Previously On X-Men: This Week’s X-Books Are All About The Deep Cuts

In what I have to assume is pure coincidence, all three of this week’s X-books feature appearances in key roles from characters who are relatively deep cuts, with few or no significant appearances to their names.

X-Men #17 by Jed MacKay and Ryan Stegman

More of 3K’s mysterious leaders are revealed as Magneto uses a Sentinel as a Kaiju-fighting mech suit.

• Ryan Stegman is back on art. While Netho Diaz is both a worthy fill-in and it’s nice to have Stegman back, it’ll be interesting to read this story in one sitting and see how the art changing hands impacts it as a complete narrative.
• This issue gives us our biggest look inside 3K yet, notably that one of its members is Astra, the retcon-masquerading-as-a-character created in the late 90s to explain where Joseph came from once it was decided he wasn’t actually Magneto. A mutant with a teleportation ability and a fondness for stealing advanced science which has made her an expert on cloning, the original Astra stories established her as a founding member of Magneto’s Brotherhood of Evil Mutants who left the group before they were actually introduced in comics (which is why she isn’t there in old Silver Age stories). Mad at Magneto for being a jerk (which he was, but to be fair, he was a jerk to everyone), she created a clone of him for revenge reasons: Joseph. She really hasn’t been seen much outside the initial the “Magneto War” crossover stories that introduced her and 2012’s Magneto: Not A Hero miniseries.

• Her latest iteration of Joseph (aka a clone of Magneto who is young) appears in this issue as well. She’s also still advocating a plan involving flipping the magnetic poles of the Earth, which was her big move in “Magneto War.”
• We still don’t know who the chairman is, but it is established they have a familiarity with cloning as well (and refers to Cyclops as “Scott”), which limits the field further, especially given:
• It’s also established that another X-Men villain with a predilection for cloning, Mister Sinister, was specifically not invited to join the group, and the 3K charter forbids its members from assembling clone armies.
• We learn that Sabretooth was the group’s first choice for Wyre’s role as trainer/overseer of the 3K X-Men; while I like the idea of textualizing Wyre’s second-string status, it’s tough to picture Sabretooth doing the kind of stuff Wyre is doing for the group, so they probably ended up in the better situation in the long run.
• There’s a flashback that shows how Kid Omega survived the attack that kicked off this story, via a “psychic macro” (basically putting his powers into autopilot mode to protect him as he fell to the ground). Like a lot of MacKay’s work on this book, it is reminiscent of the kind of thing Grant Morrison would do in their run, in terms of using powers in different ways (which is especially apt given Quentin is a Morrison creation).
• One of the people Quentin cites in is macro as a trusted ally is Phoebe Cuckoo, who isn’t on the current X-Men team but was his girlfriend during the Krakoa Era X-Force.
• There’s a neat bit at the end of the issue where, after Ben (one of the adult mutants rescued/sheltered by the X-Men) seemingly runs off to join Magneto fight against Piper Cobb’s evil twin sister inhabiting the corpse of a massive space whale (comics!), but instead shows up at Piper’s anti-mutant mom’s doorstep, asking for her help.

This is another hugely decompressed issue (I think maybe all of 30 seconds pass in terms of the X-Men’s fight with the 3K X-Men between last issue and the end of this one). But the deeper glimpses inside 3K create the impression of forward momentum, and its hard to complain about a Stegman-drawn Sentinel Mech/Space Whale Kaiju fight. Plus, Astra?!? Gotta love a deep continuity cut like that.

Laura Kinney: Wolverine #7 by Erica Schultz and Giada Belviso

The truth about Laura’s “so-called life” comes crashing down around her!

• Julian Keller aka Hellion recently appeared in NYX, and dates back to the early 2000’s “New X-Men” era — as do the sparks of romance between him and Laura.
• To the issue’s credit, it doesn’t belabor the “actually, you’re normal and your fantastical life is all a dream!” setup for very long; as readers, we obviously know it’s a ruse, and keeping that info from from the characters for too long becomes frustrating.
• The villains who have captured Laura are the Badoon, a second (third?)-tier Marvel alien race who debuted in Silver Surfer’s first solo series and are probably best known for having conquered the galaxy in the future timeline from which the original Guardians of the Galaxy hail.
• They reference Laura fighting the Brood in Captain Marvel #49 aka the “Revenge of the Brood” storyline that ran for six issues and tied into the Krakoa Era X-Men book (of which Laura was a member of the team).
• Beautiful Dreamer debuted back in Power Pack #12, and has been a perennial “background Morlock” ever since (last appearing during “Fall of X” in Dark X-Men (vol. 2) #2-3), but is hardly a Tier 1 Morlock.
• Back in the day, her mind-altering “dream smoke” manifested via a cigarette that fit her general “homeless flapper” vibe, but here it just seems to come from her hands, suggesting the cigarette was more of an affection (obviously, these days Marvel isn’t going to have a character using their power by smoking).

By this issue it’s pretty clear Schultz is intentionally structuring her stories as two-parters, and this issue in particular underscores the strengths and weaknesses of that approach. On the one hand, the It’s A Wonderful Life gimmick doesn’t overstay its welcome; on the other hand, the resolution feels rushed and the threat diminished once it becomes clear everything is going to be wrapped up by issue’s end.

Storm #9 by Murewa Ayodele and Lucas Werneck

Storm’s legal woes continue as the FBI/ONE make a move on her sanctuary.

• This issue doesn’t contain a “One World Under Doom” tie-in banner (nor should it), but it is casually mentioned that Doom is Emperor and overseeing the execution of jurisprudence in the United States.
• Storm gets hooked up to a fancy lie detector which functions in a way that is a thematic parallel to her own current relationship with Eternity, and it’s always fun when antagonists do stuff like this expecting to catch the hero in a lie only for the hero to still mostly tell the truth yet not give their interrogator what they want.

• Similarly, there’s a great moment later in the issue when it turns out this whole interrogation of Storm is basically a cover for the government (the FBI is questioning Storm, but Agent Lundvqist of ONE is involved as well) to go into Limbo and convince some demons to attack Storm’s sanctuary so they can slip in unnoticed and retrieve its power source. Except they don’t know that Storm is hosting her big “get strong people to fight each other” tournament, so the demon attack is easily repelled off-panel and the whole plan falls apart on the same page its introduced. It’s genuinely hilarious.
• The big thing the sanctuary is hiding, the weapon Eternity intends to use in its fight against Oblivion, turns out to be Abraxas, the physical embodiment of the act of destruction, a sort of “anti-creation” being. It debuted in an early 2000s Fantastic Four story, and this is its first appearance since then.
• The last few pages of the story, set in the “near future”, explicitly connect the Storm/Eternity/Oblivion conflict with the looming threat of Hadad the storm god.

By now, it’s pretty clear that Ayodele is less interested in telling Storm stories as he is in using Storm as a lens/hook into telling a big Marvel cosmic saga. Yet at the same time, his enthusiasm for that stuff (roughly one half of this issue’s letters page is an editorial from Ayodele that basically boils down to “damn, I love this shit”) is admittedly infectious, and having a stellar (no pun-intended) artistic collaborator helps sell it all, even as the book continues to move further afield from the rest of the line and Storm’s established characterization.

For more X-related fun, check out Scott Redmond’s full reviews of Deadpool/Wolverine #5 and Ultimate Wolverine #6!