, maybe? Sarah is the Big Bad of the first arc, which is pretty terrific — it becomes almost like a horror comic at times, as Marquez draws Sarah as a very freaky monster and there’s a lot of weird things going bump in the night. Even after they take care of Sarah, she doesn’t leave the book, because she’s still important, as is the Graymalkin stuff — the scientists there design robot dogs that hunt mutants, and we get a very tense story where they attack the new kids at the mall in New Orleans. Simone also does a quasi-horror story with “The Dark Artery” (issues #13-16), which is about the secrets of the homestead where the team is staying. It’s supposed to be a mini-epic, but it doesn’t hit as hard as it could, and I’m not sure why. Simone grounds it in history, and Man-Thing is there, and it certainly works, but it doesn’t feel as important as Simone seems to want it to be. The issues right after those, in which someone makes a movie about a mutant serial killer and the actress playing the part turns out to be a lot more evil than you’d expect, feels a bit more sinister than whatever’s going on underneath the house. But that’s just me. What the heck do I know?

Simone, of course, has written one the best team books of the 21st century, so it’s not surprising she does a good job with this. Some people are complaining in the letters pages that she’s focusing on the new characters too much, but I disagree — she seems to strike a pretty good balance with all the characters, and anyway, we know the long-standing characters, so we need to know more about the new ones. There’s still plenty to learn, too — we’ve only seen glimpses of their pre-X lives, and only Becca has gotten a little more than even that. She’s doing a nice job with the characters, too — the new ones like and respect the older ones, but they’re still kids and not always deferential, which makes things a bit more fun. They all have different personalities, which makes reading their reactions to things interesting. It’s also fun to see Jubilee — who still can’t be that old in the Marvel Universe — acting like a grown-up. Jubilee’s been through it, man. There’s a lot of weird stuff — the first thing Rogue, Gambit, and Wolverine fight in the book is a dragon, and in that fight, Gambit ends up in possession of an eye of Agamotto, so there’s that — but what makes the book work so well is the non-fighting stuff, which isn’t a surprise. Kurt saves a kid from getting smeared by a bus early on in the book, and the grateful mother — who obviously digs the cut of Kurt’s jib — begins a campaign to welcome mutants to New Orleans, making it a “sanctuary city” for mutants, which leads to the carnival in issue #18 and yet another chance for the X-Men to show how heroic they are when they rescue a bunch of people from a burning hospital (at which Cyclops and some random mutants — Guido, for one — show up and what’s up with that?). Meanwhile, when the robot dogs attack the kids, Corina Ellis is peeved because it will be bad PR, and she’s right, especially when the kids survive and save a bunch of humans. There’s a good amount of sitting around, which is nice, as Simone makes sure these people actually talk to each other more than most superhero books allow their characters to talk to each other. It’s the tiniest bit saccharine — everyone says they love everyone else a bit too much and bit too quickly, it seems — but I’ll still take it over constant punching. It’s refreshing that Simone, as well as some of the other X-writers, aren’t wallowing in doom ‘n’ gloom and are trying to show that #NotAllHumans hate mutants. It would be nice if that can continue.

As I noted above, the art is mostly excellent. Marquez has a nice, brushed style that moves well, so his fight scenes are quite good, and because he uses a brush so nicely, he works well with the more horror-esque elements of the book, as his creepy characters look a bit out of phase with reality. His Sarah Gaunt, for instance, is terrifying, which is neat. Garrón is more precise, and his details are superb — Marquez puts the X-Men in a more natural, somewhat shifting environment, but Garrón grounds them a bit in a more solid world. I was very keen to see Bressan working on a top-level book, because I’ve loved his work for years, and he does excellent work here — he’s almost a cross between Marquez and Garrón, as he’s not as precise as the latter but he’s more detailed than the former. Vecchio’s work is a bit strange, as sometimes, his figure work in panels is a bit lazy, looking like a mid-level manga artist, but when he draws “Mutina,” for instance (the mutant serial killer in the movie who also exists in the real world), he really goes all out, making her both a bit adorable yet scary as fuck? It’s an odd thing, but Vecchio generally does a decent job (and it’s weird, because his work on Storm seems a bit looser and better, and I’m not sure why it looks so much different from this). This and X-Men are the top-level mutant books, so it’s not surprising that Marvel would try to make sure the artists on them know what they’re doing.

I’m really enjoying this and X-Men. Overall, the “From the Ashes” relaunch has been pretty good (I don’t know how sales are; I’m just talking quality), and it’s nice to be reminded why I fell in love with these characters so many years ago. I just hope Marvel can keep it up!

Now, I want to take a look at the two crossovers we’ve seen so far, plus another one-shot and the recent, alternate reality stuff. First up: the “Raid on Graymalkin” that ran through X-Men #8-9 (parts 1 and 3) and Uncanny X-Men #7-8 (parts 2 and 4). This short story stems from the existence of the Graymalkin Prison, of course, but also because in the issues that directly precede it, Corina Ellis has her soldiers take Hank from Alaska and Becca and Jubilee from Louisiana. Why she does this is a bit unclear, but it provides a pretext for both teams to go in and get their people. Scott wants his X-Men to go in alone and tries to get Rogue to stand down (he sees his group as the more “professional” team), but of course she doesn’t listen, and the two sides come into conflict. The first 1½ issues are interesting, as Mackay and Simone run a bit parallel in time (it doesn’t seem to quite match up, but it’s close enough), and after the two teams join up halfway through Uncanny #7, they’re fighting against “Scurvy,” a villain who can manipulate emotions and knows some things about mutants that even Xavier didn’t know. Nightcrawler and Psylocke get Xavier out of his cell to help fight Scurvy, and the entire thing ends a bit anticlimactically, as Xavier goes back to his cell and Ellis keeps operating, even though the X-Men know she has Xavier and other mutants imprisoned and is using mutants — Siryn being one of them — as a strike force, and it’s clear they’ve been fucked with somehow into going along with her. Rogue is very unhappy about leaving everyone behind, and Scott’s attempts to convince her that it’s not a bad thing fall on deaf ears. There’s some nice information in the crossover about what’s really going on at Graymalkin Prison, and it’s a decent fight between good guys (we always love that, don’t we?), but it does feel a bit empty when you boil it right down. Still, as part of the larger ongoing, it’s not bad.

The “X-Manhunt” crossover is even stranger. This ran through the X-titles in March (except for Exceptional, because it seems like they couldn’t figure out how to include it, so it got a banner claiming it was part of the tie-in but only because Iceman mentions that Xavier escaped), beginning with Uncanny #11, then moving to NYX #9, Storm #6, X-Men #13, X-Factor #8, X-Force #9, and finally the one-shot X-Manhunt: Omega. In Uncanny X-Men #11, Xavier senses that his daughter — the Shi’ar empress, of course — is being threatened by rebels, and he feels bad. He’s still in prison, of course, so he manages an escape, and then tries for the rest of the crossover to leave Earth. He manages to resurrect Lilandra and takes off, leaving Earth behind. It’s fine — it’s not the first time he’s done this, and I guess it ties into Hickman’s Imperial, which I care nothing about. Xavier has a tumor in his brain that’s messing with him, as we discovered earlier in the relaunch, so he needs to get that out, and very few mutants trust him, so he has to be surreptitious. It’s … fine, I guess, but it does feel like an excuse to have the various mutant groups interact with each other, and that’s all. Xavier’s quest could take far less time if he just trusted people more, but Cyclops has majorly turned against him, so that’s a problem. Some of the issues ignore the problem for much of the issue, as in X-Force, where Tessa goes off and helps Xavier while the rest of the team fights something else, and NYX, where Xavier recruits Anole and Kamala for a mission that distracts them while he gets what he really wants. In X-Manhunt: Omega, he basically just tells them what’s happening, and while Scott is not completely wrong that if they let him leave, Ellis will come after all of them and whatever alliances they’ve built with humans will fall apart, it does feel like a bit of weak reasoning from Cyclops. It’s a bit more fun than most old-school X-crossovers, because those generally featured a lot more ridiculous plot contrivances and useless fighting, but it also feels a bit needlessly stretched out. Still, it’s fun to see a lot of the characters seeing each other again, even if it’s occasionally antagonistic.

There has been some newer stuff, too, that I haven’t mentioned yet. Last month, the Hellfire Vigil book came out, as Marvel seems committed to doing these things every year. This time around, they’re memorializing FUCKING KRAKOA, and it’s a decent enough comic. A bunch of characters who don’t usually see each other get to hang out, which is always nice to see. Each X-writer takes a section, and some of them hint around at things to come while others just have fun with the characters. At the end, the Faux X-Men from MacKay’s book make an announcement, which casts a bit of a pall over everything, and during the proceedings, Dazzler is simply taken away by the Graymalkin Evil Dudes and nobody really cares? It happens right in the middle of her concert, and she asks everyone not to fight to free her. This Graymalkin thing is very weird — how does the warden decide which mutants to take, and why doesn’t anyone — besides Rogue — seem to care? It’s very weird. Still, it’s a pretty good issue — it’s nice to see everyone having a good time, for about 99% of the issue — and we’ll see where the writing committee goes with some of the plot points!

Marvel decided to give Emma Frost a series, the first two issues of which have shipped. It’s by Amy Chu, Andrea Di Vito, Antonio Fabela, and Ariana Maher, and I assume it’s a mini-series, although I’m not sure. The reason I assume it’s a mini-series is because, like the Rogue one, it’s set in the past, “sometime after X-Men (1963) #138,” as the credits page helpfully tells us. Basically, there’s a traitor inside the Hellfire Club who appears to be helping the X-Men, but at the end of issue #2, we find out the traitor might just be working against Emma for Sebastian Shaw, who wants to get rid of her. So far, it’s fine, but nothing special. Di Vito’s art is pretty good — it’s a bit rougher than I remember, and it works a bit better. He does get to draw a cool guy with octopus tentacles, so that’s neat. I suppose I will see it through, but it’s not terribly interesting as of yet.

As it’s the 50th anniversary of the “new” X-Men, Marvel has been doing a series of one-shots in which Kamala Khan is deposited in key moments in the history of the X-Men and alternate dimensions of the team. In the first, she ended up in 1975, basically, just the new team is about to head for Krakoa. Then she jumped to when Jean was going all Dark Phoenix, then to the Age of Apocalypse, then to the House of M time. The final one, which hasn’t come out yet, seems like it’s going to send her back to 1975. The main story (each issue has back-up stories) is by Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly, and they’re having a lot of fun telling a wildly convoluted story, in which Legion — not Daniel Haller, because apparently we can separate the powers from the person these days — is trying to accumulate power for … some reason? It’s kind of generic — basically, they want to kill everyone. Of course. Anyway, Kamala gets thrown into the timestream by Bruno, of all people, and she ends up linked to Legion, and she’s the only one who can stop them!!!!! It’s ridiculous, but goofy fun — Lanzing and Kelly use the stupid “Let’s bring the teen X-Men into the present!” story from some years ago as a kind of important plot point — and Marvel got some good artists to draw it. Adam Kubert (with Laura Martin on colors) draws the first one, and he has a blast with it, turning a few pages on their sides so it feels like a 1990s book (even though it’s technically a “1970s” book). Rod Reis draws a beautiful “Dark Phoenix” issue, C.F. Villa and Rafael Loureiro (with Edgar Delgado coloring) do a nice job with the “AoA” issue, and Francesco Manna (with Delgado again on colors) does a good job with the “House of M” issue (Clayton Cowles, of course, letters it all). Of the back-up stories, the one in the first issue — by Al Ewing and Sara Pichelli — is the most interesting, as Ewing introduces a mutant that Xavier tries to recruit to go to Krakoa, but she ain’t having none of it. I do hope we’ll see more of her. The others are fine, but nothing special. The final issue of this epic should be out next week, I think, so we’ll see what’s what!

Finally, Marvel is gearing up for the 30th anniversary of the Age of Apocalypse (we’re a little late, as it kicked off at the beginning of 1995, but whatever), and we got a teaser with Age of Revelation #0. In it, Xorn walks the Earth (like Caine from Kung Fu!) and narrates about what’s going on. MacKay is writing this, and I was a bit bummed that Xorn tells us, basically, that Doug Ramsey is the new “Apocalypse.” We saw Doug, as I noted, in the most recent issue of X-Men, and MacKay apparently brought him back with a glow-up so he could be a big-ass super-villain. He claims in the back that Doug “represented a whole new faction in the post-[FUCKING] Krakoa world, and I was vocal in my opinion that we needed to pick that thread and run with it.” Sure, that’s fine, but why does he have to be a megalomaniacal villain? Anyway, the “new” titles that are coming out of this — it’s going to be just like AoA, I guess, in that the books are going to stop and become other things, except this time a lot of the Marvel Universe will be part of it — sound neat, just from their titles, and I might check some of them out, but I’m still a bit bummed. I will say that this is the best Humberto Ramos art that I’ve seen in forever — it’s much less cartoony and ridiculous than it used to be, and I don’t know what the hell is going on. If this is how he’s drawing going forward, I’ll have to rethink my soft boycott of his art!

Ok, that’s all the books. Let’s check out some covers! I’ve posted some of them, and I’ve held some back because they’re nifty variants that deserve a bigger spotlight. I will say, I still love old-school covers that tried hard to sell the books, but artists do some amazing cover work these days, so I’m torn. I’m especially torn over the covers of the solo series, because of the sameness — mostly just the characters posing, which can get boring. But let’s check out the best “regular” covers (building up to the best, which I know is backward, but what the hell), and then some variants!

Greg Land, X-Factor #9:

Yep, it’s a Greg Land cover! Most of Land’s X-Factor covers are, well, Greg Land-ish, which I don’t love, and while this one is also very Greg Land-ish, I dig the pose and the ferocity on Angel’s face. It helps that he’s not moving!

Sara Pichelli, NYX #5:

Most of the covers of NYX were just solid, but Pichelli’s for issue #5 stands out, as Sophie is confronted by the rest of the Cuckoos. It’s not too scary, but it is disturbing, and the fact that they all look alike makes it just a bit weirder.

David Marquez, Uncanny X-Men #9:

Not the last time we’ll see one of Marquez’s superb covers, this one has a very good sense of tension and fear, as the new kids are stalked by the robot dogs. Bonus points for the lettering!

Declan Shalvey, Mystique #2:

The sense of doom on this cover is excellent, as Avalanche is about the engulf Mystique, who seems nonchalant about the whole thing. Just a nice composition for a cover.

David Marquez, Uncanny X-Men #5:

I mean, the cats make it, don’t they?

Mahmud Asrar, Psylocke #6:

This series and Magik suffer the most from the “just poses” cover theme, but where Magik has J. Scott Campbell (who’s fine, and more popular), Psylocke has Asrar, who’s a much better artist. The darkness of this cover really makes it pop.

Yasmine Putri, Phoenix #6-7:

I dig the linked covers, as Jean turns the tables on Thanos. More fun Putri coming!

Javier Garrón, Concert of Champions:

The issue might be kind of dull, but Garrón’s fun-as-heck cover for Concert of Champions is just, well, fun as heck. Beautifully drawn, of course, and just laid out superbly.

Elena Casagrande, Wolverine #6:

This is both a goofy and scary cover, which is a hard trick to pull off. Casagrande does a nice job with it, with Logan’s face really making the drawing work.

Carmen Carnero, Exceptional X-Men #10:

This is a bit unusual, as it doesn’t look like the other covers or Canero’s interior work. It is quite cool, though — the contrast with the brushwork on Sinister and the harder lines on Emma work well.

David Marquez, Uncanny X-Men #6:

The new kids head off to school, and we get this charming cover from Marquez, which is not only fun, but shows a slightly different style from him, which is nifty to see.

Yasmine Putri, Phoenix #9:

I cut off a bit of this on the scanner, but it doesn’t take away from the power on display on this cover, as Jean breaks through the chains with what looks like righteous rage. You can just feel the metal pop!

Ryan Stegman, X-Men #9:

The composition of this is superb, as Psylocke faces off against Wolverine, whose claws are so large so that we become a bit nervous for Kwannon but also because they look like prison bars, which fits in with the whole “Raid on Graymalkin” thing. Just a really well-done cover.

Carmen Carnero, Exceptional X-Men #2:

I dig me some negative space, and Carnero uses it to really good effect here. Nice work making Thao — who can do sort of what Kitty does — freaked out, because even though she’s a tough person in the book, she’s still not used to her powers.

Yasmine Putri, Phoenix #3:

Another really well-composed cover, with Phoenix and the Black Order poised to do some damage to each other. The bad guys are higher up, implying that they have the upper hand, but Putri also makes sure to show Phoenix rising upward very “fast,” so that it’s clear the evil is about to be shattered. The coloring is terrific, as well, with the nice split between light and dark.

Ryan Stegman, X-Men #14:

Another terrific Stegman cover, which also reflects some of the action inside — imagine that! The perspective is great, as Quentin falls away from us amid all the debris, and his broken glasses, looming large, are a symbol of the violence wreaked upon him — the cracked lenses imply something bad happening to his eyes, which is always a disturbing image. It’s just a neat image.

Mahmud Asrar, Psylocke #4:

Another pose, but this one is far more disturbing, as our hero is mesmerized and covered in butterflies, which, sure, are pretty, but also kind of creepy?

Carmen Carnero, Exceptional X-Men #7:

Some people complained in the letter column that this gave away that the bad guy was Mr. Sinister, and yes, it does, but what a cool image. The shadow is terrific, and the “devil on the shoulder” thing is really done well. It’s ok, people, we knew he was evil already!

Ryan Stegman, X-Men #10:

Another wonderfully composed cover, with Cyclops like a pillar of strength and his eye-beam scything across the page and the bad guys. I love that the logo is obscured, too.

Ryan Stegman, X-Men #5:

Stegman is killing it on these covers, and his best is this one for the “Psylocke/Kid Omega inside someone’s mind” issue. All kinds of weird-ass stuff, and the eye looking down on them really ties it all together.

Mahmud Asrar, Psylocke #8:

The last Asrar cover is this extremely creepy one of Kwannon battling it out with Betsy, which ties into the interiors, so that’s nice. It’s just a wonderfully horrific drawing.

The best three all come from Marquez, who is killing it on the Uncanny covers even more than Stegman on the X-Men covers, which is a nice feat. Up first is issue #17:

The movie poster theme is great, and the coloring is superb. The mutants are all bothered by the serial-killing mutant in the movie, but I ask you: Who wouldn’t go see this?

Here’s issue #12:

Another amazing drawing, as Gambit faces some demons from his past. As much as I dislike Remy, this is a great cover. The mood is amazing, and I love how his reflection shows a different time in his life. Really nicely done.

The best non-variant cover, to me, is issue #4:

Just a gorgeous drawing — effectively scary, as Rogue fights the monster in the darkness all alone, as her comrades lies dead at her feet (I mean, they’re not really dead, but that shouldn’t stop a good cover!). Sarah Gaunt is a cool villain, and Marquez really leans into her creepiness. It’s an excellent lure for consumers — what the heck is going on with the X-Men, they want to know!

There have been a lot of variants, and unlike DC, Marvel tends to charge the same amount for the variants, so I picked some of them up. Let’s take a look!

First up, with have the Scott Koblish “Every X-Character Ever” covers, the first of which he did for X-Men #35, the final FUCKING KRAKOA issue. He did three more — one each for the three “main” books — X-Men, Uncanny, and Exceptional — and I bought them all:

Look at those glorious, ridiculous things!

For the first time in a very long time (since, probably, Jim Lee’s X-Men #1), I bought multiple copies of the same comic, because I really wanted that Koblish Uncanny X-Men cover, but they also had this amazing one by John Tyler Christopher:

How could I resist?!?!?!? The answer, good reader: I could not.

There were some Peach Momoko variants that I rather liked. I don’t love Momoko’s writing, but she’s a very good artist — here are the covers of Phoenix #1, NYX #9, Uncanny X-Men #11, Wolverine #4, and X-Men #13:

I got a couple of the Godzilla variants that Marvel did, the first by David Baldeón, the second by Chris Samnee:

I got one of the “Marvel Universe Connecting” variants that Chris Giarusso did:

The Giant-Size issues have had some neat variants. Here are a “Dark Phoenix” one and the “Age of Apocalypse” one, both by Iván Talavera, and a “House of M” one by Martín Cóccolo:

Some of the variants seem to be “Marvel commissioned some famous artists to draw random characters in the hopes they might be a cover someday,” and I got some of those. Here’s Joe Quesada (Phoenix #11), Alex Maleev (Wolverine #5), and Jenny Frison (X-Factor #5). I like how they’re all drawn so that their left side is facing us. Does that mean that all those artists are right-handed?!?!?

We also have the “Greg likes these characters, so the covers might not be superb, but who cares?” section, which includes some seemingly random characters that might have been simply commissioned by Marvel in the hopes they could be used as covers. There are some others farther down, but those are somewhat nicer drawings, so I included them in my favorites. Here we have AKA drawing Jubilee for Uncanny X-Men #16, Greg Land “drawing” Rogue for Uncanny X-Men #18, Mark Brooks giving us Rachel and Betsy in the “Animated Style” covers that Marvel did back in February for X-Force #8, Oliver Vatine with a “Disco Dazzler” variant of Psylocke for X-Men #2 (not the Psylocke I dig, but close enough, plus it’s a “Disco Dazzler” variant!!!!), an inexplicable Rogue drawing by J. Scott Campbell for X-Men #3, a book she does not appear in, mind you, and Joëlle Jones’s Psylocke for X-Men #7. None of these are superb covers, but I just like the characters!

My favorites, again going from bottom to top (with the acknowledgement that the Jubilee one I posted above is the absolute greatest!!!!!):

InHyuk Lee, NYX #4:

I just like the coolness of the cover, from the colors, which feel ice-cold (not a bad way to go, given the Cuckoos themselves and that they were protégés of Emma Frost) to Sophie’s IDGAF attitude. It’s a nifty drawing.

Junggeun Yoon, Exceptional X-Men #11:

Speaking of Emma, here’s another neat icy-chill cover, with Iceman and Emma, while Kitty wears a cool color. Her hand coming out of Emma’s thigh is what elevates it, though.

Nicoletta Baldari, Phoenix #2:

The exact opposite, a very hot cover, and a nice contrast the more technically precise covers of Yasmine Putri on this book, as Baldari goes for a kinder and quirkier Jean, which works nicely.

Nogi San, Wolverine #8:

Unlike some of these variants that are just characters posing, San gives us a tense, ready-for-action cover, and the brutality of it adds to its effectiveness. Nice work hiding an “X” on the cover, too.

Joshua Swaby, X-Men #11:

This is a bit boring, I know, but man, it’s a nice painting, and the demons surrounding Illyana are good and weird!

Frany, NYX #6:

I don’t know anything more about Kiden than what I learned in this iteration of NYX (which wasn’t too much), but that’s a cool drawing.

Kael Ngu, Sentinels #3:

I dig that Magneto is sitting on a throne made out of a Sentinel’s hand. It’s just a nifty image.

Luciano Vecchio, Uncanny X-Men #14:

This is Henrietta, the new character Simone introduced in the “Dark Artery” story arc (or, I guess, Lady Henrietta if you’re nasty), and it’s a cool design. It’s a bit of a spoiler, since she doesn’t actually appear like this until the end of this issue and the cover was out for a few months prior to it, but, you know, whatever.

Luciano Vecchio, Dazzler #4:

Hey, another one by Vecchio! This could easily be in the section above that features my favorite characters, but I just dig this drawing a bit more than those. Alison just looks awesome.

Michael Cho, Phoenix #13:

In July, several of the X-books featured “Retrovision” covers — artists did them like they were old-school covers, and they all rocked. The fact that Cho is the least good of them means something, because Cho is awesome. The Kirby vibe to this cover is pretty keen, though.

Ben Harvey, Psylocke #5:

Again, technically this Psylocke isn’t one of my favorite characters, but I still could have included this in that section. I just dig Harvey channeling Daniel Brereton here, so it goes into this section!

Karen S. Darboe, Storm #4:

This is just a gorgeous drawing of Ororo — I dig the kind of Gustav Klimt/Afro-Futurism vibe of the whole thing.

Joe Quinones, Magik #7:

Another “Retrovision” cover, and Quinones really nails the Paul Smith-ness of it all, and who doesn’t love faux-raggedness around the edges?

Chris Allen, X-Force #1:

Deadpool doesn’t always work in large doses, but in small doses — like on covers! — he’s good as a chaos agent, and Allen drops him into the X-Men’s raid on the Hellfire Club during the Dark Phoenix Saga, and the results are hilarious. I just like how Wolverine doesn’t care that Deadpool is there — he’s still going to cut some people up!

Pablo Villalobos, Psylocke #3:

This is just a terrific and trippy drawing, what with the background and Kwannon using all those Jedi mind tricks on us and shit. It’s just nicely done.

Jacob Chabot, X-Men #17:

My retailer actually put this aside for me because he knows how much I like Phineas and Ferb, so that was nice of him. And come on, Candace as Magik fighting off demons that look like Ducky Momo rulez. Yes, with a “Z”!

Benjamin Su, Psylocke #9:

Another “Retrovision” cover, and I love all the uses of “action” on the cover, because it does feel like Marvel and DC used to really go overboard with selling how much action was inside. Again, you have to dig the fake ragged-ness!

Scott Koblish, X-Men #19:

There’s honestly nothing I don’t love about this cover. NO NOTES!!!!

Juan Ferreyra, X-Force #4:

I mean, come on — did you think Ferreyra would draw a cover that I wouldn’t think is the best one? Look at how cool this thing is — Man-Thing in the swamp as the team walks over him, his claws reaching for Forge, everyone looking around because they know something just ain’t right, the perspective of the entire cover … Ferreyra just fucking gets it.

So, what have we learned? Well, I read somewhere that Tom Brevoort simply wanted to throw a bunch of things at the wall to see what stuck, and while I don’t agree with that proposition, it’s his sandbox, so whatever. I would have liked a slower roll-out, maybe build some of the minor characters up in the main titles a bit — we got a single issue devoted entirely to Doug Ramsey, so why not some others — and do some “back-door pilots,” so to speak, before launching a bunch of these. I know that’s not how Marvel does things, but it’s frustrating when a book with oddball potential like X-Force gets lost in the haze, especially when it’s better than some of the others that are still going, ones that simply have more popular characters attached to them (Storm and Phoenix, I’m looking at you). Oh well. Since the wave of cancellations, only Emma Frost has launched and that’s a retroactive mini-series, so we’ll see what happens after this Big Event that Doug Ramsey portends and if Marvel will launch anything new when that concludes. Who knows what they’re cooking up?

To recap: Sentinels is the best mini-series, while the others are just fine. Of the canceled books, NYX was the best, X-Force was interesting, and X-Factor was disappointing. Of the remaining books, it’s not surprising that Uncanny X-Men, X-Men, and Exceptional X-Men are the best, as they’re the ones that Marvel puts the best talent on, but what is surprising, at least to me, is how good they are, because they really are, especially the two flagship titles (Exceptional is just a bit under them). Of the second-tier books, I guess Magik is the best one, with Psylocke a bit under that, and then the rest. None of them, mind you, are really great, but none are terrible, either.

So, that’s all she wrote. I’m going to keep buying the main books, and I’ll think about some of the minor ones. Back when I wrote about the final issue of the FUCKING KRAKOA DEBACLE, I mentioned that I didn’t have high hopes for the relaunch, despite some of the talent they were bringing onboard. However, this has been a pleasant surprise. The books feel like old-school X-books, but they’re also dealing with a different and slightly more nuanced world. It’s been pretty keen, and I hope Marvel and the creators can keep it up. I don’t know how the sales are, but in terms of quality, this has been a pretty darned good relaunch.

Sorry for taking up so much of your time! This got a bit out of hand, didn’t it?!?!? I guess it wouldn’t be me if I didn’t go on a bit! Have a nice day!