Previously On X-Men: Dark Phoenix Redux And More In This Week’s X-Books

Lots of exposition, some continuity conundrums and, thankfully, at least a few nice character moments as we dig into the latest batch of X-books!

Deadpool/Wolverine #6 by Benjamin Percy & Joshua Cassara

The secret origin of Stryfe-pocalypse! Sort of!

• As teased on the cover, the remit of this issue is to explain how Apocalypse came to reside in Stryfe’s body. Which it sort of does.
• What is shown is an aged, infirmed Apocalypse in some indeterminate future time transferring his consciousness into Stryfe’s body (looking as it does in this series).
• This then prompts a flashback to The Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix limited series, and a recap of how Apocalypse arranged to have Baby Cable sent to the future so he could inhabit his body, tried to do that with Cable’s clone Stryfe, but couldn’t.
• But none of that really tells us when or why the future Apocalypse pulled off the transfer with Stryfe, nor why he’s back in the present riding around on a dragon’s skeleton. The Future Apocalypse’s garb more or less resembles his Krakoa Era look, suggesting it takes place in the not too distant future. At any rate, it suggests that the Apocalypse-in-Stryfe of this series is both a distinct Apocalypse and Stryfe, in terms of their personal timelines, from any of the previous ones that have appeared in stories.

• Stryfe-pocalypse is after Stryfe’s helmet because he needs it to amplify his powers; I believe this is a new development (Stryfe was always more powerful than Cable and it was never attributed to his helmet).
• The only lines of dialogue Wolverine has in this comic appear to be lines spoken by Stryfe-pocalypse through him.
• As mentioned in the issue, the Nick Fury who appears is a hard-light representation of Fury; the real Fury is currently considered dead while operating as the cosmic Unseen.

The title characters largely take a back seat in yet another heavily deconstructed installment.

Check out the full review of this issue from Scott Redmond!

Exceptional X-Men #10 by Eve L. Ewing, Carmen Carnero & Federica Mancin

Axo battles Mister Sinister for the life of Emma Frost!

• The flashback to Emma and Kitty’s past encounter (where Kitty is bound to a chair) is from New Mutants #15, when Emma had kidnapped the New Mutants and telepathically forced them to join her students, the original Hellions, though that’s not their first encounter (which is in X-Men #129, the first appearance of both).
• The “Charles Dicken meets serial killer” (as Axo puts it) aesthetic of Sinister’s mindscape stems from the fact that before becoming Mister Sinister, he was a scientist living in the Victorian Age.

• The X-Men battle a pack of mini sabretooth tigers created as a guard system by Sinister, which vaguely resemble the kind of chimera-esque animals with the powers of various X-Men he had hanging around his labs during the Krakoa Era.
• Inside Sinister’s mind, Emma says she’s not a match for Sinister telepathically, which isn’t really consistent with past depictions. Sinister has telepathic abilities, but he isn’t an accomplished telepath on the level of Emma.
• In the real world, Sinister explodes into a pile of clone goo (like the Axo clone from the previous couple issues), but then again, pretty much all Mister Sinisters are technically clones to some extent.
• The purple dragon the X-Men discover in one of Sinister’s tubes is presumably Lockheed, Kate’s longtime alien companion. His last appearance was in X-Men (vol. 6) #35, the last issue of the Krakoa Era. It’s not clear how he ended up a captive of Sinister.

This reads like the climax to a new book’s first arc in issue #5 or #6 — the young charges asserting themselves as members of the team and stepping to the fore — so the fact that it’s coming four or five issues later is a testament to this series’ pace. But it’s still a well-executed climax, and I’m curious to see where the book goes from here.

Giant-Size Dark Phoenix Saga #1 by Jackson Lanzing, Collin Kelly & Rod Reis

After Legion lures the Phoenix away from Jean Grey, Ms. Marvel has to help the former Marvel Girl get her groove back.

• The beginning of this issue is out of synch with the ending of Giant-Size X-Men #1; that issue concluded with Ms. Marvel arriving on the lawn of the Grey home as the X-Men battled Dark Phoenix, as seen in X-Men #136. Here, she is Central Park, where the X-Men are battling Dark Phoenix.

• The X-Men did fight Dark Phoenix in Central Park in X-Men #135, but that fight took place before Dark Phoenix went into space and ate a star, destroying the D’Bari planet and all its denizens in the process; here, Dark Phoenix references those events as having already happened.
• Clearly, there was some mix up between the creatives of last issue and this one, and/or some confusion on the part of Rod Reis, as well as an overall lack of editorial oversight.
• Similarly, when Legion tempts the Phoenix Force into possessing him, it leaves Jean Grey behind. Except, there should be no Jean to leave behind, as according to the retcon which allowed for Jean Grey to return from the dead after the end of the “Dark Phoenix Saga”, Jean Grey was never Dark Phoenix; rather, all appearances of Phoenix/Dark Phoenix in X-Men #101 through #137 were the Phoenix Force in the form of Jean Grey. It can’t really leave Jean in this issue, because there’s nothing to leave. There’s just Phoenix.
• The story culminates in Ms. Marvel using her mutant power (as opposed to her Inhuman-derived size changing power) for the first time, which turns out to basically be her MCU counterpart’s hard-light power.
• In the end, Legion and Ms. Marvel end up in the “Age of Apocalypse,” setting up the next chapter.
• The backup story by Steve Foxe and Lucas Werneck is a cute but slight retrospective of Scott and Jean’s relationship. Looks great though.

All else aside, this issue is absolutely gorgeous. Just top notch work from Reis across the board. But as with the previous installment, some pretty significant continuity issues detract from the story.

Magik #6 by Ashley Allen & Jesûs Hervás

Illyana helps Madelyne Pryor deal with a demon uprising in Limbo.

• Madelyne Pryor assumed rule over Limbo in the “Labors of Magik” arc across New Mutants (vol. 4) #24-28, in which, as Illyana reiterates in this issue, she gave up the throne in an effort to move beyond her traumatic past.
• The Limbo Embassy — a foothold of Limbo on Earth — first appeared in Dark Web Finale #1, and has served as Madelyne’s chief base of operations ever since.
• Illyana and her X-Men teammates Psylocke and Juggernaut are briefly seen fighting remnants of Liminal’s attack in Voyageurs National Park in Minnesota, the home state of writer Ashley Allen (and yours truly).
• As far as I know, all of the various demons attending Madelyne, serving on her war council, or rebelling against her, are creations of this story.
• In the course of the fight against the demon rebels, Illyana gains control of the “Wraithsword”, a sword which consumes magic in order to go stronger (in contrast to her Soulsword, which destroys magic; it is also a rapier-like blade, versus the Soulsword’s more broadsword design). I’m curious if we’ll see her deploy both blades in the future.
• The closing page teases the reveal of the leader of the Society of the Eternal Dawn (the secret organization to which Cal’s grandmother belonged and for whom Dani Moonstar currently works), whom Dani refers to as “Embodiment”.

A nice little breath-catching issue after the conclusion of the book’s first arc. It’s good to see the Madelyne/Limbo relationship addressed in this book, and though the plot is relatively self-contained and straight-forward, there’s some good character work going on, too: the moment when Illyana accepts Madelyne’s help then devilishly grins at the thought of coming back to Limbo and helping Madelyne by busting up some demons again is a perfect encapsulation of the “burdened by trauma but loves a good brawl” dichotomy at the heart of the character in just three panels.

Phoenix #12 by Stephanie Phillips and Roi Mercado

Sara Grey explains how she went from pro-mutant activist on Earth to the leader of a planet of space-mutants.

• In addition to chronicling Sara Grey’s path from sticking up for her sister to mutant space messiah, it does some assorted world-building involving the planet this is all taking place on, Elarunn-7, and some of the people who have gathered around Sara, most notably Keldros Verrick (who was leading a rebel faction against some kind of loyalist government in the “Thales Civil War” when Sara first appeared on the planet), who is now Sara’s right hand man/advisor.
• Dreia (who tended to Sara after she arrived) looks an awful lot like Star Wars‘ Doctor Aphra, for whatever reason.
• Sara details how, after giving her pro-mutant speech on TV (as referenced in X-Factor #12 way back when; the line of dialogue she has here matches her dialogue in that issue), she was accosted by the anti-mutant Purifiers and taken to Cameron Hodge, who used her in his experiments with the Phalanx (as revealed in X-Men (vol. 2) #36). After that, the next thing she remembers is waking up on Keldros’ planet.
• All of that is broadly-consistent with Sara’s established history, though the Purifiers are Reverend Stryker’s organization of anti-mutant cannon fodder; Cameron Hodge led the Right. It’s possible the story is suggesting the Purifiers grabbed Sara and then delivered her to Hodge/the Right, though earlier stories explicitly said it was the Right who captured her.
• Also, Hodge is presented here as already being infected with the Phalanx techno-organic virus (and still looking mostly human) while experimenting on Sara shortly after her capture, which doesn’t quite fit with his timeline. He traded his soul to the demon N’astirh for immortality, which meant he lived on as a severed head after Archangel sliced it off his body in X-Factor #34, which led to him existing with his head attached to a big cyborg spider snake body in “X-Tinction Agenda”, after which he was brought into the Phalanx collective (as first revealed in Uncanny X-Men #306).

• A big deal is also made about how being infected by the Phalanx led to Sara learning her sister was dead, which simply makes no sense. She attended Jean’s funeral in X-Men #138 and wasn’t aware of Jean’s return/the Phoenix retcon at the time of her abduction circa X-Factor #12. If anything, the Phalanx telling her Jean is alive would be the more shocking piece of info.
• Cable shows up at the very end of the issue, following on from his appearance last issue, to shoot Sara and gives us our issue-ending cliffhanger.

It’s hard not to notice that the most relevant/unknown piece of info in Sara’s backstory — how she got from “one of the Phalanx/seemingly dead” to her current role as a mutant Space Messiah — is left out of her recap. Hopefully, there’s a reason for that. In the meantime, this reads more like a spottily-edited Wikipedia article masquerading as a story.