Previously On X-Men: It’s Time To Hack The Planet In ‘X-Men’ #19

Even MORE Wolverines and Deadpools, outsmarting the Mad Thinker and more in this week’s X-books!

Avengers #28 by Jed MacKay & Andrea Broccardo

Captain America and Black Panther battle a Masters of Evil-ized Mad Thinker in the conclusion to “Masters of Evil”!

• Essentially another issue-long fight, Sam and T’Challa ultimately win by using one of the Mad Thinker’s automatons to do a hard reboot of the Impossible City, letting the city’s consciousness reassert itself, lock out Quasimodo, stop the asteroid that the Mad Thinker had programmed to impact Earth, and bring the rest of the Avengers back aboard.
• Iron Man is accurately drawn wearing his stripped down armor from his current solo series.
• The Avengers note that the threat of a world under the control of Doctor Doom is still pressing, since that crossover event continues to churn.
• Former spouses Black Panther and Storm come to terms with being on the Avengers together (mostly, it’s Black Panther who has had to come to terms with that).

Two consecutive issues of near non-stop action is a bit much, but the “outsmarting the Mad Thinker” reveal is fun.

Hellfire Vigil #1 by the X-Office

Inspired by the Hellfire Galas of Krakoa, mutants around the world gather to hold a vigil in remembrance of their lost society.

• This is a “jam” issue, with a number of different writer/artist teams contributing a few pages at time.
• Ms. Marvel mentions that she wasn’t on Krakoa for long; she was resurrected shortly before the last Hellfire Gala, which concluded with Orchis’ attack on the island that scattered the X-Men (including Ms. Marvel) off the island. She always says she’s told her parents she’s a mutant, which we haven’t see on-panel yet, making that comment a possible spoiler to the conclusion of the ongoing “Giant-Size X-Men” event she’s at the center of.
• Anole says that Prodigy, Forge, Sobunar and Local worked together to create lapel pins which recreate the Krakoan gates for the night, though it’s never made clear why they only work for this night, and couldn’t continue to be used (even though we know we they won’t be).
• Following up on hints laid down in both NYX and Exceptional X-Men, Axo (aka “Tarnished Mood”) and Sophie Cuckoo meet in person at the vigil for the first time.
• Mystique and Destiny attend the gala, with Mystique giving no indication of the grievous injuries she sustained in the course of her recent miniseries.
• It seemed like this issue might be used as a means to set in motion plotlines for the various X-books, but that isn’t really the case, with the exception of an extended sequence in which Phoenix confusingly encounters some crystal memory people in space.

• Glob interrupts Beast and Jennifer Starkey to correct him about his role in the mid 80s Beauty and the Beast miniseries starring Beast and Dazzler.
• Psylocke and Deathdream having a friendly slow dance together is a nice moment that builds on their recent interactions in her solo series.

• Reference is made to Beast’s secondary mutation, but this Beast (whose mind dates to his New Defenders days) hasn’t undergone his secondary mutation yet (which hit the original Beast during Grant Morrison’s New X-Men).
• This issue establishes that Colossus wore a face-covering helmet as Tank in the “From the Ashes” X-Force because it blocked telepathy (like Magneto’s helmet), a reaction to him having spent so much time under the mental control of his brother in the previous iteration of X-Force.
• Even though the cancelled X-Force and NYX (and the always-a-miniseries but completed Dazzler) get dedicated sequences, neither the ongoing Wolverine book nor the cancelled X-Factor get any kind of attention.
• It’s revealed that Idie (from X-Men) and Ransom (from Uncanny X-Men) somehow entered into a long-distance relationship.
• Banshee’s lack of appropriate attire for the vigil is explained in the Astonishing X-Men Marvel Unlimited issue this week. He meets Siryn, who is still one of the willing trustees (aka brainwashed/press-ganged mutants) at Graymalkin Prison. Her presence is a nice reminder of that ridiculous plot element of this era, which sets the stage for what happens next:
• The centerpiece of the issue is when ONE and Warden Ellis show up and arrest Dazzler (who is in the middle of a concert), at which point Dazzler urges the crowd (which contains not just “bystander” mutants but actual X-Men and Avengers) to standby and not intervene on her behalf. It’s an incredibly uncharacteristic scene (for numerous characters) and reads as very tone-deaf in light of the current political climate and the traditional relationship between the X-Men and anti-mutant establishment figures. To his credit, Jason Loo (who scripted that scene) took to social media and apologized for the scene, explaining it was written months ago (which still doesn’t quite excuse it, but it’s nice to see him quickly recognize how discordant the scene reads at the moment).

• In another uncharacteristic sequence, Storm spends a few panels dressing down a cashier at a pharmacy for being impolite (the cashier *is* being a jerk, but it seems like the kind of thing Storm would rise above rather than attack, particularly since she’s driven to action when the cashier embarrasses her.
• This issue also introduces Furaha, Storm’s possible future daughter (another rare bit of future-story-seeding in the issue) via an unrevealed father (though he has black hair and fangs, leading to some to speculate it’s Wolverine, others to say T’Challa, and let’s not forget Dracula has long had a thing for Storm…).
• At the end of the vigil, 3K shows up, broadcasting the footage of Magneto using a Sentinel against fellow mutants in X-Men #17-18 — something they flagged as being a potential propaganda coup for them at the time. It’s also established that their name comes from their stated goal to create a “human free” world by the year 3000.

There’s some nice art and fun character moments sprinkled throughout this issue (like the bit with Psylocke and Deathdream, or Cyclops being a grumpy Gus about the whole thing and not going), but they’re not enough to overcome the crass commercialism at its core, stemming from the fact it’s an issue designed to memorialize a status quo created by the same X-office that has made their dislike of that same status quo all too clear since taking the reins of the franchise.

Wolverines and Deadpools #1 by Cody Ziglar & Rogé António

Deadpool and his daughter team up with the Wolverines — Logan and Laura Kinney — to investigate mutant child abductions in Symkaria.

• Remember when Wolverine and Deadpool were in a movie together and it made a lot of money? Well, Marvel sure does, and is continuing to wring every last dollar it can out of that fact, launching a second Wolverine/Deadpool title — this time with even MORE Wolverines and Deadpools!
• Though Deadpool’s daughter (who, like the two Wolverines, shares a codename with her dad) debuted back in 2013 (in a story penned in part by Gerry Duggan, hence the fourth-wall breaking reference she makes), this story is more or less a direct continuation of Ziglar and António’s ongoing Deadpool series, where she is part of the cast.

• Wolverine references his time with Deadpool in Rick Remender‘s Uncanny X-Force.
• Agent X debuted as part of Marvel’s retooling of Deadpool’s original series to make it more obviously part of the X-Men franchise, in which the true identity of Agent X was kept hidden (and periodically hinted at being Deadpool himself).
• Lady Bullseye was created during Ed Brubaker‘s Daredevil run; as the name suggests, she’s a female version of Bullseye — an assassin who at least for a time worked for the Kingpin — though she’s not related to the original Bullseye in-story in any way.
• Both are revealed to be working for the Shadow King, an ancient telepathic demon who exists on the astral plane who must possess a host body to interact with physical reality. It last appeared in the Krakoa Era New Mutants where it was forcibly separated from its longtime host Amahl Farouk; that story concluded with Farouk seeking rehabilitation for the evil he committed while being bonded to the Shadow King. Hopefully that means this is “just” the Shadow King, and not Farouk himself.
• Neither Agent X nor Lady Bullseye have any past association with Farouk or the Shadow King, so it’s not clear yet what they’re doing here.

This is fine. Lord knows we don’t need another Wolverine/Deadpool book, but Deadpool’s banter with Wolverine is more entertaining than his usual Fourth Wall-breaking schtick (and is something we’re not getting much of in the other Wolverine/Deadpool book, where one or the other or both has been a Stryfe zombie for most of it) and the addition of the “second generation” Wolverines and Deadpools gives it a little added zip.

For another perspective, check out Scott Redmond’s review of the debut issue.

X-Men #19 by Jed MacKay and Netho Diaz — Book of the Week

Doug Ramsey, Heir of Apocalypse, is attacked by agents of the anti-mutant group ZERO.

• Doug became “Revelation”, the vaguely-defined heir to Apocalypse in the aptly-titled X-Men: Heir of Apocalypse miniseries, after which Apocalypse retired to Arakko.
• That story introduced Doug-as-Revelation as something more removed from typical Doug in appearance and temperament; here, he’s more back to his usual self in terms of both, though he remains powered up as a result of Apocalypse’s transformation.
• In addition to being stronger and more physically resilient, his ability to intuitively understand language now allows him to essentially control people via verbal commands, something he isn’t terribly comfortable with, likening it to Xavier’s use of telepathy.

• He references telling Xavier, “we need to be good, or we’re nothing”, which was in Immortal X-Men #13.
• Doug is accompanied in this issue by his wife Bei and “self-friend” Warlock; Apocalypse called them his “first disciples” but Doug calls them his family.
• Unlike me, Bei hates puns (though Doug’s admittedly isn’t great).
• Doug is wearing a “Krakoa was for lovers” t-shirt.
• Doug states that he needs to “hack the planet,” a line from the 1995 film Hackers (which neither Bei nor Warlock get).
• MacKay once again cites Gene Nation as an anti-mutant group, even though they were a group of anti-human mutants.
• Doug is attacked by generic-looking (by comic book standards, they more or less resemble ICE agents) goons he pegs as black-ops forces. They turn out to be a splinter group from inside ONE who are willing to target mutants for assassination (something “regular” ONE doesn’t condone), believing the number of good mutants to be zero, hence their name: ZERO.
• In the end, Doug’s somewhat idyllic life in the Pacific Northwest with Bei and Warlock is blown up, so the trio heads out to find some X-Men.

It’s still not clear that making Doug Apocalypse’s heir was the best idea (or even what it means in practice), but this issue does more to sell it as a concept than the miniseries where it happened does. In particular, it’s nice to see that Doug is still essentially himself even as he grapples with the changes wrought by Apocalypse and tries to determine (for us and himself) what being Apocalypse’s heir means.