Previously On X-Men: Colossus Looks and Feels Great In ‘Magik & Colossus’ #3

X-Men United is back with a second issue to lay its claim as one of the line’s flagship books, and it mostly whiffs on that count. But a couple of other books fare better, and of course, there’s Storm: Earth’s Mightiest Mutant doing what it does, in this week’s “Previously on X-Men!”

Inglorious X-Force #4

By Tim Seeley & Philip Tan

X-Force tracks some mystical energy emanating from Apocalypse to Mister Sinister.

• Cable’s name on the cover is using the logo from his early 90s miniseries and solo book.
• I am not 100% sure if the “here’s what happened between issues, but it’s slightly off” thing is intentionally confusing, or just messy.
• Angel was revealed as Apocalypse’s Horseman of Death in X-Factor #24.
• Apocalypse infected Cable with a techno-organic virus, leading to his trip into the future, in X-Factor #65-68.
• I am admittedly just sort of smiling and nodding at all this death seed/life seed stuff, at least until it becomes clearer what’s going on and how it all fits with what’s established about those.
• The healing energy being used by Archangel on Boom-Boom here seems to be different than his previous secondary mutation in which his blood had healing properties (from the Chuck Austen Uncanny X-Men run), chiefly because it apparently has a mystical energy to it that Akihiro can track.
• Akihiro did indeed break into a SHIELD facility in Wolverine: Origins #10, though there was no SHIELD android in that issue.
• The Nasty Boys debuted as Sinister’s post-Marauders henchmen circa X-Factor #75. While I don’t recall him cloning them before, it’s a common practice he followed with the Marauders.
• That said, the reference to the Upstarts killing them dates to the pre-Krakoa Uncanny X-Men (vol. 5), and at least four of them were explicitly seen resurrected on Krakoa, so Boom-Boom shouldn’t be surprised to see them (perhaps Seeley is confusing his Upstarts and is referencing the more current version from Jed MacKay‘s X-Men; seems like some kind of editorial presence could help with that).
• Mister Sinister last appeared in Exceptional X-Men; not sure if this is the legit Sinister or a clone, or why he’s operating out of an old SHIELD base.

This takes a hit from the art (though Tan’s overly-rendered style isn’t a terrible fit for a story featuring 90s poster children the Nasty Boys, and he also worked on Uncanny during the Austen run that is being obliquely referenced) and the somewhat awkward opening, but the Sinister reveal is fun and Seeley continues to keep the pacing brisk, which is appreciated.

Magik & Colossus #3 – Book of the Week

By  Ashley Allen & Germán Peralta

Illyana fights her way through a series of gladiatorial contests as Colossus tries to rescue her.

• It’s shown here that when he was little, Colossus’ mother called him “Little Snowflake,” his common nickname for Illyana, which is touching.
• This is the first appearance of Lev, but Count Kaoz debuted in the fourth volume of Doctor Strange back in 2016.
• Colossus saying he’s trying to focus on the positives of his recent possession by Mikhail (such as using the connections he made in the Russian mafia to find Illyana) is a smart way to show how he’s evolving over the course of this story.
• The page where Colossus jumps in and lands in the arena is pretty awesome.

• The observation that Illyana learned to bend to accommodate the hell she went through, whereas Colossus finds it harder to shed his moral rigidity in the face of his is both a great expression of their characters and a smart way to lampshade the themes of this miniseries generally, and the idea that Illyana comes to fighting more easily than Colossus (something underscored by the flashbacks).
• Lil’ Illyana has a Red Guardian punching bag.
• Baba Yaga is perhaps the most famous of Russian folklore “monsters,” at least to comics readers. Illyana and Colossus previously teamed up against a version of her in Uncanny X-Men #231.

Plot-wise, not a ton happens – there’s almost no movement on the Immortal plotline – but Allen uses the time to do some really impressive character work, including some subtle use of flashbacks to underscore her points while starting to form up a version of Colossus who is actually entertaining to read about again. Plus, Peralta just keeps knocking it out of the park. This is the kind of issue that makes me an Ashley Allen defender, and I hope she can bring some of the multilevel character work she’s doing here to the Moonstar mini soon.

Storm: Earth’s Mightiest Mutant #3

By Murewa Ayodele & Federica Mancin

Storm meets the mysterious astronaut and is taken outside the multiverse.

• Amongst the various afterlives Storm visits are Valhalla and Hel, neither of which she should be aware of as actual places per current Thor continuity (nor should she be able to visit them).
• The spirit of Storm’s mother being mad at her is presumably a reference to Storm #4, in which she met her father in the afterlife but not her mother. She reasons its because Storm gave away the ruby her mother gave her to charity in issue #2.
• Macaria is a very minor figure from established Greek mythology (the daughter of Hades, as mentioned here), though I don’t think her Marvel version has ever appeared.
• I have no idea why Maggott is in Elysium, one of the Greek afterlives.
• The Ogun whom Doctor Voodoo kills and recruits is different from the samurai Ogun who trained Wolverine and possessed Kitty Pryde.
• Zombie Magneto declares “Welcome to die!” — the character’s meme-driving catchphrase from the X-Men arcade game.
• The person in the spacesuit — Alt N’Dare — previously appeared in issue #1 of this series, talking about how the current universe is only ten years old (likely a reference to the 2015 iteration of Secret Wars which wrapped up in 2016), shortly before the couple watching TV had their heads explode. The recap page also points to a background appearance in issue #11 of the previous volume.
• The giant wall made up of statues to which N’Dare takes Storm (said to be “beyond the confines of our multiverse”) sure seems like the Source Wall from DC, the wall which forms the outer boundary of the DC Universe.
• The Raptor whom Storm misindentifies as Phoenix is also very reminiscent of the Cosmic Raptor from Justice League (vol. 4) #22. So it seems like Ayodele is doing a stealth DC/Marvel crossover of sorts now.
• Scarlet Witch’s one panel appearance invesitgating the death in the Sanctuary from last issue is presumably meant to be a follow-up to her investigation plotline from earlier in the series. This really feels like an instance where the cutdown of this book to a five issue mini is impacting Ayodele’s plans (in that he probably intended to give Scarlet Witch more room to do her thing, but is running out of space).
• Galacta also makes a one-panel cameo on that page, along with Cerberus, the guard dog of Hades, for some reason.

Not that this story has ever been terribly straightforward, but this really feels like the issue where the confusion between Marvel and Ayodele about how many issues he has to wrap up the story starts to rear its head, as there’s a lot of “and then this happened, and then this happened, then this happened” going on (and even then, nothing about the conflict with Susanoo, the main plot of this volume, is covered). Of course, being Ayodele, it’s all in a weird jumble, chronologically, which makes it even harder to latch onto. It also doesn’t help that the deeper we go, the less active a protagonist Storm becomes. At this point, she feels more like an observer than a driver of action, whatever connection between the events of the plot and Storm’s characterization which once existed now rendered a tenuous one, at best.

X-Men Infinity Comic #13

By Steve Orlando & Minkyu Jung

The X-Men chase the Durisphinx out of Skull Mesa.

• It seems pretty clear these X-Men have not been plucked from time, since Jean is aware of Apocalypse, and Silver Age Jean wouldn’t know of him.
• Candra is one of the Externals, with ties to Gambit’s past in the New Orleans guilds. She first appeared in his initial limited series in 1993.
• There’s been a few minor characters called Yeti that have popped up in X-books through the years, including the one who was a member of Weapon: PRIME in early X-Force, an Inhuman version, and one in the First X-Men retro miniseries. None of them seem to resemble the Yeti shown here, so I’m guessing this is meant to be a new character.
• Apparently Orlando is doing the thing where the villain persists across the story but the protagonists change, as we’re heading into an X-Force/Durisphinx showdown next chapter.

I’m not sure how Durisphinx retreating to find other mutants to quiz fits with his whole “answer my riddle or DIE!” MO, but whatever. On to X-Force, I guess, with no explanation of where this story is meant to fit in continuity.

X-Men United #2

By Eve L Ewing & Tiago Palma

Emma Frost offers the services of the Empathy Engine to help Captain America.

• Saying this as someone who loves Cyclops, his “let’s fake blowing up the school plan” is deeply dumb.
• Along the lines, the tension between Scott and Emma here feels very forced. Even when not romantically involved, they’ve been on pretty decent terms, and her assertion that he doesn’t trust her makes no sense given past events.
• If the school exists on the psychic plane, what is everyone eating in the cafeteria? Are they just getting a telepathic sensation of eating food?
• Beast’s plan for using the Empathy Engine here makes no sense, and the issue lampshading that doesn’t excuse it.
• The Cap plotline here stems from Truth: Red White & Black miniseries in 2003, when it was revealed that the US government experimented on black soldiers in an effort to reproduce the super-solider serum. It’s the series which introduced Isiah Bradley and, indirectly, Patriot.
• Maurice Canfield also appeared in that mini, which also implied he had died.
• Melée’s Indigenous heritage was mentioned in Exceptional X-Men #3.
• Again, if the school is a place where everyone’s minds go, how is Rift physically teleporting the squad to Canfield’s location?
• And while we know Rift can send people through time (that happened in his intro story at the tail end of Exceptional X-Men), this issue seems to suggest that he sent everyone to the same place/time, then the time distortion that split them up happened. Presumably, that’ll get explained more as the story progresses.

Well, this is still a mess. The mechanics of how all this works are still deeply unclear, and while that doesn’t necessarily have to drag down the story, the way this story is constructed is constantly drawing attention to it. Also, while I am generally pro “the X-Men occasionally interacting with the larger Marvel Universe,” it seems a little weird and ill-advised to immediately drop a new series still trying to establish its premise into a Captain America story.