For Your Life

“X of Swords: Chapter 14”
Marauders #15
Written by Gerry Duggan and Benjamin Percy
Art by Stefano Caselli
Color art by Edgar Delgado

“X of Swords: Chapter 15”
Excalibur #14
Written by Tini Howard 
Art by Phil Noto

“X of Swords: Chapter 16”
Wolverine #7
Written by Benjamin Percy and Gerry Duggan
Art by Joshua Cassara
Color art by Guru-eFX

And now the story gets a little weird! But of course, “weird” is a human word…

• Marauders picks up on last week’s cliffhanger in the most jarring way possible, zooming ahead to the aftermath of Wolverine murdering Saturnyne – the inevitable conquest of Krakoa and the rest of Earth by the forces of Arakko and Amenth. But of course Saturnyne is seemingly omnipotent in her realm, and so she’s only just messing with Wolverine and showing him the actual stakes of the situation. This all supports the notion that it’s in Saturnyne’s interest to defeat the Arakkii and flush the influence of Amenth out of Otherworld lest they inevitably conquer the rest of her domain, but Saturnyne’s actions over the course of three issues complicate matters further by capriciously rigging the contests against the Krakoan swordbearers in increasingly absurd ways. She’s playing a game, but it’s hard to tell exactly what it is. 

• Marauders #15 continues on from last week’s issue in further developing the characters from Arakko at the banquet before the contest. The White Sword’s tension with the family of Apocalypse and Genesis is highlighted by his utter disgust for War attempting to poison her opponents at the parley, while Redroot and Death ponder the ways living in a far less horrific world has made the X-Men “weak and soft.” It’s remarkable how familiar these characters and their milieu have become over the past few weeks – it’s all so rich that it would be a shame to see some of them go at the end of this story. 

• We get our first glimpse of Death’s mutant power as he murders a servant with a glare at the banquet. This scene is handled very well by Stefano Caselli, who paces it very nicely and conveys how effortless and meaningless this gesture is for Death. It’s interesting that this power is only a minor variation on that of Gorgon, who also hides his eyes to hold back his own version of a death gaze. (And of course this carries over to Cyclops, though he’s not in this story.) 

• Isca the Unbeaten is further developed in both Marauders and Excalibur, in both cases suggesting that she’s a decent person who feels inclined to spare her opponents the inevitability of her victory. It’s increasingly obvious Isca is going to be hanging around the X-Men for a while after this, and I welcome it. She has so much potential, and the concept and design of her is so strong.

• Excalibur #14 begins the contest phase of the storyline and immediately upends all expectations by giving us an abrupt anticlimax in the duel of Betsy Braddock and Isca and then a forced marriage rather than a battle. Betsy’s apparent death in her fight with Isca is strange and abstract, and also unrelated to any power we know Isca to possess besides that she wins any battle she’s in, so it seems very likely whatever happened to her is the intervention of Saturnyne’s magic or perhaps her brother Jamie’s reality-warping power. 

• The forced marriage of Cypher and Bei the Blood Moon is a wild curveball, but makes sense if Saturnyne’s true goal is to weed out the Amenthi influence on the Arakkii and get the Krakoans and Arrakkii on the same page – i.e., purging Amenth from Otherworld. This sequence is a lot of fun, and I love that Bei is able to “speak” in a way that is intuitively comprehensible to everyone else but is by technicality indecipherable to him as a result of his power. So of course he’s fascinated by Bei, and though Bei’s thoughts on the matter are opaque she seems pretty enthusiastic about marrying – and violently protecting – this cute little golden-hearted dork. But still, as amusing as it is for this tall warrior woman to embrace the notion of marrying him, it’s hard to grasp why given the limited information we have about her life. 

• The Wolverine issue pushes the absurdity of Saturnyne’s competition to another level, first by making Magik’s battle against the monstrous Pogg Ur-Pogg an arm wrestling match she cannot possibly win, and then by having Wolverine kill Summoner in the surreal realm of Blightspoke and having the point go to Arakko because they were told it was a fight to the death and Summoner was the one to die. Then Wolverine is roped into another duel as a result of the agreement he made with Solem off-panel earlier in the story, and when Wolverine defeats War in battle, the point also goes to Arakko. Saturnyne is plainly rigging the contest against Krakoa… but why exactly? It makes sense for her to want to mess with Wolverine and Betsy specifically, but what is she actually up to? I suppose we’ll get that reveal next week. 

Truth

“X of Swords: Chapter 12”
X-Men #14
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Art by Leinil Francis Yu with Mahmud Asrar
Color art by Sunny Gho

“X of Swords: Chapter 13”
Marauders #14
Written by Gerry Duggan and Benjamin Percy
Art by Stefano Caselli
Color art by Edgar Delgado

• I was wondering how Mahmud Asrar was handling the deadline crunch of seemingly getting put on a third of last week’s Stasis special while being assigned to draw four other issues in the crossover, but now we know the answer: He only drew the framing sequences of this issue, and the majority of the issue is made up of repurposed Leinil Francis Yu pages from X-Men #12. Jonathan Hickman has made use of the old “reuse the art” trick before, but this is a particularly bold move, reframing the history of the mutants of Arakko as told to Apocalypse by Summoner from the perspective of Genesis. Whereas Summoner was trying to mislead and trap Apocalypse, Genesis is telling him the hard truth of things. It’s like hearing the same song played in a different, far more melancholy key. 

This creative decision is as artful as it probably was quite pragmatic, though it does make you wonder what the compensation deal was like for Yu in this situation.

• It’s interesting to see where Summoner and Genesis’ accounts differ and converge, with some bits of their stories perfectly aligning on particular panels. The most blatant deviations come towards the end of the story, with Genesis revealing that the demons of Amenth had bred captured mutants to create a hybrid warrior race and the demon conjuring Summoners, and that Genesis indeed killed the prior host of Annihilation and was obligated to wear the Golden Helm of Amenth and command its armies. And though she put this fate off for many years, she eventually gave in and all of Arakko succumbed to Amenth. This led to the conquest of Dryador, and onward to the next goal of taking Krakoa. The final text page of this issue is heartbreaking, spelling out the truth of Arakko: The mutants there are “prisoners in their own land,” oppressed by the Amenthi hybrids, the Summoners, and the Golden Helm. What was previously implied is now very clear – Arakko must be liberated from Amenth and the mutants loyal to Amenth. 

• Isca the Unbeaten plays an interesting role in this story – her power to never lose compels her to side with inevitable victors, which directly led to her sister Genesis being corrupted by Annihilation and Arakko falling to Amenth. She’s a narrative echo of Cylobel from Powers of X, who was bred by Nimrod to betray her fellow mutants, but the notion of people who are genetically compelled to turn against their own is an odd and potentially contentious theme for Hickman’s macro story. However, just as Cylobel turns against Nimrod, it seems very likely that Isca will side with Krakoa by the end of this story. But whereas this is a redemptive act for Cylobel, wouldn’t this just be another convenient turn of events for Isca? And besides, how exactly is surrendering one’s loyalties not a form of being beaten? 

• The “vile schools” of mutant-Amenthi hybrid warriors is another echo of a plot point from Powers of X – the breeding of chimera as a warrior class of mutants by Mister Sinister. And what’s going to be the comic in this storyline to really engage with the vile schools? Hellions, the series featuring Mister Sinister as the lead.

• There’s such a sad poetry in Apocalypse having to face this brutal survivalist ethos he’s been living with for centuries from the perspective of now having Krakoa, and seeing in Krakoa a real possibility of true mutant culture and prosperity that is entirely alien to these Arakki people who can only see a zero sum game of survival or destruction. Genesis sees only softness and weakness in Apocalypse and Krakoa, but she has lost all context for true civilization. The Arakki fight merely to conquer and survive in their miserable lives, but the people of Krakoa have something to truly treasure and protect.  Genesis is blind to the power of that motivation. 

• Marauders #14 is a welcome tonal shift from X-Men #14, reorienting the story back to the perspective of the X-Men swordbearers as they meet their counterparts from Arakko for the first time at a banquet hosted by Saturnyne. Much of the story focuses in on Storm, who carries herself with absolute confidence as she rebuffs the romantic advances of Death, and on Wolverine, who is openly contemptuous of Brian Braddock for not taking advantage of Saturnyne’s love for him to prevent the tournament. There’s also a fantastic little scene in which the Krakoan captains Magik and Gorgon look for weaknesses in their opponents and test Isca, who manages to spook even them. 

• Stefano Caselli noticeably steps up his game for this issue, and really outdoes himself in drawing the surreal banquet hall of the Starlight Citadel. He does some stellar work with body language and facial expressions through the issue, and is particularly impressive in how he conveys so many distinct personalities and interpersonal dynamics in the party scenes. He was very well cast for this sequence of the story. 

• Since starting this site I’ve paid a lot more attention to X-Men comics fandom, and doing that can be like stepping into a weird alternate universe in which everyone dislikes Wolverine and finds him boring. I can’t relate. But this issue, as with most Wolverine comics written by Benjamin Percy, makes a great case for why he’s such a widely beloved character. His brutish no-bullshit attitude is a necessary contrast with the pomp and circumstance of Saturnyne’s banquet and the absurd formality of her contest. When he stabs her on the last page it is a genuinely cathartic moment, even though it’s quite clear there’s no way he’s successful in this tactic. 

Stasis

“X of Swords: Chapter 11”
X of Swords: Stasis
Written by Jonathan Hickman and Tini Howard
Art by Pepe Larraz and Mahmud Asrar
Color art by Marte Gracia

• The issue opens with more dazzling worldbuilding from Pepe Larraz, who establishes the look of five kingdoms within Otherworld in five evocative half-page panels. I’m particularly impressed by his design for the angular and minimalist architecture in the Kingdom of Sevalith throne room and the dusty junk shop vibe of Jim Jaspers’Crooked Market. I also love his designs in Saturnyne’s Starlight Citadel, particularly the quasi Deco aesthetics of the elevator scene at the end of the issue. Larraz’s raw draftsmanship is extraordinary, but the way he pulls in visual reference points from the more stylish ends of art and design history really pushes him over the top – even a lot of his most impressive peers can’t step to the casual sophistication of his post-House of X pages. 

• The parliament scene at the top of the issue further teases the question of what’s going on in Mercator, this time all but confirming that the realm has been taken over by the nearly omnipotent omega mutant Absolon “Mr. M” Mercator. The design of the unnamed representatives of Mercator is very creepy, recalling the sort of faceless enigma figures of Grant Morrison and Richard Case’s Doom Patrol but also ceremonial religious garb, kind of an ultra-goth Catholicism thing. Mercator is a very obscure character that has not been used in many years, so I get the impression Hickman and his writing staff will be reinventing him quite a bit – there’s not really anything from his previous appearances to suggest conquering realms and lording over these sort of solemn weirdos is something he’d be into. But hey, if you’re all-powerful, why not play god? This may turn out to be the most literal exploration of Magneto’s “you have new gods now” annunciation at the start of Hickman’s run. 

• Mahmud Asrar’s pages in this issue depict the gathering of the Swordbearers of Arrako and introduce a few as-yet unseen characters – Redroot the Forest who turns out to be a rough analog to Cypher as the “voice of Arrako,” Pogg Ur-Pogg who’s basically an endlessly greedy crocodile-like monster from Amenth, and the somewhat inscrutable warrior Bei the Blood Moon. The most intriguing scene involves Famine and Death recruiting the ancient White Sword of the Ivory Spire, who has a complicated backstory that puts him at odds with Annihilation and the Horsemen going back centuries. I’m not that invested in the details of this so much as I find it interesting that Saturnyne’s selection of Arraki swordbearers are not at all a united front. Aside from White Sword’s ancient vendetta, there’s also the bad blood between War and Solem, and the non-mutant Pogg Ur-Pogg mostly seems like an agent of chaos who does not care at all about the Arraki mutants. Is this Saturnyne’s way of sabotaging the Arraki champions and giving favor to Krakoa and Avalon? 

• The issue ends on the reveal that the Golden Helm of Annihilation is worn by none other than Apocalypse’s wife Genesis, which isn’t at all surprising – like, I just kinda figured this was the case just from looking at early promo images and the plot has been unsubtly gesturing towards this all along – but it does land with the appropriate emotional impact on Apocalypse, for whom this is indeed a soul-shattering shock. Hickman and Howard continue to make Apocalypse a genuinely empathetic figure, and at this point it’s quite moving to see him process such immense disappointment and betrayal. They’ve succeeded in making this character an underdog and having that reversal be poignant in that his whole reason for being for all these years was his disdain for underdogs. 

History

“X of Swords: Chapter 9” 
Excalibur #13
Written by Tini Howard
Art by R.B. Silva
Color art by Nolan Woodard

“X of Swords: Chapter 10”
X-Men #13
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Art by Mahmud Asrar
Color art by Sunny Gho

• This issue of Excalibur features guest art by R.B. Silva, who turns in his last X-Men interior pages for the foreseeable future as he moves on to become the regular artist on Fantastic Four. His work here is typically excellent and brings the grandeur, atmosphere, melodrama, and romanticism that’s in Tini Howard’s stories but missing from usual artist Marcus To’s pages. Howard’s plot moves along the macro story of X of Swords but plays out like a self-contained fairytale in which Saturnyne pits Betsy and Brian Braddock against one another in a ploy to strip Betsy of the mantle of Captain Britain and return it to her beloved Brian, but it all backfires on her in the end. By the end of the issue Betsy is affirmed as the one true Captain Britain and wields Saturnyne’s Starlight Sword, and Brian becomes Captain Avalon, retains his Sword of Might, and is given a new role as the protector of his brother Jamie’s realm in Otherworld. It’s a happy ending, at least for now. Howard’s narration at the end doesn’t bode well for the Braddocks. 

• X-Men #13 is more of a fable. The story is mainly focused on a flashback to Apocalypse’s life on Okkara that fills us in on what his wife Genesis was like, and shows us what actually happened as she and their children took off with Arrako into Amenth. The story we’ve seen before, which presented Apocalypse as a more decisive and heroic figure, is inverted – he was left behind by Genesis, who deemed him not strong enough to join them. His mission over all these years was given to him, to make the world strong enough to stand against the hordes of Amenth. Suddenly everything about Apocalypse makes sense, and the power-hungry despot is now a tragic romantic figure. 

• This issue establishes that the mask of Annihilation effectively is Annihilation – or, more accurately, the Golden Helm of Amenth. The wearer of the helm controls the hordes of Amenth, but the helm controls the wearer, which must be fit enough to be worthy of it. Apocalypse must face the avatar of his own cruel survival-of-the-fittest ethos, and likely rescue his beloved wife from its influence. It’s hard to imagine he’ll make it through this; it would feel like a cheat for this to not end in tragedy for the newly sympathetic archvillain. 

• Mahmud Asrar shifts his art style a bit for this issue – his linework is a bit thicker with chunkier blacks and more negative space, occasionally somewhat resembling the style of Mike Mignola. This is very effective in his depiction of the Golden Helm of Amenth and his evocative renderings of Okkara and war with the creatures of the dark world. Asrar is particularly good at conveying Apocalypse’s deep, centuries-old sorrow. His enormous bulk, once so intimidating, now looks like a manifestation of his overcompensation, and of the incredible weight of the loneliness and grief he carries with him. The first panel of the penultimate page, in which we see him looking down at his reflection in a pool of water before gathering the parts of his sword The Scarab, is a moment where we see him in a fully honest moment. There’s no one to observe him, no audience for his shows of strength, and so you see him without the clarity of purpose that was driving him for ages. In that panel he’s a sad old man who has been betrayed by his lost children, and must face the possibility that he’s wasted his long life. 

Subterfuge

“X of Swords” Chapter 6
Hellions #6
Written by Zeb Wells
Art by Carmen Carnero 
Color art by David Curiel

“X of Swords” Chapter 7
Written by Ed Brisson
Art by Rod Reis

“X of Swords” Chapter 8
Written by Gerry Duggan
Art by Phil Noto

• This set of X of Swords chapters restore some of the plot momentum that had slowed for the digressions into Wolverine and Storm solo stories last week. Thankfully the writing staff appreciates that there’s a hard limit on how many “quest for sword” plots that could be included without derailing the story entirely, and so this week we get a digression introducing a new plot thread centered on Mister Sinister and spend some time with designated swordbearers of Krakoa who already have their blades – Cypher, Magik, and Cable. 

• It was unclear what role the Hellions would play in this story, but Zeb Wells offers up a clever curveball: Mister Sinister offers the services of his Hellions to go to Otherworld and seek to sabotage the Arraki swordbearers, forcing them into forfeit and thus preventing any Krakoan from permanently dying in Saturnyne’s tournament. Exodus forces Sinister to lead the mission, largely out of his barely concealed contempt for the man. Wells plays it all as dark comedy, particularly as the vain and peevish Sinister brings his ragtag group of maniacs to Otherworld and only manages to make it through Avalon thanks to the artificial charms of Empath, who only agrees to cooperating if he’s permitted to make Greycrow his “pet.” Their mission seems doomed to fail if just by the narrative logic of the story, so this plot thread is more a question of what the result of their intervention might actually be. 

Carmen Carnero’s art on this issue is quite good, and a step up from her previous work on Miles Morales and Captain Marvel – a bit less “Marvel house style,” a bit closer to the aesthetics of Pepe Larraz and R.B. Silva. She clearly had a lot of fun drawing Sinister in particular, and does a fine job of conveying his grandiose bitchiness. 

• Ed Brisson’s final issue of New Mutants is focused entirely on the plight of Cypher, who has been drafted into the tournament despite having minimal experience or natural aptitude for combat. Cypher has mixed emotions – he’s scared that he will die, he wants to prove himself, he’s trying to figure out why Saturnyne chose him, he feels he must do it to spare any other mutant’s life. Everyone else, most especially Krakoa itself, is actively trying to get Cypher out of the tournament altogether since his presence is crucial as he is the only one who can communicate with Krakoa. Brisson acknowledges Cypher’s anxiety but emphasizes his nobility and selflessness – he’s an unambiguously good guy, and even if he’s overcompensating he’s still quite brave. 

Cypher’s foil in this story is his old friend Magik, who does her best to teach him how to fight though she has very low hopes for his potential of surviving in combat against any of the Arraki swordbearers. Cypher and Magik have a history of being played for contrast. They’re total opposites in most respects – a sweet gentle boy and a warrior sorceress raised in a literal hell – but they are both outsiders in terms of their perspective on everyone else. Magik leans into the “tough love” approach to giving him a crash course in combat techniques, but she can’t fully obscure her concern for him and fear that he will not make it. The tenderness comes through, particularly in Rod Reis’ thoughtful body language and facial expressions. 

• Exodus shows up again in New Mutants, this time to intimidate Cypher into following through with his plan to murder him on Krakoa to be resurrected later, with him stepping in as a replacement in the tournament. Krakoa and Warlock intervene, and Exodus leaves with the offer standing. It’s a good plot beat for Cypher’s story in this issue, but between this and the scene in which he forces Sinister into going to Otherworld, it’s more interesting to me as part of Exodus’ ongoing development. Exodus is essentially an unyielding zealot, but thus far he’s mostly been presented as a voice of reason in Quiet Council scenes and serves as a swing vote in a lot of situations. He’s got honor and good intentions, but he’s also ruthless and seems to have far better political instincts than most members of the Council. He’s willing to use the rules to undermine his enemies, as with Sinister, but also understands he must slowly gain favor with the other blocs. I can see him gradually become the Mitch McConnell of the Quiet Council. 

• The Cable issue shifts focus back to the S.W.O.R.D subplot from the ending of Creation, in which Cable, Cyclops, and Jean Grey discover that the crew of The Peak have been massacred. Even at the end of this issue it’s still very unclear how this plot thread connects to Saturnyne and the Tournament, though the introduction of the destructive hordes of aliens called the Vescora suggests that part of her endgame may be manipulating the X-Men into unleashing these creatures on the Arraki. (And maybe they’re from the Hothive?) That’s as good as I’ve got for speculation, but I appreciate there being this wild card element in the mix. This chapter isn’t quite as entertaining or moving as the Hellions or New Mutants chapters, but there’s some good horror and action beats in the plot and Phil Noto’s art is quite good and evocative. 

Muramasa and Skybreaker

“X of Swords” Chapters 3 and 4
Wolverine #6
X-Force #13
Written by Benjamin Percy
Art by Viktor Bogdanovic
Color art by Matthew Wilson

“X of Swords” Chapter 5 
Marauders #13
Written by Vita Ayala
Art by Matteo Lolli
Color art by Edgar Delgado

• These three chapters of X of Swords mark the story’s first narrative gear shift, as the spotlight narrows to a pair of solo stories starring Wolverine and Storm as they go off in pursuit of the swords assigned to them by Saturnyne. There’s a trade-off here – a loss of momentum, but a deeper focus on character and the weight of responsibility bearing down on these two core X-Men members. If the shipping schedule of this crossover were different, these issues might have slowed things down too much, but if we’re burning through the “quest” issues in two or three weeks with a few issues at a time it’s making good time and allowing the reader to invest in Krakoa’s champions before they head off to war. 

• The Wolverine and X-Force issues are one story split between two issues, with the X-Force issue being fully a Wolverine comic as the rest of the cast – or even the basic premises of that series – is part of the plot. Benjamin Percy’s plot moves along the X of Swords story while working well as a discrete two-parter in which Wolverine must find a Muramasa blade and discovers he can only do that by literally going to hell to find one. These issues introduce Solem, one of the Swordbearers of Arrako, who is positioned as Wolverine’s new archnemesis in the absence of Sabretooth. Whereas Sabretooth is Wolverine’s opposite number, Solem is more of an inverted version of Wolverine – a warrior with adamantium skin, who embraces aesthetics and hedonism just as Wolverine is more salt-of-the-earth and ascetic. 

There’s a certain amount of hubris in aiming to give a major character like Wolverine a new central villain, but given the status quo now it’s sort of necessary. Percy has set up an interesting contrast here, and Solem is immediately charming – an arrogant lothario with poetic sensibilities and a history of causing chaos in Arrako just for the thrill of it. There’s a lot of potential here, if just in exploring a character who is basically a hyper-violent Frasier Crane. (Wolverine, of course, would be the Martin Crane.) 

• I particularly like the opening scene of this mini-arc in which Wolverine confronts Krakoa, which very succinctly gets a lot of exposition out of the way while reaffirming Wolverine’s commitment to the promise of the Krakoan nation state and his spirit as a warrior, and showing us that he’s come to distrust the sentient island itself. It’s very true to Wolverine’s nature, but this moment is notable as it’s a rare occasion in which someone has questioned the character of Krakoa and its motives in this era. 

• It’s interesting to me that while DC Comics’ current event Death Metal and its predecessor Metal strain to evoke a “heavy metal” aesthetic, X of Swords and these two chapters in particular actually do a better job of that without necessarily advertising it as part of the project. Even aside from all the Arrako elements of the story, just look at those pages in which Wolverine’s adamantium skeleton emerges from the literal fires of hell – you can practically hear the speed metal riffs come through the pages. The fact that these issues are illustrated by Viktor Bogdanovic, whose work looks quite a bit like that of Death Metal artist Greg Capullo, only encourages this comparison. 

• The Marauders issue tells the story of Storm going to Wakanda to collect her assigned sword Skybreaker, which is complicated by her fraught relationship with Wakanda royalty since divorcing Black Panther and giving up her crown, and that there is a major taboo of Skybreaker leaving Wakanda soil. Vita Ayala, who makes their Hickman-era X-Men debut here as a guest writer before taking over New Mutants and launching Children of the Atom after this event, has a very good handle on Storm and embraces the complexities and contradictions of her life rather than try to pare down her story. Ayala makes this part of the point of the issue, as Storm seamlessly segues between different aspects of her character – mainstay of the X-Men, goddess, Wakandan royalty, political leader, thief, ex-wife. Aspects of Storm’s identity shift like the weather, but the plot emphasizes that her indomitable will and absolute conviction in doing whatever it takes to do the right thing are immutable characteristics. 

• As good as the Marauders issue as a solo Storm issue, it slows some of the momentum of the larger X of Swords story. Whereas the Wolverine and X-Force issues have the same essential narrative purpose as this in terms of focusing on one character and the sacrifice they must make to compete in Saturnyne’s demented tournament, the former story continued to introduce new information about Arrako and its people. Those issues flow more naturally from the previous two chapters, whereas the Marauders issue feels more like a tie-in. It has the vibe of a very good annual, not so much a continuation of the story established by Jonathan Hickman and Tini Howard. 

• Text pages in all three of these issues continue the trend of giving background information on each of the realms of Otherworld. The most interesting of these is certainly the page for Mercator, which keeps up the mystery of that realm’s regent, but heavily suggests that it is indeed presided over by Absalon “Mr. M” Mercator, the missing omega level mutant previously mentioned in passing in House of X #1 and the Hickman pages of the Incoming! special. I’m personally very intrigued to see how this character will be presented, and I like this as a potential new context for an underdeveloped and obscure character with godlike powers. 

Sanctus Sacrum

“X of Swords Chapter 2”
X-Factor #4
Written by Leah Williams
Art by Carlos Gomez
Color art by Israel Silva

• The resurrection protocols introduced in House of X have freed the X-Men franchise from its endless cycle of pointless deaths and tedious, convoluted rebirths. It’s also opened up a lot of new narrative possibilities, and that’s the basis of Leah Williams’ new X-Factor series. But it’s also created a problem for a big story like X of Swords – if none of the X-Men can die, what does it matter if they fall in this epic battle? As long as the protocols were in place they could face any war as a battle of attrition they would inevitably win. 

This issue moves along the plot from the first chapter and establishes some new stakes: Yes, any mutant can and will be resurrected, but if they die in Otherworld they lose all established sense of self and their history. The person resurrected is a version of them made as a composite of infinite versions of the self in Otherworld and this self permanently overwrites everything saved in Cerebro. It’s got all the existential stakes of death, but the weird wrinkle of still existing as a comic book character. It’s a smart compromise that doesn’t break the innovation of the protocols. The downside is realizing most major stories from this point onward will have to do some version of this narrative workaround. 

• We find all of this out as Rockslide is resurrected after being murdered by Summoner in Otherworld in the first chapter. Rockslide is a perfect character to sacrifice in this way – he’s a minor character that has been hanging around the backgrounds of stories for nearly 20 years but doesn’t have a well-developed personality beyond “what if AJ Soprano was The Thing,” so nothing is really lost in this decision. There’s a lot of narrative possibilities in the new mysterious composite version of Rockslide, so the character finally has a distinct story purpose. Also the thing about him being this intangible ghost within a rocky shell now feels more creepy – a ghost of a boy no one knows, a shell of a person who is lost forever to anyone who knew him.

• Williams only has one chapter in the X of Swords saga, and she really makes the most of it in this double-sized issue – she works in a very good scene with her beloved Emma Frost responding very much in character with absolute horror at the realization that one of the students has permanently died, she builds on the processes of The Five and X-Factor, and you can sense her absolute delight in writing the text page explaining the hedonistic realm of Roma and the rhyming riddles announcing the sword bearers of Krakoa. There’s a strong “AHHH I CAN’T BELIEVE I GET TO WRITE THIS” energy in this issue, and that adds an extra bit of joy in reading it. 

• Carlos Gomez’ fill-in art on this issue is adequate but a bit too bland for a story of this magnitude, particularly as it comes just after dazzling world-building art by Leinil Francis Yu and Pepe Larraz. Gomez, who worked with Williams recently on The Amazing Mary Jane series, is a natural for Spider-Man comics – his art is basically the current Marvel house style spiked with a bit of J. Scott Campbell pizzazz. But in this issue we basically just get flat house style, and while it does the job it lacks a spark. It makes sense why he was hired for this issue but I think given the current roster of artists working for the X-office but not booked for a X of Swords issue this probably would’ve been better illustrated by Matteo Buffagni or Lucas Wernick. 

• The sword hub at the end of the issue is so very video game in both concept and design – Final Fantasy in particular, though I’m hardly a gaming expert. But I really appreciate the way Hickman-era X-Men borrows visual notions from video games but also creates environments and situations that would logically carry over to video game adaptations. Everything about X of Swords so far would make for a pretty cool game, and I suspect that factored into it on a concept level. As much as the Hickman era is pushing boundaries, it’s also very much about expanding X-Men IP for eventual use by other parts of the Disney family. It’s the best case scenario on the creative end for this sort of vertical integration, but it is absolutely is IP development for vertical integration. 

Creation

“Creation”
X of Swords: Creation
Written by Jonathan Hickman and Tini Howard
Art by Pepe Larraz
Color art by Marte Gracia

I’m shifting format slightly for this one, this is all going to be in “some notes” format.

• Pepe Larraz’s return to X-Men a little over a year after the end of House of X is as auspicious as it ought to be – the triple-sized opening chapter of a major crossover, as befitting an artist who has emerged as a defining – and more importantly redefining – artist on this franchise. Larraz’s pages here are top quality and play to his strengths in world-building and his raw talent for drawing evocative environments, nuanced body language, thoughtful page layouts, and perfectly paced and composed dramatic moments. It feels like a gift to read pages as well illustrated as this – the level of craft is above and beyond, particularly in a thing like the opening panel of the issue in which he effectively depicts a vast army with incredible elegance and economy of line. 

• The issue re-uses, recontextualizes, and in some cases alters the pages previously seen in the Free Comic Book Day special promoting this event. The tarot reading sequence feels right as the proper beginning of the story rather than merely a trailer for it, and I appreciate them using the obscure mutant Tarot’s interpretation of the cards drawn as a text page. It’s a clever bit of hand-holding for those of us who are either only dimly aware of tarot or totally ignorant. It’s interesting to note that the figures on The Hanged Man card have been changed somewhat – Banshee to Siryn, Glob to Rockslide, Trinary to Summoner – but I suppose that’s simply a result of plot revision. 

• Archangel was mostly played as a joke in his Angel persona in Empyre: X-Men, so it’s nice to see him depicted more seriously in this story, where his extremely fraught relationship with Apocalypse is foregrounded to highlight that while he’s essentially the protagonist of this crossover the X-Men have a very bad history of being traumatized by him. 

• It’s also nice to see Monet once again at the forefront of a story, as she drives much of the action plot in the second half of the issue in which the X-Men confront Saturnyne. Between this, House of X, Empyre X-Men, and Giant Size X-Men: Storm, Monet has been positioned as a major X-Men character and this makes a lot of sense – she’s a character with a big personality and a diverse list of extraordinary powers, making her an obvious person to place on the front lines of any battle. I like the way the typically haughty Monet is set up as a foil to the even haughtier Saturnyne here, and her casual mention that she’d be interested in taking Saturnyne’s job at some point. Maybe that’s just a funny line, or maybe it’s foreshadowing – we’ll just have to wait and see. 

• In the lead-up to X of Swords we were led to believe that Apocalypse was the one pulling all the strings, but as we see in this issue he’s been manipulated just as much as he’s been manipulating the mutants of Krakoa. His Caesar-esque betrayal by Summoner and his the Horsemen is hardly a surprise but still hits with some emotional resonance and we’re fully aware of what a crushing disappointment this is for Apocalypse after centuries of waiting to be reunited with his lost family. And of course, at the end of this issue we see that Saturnyne has been playing everyone all along, and has set up a conflict for her amusement or potential gain in which he’s only just a pawn. It looks like a big part of this story will be Apocalypse being forced into true humility. 

• At least a third of this story is rooted in the Captain Britain mythos developed by Alan Davis, Alan Moore, and Chris Claremont in the 1980s – most obviously the presence of two Captains Britain in Betsy and Brian Braddock, but also Saturnyne, the Starlight Citadel, and Otherworld. The map of Otherworld is intriguing, with references to expected characters like Jamie Braddock, Roma, and Merlyn, but also a few somewhat unexpected characters from this mythos like Mad Jim Jaspers and The Fury. The most surprising thing here is the suggestion that the missing all-powerful omega mutant Absolon “Mister M” Mercator is most likely the “unknown” regent of a realm called Mercator.

• The biggest curveball in this opening chapter by far is the revelation at the end of the issue that somehow S.W.O.R.D., the intergalactic intelligence agency created by Joss Whedon and John Cassaday in Astonishing X-Men, is somehow part of Saturnyne’s scheme. I can barely even speculate on how that fits into all this with Arrako and Amenth and Otherworld, but I like the feeling of having no idea where this plot is going. 

• As the issue ends we learn that the macguffin driving the plot of this crossover will be some kind of tournament between the swordbearers of Arrako and Krakoa, and we’re given the name of ten swords that will be wielded by X-Men who’ve been indicated on either the Ten of Swords card in the reading early in the issue or the covers of forthcoming issues.

Some of the swords are obvious – Magik possesses the Soul Sword, Cable recently acquired The Light of Galador in his solo series, Cypher is bonded with Warlock. The Sword of Might would be Brian Braddock and the Starlight Sword would be Betsy Braddock. Skybreaker would be for Storm and The Scarab would be for Apocalypse given their respective themes as characters. Gorgon has a history with Grasscutter and Godkiller in previous Hickman comics, and I would assume Magneto would take the latter if just for the pompous name. Muramasa, a blade infused with Wolverine’s soul, is obviously meant for him, which is troubling as that one also appears as the 11th sword of Arrako. Hmmm.

Nothing People

“Let Them Be Snakes,” “Blood Work,”
“Nothing People,” “Love Bleeds”
Hellions #1-4
Written by Zeb Wells
Art by Stephen Segovia
Color art by David Curiel

The premise of Hellions is basically DC’s Suicide Squad but on Krakoa – a crew of violent antisocial misfits being forced into service of their government, in this case on the premise of giving purpose and therepeutic treatment to these people who’d otherwise be a drain on their society. This is an intriguing way of getting deep into irredeemable sociopaths like Greycrow and Empath, or looking for some explanation to the madness of the deeply strange Nanny and the Orphan-Maker. The complication in the series is the inclusion of Havok as the “straight man” in the mix – a guy who’s ordinarily a straight-laced X-Man but has a history of unhinged violence and sinister behavior even if that’s induced by outside forces as in the unfinished aftermath of his “inversion” at the end of Rick Remender’s Axis event. The story provides a context for honestly exploring what years of inconsistent writing, shunting drastically between classic heroism and mind-warped psychosis, would actually do the psyche of a man.

Zeb Wells, who wrote a brief but excellent run on New Mutants in the late 2000s, is a welcome return to the X-fold. He’s very good with understated nuance in character writing, high-stakes plotting, and mining and interpreting the subtext of continuity (particularly from the late ‘80s) in ways that don’t actually necessitate having read the source material. But it certainly helps, particularly in the case of this first arc in which the Hellions are sent to destroy one of Mister Sinister’s clone farms and discover that his most famous clone Madelyne “The Goblin Queen” Pryor is there turning the remnants of Marauders clones into zombies. Pryor is a very complicated figure, but Wells boils her story down to one simple, emotionally resonant idea: Even if she’s dismissed by everyone as an insane clone of Jean Grey who messed up their lives, she is still very much a person in her own right. She’s the woman dismissed as a “crazy bitch,” driven mad by other people refusing her personhood, particularly when she’s been wronged and all that’s been erased. Havok, who once fell in love with Pryor, is one of the few people to actually see her as a true person, but he’s also the one most susceptible to her cruel manipulations as we see in a series of scenes rooted in erotic femdom horror. No one can see this woman clearly.

Wells’ other narrative anchor is exploring Psylocke, who is no longer Betsy Braddock but fully Kwannon, the Asian psychic ninja whose body she had possessed through decades of publishing. Wells’ Kwannon retains the essence of Psylocke as she existed for many years – intense, sullen, ruthless – with the implication that Betsy’s presence in this form was strongly influenced by the suppressed Kwannon persona or at least the memories carried by her body. She’s presented as essentially the Hellions’ chaperone on behalf of Mister Sinister, but given her history as an assassin for The Hand, there’s a lot of doubt cast on her motives for agreeing to this. A text page, presented as a case review from the perspective of an unnamed character that I presume to be Nightcrawler given some contextual clues, foregrounds this by speculating at what point Psylocke fully asserts herself as the master of this group rather than Sinister, and trying to remind the other Krakoans that this is not in fact their friend Betsy that they love and trust. 

The major strength of Wells’ Hellions is that it’s a book eager to explore a lot of characters – or characterizations – that would otherwise be swept under the rug. This is true both in-story and in a metatextual sense, and he’s good at addressing the latter without getting in the way of the emotional reality of the former. I’m looking forward to where he goes with this. 

A Crooked World

“The Unspeakable and the Uneatable I and II,” “Schools of Magic,”
“A Crooked World,” “Blood of the Changeling,” “The Beginning”
Excalibur #7-12
Written by Tini Howard
Art by Marcus To (8-12) and Ed Santos (7, 8)
Color art by Erick Arciniega

The break in publishing as a result of the pandemic was rough on all of the series in the Dawn of X line, but I think it had the worst impact on Excalibur as it was entering a run of issues introducing Saturnyne and Otherworld that demanded a more immediate memory of a fairly tangled narrative web involving multiple realities. I think Howard’s story is relatively straightforward in its plot beats, but the plain aesthetics of Marcus To and Erick Arciniega’s art get in her way by doing pretty much nothing at all to give the reader visual cues that we are looking at different realities, which makes the story more difficult to follow as a casual reader than it ought to be. Arciniega could have done a lot to get this across, but no – the colors are basic and utterly devoid of vibes. To’s art is fine with fundamentals and quite good when it comes to rendering faces, but he seems entirely incapable of drawing compelling backgrounds or conveying atmosphere, which is a big problem on a fantasy series. He’d be fine on most mainline Marvel books or even on another current X-Men series like New Mutants or X-Factor, but he continues to hobble Howard’s ambitious ideas. 

The good news is that in Excalibur #12 Howard pays off on the majority of the narrative threads she’d been seeding through the first 11 issues of the series. The issue centers on Apocalypse as he and Rictor enact a ritual creating a gateway to the long-lost Arrako, with Gambit unknowingly completing the spell by dispatching the disembodied form of his old enemy Candra. The plot is satisfying enough, particularly as lead-in to X of Swords, but the best thing here is Howard’s thoughtful characterization of Apocalypse. 

Her Apocalypse is blithe in his monomaniacal pursuit of reaching Arrako, expertly exploiting everyone – his old friends the Externals, his new coven in Excalibur, Saturnyne of Otherworld – to get what he needs. The reader is encouraged to side with Apocalypse in terms of his goals but to also reckon with the degree to which he is a sociopath. In this issue we see exactly what becomes of people when they stop being of use to him, and it opens up the question of what will happen when Excalibur – or the Quiet Council of Krakoa – is no longer of value to his quest. She and Hickman are very much on the same page with Apocalypse, and I think it’s clear that this nuanced redefinition of the character will end up being part of the legacy of this run of comics that makes it into Marvel’s movie universe down the line.

Amenth

“Amenth”
X-Men #12
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Art by Leinil Francis Yu
Color art by Sunny Gho

“Amenth” is a tremendously ambitious issue focused almost exclusively on world-building in advance of the X of Swords epic beginning next week. It’s quite a lot to take in. In 14 pages we’re presented with Summoner’s abridged history of centuries of a mutant society stranded in the fallen world of Amenth after the “Twilight Sword” of “the enemy” split Okkara into Krakoa and Arrako. We learn that the mutants of Arrako are led by Genesis, the wife of Apocalypse. Genesis was betrayed by a fellow mutant and killed by Annihilation, the god of Amenth. As we enter X of Swords, Apocalypse is called on to liberate the surviving mutants of Arrako from the siege of Annihilation and the hordes of Amenth. We’re left with some question of Apocalypse’s motives at the time of Okkara’s split, and his motives now. 

It’s all very good set up for the next big story, and establishes the most radical changes to X-Men mythology since House of X/Powers of X. The notion of an entire separate lost mutant society with centuries of history is wild, as is the revelation that Apocalypse is not the first mutant but rather the first of the second generation of mutantdom. There’s still quite a bit of story ahead in X of Swords, but it seems to me that the likely result of that story is the first level up in mutant society in terms of the galactic scale presented in Powers of X #2. It’s the next step in the evolution of Krakoa as a society towards greater scale as the macro story moves along – the alliance with the Shi’ar being an eventual logical step, and I suspect we’ll eventually see Krakoa ascend to some stage of “worldmind.” And then, maybe in the end…the Phalanx. 

This is Leinil Francis Yu’s final issue as the regular artist on this series and his work in conveying the grand scale of this plot is outstanding. Hickman’s plot is extremely demanding, with pages in which every other panel represents major historical moments on a large scale, and Yu delivers without making it all feel too heavy and overwhelming. I particularly like the way he drew the sequence with Genesis entering palace of Annihilation – it feels both Biblical and alien, and full of small details that suggest yet more history to be told. Yu has been a mainstay of Marvel Comics – and of X-Men projects – for over 20 years, and his work on this past year of X-Men with Hickman has been a career pinnacle for him. They’ve worked together on Avengers in the past, and in that series he was also pushed to draw sci-fi on a grand scale. It’s another example of Hickman seeing what an artist is truly capable of and pushing them to the next level. 

Onwards to X of Swords! 

Into The Storm

“Into the Storm” / “The World” / “Disintegration” 
Giant Size X-Men: Jean Grey & Emma Frost, Giant Size X-Men: Fantomex, and Giant Size X-Men: Storm
Written by Jonathan Hickman with Russell Dauterman (Jean/Emma)
Art by Russell Dauterman (Jean/Emma, Storm) and Rod Reis (Fantomex)
Color art by Matthew Wilson (Jean/Emma, Storm) 

The Giant Size X-Men specials were initially sold as stand-alone one-shots, but as it turns out three of the five issues are, in fact, a coherent story arc that appears to advance the slow-burning Children of the Vault subplot. These three issues amount to 90 pages of story, but the plot isn’t particularly dense: Storm gets sick following getting zapped in her attack on the Vault in X-Men #5, Jean Grey and Emma Frost discover that she’s got a “machine virus” and will die within a month, Monet figures out that she can be saved in The World, and Fantomex brings Storm, Monet, and Cypher to The World to eventually extract the virus from Storm’s body. 

The first issue of this arc is essentially a tribute/cover version of Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s famous “quiet issue” of New X-Men in which Jean and Emma perform a similar “psychic rescue” with Charles Xavier, and as such it’s more of a showcase for Russell Dauterman’s considerable skills as an artist. The Fantomex issue is also a blatant Grant Morrison tribute, with several scenes involving Fantomex quoted directly from New X-Men issues. This is all very nice and well-executed, but feels a little odd in the context of Jonathan Hickman’s larger project on the X-Men, which before this point had excised the “hey, remember this?” nostalgic references that had piled up quite a bit in recent years and fully metastasized in Mark Guggenheim’s vile X-Men Gold run. And true, those nostalgic nods were almost always to Chris Claremont comics, but the spirit is still the same. Also, the “hey, I’ve already read this” feeling makes these issues seem more slight than they actually are. 

The Fantomex issue illustrated by Rod Reis is quite good. The plot depicts scenes from Fantomex’s life in which he brings different groups of people into The World, the artificial environment with accelerated time where he was created and raised. There’s an implication of unreliable narrative, that there’s only so much we should believe about what we’re seeing from the perspective of a man who is a living lie from a fake world – a “living contrivance, a product… a hall of mirrors with no end” as Psylocke puts it in Rick Remender’s Uncanny X-Force. But as much as the truth of it all is ambiguous, we see how Fantomex’s awareness of this weighs on his actual soul. 

The big reveal of this issue is that Fantomex and Ultimaton – both products of A.I.M. and Weapon Plus’ project of developing mutant-hunting super soldiers in The World – are essentially identical twins raised with as much variance as possible. Fantomex was discarded as a baby, and the other gradually evolved into the Ultimaton we see in Morrison and Chris Bachalo’s “Assault On Weapon Plus” story. Each time Fantomex returns to The World he encounters Ultimaton at different stages of his development, always asking him if he would like to leave with him. Ultimaton always declines, and as time goes on sees Fantomex as an abstraction – “some primal direction of man, some primal direction of me.” The issue leaves off with Fantomex bringing Storm, Monet, and Cypher to The World, and the plot thread concludes in the Storm issue with Fantomex deciding to remain in The World with his ersatz brother. To be continued, of course, but there’s a nice emotional charge to this beat – Fantomex embracing the only sort of family he has, and giving up something of himself to help or guide this warped reflection of himself. 

The Storm issue covers interesting ground. It’s a story about Storm fighting for her life, though in the first few pages Emma Frost points out how “overly dramatic” this is given that they have the means to immediately resurrect her. The point of the story is that Storm is a person who would fight for survival regardless – she refuses to surrender to anything, she will always try to find a way to overcome obstacles. Storm is also quite dramatic. It’s part of her charm. 

The mechanics of the plot of this issue are driven largely by Monet and Cypher, who are clearly two of Hickman’s favorite characters. The story serves as a reminder that part of Monet’s impressive set of powers is advanced intelligence, and her genius is ultimately what saves Storm. Monet largely serves a plot function here, but her presence in this story, as well as in House of X and Empyre: X-Men amount to Hickman making a case for her as an essential X-Men heavy hitter from here on out after years of the character being sidelined as a result of relative obscurity. 

Cypher is more of an observer and interpreter in the plot, just as he was in the Nightcrawler special. At the end of the issue we see the machine virus entirely removed from Storm’s body and held in a containment field to prevent it from rapidly evolving in the artificially accelerated time of The World. In the epilogue we see that Cypher recognizes that the machine virus is sentient and conscious. This is left as a ticking time bomb, as the possibility of an artificial intelligence developed in the artificial time of The Vault attaining “evolutionary critical mass” in the slightly different artificial time of The World can become an existential threat to mutants down the line. 

We’ll be returning to this machine virus thing at some point, but it’s hard to say which ongoing plot this beat connects to – is this going to remain a part of the Vault thread? Or maybe, since there’s a direct tie from A.I.M. to Orchis, this is part of how their Sentinels evolve to a Nimrod state? It could just as well be part of the Phalanx subplot. Just as with the mysterious tower built for Emma Frost in the Magneto special, it feels like it could be quite a while before we find out the actual significance of this issue to the macro plot. 

These specials were designed as showcases for artists, and as can be expected, these issues give a lot of room for Russell Dauterman and Rod Reis to flex. They’re both quite good but I prefer the loose, gestural qualities of Reis’ art to the extremely tight and slick lines of Dauterman. The latter’s work is beautiful and dynamic but a bit too stiff at times, and while he can draw very nuanced facial expressions, there are many panels where the faces seem oddly blank and vacant. Dauterman is called on to draw abstract environments in both of his issues, and while they work well on his terms, they seem rather cold and static compared to Reis’ more surreal and dreamlike drawings within The World. It’s an intriguing contrast of styles, with Reis more connected to cartooning while Dauterman’s aesthetics are more rooted in animation. 

X-Book Mini-Reviews: Marauders, Cable, Wolverine, X-Men + Fantastic Four

Marauders #8-12
Written by Gerry Duggan
Art by Stefano Caselli (8, 10, 11)  and Matteo Lolli (9, 12)
Color art by Edgar Delgado

Gerry Duggan was just beginning to hit his stride where I left off with this series and with these issues he’s fully in the zone. The magic of this book is in how deftly he balances his exploration of the new Krakoa status quo and a firm grasp of characterization and character history. He does excellent work in restoring Callisto to her Claremont-era greatness as a queer punk anti-hero with a strict code of honor, and pulls off a minor miracle in reinventing Jason Aaron’s absolutely horrible kid Hellfire Club as a legitimate threat under the name Verendi. I love the way he writes the fraught character dynamics of his central cast of Storm, Emma Frost, and Kate Pryde with all the nuance of years of publishing without requiring a reader to have actually read any of those comics. And bless him, he’s even doing his best to acknowledge years of Kate being written as a bisexual woman, though it doesn’t seem as though he’s allowed to state this in the text.

These issues keep up a strong Claremontian momentum even with a significant break in the publishing schedule as a result of the pandemic, though the issue in which Kate is finally resurrected is oddly anticlimactic given how much the question of whether or not she even could be resurrected is positioned as a major plot point. But Kate’s actual return in issue #12 makes up for this bum note – Duggan and Matto Lolli present her with a renewed swagger, and set up the next phase of the plot so enticingly that it actually feels disappointing we have to move away from this story for three issues to get through X of Swords. 

Cable #1-4
Written by Gerry Duggan
Art by Phil Noto

Whereas Duggan’s Marauders is centered on political intrigue and the nuanced relationship of its trio of leading women, his Cable solo book is positioned as more of a light-hearted wish fulfillment story for boys. Duggan is working with the teenage version of Cable established by Ed Brisson in Extermination – a young man who’s killed the older version of himself we’ve known for decades for the crime of not being good enough at his job. On a macro level, Duggan’s story is about this boy gradually and inevitably becoming the old man, but in these issues it’s mostly just presenting Cable as an adventurer and establishing his five-way romance with the entire Stepford Cuckoos hive-mind. This is clever – the Cuckoos are established as clone/daughters of Emma Frost, and Cable is the time-lost child of Cyclops and a clone of Jean Grey, so it’s a play on their dynamic while also just depicting Cable as this ultra-stud. (We also see that Armor has a crush on him – mutant ladies sure love a Summers man.) 

Phil Noto’s art is typically fantastic in these issues, with his usual flair for clean design, vivid colors, and expressive faces. He’s very well-suited to Duggan’s writing style, adept at both action scenes and conveying his humor. He does a particularly good job in giving the five Cuckoos distinct expressions and body language, and in playing off the odd dynamic of the teen Cable meeting Deadpool for the first time while Deadpool was friends with his older self for many years. 

Wolverine #1-5
Written by Benjamin Percy
Art by Adam Kubert (1-3) and Viktor Bogdanovic (1, 4, 5)
Color art by Frank Martin (1-3) and Matthew Wilson (1, 4, 5)

In all my years of reading X-Men comics I have rarely regularly followed a Wolverine solo title, largely because those series seem rather inconsequential and I prefer the character as part of a team dynamic. It’s like how I love cinnamon in an apple pie, but wouldn’t really want to eat cinnamon by itself straight out of the spice rack. Benjamin Percy, however, is a guy who just wants as much Wolverine as he can get and is obviously having the time of his life as the primary author of the character in both his solo series and X-Force. Percy has a firm grasp on exactly what makes Wolverine work and is fluent in the particular cadences of his dialogue, and his enthusiasm for the character is infectious, so much so that the two narrative arcs in this run of five issues are only so-so in plot terms but are nevertheless very enjoyable just for all the great character moments. 

I’m particularly fond of Wolverine’s interactions with Magneto, a man who has caused him great agony over the years that he’s now forced to answer to as one of the leaders of Krakoa. Percy is very interested in the nuances of how these old men who are very set in their ways adapt to an entirely new status quo – they are both going about it in good faith, but there’s only so much of the past you can ignore while working for a better future. 

This mix of “same old” and “totally new” seems to be the narrative crux of this series, and that extends to the art as well, as classic Wolverine artist Adam Kubert is trading off arcs with relative newcomer Viktor Bogdanovic. Kubert’s art is solid as ever, though his tendency towards unusual page layouts is kicked into high gear with these issues. He’s very good at drawing Krakoan landscapes and biotech, and it’s apparent he’s excited by the challenge of working with Pepe Larraz and R.B. Silva’s designs. Bogdanovic’s art is extremely similar to that of Batman artist Greg Capullo, to the point where you could just pretend it’s actually Capullo drawing the book. This is fine, though I’d like to see him evolve more into his own style as he clearly has the raw skills down. 

X-Men + Fantastic Four #1-4
Written by Chip Zdarsky
Art by Terry Dodson and Rachel Dodson
Color art by Laura Martin

Chip Zdarsky is a writer that leads with humor and delight, but always grounds his stories in compelling dramatic questions. To some extent that’s the job of a superhero comic writer, but it’s not tremendously common for people to actually achieve that balance, particularly when Marvel comics that lean humorous are nearly always full of unfunny soy jokes with no narrative stakes. This miniseries, in which the X-Men and Fantastic Four clash over the question of whether or not Reed and Sue Richards’ omega-level mutant son Franklin belongs on Krakoa, presents as a high-stakes story, even if the actual resolution of the Franklin question feels like a shruggy compromise. But even if the ending feels a bit inconsequential, the philosophical clashes are handled thoughtfully and Zdarsky’s handle on the personalities and voices of all the core characters is impressive. Terry and Rachel Dodson, no strangers to either the X-Men or Fantastic Four, do typically excellent work in their ultra-clean and dynamic style. The ending of the story hints at a further conflict between Reed Richards and Charles Xavier down the line, but even without that thread this miniseries leaves me with the feeling that I’d be happy to get more X-Men and/or Fantastic Four comics written by Zdarsky in the future.

Not As Hoped

“To the Grave,” “Fast and Furious,” “Not As Hoped,” 
“A-Hunting We Will Go,” “Something Rotten In…,” 
“Parasomnia,” “Ice Cream Dreams,” “Monster Machine”
New Mutants #3, 4, 6, 8-12
Written by Ed Brisson
Art by Flaviano (3, 6, 9-11) and Marco Failla (4, 8, 12)
Color art by Carlos Lopez

This series has been very frustrating, mainly because Ed Brisson is always shooting in the direction of good ideas but never quite hitting his mark. His stories are focused on dealing with the world outside Krakoa, with an emphasis on how hostile and bigoted humans are dealing with the existence of a new mutant nation state. This is fertile ground for stories but the situations and new human antagonists Brisson has come up with are rather dull – generic drug cartel enforcers, generic military goons, generic fictional foreign countries, generic right wing media trolls. Aside from one gangster with a particularly outlandish design, these are barely characters and they don’t come across as particularly threatening. The plots plod along like an empty ritual. Flaviano and Marco Failla don’t do much to elevate material – they tell the stories effectively but without much style or pizazz. It’s all strictly professional and nothing more. 

Brisson does a little better with character moments, particularly with Glob Herman. Brisson, who was writing various X-Men titles before Jonathan Hickman took over the franchise, has been fixated on Glob for some time now and has done more to develop the perennial background character than anyone else. But even after all the work he’s put in here in terms of fleshing the guy out in these issues, he’s still a snooze – a sweet boy in the grotesque body of a pink Jell-O monster. Perhaps I would be more receptive to Glob if it didn’t feel so much like he’s meant to be an unintentionally cruel metaphor for obesity. 

But hey, the text page with Glob’s vegetarian laksa recipe was very cute. Points for that. 

There are other characters in New Mutants, including several that people would commonly associate with the name like Magik, Mirage, Cypher, Wolfsbane, Karma, Boom Boom, and Magma. The latter two characters have unexciting subplots, but the rest just seem to show up to serve plot functions. The fact that Hickman wrote most of the early issues of this series and has used several of the classic New Mutants in X-Men does Brisson no favors. Hickman has an excellent feel for these characters and is able to convey everything that’s ever been charming about them in very economical scenes and bits of dialogue. As written by Brisson they all seem flat and interchangeable.

I just don’t think this book is working. It’s not bad – lord knows there are plenty of comics that aren’t nearly as competent or at all thoughtful – but it’s well below the standards established by the other current ongoing X-Men titles. With all due respect to these creators, it’s hard to shake the feeling there’s other writers and artists better suited to the task of writing about the young mutants on Krakoa. Maybe some of them would even include romance plots, something you’d really hope for in a series about a community of a few dozen teenagers and young adults. 

One War, One Mutant

“One War, One Mutant”
X-Men #11
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Art by Leinil Francis Yu
Color art by Sunny Gho

This issue is another tie-in with Empyre, after the previous issue and the Empyre X-Men miniseries which concluded last week. It’s interesting to read these in the context of Al Ewing and Dan Slott’s main Empyre miniseries, which has its merits but has struggled to convey narrative momentum or deliver any memorable setpieces. This issue – 22 pages, only 16 of which are directly related to the Empyre plot – presents all the beats of a big event story in concentrated form without feeling rush or as if it’s missing any connective tissue. On top of being a far more entertaining and exciting story, it shows the X-Men easily triumphing over the invading Cotati aliens through their collective power and creativity, which in context of the broader Empyre story make the event’s primary protagonists the Avengers and Fantastic Four look like fumbling chumps. 

The Cotati/Empyre stuff is really just a MacGuffin in this issue. The real story is in pushing along simmering plot points from X-Men #1 and #7 – the emerging narrative among Krakoans that Magneto is the nation’s greatest hero, and Exodus making that a major talking point as he indoctrinates the children of Krakoa. The Exodus fireside chat scenes in #7 and #11 have a creepy ambiguity to them. For one thing, it’s strange for one of the heads of the Krakoan state to be hanging out with little kids in the woods at night. But more than that, you see how Hickman has Exodus saying a lot of things fully in line with the Krakoan triumphalism of the Dawn of X period, but always pushing a few steps further towards a radical mutant supremacist dogma. I like that Hickman is presenting this as a slow and insidious shift, starting in the shared joy of the birth of the Krakoan nation but gradually moving towards inevitable ideological conclusions. 

Exodus has always been portrayed as a zealot, and as someone in thrall of Magneto as a symbolic figure. The concept of the character has always been strong, but the greater Krakoa story is the first time Exodus has been put in the position to fully develop and reach full narrative potential. Just as other characters in the Quiet Council represent threats from within Krakoan society – the sociopathic Machiavellian scheming of Mister Sinister, the ticking time bomb of Mystique’s justified resentments, the corosive ruthless capitalism of Sebastian Shaw, the egotism of Magneto, the messianic hubris of Xavier, the hidden agendas of Apocalypse – Exodus is the personification of radical nationalism. 

Exodus exerts his power through influence, making a point of passing his views to the children, and in mythologizing Magneto in a way that will inevitably bring out the worst of his vanity. Magneto is a hero in this story; we see him at his best as he protects his people in a show of incredible power in tandem. But it’s been pretty clear from House of X #1 that we’re in for a long, slow, and heartbreaking story in which Magneto’s arrogance eventually becomes a big problem. Pumping him up as a great leader and supreme champion seems like a sure path to him making a terrible decision down the line with the absolute conviction that he’s doing something heroic. I have a feeling Hickman’s long game with Magneto is to present him as this heroic figure for a long time before this heel turn happens, so when it comes it’s totally gutting. 

Some notes: 

• The issue begins with a scene in which some semi-obscure younger mutants from the 2000s meet Summoner, the character from Arrako we met in #2. This is the first we get a sense of his personality – friendly and erudite, but raised in a culture obsessed with strength – and it’s mostly a tease of what’s coming in X of Swords. The best part of this scene is quite subtle, as silhouettes of characters we know to be villains from Arrako in X of Swords promo art appear in the shadowy backgrounds of the panels. The final line of the scene says it best: “Well…that’s ominous.” 

• Hickman’s issues have been light on text pages recently but we get a good set here in the form of an official report from Cyclops to the Quiet Council relaying minutes from a meeting of Krakoa’s military captains. As with a lot of the best text pages, this gets across a lot of information that would have been dull as expository dialogue. It also feeds directly into the issue’s plot, as Cyclops discusses the possibilities of mutant powers combining in tactically useful ways, which is displayed in the story as Magneto, Iceman, and Magma work together in the battle with the Cotati. This is a natural progression of Hickman’s concept of how The Five collaborate to resurrect mutants, but it’s also elaborating on a concept going back to the early days of Chris Claremont – the “fastball special.” 

• I can’t help but notice that Exodus’ star student, the white kid with a pink mohawk and glasses, looks a lot like Quentin Quire. Which is not to say there’s an in-story connection between the two, but that Quire originates as a student radical in Grant Morrison’s New X-Men. Maybe we’ll be seeing him as a deliberate parallel with Quentin as this story progresses. 

Un-Ring

“Alien Plants Vs. Mutant Zombies,” “Growing Strong,” “Staff Infection,” “Un-ring” 
Empyre X-Men #1-4
Written by Jonathan Hickman with Tini Howard, Gerry Duggan, Benjamin Percy, Leah Williams, Ed Brisson, Vita Ayala, and Zeb Wells
Art by Matteo Buffagni, Lucas Wernick, Andrea Broccardo, and Jorge Molina
Color art by Nolan Woodard with Rachelle Rosenberg

Empyre X-Men is two things – a loose tie-in with a Fantastic Four/Avengers event and a formal experiment in publishing a mini-series as an “exquisite corpse” exercise in which each of the current X-book writers get to write a segment of the story – but is more importantly third thing, which is Jonathan Hickman setting his Scarlet Witch story in motion after teasing it in both House of X and X-Men #7.  The jam elements of this miniseries are fun, especially the aspect of it that’s basically watching each writer do their best to introduce a wild plot beat before handing it off, but it’s ultimately all a bunch of enjoyable filler between the Hickman portions at the beginning and end of the series. 

Since so much of what Hickman has been doing at this stage of things has been moving characters and plot points into place for bigger things later on, it’s encouraged a way of looking at the stories in terms of what’s been established or advanced. In this case, there’s some small but notable beats – we finally get to see what Angel and Monet have been up to since House of X since they don’t appear in any of the spinoff series, and we see Beast steal some science stuff from Hordeculture, the evil botanists/Golden Girls pastiche characters from X-Men #3. 

Angel – who is apparently free of his menacing Archangel persona for the moment – is heading up some business operations for Xavier with the assistance of Monet, and his main plot beats amount to him being like “put me in the game, coach” to Xavier and then just bumbling around as a beautiful himbo who is objectified by most of the women in the story for the remainder of the issues. It’s all very cute and a nice change of pace from the usual angst-ridden Angel/Archangel stories, but it’s still not giving this fairly central X-Men character much to do. When notable characters aren’t in any spin-offs I assume they’re part of Hickman’s larger plan – certainly the case for Monet and Nightcrawler – but with Angel I just wonder if the writers don’t have any particular ideas of what to do with him that isn’t just going back over the Archangel/Apocalypse beats yet again.

The Scarlet Witch plot goes like this: Wanda Maximoff, overcome with the guilt of stripping millions of mutants of their powers in House of M, has tried to make up for this by attempting to resurrect the 16 million mutants killed in the Genosha genocide from Grant Morrison’s New X-Men. She screws up the magic and brings them all back as zombies, and the middle section of the story is a melee with the mutant zombies, the Cotati aliens from the Empyre story, Hordeculture, and demons from Limbo. She goes to Doctor Strange to fix this and after harshly criticizing both her shoddy magic and misguided intentions, he fixes the situation on the zombie/magic end of things. 

The Wanda plot is interesting to me for a lot of reasons. For one, it’s sort of amazing that in all the time since House of M was published in 2005, there’s never been a proper X-Men story that has truly engaged with her effectively destroying mutantdom for many years. This has come up in some Avengers stories, but it’s not really the same thing. Given that House of M was a thing that deliberately hobbled the X-Men as a franchise at Marvel in favor of the Avengers for many years, the anguish of mutants about “M Day” is mirrored by the people (like me!) who frustratedly read X-Men books in the aftermath of it. From an X-Men fan perspective, setting her up as “the pretender Wanda Maximoff” and having her villified by Krakoan culture feels correct both in the text and on a meta level. Wanda is a made-up character, but she represents an editorial decision a lot of readers resent. 

But despite all this, Wanda Maximoff is still basically a heroic figure in Marvel lore. Even if her actions in this story create a huge mess, she’s still presented as a sympathetic figure who desperately wants to make up for what she’s done in the past. Doctor Strange’s dialogue with her in the fourth issue is blunt to the point of brutality, but he’s not wrong about her: She’s a reckless person who creates chaos and other people always have to deal with the mess she makes. She’s always trying to erase her sins rather than “eclipse them with greater deeds,” as Strange puts it. Hickman’s dynamic between these two characters is intriguing to me – he wrote Doctor Strange extensively in New Avengers and Secret Wars, but Wanda didn’t appear in any of his Avengers work. Strange is presented as very intelligent, but condescending and dismissive, particularly towards women. Wanda comes off as dim and impulsive, but very sensitive and decent at heart. Even if Strange is absolutely correct about her, Hickman pushes the reader to feel empathy for her. It’s going to be rough when she eventually has to confront who she is the mutants of Krakoa somewhere down the line. 

The X-Men don’t know Wanda is responsible for the zombie mutant situation, but Wanda doesn’t know about the Krakoan resurrection rituals. This is addressed in a subplot with a mutant called Explodey Boy who first appears as a zombie and then later as his resurrected self. There’s an extended sequence in the last issue illustrated by Lucas Wernick in which the two Explodey Boys meet and talk through their odd existential situation. This very Brian Michael Bendis-y sequence is very sweet and makes good use of the possibilities of resurrection as a major feature of Krakoan life, but it grates on me that Hickman and Wernick portray Explodey Boy as a cute blonde white boy with an “aw shucks” demeanor when they had the option to make him… so many things besides a cute blonde white boy! For one thing, he looks and talks just like Cypher, so there’s a matter of redundancy. But when the entire point of Explodey Boy in the story is that he’s a wholesome normal kid, making him a blonde white boy is basically equating that with the utmost of sweet normalcy. It just seems to me that an X-Men comic in 2020 should avoid a lazy trope like that. 

Fire

“Fire”
X-Men #10
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Art by Leinil Francis Yu
Color art by Sunny Gho

Vulcan has been a regular supporting character through Jonathan Hickman’s run on X-Men so far, largely played as an overly serious foil to more established characters – his biological brothers Cyclops and Havok, and his new housemate Wolverine. Vulcan is a tricky character who was introduced in Ed Brubaker’s mid-2000s run as a complicated retcon: He’s the lost Summers brother, he was chosen by Charles Xavier and Moira McTaggert to lead a doomed team of forgotten X-Men on a mission to Krakoa, he went off to space to become a tyrannical Shi’ar emperor. There’s even more to it than that, but mostly in “cosmic” Marvel books I have never read. There’s a lot of reasons many reasonable writers would run screaming from this extremely convoluted character, particularly as he’s never had much of a compelling personality beyond spite and madness, but given how much of Hickman’s X-Men hinges on the intersection of Xavier, McTaggert, and Krakoa – not to mention Cyclops being a lead character – he’s sorta cornered into dealing with him and his now-resurrected lost X-Men. 

“Fire” does not call back to the part of Vulcan’s story that intersects with Moira and Krakoa, but it does properly reintroduce Petra and Sway – though really, given how little they’ve ever appeared as living characters, it’s more like a regular introduction. Of the four lost X-Men that Brubaker introduced in X-Men: Deadly Genesis, these are the two who died on Krakoa. (Darwin, who appeared as part of the trio who disappeared into The Vault in issue #5, survived the experience and was featured as a member in Brubaker’s Uncanny X-Men run.) Petra and Sway are depicted as rather messy hedonists intent to drink heavily and get wild at the Summers House on the moon while the “boring mutants” are off on vacation. They come across as cheerful types who are not particularly bothered to be residents of a living island that once killed them both. Resurrection seems to have a way of making people very forgiving about such things.

The issue mainly boils down to Vulcan encountering a group of invading aliens connected to the Empyre crossover event and them tampering with his mind, seeing his reborn and stable form as a broken version of him, and introducing a corrupting element that will undermine his progress and redemption. This sets Vulcan up for an eventual return to his primary role as an antagonist, most likely whenever Hickman’s ongoing Shi’ar story kicks into high gear. The interesting part of this development is more that Vulcan’s story becomes about him knowing this has happened and actively resisting the lure towards madness and destruction. 

Hickman has put a lot of effort into putting the traditional X-Men mutant villains on paths towards antagonistic roles without undermining the notion of Krakoa unifying all the mutants. House of X set Sabretooth up for an eventual revenge story after he was cruelly imprisoned by the Quiet Council, and Powers of X set in motion some grand betrayal by Mister Sinister as part of establishing the resurrection protocols. Exodus appears to be on a path towards cultish zealotry in parallel with Nightcrawler’s creation of a mutant religion, and it looks like we’re set to discover Apocalypse’s true motives in X of Swords. And then there’s Mystique, who will undermine the Quiet Council as she seethes in fully justified resentment of being denied the resurrection of her wife Destiny. It’s pretty clear that once the Mystique/Destiny/Moira plot comes into play, we’ll be entering the end game of this whole thing. 

Vulcan’s trajectory is an interesting counterpoint to that of Mystique. Both are former enemies playing at being reformed members of Krakoan society, but whereas Mystique is only playing along to advance her personal agenda, Vulcan seems to genuinely want to be a better man and live up to the example of his brothers. Mystique embraces the moral rot in her, and her capacity for causing chaos, but Vulcan now lives in fear of this destructive element in him. Even before the alien intervention he knew he was a bomb waiting to go off – now he’s stuck worrying that he is powerless to defuse it. As with the other mutant villains set on a track to return to form, his plight is very true to the core of his character and is driven by relatable motives. The difference is that he’s the character positioned to overcome his worst impulses. 

Some notes:

• It’s hard not to notice how between Hickman’s X-Men, Gerry Duggan’s Marauders, Ed Brisson’s New Mutants, and Benjamin Percy’s X-Force there is a real obsession with showing X-Men drinking heavily, with a few characters being depicted as problem drinkers. It’s a little weird, and I imagine it must grate on sober readers quite a bit.

• I love that Hickman has made elements of Ed Brubaker and Mike Carey’s parallel mid-’00s X-Men comics very crucial to his own work, while virtually nothing from Joss Whedon’s much more popular concurrent Astonishing X-Men series has come into play. But of course – Whedon’s take was deliberately retro, and he didn’t actually add much to franchise in terms of big ideas. (But hey, Armor has showed up, so that’s something.)

The Reading

X-Men: Free Comic Book Day 2020
Written by Jonathan Hickman and Tini Howard
Art by Pepe Larraz
Color art by Marte Gracia

Every year Marvel issues a special Free Comic Book Day comic designed to hype up whatever major event is coming along, and the headlining story in this year’s edition is basically a trailer teasing the first X-Men crossover of the Hickman era, X of Swords. Even aside from hyping up the next big arc, this issue is exciting if just because it reunites Hickman with Pepe Larraz, the artist of House of X. The two have a remarkable creative chemistry, and Larraz has asserted himself as the definitive artist of this X-era. The pages, which rely heavily on his gift for character design and evocative environments, feel like home. 

The familiarity of Larraz’s line is helpful in grounding the issue, which otherwise pushes the reader off the deep end into unfamiliar territory. The opening pages introduce Apocalypse’s original Horsemen, who he lost when Okkara was split into Krakoa and Arakko centuries ago. I’m not certain exactly what happens in these pages, but it establishes them as powerful and brutal characters who seek Opal Luna Saturnyne, the Omniversal Majestrix of Otherworld. There’s certainly some missing threads here, but the Horsemen and the lost island of Arakko being connected to Otherworld makes more sense of Apocalypse’s machinations through Tini Howard’s Excalibur series. It’s all starting to click together. 

The remainder of the issue teases out the rest of the story as Saturnyne does a tarot reading to get a sense of what may be coming to her. Hickman, Howard, and Larraz provide a feast for speculation, particularly in the final three cards. I’m not going to indulge in that for now, but I will say I’m quite pleased that Archangel, Banshee, and Penance are being positioned as prominent characters in this story after being largely absent from the first wave of Dawn of X books, and that Storm seems to have a major plotline in this arc. This, along with Giant Size X-Men making Storm central to the ongoing Children of the Vault thread, gives me hope that after many years of being sidelined we may be entering a phase when Storm is restored to her proper place as a crucial character in this franchise. 

Wait And See

“Wait and See”
Giant Size X-Men: Magneto
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Art by Ramón Pérez
Color art by David Curiel

It’s been a bit difficult to find the appropriate level of expectation for the Giant Size X-Men issues. Each of the three published so far has felt less substantial than any of the regular issues of X-Men written by Jonathan Hickman, and have done more to gesture in the direction of future stories than deliver something more satisfying in the moment. The comics have all delivered in terms of serving as showcases for talented artists, and with this Magneto issue the Canadian illustrator Ramón Pérez– mostly known for his indie and web comics – gets to show off his considerable craft on a very mainstream title. Hickman’s primary interest here seems to be in letting the artist flex, and in laying in plot details for later on. The former is a great idea when working as a writer in a visual medium, the latter goal is fine in the abstract but in the case of this issue it mostly just undermines a story that presents itself as a quiet character study. 

The plot of the issue is basically that Emma Frost has asked Magneto to acquire an island for her, and he accomplishes that with the help of her profoundly arrogant ex Namor, the mutant monarch of the seas. At the end of the issue we see Magneto assemble a tower with a Sentinel head built into the side for Frost, and well, that’s that. We’ll find out what Emma is going to do with this island some other time. It looks cool, so there’s that. There’s some bits of deep sea adventure in the middle of the story with Namor, but in narrative terms that’s what happens in 30 pages.

The meat of the story is mostly in observing Magneto at this moment of his life. He’s typically a character defined by his unrelenting ideology and antagonistic relationship with humans, but in this issue we see him rather contented by the founding of Krakoa and his station as one of the fledgling mutant nation’s leaders. Magneto has been a steady presence in Hickman’s story thus far, but his most memorable scenes have involved him making grand and unapologetically arrogant speeches to human leaders. This facet of Magneto is not on display in this issue. Instead we him willing to wait patiently for Namor among a bunch of puffins on a small island, and dining with Emma Frost, a woman he clearly recognizes as both a peer and a friend. The latter is notable – even though these characters have a good amount of history as colleagues, it’s actually pretty rare to see Magneto engage with someone besides Charles Xavier or Rogue as either a respected friend or confidant. His tendency is to be alone, and to project a superior aloofness.

Magneto, Emma Frost, and Namor are all characters with major superiority complexes and a flippant contempt for humans. In contrasting today’s Magneto with two characters he has so much in common with, we see how much he’s changed in the recent past. His rage has subsided upon the realization of his lifelong dream of a mutant nation, we see him as magnanimous and respectful - not just of Emma and Namor, but of the human man living on the island. The entire story is him doing a favor for Emma, whereas Magneto’s role since the start of House of X has largely involved him sending other mutants out to do his bidding. I get the sense that in the long run of Hickman’s story, this will be understood as a glimpse of Magneto at a good moment in his life. This state cannot last for him, and that’s his tragedy. 

The matter of Emma’s island tower is intriguing but makes the issue feel unresolved and incomplete, and since the issue ends on an inert “that’s it?” moment it undermines the understated character development that was the actual focus of the issue. It may have landed better if the issue ended on another quiet Magneto moment, or if Perez’s last page didn’t feel like such an abrupt ending. But I think Hickman is more to blame here – whereas the previous Giant Size issues have advanced an ongoing mystery with Cypher and presented a cliffhanger with Storm, both of which are tied to macro plots introduced in House of X/Powers of X, it’s hard to get a sense of how significant this story development is when all Emma says in the end is that she intends to…invite people to this island. Uh, sure? I trust Hickman enough to pay off on this in some way, but this could just as well be an entire issue about Emma Frost needing a place to hold off-site meetings. 

Unlike the other issues of Giant Size X-Men, this one was not conceived with the artist in mind. The issue was originally meant to be drawn by Ben Oliver, and Ramón Pérez stepped in when Oliver had to bow out of the commitment. He did a good job with it, particularly in drawing the most uneventful pages where it’s really just Magneto hanging out on an island and looking off into the distance. He presents Magneto as a powerful but unknowable figure, but also someone with an obvious soulful interiority. His ability to convey this is crucial to the successes of this issue, since Hickman really went “show, not tell” in this story. 

Haunted Mansion

“Haunted Mansion”
Giant Size X-Men: Nightcrawler #1
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Art by Alan Davis
Color art by Carlos Lopez

The Giant Size X-Men special issues written by Jonathan Hickman were originally meant to be annuals for the first five ongoing series from the Dawn of X launch, and though this issue features none of the cast from Tini Howard’s Excalibur, it seems obvious that this issue was intended to be the Excalibur annual given that it’s illustrated by Excalibur co-creator Alan Davis and features a handful of core characters from that series as they appeared in the late ‘80s. The story also prominently features Cypher and Magik, who Davis drew in memorable mid ‘80s New Mutants annuals written by Chris Claremont. Hickman makes the most of Davis’ familiarity with these characters not just for nostalgia’s sake, but for rooting this story in which the Krakoa-era X-Men visit their old home in “classic X-Men” aesthetics of an artist who has had multiple runs on X-Men titles over the years. When the issue opens on interiors of the abandoned X-Mansion, it immediately feels authentically like you’re in the place if just because it’s Davis’ recognizable ultra-clean linework.

This is billed as a Nightcrawler story and while he’s very prominently featured in the plot as the leader of this mission, the most intriguing parts of the issue center on Cypher and further hint at something strange about the current state of his relationship with his techno-organic best friend Warlock. Though it was fairly obvious to anyone familiar with the character, this issue is the first to confirm that Cypher has been “wearing” Warlock on his right arm. This isn’t at all unusual for the character, but the weird thing here is that it is for some reason a secret he’s keeping this a secret. The first suggestion of this came in X-Men #7 where Cyclops stumbles into the two of them hanging out, and in this issue Cypher begs Magik to keep it a secret before explaining himself and she’s rightly sort of baffled why this would be a secret to begin with. Hard to say where Hickman is going with this thread, but I suspect it will eventually pay off on the panels in which he appears to infect Krakoa with the techno-organic virus – a form of the Phalanx – in Powers of X #4. 

Aside from advancing this plot, the issue is a straightforward mystery plot that resolves in a reveal involving the Sidri, a fairly obscure alien race introduced by Claremont and Dave Cockrum in the early ‘80s. It’s enjoyable entirely at face value, but even as a fairly throwaway one-off issue it does push the macro plot forward in terms of showing us the current state of the X-Men’s former headquarters, adding another alien alliance that may factor into Hickman’s slowly percolating cosmic plot, and nudging along the Cypher thread. Not bad, all told, and plus it’s always a pleasure to see Alan Davis draw Nightcrawler in action.