Posted in: Comics, Marvel Comics | Tagged: Age of X-Man, amazing nightcrawler, marvel comics presents, wolverine, wolverine: infinity watch, x-force, x-men, X-ual Healing - The Weekly X-Men Recap Column

X-ual Healing 5-22-19: The Internet's Only #XMenMonday Column This Week

Hi folks, and welcome to the only X-Men Monday column on the net this X-Men Monday. The goal is simple: we read all of the X-Men comics that came out last week (on May 22, 2019), good or bad, and tell you what happened in them. We pick the most satisfying one and designate it as the Wolverine's Weiner X-Pick of the week. Then, because we know you all can't get enough X-Men, we'll tell you where to find more interesting X-Men news here and elsewhere on the web from the past week.

Now let's get to recapping…

Sworn to sell comics for Marvel executives who feared and hated the fact that Fox owned their movie rights, The Uncanny X-Men suffered great indignities, but with a corporate merger on the way, the X-Men can finally get back to doing what they do best: being objectively the best franchise in all of comics.

Amazing Nightcrawler #4
(W) Seanan McGurie (A) Juan Frigeri (CA) Shane Davis, Michelle Delecki, Diego Rodriguez
THE MOST FORBIDDEN LOVE!
• Role model and idol to millions Kurt Wagner (better known
as Nightcrawler) may have had a lapse in judgment a few years ago…and only Mystique can lead him to the fruit of his loins!
Rated T+
In Shops: May 22, 2019
SRP: $3.99

At a mall in California, Nightcrawler and his colleagues from Studio X battle Lady Mastermind and her rival studio mates in front of a cheering crowd. Nightcrawler realizes that the crowd is cheering because the X-Men have made the world so safe, they can't even imagine this is a real battle and not a show, which makes him proud. Nightcrawler ends the battle and tells Lady Mastermind to leave before something goes wrong. Then he sees Mystique in the crowd with his daughter, Talia,  but they disappear before he can catch them.

Later, as the team recuperates, Nightcrawler realizes that Meggan is missing. Irma and Celeste say they cannot find her, but Celeste, to her sister's chagrin, offers to help Nightcrawler find his daughter. Using Celeste's telepathy, Nightcrawler teleports the two of them to a warehouse where they find Meggan with Tenia, watching Flatscan Zombie Beach Party, which is apparently inappropriate for children. Meggan doesn't remember how she got here.

In any case, Nightcrawler wants to leave, now that he knows Tenia is safe. He believes that family belongs in the past. But suddenly Meggan transforms into Mystique, who reveals she's Nightcrawler's mom, and that he used to know her and believe in family, but he's been brainwashed. Nightcrawler demands to know where Meggan is, but Celeste informs him that is Meggan, her empathic powers causing her to manifest as Mystique because that's who Nightcrawler needs to see. Uh, what?

Now, Celeste reveals that all of this has happened before. That the entire film crew has been reprogrammed multiple times, and that each time, someone falls in love, and Kurt has gone looking for Tenia before. Kurt is freaking out, but things get worse when everyone from both studios show up under Celeste's control and reveal they're going to need to reprogram Kurt for the last time.

Things took a majorly creepy turn this issue, and not just because we learned that on some level, Nightcrawler made out with his mom. One more issue to wrap things up. Can Nightcrawler and friends overcome their cycle of brainwashing? And who are the bad guys here? Will any of it matter when Jonathan Hickman reboots it all? In a way, is Hickman brainwashing all of us?

War of the Realms: Uncanny X-Men #2
(W) Matthew Rosenberg (A) Pere Perez (CA) David Yardin
Sabretooth, tired of being the X-Men's pet, is back to his bloodthirsty ways once again. Now, joined by Malekith's forces, he's determined to make the X-Men bleed for him…
LEGACY #636
Rated T+
In Shops: May 22, 2019
SRP: $3.99

The issue opens with Mirage, Karma, and Multiple Man holding off a group of frost giants and wild hunt dogs so a group of civilians can escape. After taking them down, they radio Havoc, who is manning the camp the X-Men set up at a baseball stadium for survivors a few blocks away. Havoc clears a path with a massive plasma blast, and more frost giants attack. Banshee swoops in to fight them, but gets taken out, so Madrox requests help from Cyclops. Cyclops takes out frost giants with optic blasts to the heads, using a telescope as a sort of sniper scope/focuser for his optic blasts from a high position atop the stadium.

With the new group of civilians saved, we get some x-position about the camp, which is called Fort Syndergaard, after the real-life Mets player Noah Syndergaard, who is known for looking like Thor (the Mets have done some cross-promotion with Marvel about this). There are over 300 survivors here, and the way the previous battle just played out is the routine by which the X-Men have been holding the stadium. They use an army of Maddrox dupes to man the walls and keep the place running, and as a result the prime Jamie must be heavily protected. The new group of survivors reveal that there is another group of mutants out in the city helping people.

So it's time to check in on Wolfsbane, Hope, Chamber, a Madrox dupe, and Sunspot, who showed up last issue. They are taking down frost giants in the field. We see hope get killed by a frost giant, and Sunspot kill the frost giant by throwing a car at its head. Wolfsbane yells at him, insisting they need to capture frost giants alive and interrogate them. Hope is fine because it was a dupe that was killed. Using the Jamie dupe with them, Hope has been borrowing the powers of Jamie prime and creating a bunch of dupes of herself. The encounter a pack from the wild hunt led by Sabretooth, who Wolfsbane engages in battle. Hope orders the team to retreat, but Wolfsbane refuses, and the other X-Men won't leave her behind.

Thankfully, the first team of X-Men arrive on the scene to help. Sabretooth runs away, and Sunspot gets a nice reunion scene with Karma and Mirage. Unfortunately, it turns out Wolfsbane is now missing. That's because Sabretooth captured her and brought her to his base at Stark Unlimited. There, he has also capture Magik, and he wants Rahne in order to manipulate Magik into teleporting Malekith's armies for him, since his Black Bifrost was destroyed in the main War of the Realms book. But before Sabretooth can adequately threaten Rahne, Hrimhari, her baby daddy and Asgardian wolf god shows up, which is surprising because he is supposed to be dead. He was working with Sabretooth to ruinite with Rahne, and he's brought along her dead son as well.

Man, as if killing Rahne off in the main Uncanny X-Men book wasn't enough, now Rosenberg has to torture her in this flashback series by bringing back her dead lover and son, and, presumably, take them back away tomorrow? Does his cruelty know no bounds?! If you're wondering why Sabretooth is back to being a villain again, you might want to check out the last arc or two of the most recent Weapon X series, where Sabretooth sacrificed his humanity in order to bring his son back to life.

Wolverine: Infinity Watch #4
(W) Gerry Duggan (A) Andy MacDonald (CA) Giuseppe Camuncoli
Things are heating up for Logan as he and Loki try to protect the new guardians of Infinity…
Parental Advisory
In Shops: May 22, 2019
SRP: $3.99

Talonar, leader of the Raptors and Robbie Rider, brother of Richard Rider, has both Hector Bautista, the new owner of the Time Stone, and Wolverine, captive on his ship. The only problem is, he's having trouble extracting what he wants from both of them. In Hector's case, the time stone. In Wolverine's case, the adamantium from his skeleton. Even though Wolverine is in a furnace, he won't burn, so death has only improved his healing factor, it seems. Bats the ghost dog fetches the baseball batt encrusted with time diamonds from Loki's ship and brings it to Wolverine so he can escape the furnace and begin killing raptors.

Meanwhile, Loki returns to the Raptor ship with Talonar's mom in tow. When she confronts her son, he believes she's an illusion and stabs her. Before she dies, she forgives him. Talonar is not pleased with this outcome, but before he can kill Loki and Hector, Hector uses the time stone to go back in time a few minutes, where Loki manages to talk Talonar out of killing his mom. Wolverine shows up on the scene, and his claws are hot, which means he's in a berserker rage. He lunches at Talonar, but the Time Variance Authority shows up to place everyone under arrest, warning that Hector is about to commit a time crime. But then things get even worse when Warbringer, the Chitauri warrior from the beginning of this story, shows up, rips a hole in the ship, and threatens to kill everyone and take the time stone.

Well, at least there's only one more issue of this nonsense.

X-Force #8
(W) Ed Brisson (A) Dylan Burnett (CA) Pepe Larraz
• X-Force is trapped in the future!
• But what kind of future is it?
Parental Advisory
In Shops: May 22, 2019
SRP: $3.99

X-Force arrive in the future just in time to see Rachel Grey's broadcast inviting all of the Askani to meet her in Ebonshire, which of course we all know is a trap since Rachel is still a hound and a captive of Styfe. They decide to head there, as Domino figures all of these plots will converge and they'll find Cable that way too. Speaking of Cable, he's in a prison cell along with the rest of his Clan Chosen comrades in Stryfe's base, and Stryfe has removed Cable's telepathy, so his techno-organic virus is out of control and spreading to the walls of the prison.

X-Force arrives at Ebonshire and meet some of the members of the Askani. Blacquesmith is there, and he smells Stryfe on X-Force, so he attacks, but Domino fights him off and explains repeatedly that they're there to help Cable, even though this Blacquesmith hasn't yet traveled back in time so he doesn't know Domino yet. He finally calms down enough to talk and figures out that X-Force are associated with the X-Men, who he sent Kid Cable back in time to stop from destroying the timestream during Extermination. Before they can fully figure things out, Stryfe's Mutant Liberation Army attacks.

In the ensuing battle, Stryfe's Cronen briefly lose control of the Mutant Liberation Army, as it's too much to control both them and Rachel at once. This causes one of the mutant soldiers to break free of the mind control briefly, which shows X-Force that these are actually captured Transian mutants. The Cronens regain control though, and as the battle continues, the MLA gains the upper hand. Meanwhile, Cable's virus is now totally out of control, and it appears to have consumed his girlfriend Aliya.

This is all very important time-travelly stuff that would have a massive impact on the X-Men universe if it weren't for the fact that Hickman is going to come relaunch it all in a few months. Oh well.

Marvel Comics Presents #5
(W) Charles Soule, Chris Claremont, More (A) Paulo Siqueira, Luke Ross, More (CA) Arthur Adams
Welcome to the 1980s, Marvel style! First, Wolverine's Vigil goes into its fifth decade but doesn't go the way he planned. Then, join Nightcrawler mid-Cross-Time Caper at the fall of the Berlin Wall! Finally, a pivotal Venom tale by fan-favorite creators Leah Williams and Guillermo Sanna!
Rated T+
In Shops: May 22, 2019
SRP: $4.99

In Marvel Comics Presents #5, Wolverine's Vigil story hits the 1980s, but in the previous 1970s installation, Wolverine's witch partner slash possible secret baby mama was kidnapped or killed (it wasn't totally clear) by the demon Ron Killings, and so instead of the usual team-up, we get a recap of the entire decade, seeing glimpses of well-known Wolverine stories from the 80s. Uh, wait, what? But… well, let's save it for after the recap.

Wolverine goes to visit Doctor Strange and explain what's going on. Doctor Strange thinks Sylvie might be part of the D'Arqueness family, a great magical clan that are related to the Harkness family in America. He sends Wolverine to France to figure things out because he doesn't want to give away too much x-position. There, Wolverine finds Agathe, Sylvie's aunt, who tells Wolverine they don't need him anymore, especially since he failed. They solve their own problems. She teleports Wolverine to the Australian Outback, where the X-Men are currently headquartered, and tells him he'll never be able to find the village again.

Unfortunately, Wolverine caught the scent of a blond woman right before he was transported away and she is probably his daughter with Sylvie.

And yeah, that's a big shocker (even if it's what we've been expecting for a few issues now), but we've got something more important to talk about. With this issue showing all of those classic X-Men stories happening in the 1980s, it's become clear that this story has completely broken Marvel time. As we all know, Marvel time is constantly shifting because Marvel's superheroes must remain forever in their mid-twenties. As a result, things that happened in an issue of X-Men that came out in the 1980s happened, according to the current timeline of the Marvel Universe, sometime in like 2007. But since this story just walked through bullet points of Uncanny X-Men and various Wolverine mini-series and stories for each year of the 1980s, explicitly noting the years they took place as the years in which they were published, it calls Marvel Time completely into question.

Editorial goof? Is this story actually out-of-continuity? Somebody is going to have to come up with a real whopper of an explanation to sort this all out and win a no-prize.

Speaking of prizes, if there's one thing I hate more than pretty much anything else, it's the idea that classic comic book stories didn't take place in the time they were written. I don't know what Charles Soule is up to here, but whether he's killing Marvel time, or simply ignoring it, it's certainly enough to earn this short story (not even a full issue!!) the Wolverine's Weiner X-Pick of the Week.

Congratulations to the creative team.

Other X-Stuff

Normally, we'd tell you to go and read Adventures in Poor Taste's weekly X-Men Monday Q&A column, but Chris Hassan fears our question about when Marvel will let Chris Claremont write an ongoing X-Men comic so much, he canceled the column this week just so he didn't have to ask it. Okay, it might also have had something to do with Memorial Day.

In an interview on CBR last week, incoming X-Men relaunchmonger Jonathan Hickman revealed that his upcoming X-Men stories won't take place in an alternate universe or involve time travel. You can read the full interview here.

Rich Johnston has a theory on "the most important scene in X-Men history" coming up in the Hicklaunch.

It looks like the upcoming Marvel Ultimate Alliance for the Nintendo Switch will feature a lot of playable X-Men characters, a new trailer revealed. Marvel Strike Force also got an X-Men patch.

That's all for this week. Next week, we've got Age of X-Man: X-Tremists, Major X, and X-23 to recap.

Read more X-ual Healing here:

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