Previously On X-Men: New Beginnings In ‘Phoenix’ #11 And ‘Wolverine’ #9, An End in ‘X-Factor’ #10 (Plus Godzilla & Hellverine!)

There be dragons here. And rock people. And time travel, and Marauders and Godzillas and Hellverines and the merciful end of a series in this week’s “Previously On X-Men!”

Uncanny X-Men #14 by Gail Simone and David Marquez

All three plot threads advance, as we get more of Henrietta’s backstory, the Outliers encounter Man-Thing in the Dark Artery, and the X-Men battle Sadurang the Dragon.

• When Rogue attacks Sadurang in defense of Gambit, she’s wearing a look reminiscent of her costume circa “Mutant Massacre” and “Fall of the Mutants”, a dark green bodysuit with a light green off-the-shoulder tunic, gloves and boots.
• Jubilee says that Sadurang reminds her of someone, meaning her son, Shogo, who is currently a dragon residing in Otherworld. Sadurang says he misses her, and advises her to visit. Nice to see Jubilee’s motherhood acknowledged in this book.
• In Henrietta’s flashback, we see her befriend a man named George who brings her to Haven house, but then he’s killed by agents of “the Service”, including Jacob Miller, introduced last issue. He calls himself a “sentinel of purity”, that first word obvious having loaded implications given the Service’s anti-mutant bent.
• Henrietta reveals her powers: she can transform into a Thing-like rock person and create/summon/control rock golems.

• More goofy timing in her flashback; it clearly seems to be set around or shortly after the turn of the 19th century, yet Henrietta encounters children on their way to an orphan train. George says they’re refugees from the Dust Bowl, which is a 1930s event.
• Man-Thing’s deal is that people who know fear will burn when they touch him, and thus, the Outliers must state their powers to him to pass (I guess the idea is they must be unafraid to open up).
• Ransom is basically Sebastian Shaw (absorbs energy, converts it to strength), Jitter is, as we know, capable of being the best at anything for one minute. Deathdream can shift between being alive and dead, control ghosts, and has dreams of the future.
• The big Outlier-related reveal surrounds Calico, who reveals that her horse, Ember, died in a fire and the Ember in the story is something else (she also says that she can give herself and “Ember” any powers she can imagine). This makes the second X-Men-related teen girl with a dead horse in their backstory (along with Firestar and her horse Butter Rum, who was killed by Emma Frost as part of a plot to ingratiate Firestar to the Hellfire Club).

A few quibbles aside (Simone drops a PMS joke that is incredibly lazy), this is another strong issue. The art — both Marquez’s pencils and Matthew Wilson’s colors — are excellent, and each of the plotlines ticks along at a good pace.

Phoenix #11 by Stephanie Phillips & Roi Mercado

Jean seeks out her resurrected sister Sara.

• Somehow, this book survived the “ten and done” purge that wiped out most of the B-tier “From the Ashes” books like NYX, X-Force, and X-Factor (see below).
• While they’ve communicated periodically before, this issue gives us our longest conversation between Jean and Cyclops yet, as Cyclops continues to service as really the only recurring supporting cast in the book.
• During her convo with Cyclops, Jean says that her sister was killed by the Purifiers; this is likely a typo, as she was killed by a different anti-mutant group whose name starts with a P (the Phalanx), which gets referenced correctly later in the issue.
• In one panel, Jean is drinking from a Harry’s Hideaway mug; Harry’s Hideway was the local pub in the town closest to the X-Mansion. Introduced in New Mutants, it was retroactively also established as a hangout for the original X-Men as well.
• Whether intentional or not, Sara Grey’s attire closely resembles the general aesthetic of the Phoenix Five (the five X-Men possessed by the Phoenix Force during the “Avengers vs X-Men” event in 2012).
• The final issue of Cable: Love & Chrome is still forthcoming, so its unclear if Cable’s appearance here synchs up with that at all.
• Cable’s explanation of something changing in the past eventually being reflected in the future/his present isn’t quite how Marvel time generally works (changes in the past create alternate realities), but “how Marvel time works” is pretty loosey-goosey as a concept these days.

• Sara has created a…place (I think it’s supposed to be a planet, but it’s not terribly clear) called Greyhaven and gathered other latent mutants like herself there.
• The idea of Sara Grey as a mutant was actually floated by Chris Claremont back in the 80s, proposed as an alternative to resurrecting Jean to appear in the original X-Factor. In his pitch, her power would have made her something like Caliban, a living Cerebro (which would have fit in with the book’s original “mutant hunters” premise). Here, its said that she has the power to unlock the latent abilities in other mutants and help them reach their full potential (Ed. Note: Not unlike Sage at a point when her powers were still poorly defined).
• It’s not quite clear how Greyhaven and all these latent mutants fit with established mutant lore in general, as well as the mechanics of the White Hot Room and New Krakoa, but it’s clear from the issue itself we’re supposed to unclear on that stuff at the moment, as Jean is.

Something of a departure from the previous arcs of the books, including being a much more personal story for Jean, and that’s probably for the best. This Sara Grey stuff has me raising an eyebrow, but at the same time, given the closing page, I think that’s what Phillips wants at this point.

Wolverine #9 by Saladin Ahmed and Javier Pina

Wolverine returns to his childhood home only to fall into a Marauders ambush.

• Vertigo on the cover has an almost Mark Silvestri look to her.
• The discussion between the two guys at the bar about not using the term “mutie” and how being from a small town doesn’t excuse ignorance or bigotry is a bit on the nose, but appreciated (it’s not like we live in subtle times…).
• It’s established here that this issue takes place sometime after Wolverine joined up with Rogue’s X-Men in Uncanny X-Men, with the first eight issues all taking place before the start of that series.
• Inspector Mehta debuted in the second issue of this volume of the book. She’s been assigned to keep tabs on Wolverine, but smartly recognizes trying to do so secretly is a fools errand so she instead re-introduces herself.

• Vertigo and Harpoon are both members of the Marauders, Mister Sinister’s team of oft-cloned mutant killers who kicked off the “Mutant Massacre” storyline back in the 80s. Wolverine recently (from our perspective) tussled with them in the Wolverine Deep Cut retro miniseries.
• Sabretooth was also a member of the Marauders, as Wolverine notes here; he last appeared in the main timeline in the final issue of the previous volume of this book (Wolverine #50), in which Wolverine seemingly killed him once and for all. But as Wolverine himself notes here, Sabretooth rarely stays dead for long.

Javier Pina does a decent job filling in, but Martín Cóccolo is still missed, particularly in the action scenes. Otherwise, this is pretty much your standard “setup a new arc” issue.

X-Factor #10 by Mark Russell and Bob Quinn

Havok tears it all down as this iteration of the series reaches its end.

• With this being the last issue of this volume of the series, making it the latest “From the Ashes” book to perish, everything gets wrapped up quickly and abruptly, with the military-backed, tech-bro promoted iteration of the team torn apart by various factions and revelations.
• Of all the abrupt shifts, Angel’s is perhaps the most abrupt, as he or more less breaks good and helps out Havok after he realizes his actions are only being celebrated by people he doesn’t like, which shouldn’t really be news to him at this point and doesn’t really fit with the earlier hints that his darker Archangel side was growing ascendant.
• Havok and Polaris reconcile, but don’t get back together, which is probably the best we could have hoped for.
• Polaris also learns about Jovius’ betrayal, and its revealed he’s basically helping the army because they rescued him from Orchis. It’s not made clear how he being the Krakoan record keeper would enable him to know where mutants are NOW, nor how the Orchis attack on Krakoa as depicted in this series varies so wildly from what was shown on-panel during the last Hellfire Gala.

• As rushed as this ending it is, it does effectively put all the pieces back in place for whomever decides to pick up these characters next, except for Rusty and Feral (who are still dead) and Darkstar, who continues to be written inexplicably out of character.
• Forget-Me-Not disappears entirely between last issue (when he was on the plane with Havok and the rest of his team) and this issue (when he’s…not). Editorial oversight or intentional gag? You decide!
• I suspect we’ll get the next iteration of this series at least by next year, in time for the 40th anniversary of X-Factor’s creation.

Good riddance. Both these characters and this creative team are capable of and deserve better.

Godzilla Vs. X-Men by Fabian Niceiza and Emilio Laiso

Marvel’s “Godzilla Vs. The Marvel Universe through the Decades” series of one-shots continue in this issue, with the 90’s X-Men. When Godzilla begins attacking ports used by a particular Japanese robotics company Tsugnai, Shiro Yoshida- Sunfire- asks the X-Men for help.

• The team line-up for this story is exactly what we see on Tony Daniel’s cover- Cyclops, Storm, Jean Grey, Beast, Wolverine and Gambit- plus Xavier. This is basically the animated series team minus Rogue and Jubilee (which are surprising exclusions). 
• Other notable members from this era of comics that are missing are Archangel, Psylocke, Iceman, Bishop, and depending on exactly where this issue is placed in the timeline, Colossus.
• Sunfire is wearing a very 90’s costume that he only wore for a short time in the comics, but was most notably seen in the very popular 90’s Marvel trading cards.
• At the table when Sunfire and Tsugnai CEO Mr. Kaneto request help from Xavier is also Henry Peter Gyrich and Val Cooper. Gyrich was initially introduced as an antagonistic bureaucrat (turned semi-ally) to the Avengers in Avengers #165. He spent the 90’s as head of Project Wideawake, a government mutant watchdog group that bordered on a law enforcement agency, which usually found himself as an antagonist, if not outright villain. Val Cooper debuted in Uncanny X-Men #176 as another government bureaucrat. She was generally a pro-mutant presence in the 90’s and served as X-Factor’s government liaison.
• The facility Gambit is breaking into is run by the Commission of Superhuman Affairs. Placing it in Boulder, Colorado makes it not far from the Vault, a superhuman prison, but very far from Project PEGASUS, which is in upstate New York. There’s a lot of secret mountain bases in the Marvel Universe.
• The Super-Adaptoid is a power-mimicking android that first appeared Tales of Suspense #82. As far as I can tell, its only other encounter with the X-Men was in X-Men #29, in which it tried to mimic the original five’s powers through Calvin Rankin, the Mimic, and shorted out.
• The X-Men-Adaptoid resembles the recent X-Men X Transformers collaboration, X-Sentinel. And it looks cool. This also is the first time in these one-shots that any of the writers thought to use Pym Particles to make their protagonists Godzilla-size.
• The Original Tri-Sentinel first appeared in Amazing Spider-Man #329. It was built by Shaw Industries, not Trask (the original creators of Sentinels) as this one is here. The power-copying ability it displays to mimic some of Godzilla’s biggest 90’s adversaries is new.

Although I think the Hulk one-shot remains the best of these specials to date, this surprised me with exactly how good it was to the point that I’d call this #2. Laiso is still a little house style, but is one of the strongest artists working in that style. Niceiza’s script is a touch wordy, but he executes the concept way better than I expected.

Hellverine by Benjamin Percy & Raffaele Ienco

This issue is fully forging its own path. After a kick-off storyarc that blended Akihiro’s history into his new demonic status quo, this story is focused on moving forward.

Percy leans back on the Weapons of Vengeance crossover and the original Hellverine miniseries for everything found here. He also subvert expectations, by making the Hell Hulk’s path of destruction being fueled by the creature’s influence, not his actual presence. There’s nothing revealed about the creature yet because of that, but I am hoping that it’s revealed to be another pre-existing character reshaped into something infernal, like Akihiro as Hellverine. Weapon H return anyone?

Ienco and color artist Bryan Valenza have a lot of fun with the story. Ienco’s pencils are loosening up by the issue, which I hope leads to a very dynamic fight when the eventual confrontation comes between Akihiro and Hell Hulk. Valenza leans into the dark nature of the story, making it drip with atmosphere.

Overall, a fun but unexpected start to the storyarc.