We’re a little behind but a few important events have happened since we last met! Welcome to X-Chat #6!
In X-Men Annual #1, Firestar gets the much-deserved spotlight from Steve Foxe, Andrea DiVito, Sebastian Cheng and Clayton Cowles!
Two key characters get some major closure in Dark Web: X-Men #2-3, by Gerry Duggan, Phil Noto, Rod Reis, and Cory Petit!
The things come to a head in Wolverine #29 from Benjamin Percy, Juan Jose Ryp, Frank D’Armata, and Cory Petit!
Spotlight (X-Men Annual #1)
Tony: Yes, the annual is about a month old at this point, but we have to talk about it. I’ve loved Firestar since Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends (I still clearly remember the feeling of watching the Swarm episode). I enjoyed her joining the X-Men in Amazing X-Men by Aaron and McGuinness. So I’ve been glad for her return to the team. She’s already one that I hope to see hold over after the Gala, like Synch did last year.
Writer Steve Foxe did something very smart here, telling a story about Firestar embracing her role within the X-Men while facing a mutant villain who didn’t take the Krakoan citizenship/amnesty as well (probably the most notable mutant non-X-villain).
So while the rest of the team deals with other crises, Cyclop and Firestar head to Florida to render aid in the middle of a massive storm. It’s fairly straightforward plot-wise, which makes it a perfect character piece.
Matt: Absolutely. And teaming her with Cyclops is a great choice. These are two characters who have hardly interacted. It gives Angelica someone to bounce off of where there isn’t that comfort of a long relationship, so we don’t have her falling back on the shorthand you do with friends. Cyclops is a character who brings out the best in others, so we get to see Firestar at her best.
Tony: Exactly. I mean, Bobby would have been obvious, and Iceman really hasn’t gotten a spotlight yet with the new team. However, Cyclops is the stalwart of this incarnation of the team, he’s the ultimate X-MAN, and I love the idea of Scott mentoring someone who doesn’t need hero lessons but X-Men lessons.
Before he showed up on-page, did you remember that Whirlwind is a mutant? Are you familiar with him?
Matt: My knowledge of Whirlwind is very limited. It’s the 90s Iron Man cartoon mostly. That and his brief appearance in an issue of Unstoppable Wasp where he was stalking Janet. He also popped up in the first issue of Al Ewing’s new Wasp series, which came out recently, but that was after this book. Due to his connection to Iron Man in my head, I thought he was a tech villain, so I was surprised to learn he was a mutant.
Knowing him now mostly from his super creepy interactions with Wasp, pitting him against a female hero will always make my skin crawl a little, but in a way that works. Because he is definitely a grade-A creep.
Tony: Yeah, he’s very much a Wasp/Avengers villain, and he’s pretty monstrous. I’m glad Foxe didn’t go there. It’s good this annual firmly said, “Yeah, that sex pest is not a Krakoan” (but not in those exact words). While Scott and Angie struggled with him, I loved the interstitials, as Jean leads the team through all the other crises. It showed how great a team the X-Men are, but also that every once in a while an threat unexpectedly turns on them.
Andrea DiVito and Sebastian Cheng do good work throughout. DiVito has long been a house style artist at Marvel (he’s done a lot of their MCU tie-ins), but just like other artists, something about the Krakoa era brought out the best in him. But man, I have to say it: I do not like Firestar’s Krakoan costume. It just does not feel like her. It might be a color thing — she’s a yellow and red character. That’s like giving Spider-Man a blue, gold and white costume. It just feels wrong.
Matt: Far be it from me to say anything against the genius that is Jumbo Carnation, but I agree. On the cover, and when she’s powered up, I think it looks fine, but yeah, the gold and black does not work for me.
I was happy to see the Hellions showing up here. Specifically, the OG Hellions, for people who might not have read the issue, not Psylocke, Greycrow and their crew.
I know we’ve seen a bit of them here and there, mostly when the empirically worst Hellion, Empath, was jerking them around, but I could definitely use a spotlight on this group. We saw the Mutant Liberation Front during the initial run on New Mutants living like a bunch of dirtbag fraternity/sorority kids in the Akademos Habitat, but I want to see where the Hellions are living. Especially after this, I want to see the Hellions traveling around the island like a roving band of hooligans, starting fights with anyone they feel slighted them because they were a bunch of kids who were killed by no fault of their own in a horrible way, and now they just want payback of a sort.
Tony: Yeah it shows how rich Krakoa is as a setting. Having these characters pop up was great and I’d love to see more of them. You hit the nail on the head for what they could be doing too. Maybe if Angelica doesn’t stick with the team after the Gala, working with the Hellions could be whatever is next for her.
Overall, this was a win. I would really enjoy seeing Foxe doing more in the line and I really want to see Angie get a big arc that firms her up as a character as firmly in the world of the X-Men as she is in the rest of the Marvel U.
Emotional Catharsis (Dark Web: X-Men #2-3)
Tony: So we’re covering two issues at once here. I have to say while I feel Dark Web: X-Men #2 was a bit of fluff, Dark Web: X-Men #3 was probably the most impactful “Inferno”-tie in since “Inferno” itself (don’t forget, “Inferno” never ends).
Matt: #2 felt like a gift to Rod Reis, letting him draw younger versions of the characters and trippy landscapes. #3 was… powerful. This is an issue that should absolutely and permanently change Madelyne Pryor as a character, and anyone who eventually tries to turn it back and try to make her a villain again will do further disservice to a character who has been mistreated for decades.
Tony: Who would have thought that the character to get the second biggest reformation in the Krakoan era would be Maddie Pryor? I think while this isn’t the only way her story could have been resolved in Dark Web, this is the way it needed to be resolved. She’s grown so much as a character since Hellions, and here we see her at last as not just a whole person but as a fully independent character. She’s always going to be partly Jean, just like Jean’s always going to be partly Maddie, but in sharing the love and memories, they’re now much more sisterly than they ever were before.
I really wonder if Ben Reilly is going to find the same closure. I mean, we know that Janine is going to be carrying on as Hallow’s Eve, but Ben… Did you read this week’s Amazing Spider-Man?
Matt: Not yet; it’s on the to read pile, but I have BatChat reading that must be done.
Tony: Well, Ben takes over Limbo, so we’ll have a BUNCH to talk about next time around.
Matt: How did you feel about Havok’s journey through these issues? I like the destination, but I would have liked a bit more of the journey. Although the minute I typed that, I realized that this is Maddie’s story, so it’s nice that for once the Summers brother being, I believe the proper terminology is “messy bitches,” taking a back seat to her seems right.
And those puppies should be the newest members of Clan Summers.
Tony: Yeah, I wish we’d gotten a little more of Alex growing up, since that’s been his character arc since he snapped out of his Axis inversion. If there’d been one more issue of this mini, I think we would have gotten that. Otherwise, I think this didn’t just tell a satisfying story within Dark Web, but also for the main series as a whole. Without this and the annual, the overall year before the next gala would just fall flat.
Matt: It feels like this year of the X-Men book has been hamstrung by tying into so many other books and events. The new team had to be in Judgment Day for two issues which, while well done and somewhat organic to the book, didn’t forward any of the numerous plots it’s been juggling. Then there were three Children of the Vault issues that largely focused on one team member, a one-off issue that did something similar, and then right into a crossover with Captain Marvel for three months. Until you said it, I thought we were only a couple months into this incarnation of the team, not half way through, with the amount of overall plot progression we’ve seen.
Tony: That’s exactly the problem with the nature of the election. The first year at least had the throughline of Cordyceps Jones and Doctor Stasis. This year hasn’t had that. It’s been a character focused few months rather than plot focused. I hope the next six months can find a balance in that.
Someone’s Gonna Get Stabbed (Wolverine #29)
Tony: Percy is really just stalling a bit until Logan and Beast can slug it out face to face, isn’t he? Not to say that I disliked this, but it’s an issue that’s just meant to be putting pieces in place.
Matt: This felt like the loudest quiet issue ever. We all know those issues of X-Men where the team plays baseball or fix up the mansion (again) and not much happens but we get great character beats? This is like that, if there was lots of fighting. It’s about Logan coming back to himself and helping Krakoa deal with the “gift” Sabretooth left behind before his escape in his eponymous mini, and for that, I’m glad it happened, but it feels like Percy needs to get this book and X-Force synced up at the right moment for all of Beast’s crappy actions to come home to roost.
Tony: It’s a little bit resolution to all the crappy stuff Beast did, a little bit resolution to the crappy stuff Creed did, and it’s all Logan. I’m a little mad that after the space prison arc, Hank seems to be wandering free in X-Force, but it seems pretty clear to me that it’s all because Percy is planning on resolving it here in Wolverine. It’s fun, even if it does hit beats we’ve seen for Logan in other stories over the years. It’s a familiar trope that’s done well.
As much as I liked the story, MAN this issue was done a disservice by the art again. I’ve liked Juan Jose Ryp in the past. I’ve liked Ryp on Wolverine in the past. But this arc… I don’t know if it’s Ryp’s work or if Frank D’Armata’s colors aren’t a good fit. I’ve struggled with that quite a bit.
Matt: I’ll tell you what about Ryp’s art on this particular issue didn’t work for me. Ryp is a hyper-detailed artist. Every detail that could take two lines takes four. And that’s ok for a lot of stories. But this is Logan fighting through the mind of Krakoa, through the ethereal world of The Pit. This should have felt dreamline and weird. Rod Reis would have been a better fit for this story, or someone in that school. Ryp could have come back for the end, when Logan gets back to the surface, to show he was back to reality, but I wanted something different for a story in The Pit.
Tony: That’s a good point. This week we also got Action Comics #1051 (watch for Super-Chat!) which had a psychic therapy scene illustrated by Marguerite Sauvage. It’s interesting to see the two side by side. Reis is a perfect suggestion for who would have fit better, but no matter who it could be, I think stylistic over realistic could have been so much better for the issue. But hey, next month starts the big Logan versus Beast arc, and I’m hoping it brings us some resolution, because HANK NEEDS IT.
X-Traneous Thoughts
- More smarmy Forge please, thank you! I’m kinda glad we have at least a couple more arcs with this team just to see more of him.
- Fun fact: In the Jack Box game Fibbage 3, one of the final round fill in the blank questions is about Swarm. My game group groaned the first time it came up because they knew it was about comics and they all knew I had just locked up that game. The two words to fill in the blanks were “Nazi” and “Bees”.
- Coming in June 2023: Inferno Puppies! Make it happen Marvel!
Matt Lazorwitz read his first comic at the age of five. It was Who's Who in the DC Universe #2, featuring characters whose names begin with B, which explains so much about his Batman obsession. He writes about comics he loves, and co-hosts the creator interview podcast WMQ&A with Dan Grote.
Tony Thornley is a geek dad, blogger, Spider-Man and Superman aficionado, X-Men guru, autism daddy, amateur novelist, and all around awesome guy. He’s also very humble.
