Previously On X-Men: The Great Exorcism Tour Of 2026 Continues In ‘Uncanny X-Men’ #34

Got another shorty week as Inglorious X-Force marches towards its end and Uncanny X-Men debuts a pair of new characters. Also, the Bishop mini continues to exist.

Bishop #3

By Saladin Ahmed, Mario Santoro, Reese Hannigan, Federico Blee & Travis Lanham

Bishop and Shard defeat Skippingstone, only to be confronted by Mirrormind.

• At one point Shard curses, via the usual comic book method of using random characters, but the sentence structure is really odd. She says, “of [swear word] course I remember!” and I can think of no swear word that would make sense there. “Of course I [swear word] remember” would make more sense.
• Mirrormind is obviously a combination of Mastermind and … maybe Mystique (who wasn’t in the OG Brotherhood but led a notable version of it)? Assuming the Shard taunting Bishop who seems to morph and appears to have blue skin isn’t entirely a mental illusion.

This feels very padded, but I’m mildly enjoying the paradigm where Bishop is viewed as soft and less driven by his gung-ho sister, in part because he knows she’s going to die soon whereas she doesn’t, and the art is generally nice — the full page splash of Skippingstone landing in front of Bishop is particularly good. — 5/10

Inglorious X-Force #8

By Tim Seeley, Luca Maresca, Romulo Fajardo Jr & Joe Caramagna

X-Force takes the fight to Kali.

• Boom-Boom calling Cable “Nathan” feels weird.
• Cable is shown to be able to interface with metal via his techno-organic virus; I honestly can’t remember if this is something previously established. (Ed. Note: I know at least a couple times, it’s allowed “tech” but I think this is a first for “metal.”)
• When Kali’s Sentinels adopt familiar forms, Cable ends up fighting Cannonball (his one-time protege/reason for being in the past, back in early X-Force days), Archangel ends up with Apocalypse and his former flame, Psylocke, Boom-Boom battles the Beyonder (whom she palled around with in Secret Wars II #5, her first appearance, which gets a footnote) and Elsa Bloodstone (from her Nextwave days), and Akihiro is stuck with Sabretooth and Wolverine.
• I have absolutely no idea how Kali (who is, ultimately, just an anti-mutant grifter with some fancy tech) knows about Boom-Boom’s history with the Beyonder.
• Domino being healed by Shatterstar and getting her memories back off-page feels like a case of the story being truncated due to the looming end of the series.
• Warpath and Rictor are, of course, former longstanding members of various incarnations of X-Force. This is more or less the first notable post-Krakoa appearance for both of then (though Rictor did appear in the weird “between eras” Heir of Apocalypse miniseries).
• Cable ends up in roughly the events of Cable (vol. 2) #1-3, the beginning of his solo series, by Fabian Nicieza & Art Thibert. His look, right down to the goatee, is taken from those issues — though notably, that story involved Stryfe’s consciousness periodically taking control of his body.
• The Hope in that timeline isn’t Cable’s future adopted daughter but the wife of his deceased wife Aliya/Jenskot (she’s the mother of Cable’s son Tyler/Genesis). The guy with them may be a miscolored Tetherblood (he’s usually depicted as Black). And Eleven is a reference to the android Cable’s group uses for teleportation, part of the same model/series as Stryfe’s Zero.
• For what it’s worth, this issue says Cable ends up on Earth-4739, whereas the Askani future he hails from has been designated Earth-4735. Mistake or plot point? I guess we’ll (maybe) find out!

The Kali reveal is hardly surprising but mostly well-executed, and whether the reveal was always going to land here or got moved up, it feels like a mystery that was ready to be concluded. Meanwhile, playing around in Cable’s future with the supporting cast from the earliest issues of his solo series is exactly the kind of “poking around in the detritus of the 1990s” move I love about this series. –– 7/10

Uncanny X-Men #34

By Gail Simone, Luciano Vecchio, Matthew Wilson & Clayton Cowles

The quest to exorcise Gambit continues, as Repent and Howler make their debuts.

• The opening pages in which Rogue is talking to some voice floating in the ether has been interpreted as Rogue speaking with her unborn child, which in turn led to some mild controversy when some readers interpreted that (plus the use of Gambit’s phantom future son in this issue) as Simone making an pro-life argument. Given Simone’s (fairly leftist) politics, I find it hard to believe that was her intention.
• Jean-Luc is the name of Gambit’s (adoptive) father.
• The scene between the St. Juniors is delightful; just a simple domestic scene of two regular people enjoying one another’s company. It’s the kind of thing I’d love to see more of.
• So I guess as of this issue, we know that Graymalkin Prison is officially shut down (and not just a prison now being overseen by Monet instead of Warden Ellis).
• This is the first appearance of Howler.
• Gambit’s ruminations on the difference between the Avengers and the X-Men is mostly nonsense. For one thing, numerous X-Men have, by this point in time, served on one Avengers roster or another – including his wife (who led the Avengers at one point). For another, his list of X-Men who can fly is ludicrously short, and even if he (slash Simone) wanted to be brief, it seems odd he’d leave out Angel given his whole deal is flying, and also, he was a teammate of Gambit’s, living with him in the X-Mansion for years, which came after Gambit was indirectly responsible for the loss of his wings during “Mutant Massacre.”
• This is also the first appearance of Repent, a new character whose debut has been much more ballyhooed than Howler’s.
• Some of the demons taunting Gambit appear as the creepy-ass “monster Sentinels” from the Outliers alternate reality in the Perimeter story, which makes them an odd point of reference for Gambit (who has never seen them before).

All the Gambit demon stuff is getting a bit repetitive (so first we went to Gabriel, and now we’re going to another exorcist…) but Vecchio smooths over all that, cuz everything continues to look fantastic. — 8/10