The Fall of the House of X continues in equal parts gory and temporal in this week’s Wolverine #42 and Dead X-Men #1.

PRELUDE TO THE FALL OF X

This week: Wolverine #42 and Dead X-Men #1.

RECAP OF THE FALL OF X

After discovering the remains of Daken, Wolverine confronts Sabretooth with his army of variants and clones, but they easily overpower him. Sabretooth signals his intent to kill Wolverine slowly to make him suffer, forcing him to watch the rest of his loved ones be mercilessly killed at his hand. The Sabreteeth then invade the Greenhouse (X-Force HQ) and violently attack the mutants within, killing several easily. X-23 (the time-displaced Laura Kinney, not the future-flung one currently answering to Talon; comics!) requests backup from Sage, but she and Black Tom are stuck in some sort of trance preventing them from responding. Aurora and Northstar arrive to help save mutant children while X-23, Colossus, and Domino fight off some of the Sabretooth variants, killing at least one of them. Aurora and Northstar find the entranced Sage and Black Tom, shaking them back to consciousness with their powers, thus allowing them to help regain control of the situation. Wolverine makes his way back to the Greenhouse, but finds no sign of X-23 within.

Sometime later, most of the mutants announced as the (ill-fated) new X-Men at the Hellfire Gala —Frenzy, Prodigy, Jubilee, Dazzler, and Cannonball— arrive in a post-apocalyptic timeline ruled by a dark variant of Magik. They’ve been chosen by Xavier and Aksani (Rachel Summers) to find the Moira MacTaggert from their timeline before her powers manifested, so they can undo their current fate. They have access to the various timelines created by Sinister’s Moira engine, but cannot attract too much attention while inside any of them, or else they risk the mission. (Prodigy only needs to encounter one version of Moira from these timelines to build a mental map to her whereabouts.) The X-Men are pulled back to their base in the White Hot Room, and Aksani sends them to another timeline, where they encounter a version of the X-Men led by Abigail Brand. In this timeline, Orbis Stellaris goaded Abigail into bringing an apocalypse, and he’s seeking to steal the last of her mysterium for an unknown purpose. Orbis then unexpectedly attacks the X-Men, but they are quickly aided by the Starjammers (led by Captain Lockheed) just as Prodigy picks up a Moira signal. They quickly locate her and find she’s an apocalypse-hardened cyborg. Deciding they’ve got what they need, the time-hopping X-Men flee the scene and leave Brand to deal with Moira, who reveals she has the same exact plan as Xavier — and now has the leverage to complete her preparations with stolen mysterium.

ANALYSIS OF THE X-MEN

As with the last issue of Wolverine, “Sabretooth War” remains more supplementary to the Fall of the House of X storyline rather than serving required reading, but it does allow us some insight into what Wolverine is fighting for. With Daken gone and Laura (one of them, anyway) at risk, his personal stakes are higher than they’ve ever been. But moreover, this issue is violent, so Wolverine fans who prefer their stories bloody and gory will certainly be satisfied.

If you want the core experience, however, then Dead X-Men is that. Directly tying into the main storyline as it last left off, we see the start of Xavier’s plan to undo their predicament with the recently elected X-Men (most of them, anyway) who’ve been brought back with some of the last of their resurrection pods. It’s a fun lineup for sure; it makes me wish we’d gotten to see more of them working together before, well, you know. The plot itself is also classic X-Men, with time-hopping shenanigans to prevent their incoming devastation. Writer Steve Foxe is clearly having a lot of fun with these characters —Jubilee especially— and that little bit of levity helps the story from feeling overly bleak or nihilistic. I’m very curious to see how it proceeds.

NEXT IN THE FALL OF X

Just one issue: X-Men #31.

Fall of the House of X: Week Five

6.5

Wolverine #42

6.0/10

Dead X-Men #1

7.0/10

Credits

Writers: Benjamin Percy & Victor LaValle (Wolverine), Steve Foxe (Dead X-Men)
Artists: Cory Smith & Oren Junior (Wolverine), Jonas Scharf, Bernard Chang, and Vincenzo Carratù
Color Artists: Alex Sinclair (Wolverine), Frank Martin (DXM)
Letterer: VC's Cory Petit
Cover Artists: Lucas Werneck