X-Chat finds the Heir of Apocalypse, goes on a Blood Hunt and mashes up with Donald Duck

As the X-Men are rising from the ashes, one face in particular looks to the past in X-Men: Heir of Apocalypse from Steve Foxe, Netho Diaz, Sean Parsons, Alex Sinclair and Clayton Cowles.

The X-Men are probably the superheroes best equipped to fight vampires, so why are we doing four character-focused one-shots? Well, they’re fun at least. X-Men: Blood Hunt is from Preeti Chhibber, Enid Balam, Elizabetta D’Amico, Jim Campbell and Ariana Maher on Jubilee; Steve Foxe, Lynne Yoshi, Ruth Redmond and Maher on Psylocke; and Stephanie Phillips, Robert Gill, Nolan Woodard and Travis Lanham on Laura Kinney: The Wolverine.

Who’s the best there is at what he does? One guess. Guess who? Who never, never starts an argument? Who has gaps in all his memories thanks to Weapon X? Who’s never wrong but always right? Who’d never dream of starting a fight? Who gets stuck with all the bad luck? No one … but Donald-Wolverine Duck! (Yes, that’s a bad mash-up of Wolverine quotes and Donald Duck’s theme song for What If…? Donald Duck Became Wolverine.) This weird mash-up one shot comes from Luca Barbieri, Giada Perissinotto, Lucio Ruvidotti and Laura Tartaglia.

All that in X-Chat #16!

Tony Thornley: It’s kind of funny, Matt, I feel like the meatiest thing we have to talk about this go-round is the shortest of the bunch.

And just a note, we are talking the “Blood Hunt” one-shots, but we’re skipping Magik because our friend Penn covered it for the site already.

Matthew Lazorwitz: After we covered the start of this kinda bold, not so new era, I thought we’d get stuff that didn’t feel like marking time, like so much of the end of the Krakoa era. But I guess a lot of what we’re covering is the tail end of that, so it makes some sense.

Well, That Happened …

Tony: I have been threatening to cover Heir of Apocalypse since X-Men #35 dropped, and man … it just did not have enough meat on the bone to cover in individual installments. So now that all of X-Men: Heir of Apocalypse has dropped, let’s talk ancient mutant destinies.

So after Apocalypse’s words/throwdown at the end of X-Men #35, he decides to pick his successor, so he selects 12 mutants he thinks are up for the job. And this is a motley crew: Cable, Wolverine (Laura), Emma Frost, Moonstar, Forge, Cypher, Rictor, Penance, Exodus, Gorgon, Armageddon Girl and Mister Sinister. (Though the good guys in this group would make for a good team of X-Men.)

A tournament, if you can call it that, ensues.

Honestly, I don’t hate the premise, but after the debut issue, the execution just falls apart. I legitimately can’t tell if there’s a tournament after Genocide shows up.

Matt: I have a real soft spot for Apocalypse nonsense, mostly because it’s often tied into my favorite kind of X-Men story, Summers nonsense. And I’ve enjoyed a lot of what Steve Foxe has done with these characters in recent years. But I have to agree, this is all over the place, with none of the character motivations of the mutants in the tournament really well-defined (except for Sinister, who’s just being a jerk). And the constant flashing back to their recruiting doesn’t help that. It breaks up the narrative flow of the rest of the story. I had thought that Lost/Arrow-style flashbacks had gone out a while ago, and I was glad to see them go then. This reminded me why.

For a series that has all these interesting characters, this has so much action and so much exposition. Oh, so Gorgon went through the Waiting Room and is a Nazi again. Great. It just felt like a lot of resetting to status quo, except for the end, of course.

Tony: Oh no joke. It was a very yell-y comic, too. I don’t feel like I could read any bit of the dialogue as having been spoken in a normal tone. In that way, it didn’t just feel like resetting the post-Krakoa status quo, but almost like it was reverting several characters to their ’90s counterparts. For example, I for one like the more complex and noble Cable that came around the early 2000s, and this just felt like the Nathan of The Rob and Fabez.

And my hell, do I ever have a problem with the flashbacks. There would start to be some narrative momentum, then a three-page flashback … then plot progression … then a flashback. I see a benefit to using the device, but honestly, the way Foxe deploys it just grinds the story to a halt. In the final issue, we got six or so pages, then TWELVE pages of nothing but flashbacks, then another six pages to close the issue. It screwed up the entire conclusion so badly that I just skipped the last two flashbacks to get to the end of the story, then came back to it after.

I see value in showing why heroic characters would accept Apocalypse’s offer to compete, but in the end it was just a time suck.

Matt: Over on BatChat, Will and I often talk about how stories in comics wind up either feeling too long because of the “write for the trade” mentality of now, or too short because older stories often had to be done in one or two issues. This is a rare exception where I feel like this could have used more space. I think the core conceit is solid, and very in line with Apocalypse’s ethos, but nothing had time to really reach a boil. Archangel is not in the tournament, but he’s here just shouting at Apocalypse and freeing the prisoners at the end. Was that necessary? Actually, that was kind of the problem with the entire FoHoX/RoPoX era, wasn’t it? The epilogue suffering the same problem feels oddly poetic. Not something I’m happy with, but poetic.

Tony: I mean, as underserved as Warren was, it was even worse for Sunfire, who showed up for like three pages in #1 and fucked off for the entire rest of the series. And then the number of participants was too much. I think if Foxe either had two more issues, or half the cast, this would have been MUCH stronger. I’m imagining a version with Cable, Wolverine, Moonstar, Cypher, Sinister and Exodus, and that just makes it a better story in a single breath. There would have been room for character development, some actual action and way fewer flashbacks.

And then the conclusion. It was all that just to get Doug Ramsey, probably the most underserved X-man outside the Krakoan era, turned into Golden Apocalypse, aka Revelation. It’s a shift that doesn’t make a ton of sense. I can’t see it lasting long term.

Matt: I love Doug. I loved Doug back in his New Mutants days. Writers have been trying to find something to do with Doug since, well, forever [Ed. Note: More or less since immediately after his creation, frankly]. Krakoa found a way to make him work really well without relying on making him Cassandra-Cain-I-read-body-language-so-I-can-fight, because his power is so much more than that. This absolutely feels like someone (and I don’t know who, but I don’t think it was Foxe) needed Doug to be more than just “the language guy,” and so came up with him being the heir to Apocalypse, and Foxe took the assignment to get him from point A to point B. 

I think there were ways to make Doug interesting and maybe even a little haunted/malevolent without needing to tie him to Apocalypse. A Doug haunted by the loss of Krakoa, a being he had bonded with, and knowing he can do and be so much more than others think of him? That’s a character who has a lot of potential, and also, one who I think would tell Apocalypse to shove it and go his own way.

Although, it was good to see Bei the Blood Moon back; I was worried she had been forgotten.

Buy X-Men: Heir of Apocalypse #4 here.

X-Women: Vampire Slayers

Tony: So, in what’s become a sort of tradition since around Civil War, the X-Men don’t get involved in the main summer event story, and are instead relegated to side stories. Unfortunately, since Blood Hunt started in between Krakoa and From the Ashes, it’s a disjointed set of one-shots of varying quality.

In Blood Hunt: X-Men: Jubilee, Jubes revisits her vampire days alongside the Unforgiven. In Psylocke, Kwannon and Greycrow come face to face with blood-sucking yokai. And in Wolverine, Laura and Gabby learn a disturbing truth about vampires and mutant blood.

I didn’t dislike any of these, but I didn’t love them either.

Jubilee’s history of being a vampire really hung over her story. I think Chhibber did a good job with what she had, but I’ve read better stories from her. Nothing I ever have read or will read will make me care about the Unforgiven.

Matt: Oh, yes, the Unforgiven are the Upstarts of vampires: some cool visuals that make you think they are going to be interesting and you should care, but then are just sort of … there. 

I like Jubilee (I started reading X-Men comics in the early ’90s, so I think it’s a requirement), but there are moments I feel like watching her character develop, you’re seeing all the things people who only casually read, or don’t read at all, X-Men comics complain about. She is now a repowered mutant former vampire single mom who used to be a tech hero after she lost her powers and was mentored by Wolverine and mentored a bunch of students for a while and oh yes her family has ties to the mob. There is all sorts of stuff to grab onto there, and the vampire stuff is some of the least interesting to me.

Tony: Yeah, and I love that Jubilee is growing up into one of the more mature X-Men, just because of all she’s been through. Throwing in some of that maturity would have made this way more interesting, even if it had chosen to dwell on the vampire stuff. Add some complexity.

Psylocke and Wolverine I did like a bit more. Foxe and Yoshi incorporating Blood Hunt into Yokai horror stories was a smart move. I love Asian ghost stories, and Foxe leaned into it just perfectly. (Side note, go find Porsak Pichetshote’s Dead Boy Detectives series from last year — it’s such a great blend of Western and Eastern horror.)

Matt: Oh, that Dead Boy Detectives series was excellent. 

We’re not talking Illyana here, since that was covered by Latonya Pennington already, but I liked how that and Psylocke spoke to each other. ‘Yana and Psylocke are both dealing with the vampires more deeply ingrained in their own cultures (although I am not sure if the one in Magik is based off a real cultural story like the ones here are). Doing something different, and not just including the same ol’ pasty fang boys, was a really smart move.

Tony: And Wolverine brought back a lot of what I’ve been missing about Laura Kinney in the last five years.

Matt: Yes, I think, with these three, their release order indicated my enjoyment; I liked them more and more as they came out. Wolverine not just had Wolverine, but it had Scout, a character I have missed a lot since the end of New Mutants, and while Xarus is another character I don’t care about, I liked the bit with mutant blood and vampires, and I enjoyed the back-and-forth between the sisters.

Tony: Oh, I really enjoyed that! It felt like Tom Taylor’s All-New Wolverine and Mariko Tamaki’s X-23 that followed it in the best ways. Phillips captured the back-and-forth between sisters so well (to the point that I have to think Phillips has a younger sister — I don’t know if she does or not).

I think for me, these one-shots weren’t a failure, but the disjointed nature made them feel incredibly inessential. I think back to Empyre: X-Men or X-Men: Secret Invasion, which were by writers currently in the line, and wrote stories that at least served as bridges between the current stories in the X-line and the event. 

If we had gotten an ad hoc team (even with these four characters plus Gabby and Greycrow) for three or four issues from someone like Foxe, Phillips or Alex Paknadel that served as a bridge without totally being a bridge, I would have liked this tons more. They could have even had the same basic plots, just with a more unifying throughline.

Buy X-Men: Blood Hunt: Laura Kinney: The Wolverine #1 here.

Old Man Donald

Tony: I am a HUGE fan of Disney Ducks comics. Whenever my local shop does a back-issue sale, I dive into old Ducks comics very first. I loved that the recent Uncle Scrooge one-shot included a classic Scrooge story.

Donald is far and away my favorite classic Disney character, and has been since I was probably 3 years old. So despite the cash-grabby-ness of this concept, it was exactly my shit.

I did not hate this glimpse into a Marvel-ized Disney universe, either. What If Donald Duck Was Wolverine was a fun little mash-up between two birthday boys (Donald’s 90th, Logan’s 50th) that frankly needed a little more room to breathe and tell its story. The biggest problem was that it pasted Old Man Logan into it. They could have taken that out and just added a generic “Logan is trying to get away from it all” trope that half of all new Wolverine runs start with, and accomplished the same.

That also would have allowed for Mickey to have been a Captain America or Cyclops mash-up rather than Hawkeye, both of which would have made more sense.

Matt: This definitely falls into the charming and amusing category. I had my doubts about this one; I too enjoyed the Uncle Scrooge one-shot, but this felt more forced. But as I read it, it made more sense: Donald practically has a berserker rage too, doesn’t he? And the art here was top notch. The two-page spread of all the incarnations of Donald-Wolverine looked gorgeous.

I also agree that this didn’t need the Old Man Logan bit. It just added a sailor’s cap on a sailor’s cap for me. I guess it was adding to the intentional dissonance of this; it’s not just Donald and Wolverine, but Donald and the most edge-lordy Wolverine story of all time (in case you couldn’t tell, I’m not a big fan of that story)! Mickey-Cap or Mickey-‘Clops would have been more apt. The only thing that using Old Man Logan did that worked was it kept the cast tight; this cold easily have spun into a cameo-fest that wasn’t a story, so keeping that part small worked. 

Tony: Yeah, that’s a good point. I think my biggest problem with the Old Man Logan of it is that they didn’t do anything with the themes or trappings of that story. Yes, it’s an edgy Logan story just for the sake of being edgy (and really the beginning of Millar’s descent into being nothing but edgy). It’s a road trip story at its heart though, and there was no road trip. It would have been fun to get another six or so pages to see the heroic trio on a road trip, encountering a Venomized Chip and Dale, maybe, or briefly teaming up with a Spider-Daisy based loosely on the Ashley Barton Spider-Girl.

Instead, its a brief road trip, the fight with Pete, then Scrooge is suddenly back in his money bin and it’s just the normal Ducks universe.

I think the only problem with removing the Old Man Logan trappings is that I can’t think of a better villain to merge with Pete. Sabretooth maybe? One of the Goblins?

Matt: Set it on Madripoor and have Pete and the Phantom Blot as Roughhouse and Bloodscream. Pete is sure built like that guy, and everyone wants more of him!

More seriously, yeah, Pete as Sabretooth probably works best, just because then you have Wolverine’s archnemesis. I’m not as up on my Disney lore, but isn’t Pete Mickey’s enemy? Does Donald have a rogue’s gallery of his own?

Tony: The Beagle Boys probably are the closest. And now that I think of it, the Beagles in place of Pete would have made sense. Even Ma Beagle as a Deathstrike or Viper sort?

But anyways, it was cute, it was fun, and it accomplished what it needed to in 30 pages.

Buy What If Donald Duck Became Wolverine here.

X-Traneous Thoughts

• As cheesy as Donald-verine was, it was ultimately very charming as well.
• Xarus says he’s an only child. Sorry, man, but I’ve read Tomb of Dracula. You’ve got a brother named Janus and a sister named Lilith. Gonna be awkward at vampire Christmas this year if they hear you forgot about them.
• I kind of wonder if Gorgon lied about being reverted to his old self post-Krakoa. I could see him progressing to the point that he realized that it would be in his best interest to pretend to be the Gorgon of old.

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