Previously On X-Men: Dani Takes A Trip Down Memory Lane

Angel takes on a new form, Rogue doesn’t get absolution, X-Men United is still a terrible puzzle and more in this week’s X-books!

Inglorious X-Force #5

By Tim Seeley, Roi Mercado, Michael Sta. Maria, Domuli Fajardo Jr. & Joe Caramangna.

X-Force battles Mister Sinister for the fate of Archangel.

• Angel operated as the “Avenging Angel” shortly before joining the X-Men, as established in the Silver Age backup stories in X-Men #55-56.
• Angel’s Blood Angel garb is basically his Archangel suit with remixed colors. Though his powers in that form include, essentially, super-healing ability, no reference is made to the fact that back in the ’00s, it was established that his blood had healing properties.
• The names/characters shown on the screens, presenting Sinister’s database of everyone resurrected on Krakoa include: Joe Caramagna (the letterer of the issue), Frenzy, Jumbo Carnation, Banshee, Fabian Cortez, the Cuckoos, Sebastian and Shinobi Shaw, Gorgon, Morph, Wolfsbane, Catseye, Chamber, and Roulette
• Sinister saying Ms. Marvel is “swimming in genetic potential” is presumably a reference to the fact that she’s part Inhuman as well as a mutant.
• When Warren says it took the apparent death of a friend to snap him out of his Death persona, he’s referring to when he killed an ice dummy he thought was Iceman.
• Krakoan resurrection muddies this up a bit (to say nothing of how in comics, younger characters age faster than older ones, narrowing the age gap), but it’s worth noting given their apparently blossoming romance, that Boom-Boom first met Warren when she was roughly 14 and she came to live with X-Factor, of whom Warren was a member (though the pair didn’t interact much then, with Warren being injured/presumed dead/under Apocalypse’s thrall for most of her time with the group, before she joined the New Mutants).
• Speaking of resurrections, it’s still not clear how Angel even has the Death/Life/Whatever Seed, let alone whatever Sinister did to him on Krakoa, when he was resurrected into the White Hot Room at the end of Krakoa.
• Cable never once considering he is “one of us” and thus a suspect is blisteringly obvious but also very in-character.
• Cable rescued the real Domino from Tolliver in X-Force #15; she didn’t join X-Force until #30, meaning the Domino in the retro X-Force picture in this issue is actually Vanessa/Copycat impersonating her and not the real Domino.
• I have no idea who or what is possessing Cable.

A bit of a shaggy conclusion to the arc — with two artists working on it, the overall look is uneven and seems a little rushed — but the pacing of the initial “murder mystery” plotline is appreciated. We’re not quite done with it, but the initial premise of “one of these four is the murderer!” has been addressed and, importantly, revealed to the characters, setting the stage for the next phase of the story. In a world where no sixth (to say nothing of 10th, or 15th, or…) issues are guaranteed, it’s a refreshing balance between self-contained and ongoing.

Moonstar #3 – Book of the Week

By Ashley Allen, Edoardo Audino, Arthur Hesli, & Clayton Cowles

Dani must fight to escape her mind after touching the Dáinsleif sword.

• This has a very Sienkiewicz-ian cover, from German Peralta.
• The first stop on Dani’s tour through her memories is to the Krakoa Era New Mutants.
• The New Mutants roster she summons for aid is the original lineup.
• Tablet of Death and Entropy first appeared in Amazing Spider-Man #546. It is the sister artifact to the Tablet of Life and Time aka the Lifeline Tablet, the MacGuffin of a classic Silver Age Spider-Man saga.
• The big cliffhanger ending to the issue — that Dani needs to choose between saving her parents or stopping Kyron — is undercut a bit by the fact that it’s not really a choice; if she saves her parents and doesn’t stop Kyron, then he’s succeeded in killing everyone. Including her parents.

I wouldn’t have minded seeing Allen explore some less well-traveled examples of Dani working with a team (like her time undercover with the MLF) but all in all, this is a step up from the previous issue, one which uses Dani’s narrative history to good effect while Audino manages to bounce through the different eras of that history effortlessly.

Rogue #5

By Erica Schultz, Luigi Zagaria, Espen Grudetjern & Ariana Maher

Rogue tracks down John Stelton, but fails to get absolution for her attack on him.

• Asking Gambit to use the Eye of Agamatto to find a more or less normal person seems like overkill.
• Presumably the scales on Gambit’s back after he uses it are related to the big wings he sprouted in the last issue of Uncanny X-Men (maybe this was supposed to come out before that and lay the groundwork for their emergence?).
• The attack on Ms. Marvel that Rogue flashes back to here wasn’t actually rendered when Rogue first appeared, but was alluded to in flashback. In 1992, Marvel Super-Heroes #11 published a story that was intended to be Ms. Marvel #25 (before the series was cancelled with issue #23), which depicted the actual encounter.
• Her meeting with Professor X and Lilandra would be set during or shortly after the events of Uncanny X-Men #171, when she joined the X-Men and Lilandra was living at the mansion.
• Feels like Rogue would have learned about Calico and Jitter’s relationship prior to this.

On the one hand, I like the idea of a story built around a character seeking forgiveness coming up empty; sometimes, saying you’re sorry, no matter how genuine, isn’t enough. On the other hand, it’s kind of a wet-fart way to conclude a five issue series, especially one as padded out as this.

Wolverine: Weapons of Armageddon #4

By Chip Zdarsky, Luca Maresca, Bryan Valenza & Joe Sabino

Wolverine and David Colton take down Primewarrior.

• Colton’s whole backstory with Steve Rogers and killing Latverians is from Zdarsky’s current Captain America run which introduced the character.
• Given his prominence on the cover, I kind of thought we’d learn more about Tyler in this miniseries, but that never really happened.
• I wonder if Tyler and Leonard, Kid Wendigo, will ever meet and swap notes about being mentees of Wolverine?
• Wolverine using the Origin Box to save Colton over his objections feels a little out of character (Wolverine typically lets people be the masters of their own destiny), but I guess whatever role Colton is playing in the upcoming “Armageddon” event requires him to have extra powers, so here we are…

It remains to be seen just how pivotal this is as a lead-in to Avengers: Armageddon and there’s certainly nothing groundbreaking about it, but it’s still a better Wolverine story than anything we’ve gotten in the main Wolverine book in awhile.

X-Men Infinity Comic #17

By Steve Orlando, Phillip Sevy, Yen Nitro & Clayton Cowles

Forge hacks the Durisphinx.

• Guido says he can grow as big as a house in the process of absorbing kinetic energy, which isn’t quite true; he eventually gets written off the team when his body absorbs too much energy and grows too big for his heart (though in defense of Orlando, that story is theoretically in the future, so maybe Guido still thinks he has no physical limitations).

Forge hacking into the Durisphinx to try to learn what answer its looking for at least puts a different spin on the usual “appear, fight a specific iteration of characters, disappear” pattern of this story, but that aide, it’s pretty repetitious.

X-Men United #3

By Eve L. Ewing, Tiago Palma, Brian Reber, & Joe Sabino

Scattered through time, the “away team” completes their mission.

• I’m not sure Jitter’s powers are meant to work the way they do here (she channels both negotiation and hypno-therapy skills, which presumably need more than 60 seconds apiece to do their thing), but that’s largely on Gail Simone for failing to make it more clear how they work over in Uncanny X-Men.
• Vernon Weaver is a new character, and a retcon to Maurice Canfield’s backstory.
• The person Kitty has all the missed calls from, Nina, is her love interest from Exceptional X-Men.
• Lourdes Chantel is a former member of the Hellfire Club Inner Circle, introduced (and killed) in a Classic X-Men backup story. She was resurrected on Krakoa, died during the Hellfire Gala massacre, then came back at the end.

As a conclusion this is fine — I appreciate Laura Kinney making a connection between her own experience and Weaver’s — though it’s kind of weird we get two stories about characters trying to make amends only for their subjects to ultimately rebuff their efforts. But it does nothing to ameliorate the larger problems with the setup of the story, which is to say, why is this Captain America story happening in X-Men United, especially as the book’s first proper story? The whole “are they time traveling or not” business also adds yet another layer of confusing plot mechanics to a series already swimming in it.