Previously On X-Men: ‘Exceptional X-Men’ #11 Enters The Marvel Universe And More

Marvel snuck out a special Age of Revolution #0 preview issue this week, but I’ve been out of town and unable to hit my LCS, and I can’t seem to find an online version, so we’ll tackle that in next week’s column.

For now, let’s dive into the “regular” X-books from last week, a trio of disparate titles that nevertheless all feature time-travel to some degree.

Deadpool/Wolverine #7 by Benjamin Percy & Robert Gill

Stryfe-pocalypse gets powered up while Deadpool recruits Maverick.

• Stryfe-pocalypse gets his Stryfe helmet back in the opening pages.
• There’s a weird moment where the controlled Wolverine is helping a weakend Stryfe-pocalypse, and Gill draws parallel panels, with Stryfe in one and Apocalypse in the other, only he draws Apocalypse like he looked during the Krakoan Era, when this is the Apocalypse from Cable’s far, far future and never looked that way (because he only appeared in stories pre-Krakoa, but still).

• The source of Legacy 2.0 turns out to be a cyborg of some sort named Legacy who is said to be the Horseman of Pestilence. This is, as far as I can tell, a new character.
• Deadpool and Maverick end up getting brainwashed by ONE, who has figured out how to hack the source code of Legacy 2.0 to allow them to control infected mutants.
• Stryfe-pocalypse’s goal is revealed as he uses his power bump to raise his ark: he intends to destroy the world and use the ark along with the catalog of mutant DNA to make Earth an all-mutant planet.
• In this comic in which they share title billing, Wolverine and Deadpool do not appear in any panels together.

It sure feels like we’re getting some narrative progression here, but seven issues in, this is still hideously decompressed. And it remains a puzzling book, in which its co-leads are routinely kept apart and/or placed under someone else’s control, which doesn’t seem like the kinds of things anyone picking up a Deadpool/Wolverine book would want.

Check out Scott Redmond’s full review of the issue here.

Book of the Week – Exceptional X-Men #11 by Eve L. Ewing & Federica Mancin

Ironheart stops by as the team gets pulled into temporal portals.

• Ironheart, who is based out of Chicago, has a recently-concluded series on Disney+, and was previously written by Eve Ewing, pops in for a guest-appearance.
• She references her time with Cyclops in the 2017-2019 Champions series (though Ironheart was only briefly a member). That Cyclops was the teen Silver Age one pulled forward in time.
• Bronze says she met Ironheart once before at a cookout when they were ten, making them something of family friends. This is all new info.
• The “mutant meeting” stuff is legit funny.
• Tank is a villain from the aforementioned Ewing run of Ironheart (specifically Ironheart #6). He’s obsessed with space/time, other dimensions, portals, etc. but can also grow really big for some reason (also, no relation to Colossus’s recently discarded alias from X-Force).

• He is drawn to a purple portal that also attracts the attention of the Exceptional X-Men kids (who just happen by it). Ironheart thinks he caused the portal but that’s clearly not the case.
• Bronze’s crush Reggie turns up, and turns out to be obsessing over the best possible text to Trista. He also brushes by the portal.
• The adults throw a “teamiversary” party for the kids based more on their recent success against Mister Sinister than any temporal event, though Kate is still struggling with the idea of training them for combat (and also picking up on cues from her sorta girlfriend Nina).
• Kate ends up getting sucked into the portal, which is drawn to people connected to it or who are temporally sensitive — though not an obvious time-traveler like Cable or Rachel Summers, Kate does have some history with time travel/extra-dimensional travel via stuff like “Days of Future Past” and “The Cross-Time Caper.”

Always nice when an X-book connects with the larger Marvel Universe, for whatever the motivation, and the shared Chicago setting makes this a natural pairing regardless. As usual, the character stuff is the draw here — the banter amongst the kids at the beginning, Kate’s ongoing struggles at the end.

Giant-Size House of M #1 by Jackson Lanzing, Collin Kelly and Francesco Manna

Ms. Marvel and Legion tumble into first the “House of M” event and then the subsequent “Decimation” of the mutant population.

• Arguably less famous/well-regarded than “Dark Phoenix Saga” and “Age of Apocalypse”, “House of M” is a mid 00s event in which the Scarlet Witch alters reality to create a world ruled by mutants (and specifically her then-father, Magneto) that is mostly remembered for the “no more mutants” bit at the end (when she restores reality but turns the majority of the mutants who don’t regularly star in Marvel Comics into humans) aka “Decimation”, which proceeds to hang over the X-books for a solid ten years or so.
• One of the first characters Kamala runs into after landing in the “House of M” reality is Layla Miller, a character from Peter David’s later X-Factor run who was a Big Deal for a hot minute (featuring significantly in both “House of M” and the later “Messiah Complex” crossover). Introduced as a child she eventually got aged up and got into a relationship with Jamie Madrox (who was also on a team with her when she was a child), one of the more subtly creepy story beats in that run.
• The idea that Kamala first thinks “House of M” is some kind of reality she’s inadvertently created because she’s not as familiar with this slice of X-history is cute.
• After pairing Kamala up with Jean and then Rogue, this one makes her Kitty’s gal pal/Jiminy Cricket.
• This issue is also the first to really take advantage of its setting in the context of Kamala’s knowledge of the future, with the mutants questioning if overturning “House of M” in light of what’s to come really is the best idea.
• We get another possible homage to the cover of Ms. Marvel #5 as Kamala sits on the roof of the X-Mansion, her leg dangling off the edge.

• Kamala’s conversation with Kitty post-decimation really underscores just how much this whole series of one-shots is about Kamala coming to terms with her mutant identity.
• Kamala may be fuzzy on “House of M”, but she is more or less spot-on when it comes to Michael Pointer and the dispersed “mutant energy”, which is from an early Brian Michael Bendis New Avengers story (which makes sense, given that Kamala was always more of an Avengers fangirl).
• Beast does indeed have a time machine. Eventually, he’ll use it to bring the original X-Men forward in time at the launch of Bendis’ All New X-Men.

To say this is the best issue of this series of one-shots says more about the quality of the previous ones than this one, but it’s still true. No major distracting continuity flubs along with a clearer focus on Kamala’s arc elevate it.