Previously On X-Men: ‘Magik & Colossus’ #5 Closes Out Strong

With one exception, the unifying thread of all of this week’s mostly-decent X-books is excellent art. Even when bewildering or maddening stuff is happening on page, it all looks really good.

Inglorious X-Force #6

By Tim Seeley, Michael Sta. Maria, Joe Caramagna & Romulo Dajardo Jr

X-Force targets the new MLF to get to their leader, Kali.

• Nakia (Bahadir) is a longstanding member of Ms. Marvel’s supporting cast.
• Michael Sta. Maria is killing it. Even the scenes in Kamala’s high school hallways are engaging and highly detailed.
• Akihiro and Boom-Boom are sleeping together on the regular, apparently, and while some of his past hookups are generically referenced, we have yet to get a reference to Aurora, with whom he was quite romantically involved with in Hellverine.
• The Mutant Liberation Front roster contains some of my favorite ’90s X-Men Glup Shittos; the ones we see in Cable’s briefing are Wildside, Zero, Forearm, Reaper, and Dragoness, with all but the latter fairly “standard” members.
• Boom-Boom saying Cable once found Deadpool in an outhouse in Antarctica sure seems like a specific reference to something, but I can’t place it (then again, I don’t know Deadpool’s solo stories terribly well). (Ed. Note: I’m almost positive it’s a reference to Cable & Deadpool: The Burnt Offering but I’d need to find it on Marvel Unlimited to be sure.)
• Cable’s former mercenary group the Six Pack was composed of Cable, Domino, GW Bridge, Garrison Kane, Grizzly, and Hammer. They disbanded shortly before Cable joined the New Mutants and transformed them into X-Force.
• They were the stars of the Mike Mignola-drawn flashback story in X-Force #8 footnoted here.
• That story can get namedropped, but not Aurora.
• Boom-Boom took out Zero, as she mentions here, in X-Force Vol 5. #10. The footnote to Astonishing X-Men Infinity Comic #24 comes after that story, when some former MLF members tried to use Zero to travel to the future, and he ended up in Banshee’s custody.

I don’t know how long it’ll last — based on sales numbers, I’m still surprised we even got this sixth issue — but the combination of solid storytelling mechanics, really nice art, and the right balance of Leo Pointing Meme references for old-timers like me keeps this one of the better X-books at the moment. This is a very close second for Book of the Week.

Magik & Colossus #5 – Book of the Week

By Ashley Allen, Germán Peralta, Arthur Hesli & Ariana Maher

The titular siblings battle Koschei the Immortal.

• It’s rare that I feel like these five issue miniseries could be longer, but they honestly could have done an entire issue of just Colossus and Count Kaoz destroying the containers of Koschei’s soul.
• Though this is its own series, the climax involving Illyana calling on her Darkchild persona to win helps it feel very much like the third arc of the Magik series it was probably conceived as originally.
• Peralta knocks it out of the park throughout the issue, but the double-page spread of the Rasputin siblings knocking out Koschei is especially good.
• The end of this issue leaves Colossus in a much better place than he’s been for awhile, which is the real achievement of the story. I really hope whomever picks him up next remembers/is made aware of this miniseries and doesn’t revert him to his sadsack woe-is-me-ness and overprotectiveness of Illyana.

A well-crafted conclusion to the miniseries and, what appears to be Allen’s run as Illyana’s chief chronicler, for the moment. The Rasputins using what they’ve learned about each other and their relationship to defeat the villain in the end is writing 101, but it’s the kind of basic storytelling that it seems is all too absent these days.

Uncanny X-Men #30

By Gail Simone, Rogê Antônio, Clayton Cowles & Matthew Wilson

The Outliers go to a school dance, Monet begins to tear down Graymalkin Prison to mixed results, and some aliens attack.

• The title of the story (“Mars Needs Mutants”) is presumably a reference to the 1968 movie Mars Needs Women or the 2011 animated film Mars Needs Moms.
• While not as slick or atmospheric as Luciano Vecchio or David Marquez, Antônio continues the Murderer’s Row of artists on this book. His work on the alien abduction sequence that opens the issue is particularly strong and well-suited to the material.
• Rogue is absent from this story, though Monet (and Quicksilver) are still dealing with Graymalkin and not yet leading the X-Men (whatever that means in the context of this less traditional group).
• The school the Outliers attend was first mentioned back in issue #21 (that is also the issue where Marlys asked Deathdream to go with her).
• Ransom’s (actually real) Alaskan girlfriend is Temper/Idee, of Jed MacKay’s X-Men.
• The collectible that sets off Calico and gets the shopkeeper all riled up seems like a riff on Funko Pops.
• MacKenzie’s response to Nightcrawler’s question about her kids’ father sure seemed Loaded With Ominous Drama.
• Nightcrawler’s comment about his own family is spot-on, given the various places occupied on his family tree by Mystique, Destiny, Azazel, Margoli Szardos, Amanda Sefton, Rogue and his namesake Count Wagner
• Psylocke taught Deathdream how to to dance in the Hellfire Vigil one-shot.
• For some reason, we’re not quite done with Graymalkin Prison, as last issue’s promise to tear it all down has resulted in … an orderly drawing down of the prison population, in which Monet is acting like the warden and keeping everyone imprisoned – even the ones she acknowledges were wrongfully imprisoned — while working out where to send the ones (like Sarah Gaunt) that probably do need to be incarcerated. We don’t see Siryn in this issue, but I find it hard to believe Banshee would be hanging out with Monet while his daughter is still in jail wearing a power-dampening collar. And if you’re going to let Siryn out, why not Dazzler? Or even Blob, who was everyone’s bartender on Krakoa? I just can’t with this plotline anymore.
• Banshee mentions that Monet should meet his cousin Black Tom sometimes. I immediately bumped on this, but then had it pointed out that the Monet who battled Black Tom in Generation X #25 was actually the Two Kids In A Monet-Shaped Trenchcoat version of the character (aka her younger sisters). Going through Monet’s bibliography, there doesn’t appear to be any direct, on-page interaction between the two.
• The Sentinel parts beneath Graymalkin is a reference to the The Sentinels miniseries.
• Only the last set of aliens (the ones described as Brood) are recognizable as existing beings; I suspect we’re dealing with either some kind of alien alliance, or a species that takes different forms based on who they encounter.
• Aside from “Weapon X-finity” being dumb, the fact that there’s also a character in Generation X-23 at the moment named “X-Infinite” sure seems like a case where an editor or two should have stepped in and told one of the two writers to change it.

Per usual, the best material involves the Outliers, and the worst material is everything else (namely, the prison stuff; we’ll see where this alien plotline is going), while all of it is impeccably drawn.

X-Men United #4

By Eve L Ewing, Tiago Palma, Joe Sabino &

Things go awry when Iceman and Ben Liu craft a Dungeons & Dragons-esque team-building exercise

• I don’t think Iceman has ever expressed an interest in table top role playing games before, but there’s nothing that says it can’t have been a heretofore unmentioned interest of his.
• Lourdes Chantel pops up to basically call out Emma’s control freak tendencies; not sure if that’s the end of her involvement here or not.
• The incidents referred to in the Emma/Lourdes conversation are from the backup story in Classic X-Men #8 (where Lourdes was introduced and seemingly killed by Sentinels) and Marauders #21-22 (where it was retconned that Emma secretly saved her and set her up to work with Kingpin).
• I’m not sure why Iceman thought Rogue in particular would be able to help keep the peace between Scott and Emma, given the ill-advised rift between Rogue and Cyclops at the beginning of “From the Ashes” which has been quietly phased out.
• I’m also not sure why there’s such a rift between Emma and Scott — they got along fine during “Krakoa.” If the idea is supposed to be that this is all built on Scott’s objections to Graymatter Lane, the series hasn’t done enough to sell that.
• Ben creating the entire game world with his power is largely inconsistent with the level of control he’s shown to have (ie none) in X-Men, though it’s not clear if that’s what causes the game to go awry or if it’s something else.
• Ben’s presence also begs the question of why he’s there at all? If all the interactions in the book are happening in Graymatter Lane, and it exists on the Astral Plane, then Emma or any other telepath should be able to modify their surroundings as needed.
• I’m also also not sure how Rogue taking some of Deathdream’s powers allowed her to break free of the restraints holding her, but it’s also not terribly clear what rules — telepathy, Ben’s power, something — are governing the physical interactions in the story. Like, how does Rogue even touch someone to absorb their power if they’re physically all somewhere else and just hanging out together telepathically?

This is a little bit better, in terms of being focused on actual X-characters and not Captain America, but it still seems like an odd choice for the book’s second story arc — if this is supposed to be the “school” series, why are we already doing a story focused on a conflict between the teachers (one of whom isn’t even a regular in the book), with only one student (who is really a student in another book) involved?