X-Men: The Hellfire Murder makes everyone suspect

When an iconic mutant power player is murdered at an exclusive masquerade hosted by Sebastian Shaw, it falls to Wolverine and Jubilee to solve a locked-room mystery that has dire consequences for all mutantkind. Everyone is a suspect. And the party isn’t over yet. X-Men: The Hellfire Murder is written by Gail Simone, Jed MacKay, Erica Schultz, Saladin Ahmed and Eve L. Ewing; drawn by Aaron Kuder, Joelle Jones, Luciano Vecchio, Federica Mancin, Tony S. Daniel and Cory Smith; inked by Mark Morales and Oren Junior; colored by Fernando Sifuentes and lettered by Ariana Maher.

Tony Thornley: It’s time. Time for the annual party around which everything pivots. Except it doesn’t really any more. But it’s kind of like an annual for the entire line. It’s the Hellfire Gala, this time with 100% more murder than the last time, but 80% less than the time before that!

That also means it’s time for our annual tradition of bringing together most of the site’s staff to talk about the Hellfire Gala!

Hi, gang!

Armaan Babu: I’ve got my mask, my badly explained theme of a costume, and a mild desire to see Sebastian Shaw dead (he’s been used one too many times against me in Marvel Snap). These are the prerequisites for this party, yes?

Stephanie Burt: Can I still get into the party if I have a vast and rage-fueled, rather than a mild, desire to see Sebastian Shaw dead? I promise to conceal my knuckle tattoos, which would probably give it away.

Adam Reck: Oh hey, I didn’t recognize any of you in your fancy nanite masquerade outfits. I guess it’s time to shamelessly break out the Krakoa-era branding again, despite there being record-low brand line cohesion. But I am always 100% cool with Luciano Vecchio getting paid to design fun cosplay ideas, so at least there’s that. 

Nola Pfau: I wasn’t invited, but I snuck in late, despite being there in the first crowd shot.

Scott Redmond: Sorry, I was hardcore flirting and didn’t even notice a murder happened. Good thing my wife is missing somewhere in space and the other person’s boyfriend didn’t come to the party.

Dan Grote: Oh no, I’ve been murdered! Will the mystery of who killed me be solved before the end of this review, or will a post-credit scene cast doubt on everything we think we know?

Austin Gorton: I’m just here for the thigh-high boots.

Tony: Why does my nanite costume look like Ralph Wiggum?!

All eyes on me

Tony: I kind of like this cold open. Having the X-Men and other mutants gather for a party, but this time by invitation only, is a very Sebastian Shaw thing to do. So after Shaw’s monologue about how he’s the best, and he’s going to dictate the future of mutantkind (and also painting an obvious target on his back), we jump into the festivities.

Was there anything major in the opening speech that jumped out at each of you?

Armaan: Get me one of those shirts; you know the ones. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Shaw was right. He’s presented a pretty good state of the world for mutants in the post-Krakoan age, and his main point? That it was absurd that any mutants at all allowed the Graymalkin prison to exist at all? That is his strongest point of all. It’s a good speech! 

I mean, it doesn’t go anywhere, or really have much at all to do with the rest of the comic, but it’s a good speech!

Dan: It was! And here’s the other thing about that. Based on who appears in this book, Shaw included, it means the inmates of Graymalkin were released off-panel. Not to pivot to reviewing a different book, but it was more important for Gail Simone to wrap up her retro-sci-fi arc in Uncanny X-Men this week than to let us see an unjust prison be emptied — we have to watch the cartoon for that.

Stephanie: Valid, though maybe we’ll get a flashback. I’m noticing that Saladin Ahmed wrote Shaw’s anti-carceral speech — and Ahmed (see his Black Bolt) put decarceral politics into cape comics before it was cool. Also I want Joelle Jones to draw lots of things. See how her panel layout puts Scott’s head right next to Shaw’s word balloon about “weakness”? Scott knows weakness from strength, and bravado from actual courage. Shaw, not so much.

Nola: I think it’s very fitting that Shaw’s main point for prison abolition is that it was a prison that affected him personally, despite all of his money and status. The thing I question is how he was able to effect a “conditional” release in which he is in his own mansion with no restraints or power dampeners of any kind. 

Tony: I mean, he doesn’t say it, but it’s pretty obvious that he’s saying he bribed his way out, though with Monet as the current warden, I’m not sure how that works.

Stephanie: Monet canonically gets distracted sometimes.

Tony: Monet, or her twin sisters in a trenchcoat?

Adam: I take particular umbrage if it really is the case that Graymalkin was emptied out off panel. Austin and I have groaned every time that story gets extended. Though there’s another exchange between Cyclops and Rogue that suggests he’s trusting her in keeping it open. So I don’t think this makes much sense or is definitive one way or the other. 

Austin: [groooooan] 

For what it’s worth, I took the Scott/Rogue exchange to be an acknowledgement that Cyclops was in on the whole “take it down from the inside out rather than blow it apart right from the start” plan and willing to let Rogue run her play. At any rate, this definitely feels like a weird place to reveal the prison is for-real goners (if it is indeed), even as Shaw’s whole speech felt like a case of taking the words right out of my mouth. 

Adam: It does feel a little bit like Shaw is critiquing the line as a whole. But then of course he’s about to get straight up murdered, so what are we supposed to take from that? 

Austin: Keep your opinions to yourself or get got. 

Dan: And just where was Warden St. Croix during this party? If we’re inviting Jeff Bridges-era Crimson Commando and Astra, you’d think Shaw would take particular joy in inviting his jailer and rubbing his little party in her face.

Are Shaw’s motives pure? Of course not! But for a brief, shining moment, it was nice to see some actual mutant leadership as opposed to the recalcitrant factionalism we’ve had these past two years.

Tony: Yeah I liked this, because on one hand, Shaw is obviously doing this for his own benefit, likely his own profit specifically. On the other, we’ve had so much mealy-mouthed lip service to doing something post-Krakoa, that it was good to finally see it.

Stephanie: I’m not sure a self-serving speech at a masquerade ball counts as “see it.”

Scott: I’ll agree that it was good to see this point thrown out there, even though the messenger is suspect. I will say, it’s very wild that Marvel has a multitude of stories going on and recently finished where the villains are the ones making the very good points, and the heroes are the ones congratulating themselves on knocking that down in favor of the status quo. Superhero comics from capitalist corporations are never going to be about fully knocking down the overall status quo. At the same time, I can’t recall a time where Marvel was so much about the heroes actively fighting so hard to make sure the beyond-broken system keeps chugging along.

Stephanie: What Scott said. Looks even worse compared to what Marvel allowed X-creators to do in the late 2000s: M-Day was indefensible, but Academy X, and then the Utopia era? I miss those books. Something’s really wrong up at the top.

Tony: The invite list confused me, though. A few of these faces were obvious — Cyclops, Rogue, Crimson Commando, Astra — but why Ransom and Temper over Magik and Nightcrawler?

Stephanie: Do you think Magik would choose to go, if invited? I mean, she would if Kitty insisted, but she’d probably just want to burn the place down. Also she’s pretty good at seeing through deceptions.

Armaan: So, obviously, the people who appear are just people the creative team wants to see all decked out in fancy outfits and write intriguing lines for, and I doubt much thought was put in beyond that. 

But No-Prizing it — I assume more people were invited than actually came. Shaw probably wanted to make a Hellfire Gala that was as big as the ones that came before, but not as many mutants are that open to a Shaw-led party. Also, mutants are more scattered than they’ve ever been for one of these galas. The more of them that happen, the smaller and smaller I imagine they’ll get, until it’s just Emma, Cyclops and Wolverine arguing about team strategies. 

Adam: You say that, but these specials do seem extra superfluous now that X-Men United is supposed to give excuses for these characters to interact all the time. The guest list is bizarre and random, but the weirdest entries might be the red herring villains in attendance: 3K’s Astra and Joseph. Last I checked, they were secret-supervillain-ing with Chairman Beast to unleash a global virus. Why in the world would they leave their sanctuary to preen in this group? 

Tony: Good point, but if anyone would leave the safety of their sanctuary, it’s totally Astra. She has a Magneto, and she’s a teleporter. Of course she’s going to be confident enough to show herself. Normally I’d call it what our good friend (and BatChat co-host) Will Nevin calls “the idiot ball,” but the logic does work.

Austin: Does 3K even have a mailing address? 

Stephanie: As our resident X-Men United defender, I would like to add that X-Men United is a school book, or at least it’s supposed to be. It’s not meant for fancy dress-ups, and you can’t invite obvious villains to Psychic Graymalkin Lane, the way you can to a Hellfire Gala.

It’s a party! 

Tony: And then we shift into the actual party itself. A few things I liked here:

• The nanite clothes machine is a cool sci-fi doodad. 
• The banter between characters, especially Wolverine and Jubilee, is on point. 
• The tension leading up to the murder is FANTASTIC.

Adam: Is it?I felt nothing.

Nola: Yeah, I’m with Adam on this. I felt no tension at all.

Dan: I’ve been murdered, so I definitely don’t feel anything.

Tony: I thought so! I mean, it’s mostly the sequence where Scott and Kwannon plot an assassination in plain sight. I think that was a standout moment.

Austin: I don’t know if I’d call it tension, but I did think the pages leading up to the reveal of the murder did an effective job of emulating the setup of a murder mystery story, when you know a murder is going to happen but you don’t know when or who, and the story goes out of its way to set up a bunch of different suspects and showcase the characters behaving oddly or going to specific places in ways you know are going to come back around as either clues or red herrings. 

Stephanie: What Austin said. Tension? No. Banter? Yes. Locked-room mystery setup? Also yes. I’ll take it.

Adam: I want to talk about the Cyclops/Psylocke interaction for a second. This bit is trying to do a few things: Cash in on ’90s nostalgia so that we all think about that weird time that Psylocke licked motor oil off Cyclops’ face and make sure we know Cyclops and Psylocke are very much up for straight up killing either Joseph, Astra or both. It definitely fails on the first count because even in the ’90s that was a stupid subplot that never went anywhere. But I’m more concerned with the second. Is it Cyclops’ intention to just murder 3K? Maybe I haven’t been reading MacKay’s X-Men closely enough, but this jumped out at me as pretty dark for our heroes. On the other hand, if you’re planning on murdering them, just do it already? Why the need for subterfuge?

Nola: The thing that gets me is they did the thing with the title where they covered “GALA” with “MURDER,” and then they don’t actually get to the murder until Page 22. That would make sense for a miniseries or something similar, because it’s about where the final page sting would be on a first issue! But here it’s two-fifths of the way through the story (side note, what the hell is a 55-page issue, is that what we get instead of 80-page giants now?). The first glimmer of tension I felt was when Emma and Namor went off alone, because at that point I understood “Oh, this is both a reason to suspect them and also an alibi.”

The lack of tension though is a big thing. There’s a bit about Rogue and Gambit not wanting to be there, there’s Cyke and Kwannon having their own agenda, there’s Idie for … reasons, I guess?

Stephanie: A murder two-fifths of the way through the story = normal for a locked-room mystery. More fun than tons of flashbacks, and gives a first-time reader the chance to speculate about who’s gonna get murdered. So many people who kinda deserve it…

Scott: Unfortunately throwing my hat on the side of not feeling any real tension here. So much of the banter and connections felt very thin to me. Like a collection of voice lines recorded for game atmosphere to evoke the character’s feeling without going too deep. I recall liking the idea of Cyclops/Psylocke flirtation when I was young, but here it feels so wildly out of place. There was so much made about denying that characters were involved in polyamorous relationships during Krakoa once this new line began. Yet the married (unless I missed something) Cyclops is shamelessly flirting with Psylocke, who is very much seeing and loves John Greycrow. Who the duo mention by name in a dismissive way as they get horny over murder talk. 

Tony: Also, this special is VERY VERY horny. Remy and Rogue needed to get a room, and holy crap, Cyclops and Psylocke plotting to kill Astra was weirdly hot.

Stephanie: The costumes make it hornier (a good thing). Well, most of them do. I love Rogue’s. I like the new look for Jubilee, who could use a break from yellow raincoats. I truly dislike Scott’s costume, though: It’s hot, but it’s Not Him. It would make more sense on Warren Worthington or Sam Guthrie or some other he/him character who’s either remarkably comfortable, or adorably confused, by obvious bondage gear.

Adam: In the context of this week’s Uncanny, Rogue and Gambit’s banter made very little sense, as they are [spoiler alert] on the cusp of leaving the Outliers behind to go solve Gambit’s full transformation into a cannibal dragon named Wyvern (no, I didn’t just make that up).

Austin: Linewide narrative cohesion has no place in Tom Brevoort’s X-Line.  

Stephanie: More of a Tangle than a Line?

Tony: Yeah, Rogue leaving after “destroying” the prison, but then kinda sticking around for four months afterward has been such a bizarre thing.

Adam: Also, soup is not sexy, even if it’s gumbo. 

Nola: Gonna go ahead and disagree with you on that, Adam. Romantically cooking for your spouse is always sexy.

Armaan: It’s the promise of soup that’s sexy, Adam, everyone knows that.

Adam: Fair.

Armaan: I don’t know about the tension, but everyone, I think, makes for fantastic suspects. It’s not just their outfits that are fancied up, their personalities are, too. Cyclops and Psylocke doing their flirtatious murder-innuendo is delightful, people flirting with each other all willy-nilly while dressed their dramatic best — honestly, I’m surprised Sinister wasn’t a bigger part of this.

Everyone feels confident, and everyone feels dangerous, and the frustrations we’ve been having with various post-Krakoan series (mainly that everyone is at each other’s throats for reasons that make little sense) seem to be left aside in favor of people just having a fun evening. 

Tony: I agree with that. And there were several suspects set up in the beginning of the issue that vanished. If I had to guess before they found the body, the prime suspects would have been Sinister, Warren, Betsy and Storm. Instead, they all either disappeared or went on to do their own thing. I mean, hell, this is the first time we’ve seen Betsy since the Forge X-Force ended, and she was set up to be a part of this story … then wasn’t.

Scott: All of this. For this being a murder mystery, it sure wasn’t really plotted or paced well to be that. They sold the premise of this being Wolverine and Jubilee solving a “locked room” murder, but it’s not really any of that. There’s not really any reason to suspect anyone here because we saw where most people were or they vanished. Not saying I’m expecting Knives Out-level stuff from a one-shot, but you gotta at least give us some crumbs to mull over.

Austin: As much as I felt it nailed the murder mystery setup, the actual investigation beats felt a little flat. We’re clearly supposed to view Wolverine and Jubilee as Holmes & Watson or Poirot & Hastings or Daniel Crag & Ana de Armas, but ultimately, it just boiled down to a lot of Wolverine smelling things. Holmes, he’s not. 

Tony: Also, as much as I liked the masquerade concept, it sure was confusing. At one point, I thought three different characters were Gambit, because they were all in purple.

Adam: You know the costume thing is a mixed bag when I didn’t even realize Betsy was in this issue. 

Tony: Yeah, it wasn’t until a couple pages later, when I realized suddenly Psylocke was in a different costume, that I went back and realized “oh purple hair, it’s Betsy.”

Scott: Nothing says great storytelling like characters having to call each other by their full given name or codename at every turn so the readers are sure who is who.

Armaan: It seems like some of the characters couldn’t recognize each other either, and I wish they’d had more fun with that — but then again, this comic had a lot of ground to cover.

Stephanie: Indeed. It’s a masquerade! Maybe I’m the outlier, but I kinda liked how the characters sometimes didn’t recognize each other, and sometimes I didn’t recognize the characters at first, and the shared experience put me into the world of the characters. Idie looks wondrous. More Idie outfits, please. I love how she got a full page to peacock (peahen?), too.

Armaan: One thing I do like about this murder mystery is that we don’t find out who is murdered until about halfway through, and I think that’s fun. It makes every conversation more interesting, as you’re left wondering not just who could be the killer, but whose upcoming death is either the most likely, or the most tragic. 

Austin: Whatever tension I felt in the setup, it largely came from that — the victim being as much a mystery as the culprit for longer than usual. 

Armaan: One thing I enjoy about this murder mystery is that where most of them have to do a lot of work toward introducing the suspects and slowly paint a picture of the victim, here we know the suspects. We know the victim. We even know most people’s powers and abilities. It gives us so much more room to enjoy the banter, the bickering and the suspicious back-and-forths later on in the comic.

Tony: I absolutely agree. I mean, Psylocke making an attempt on Astra was an obvious red herring for what the bigger story would be, but it was such a good moment to me. And I loved how the loaded dialogue shifted from attraction to subterfuge. And her weapon! A broken Champagne flute is such a good idea!

Dan: It’s Joseph-proof!

Nola: It’s a lot of folks showing up for a thing they don’t want to be at, hosted by a guy none of them care about, who then gets murdered, and we’re supposed to buy that the X-Men, who have definitely done murders many times, are troubled by this.

I dunno. I’d have gotten to that murder way quicker, put it right up front, and introduced the cast as suspects from the get go.

Stephanie: I want to know who killed Shaw, though not as much as I want to know the identity of the woman in the gold pointy mask who just picked Kitty as a dance partner. They’re bonding over their shared hatred of Shaw, but everyone hates Shaw. Is it Sage? As for Nola’s objection: nothing wrong with a murder mystery where everyone hated the victim — still gotta solve the crime. There’s a famous one set on a train with that kind of setup, no?

Dan: Not to mention the most recent Benoit Blanc movie. And I’m pretty sure Kitty’s dance partner was Lady Mastermind. Same dress, but it takes some toggling back and forth to jog the memory because neither was a major part of the plot.

Tony: And then Logan finds Shaw’s body.

And one more thing…

Tony: Wolverine should do more detective stories. The last time I remember him being a detective was … I think 1999 when I first started reading X-Men.

This wasn’t totally a fairplay mystery, but Logan investigating the death and sussing out the clues was a lot of fun, and making Jubilee his partner is much missed. It was a very fun read, even if it wasn’t perfect, and I miss Logan and Jubilee doing adventures together.

Austin: Me too, especially given the slightly new dynamic now that Jubilee is no longer the neophyte reader POV character. It’d be nice to see Simone tap into it more in Uncanny given, you know, they’re both cast members there. 

Nola: OK, the timeline and pacing here is a mess. So Shaw gives his speech, Logan notices “something” is amiss immediately after, on Page 5, which we later learn is a “whiff of adrenal panic” on Page 19. That means that, according to what we learn later, Shaw has already been replaced, and that’s not him giving the speech at the start. However, Shaw is talking to Hellion on Page 9, and that’s when Emma goes to tell him they need to talk. 

Then we’re told at the end that it wasn’t the nerve gas that killed him, he was brain fried before that, presumably when Emma was alone with him, even though he’s already supposed to be dead because Logan smelled his fear, and I hate that I’m doing forensic timeline analysis on the goddamn story because the creative team couldn’t double-check their details. They don’t care about their own murder mystery, the characters don’t seem to either, and so I ask: Why should I?

Stephanie: Far be it from me to defend Mr Brevoort’s editing skills, but hang on: Logan smelled “adrenal panic” because someone was afraid for his life, but that someone need not be Shaw. Lots of people at the party have reason to fear lots of things — and if, as we discover on the last page, Emma just offed him telepathically before the nerve gas even happened, Shaw might not even have had time to secrete fear.

Austin: Story-specific narrative cohesion has no place in Tom Brevoort’s X-Line.  

Tony: I wasn’t totally sure how to put what felt off about it, despite generally enjoying it, but I think you nailed it right there, Nola.

Adam: At the moment where Logan properly identifies the chemical name of the nerve agent, I did wonder when he became an expert in chemistry as opposed to a dude who could identify a warzone smell. It’s not that Wolverine and Jubilee are written totally out of character. It’s that they don’t have much to actually do as investigators. They find a body, ask a few questions and are mainly there for crowd control. 

Scott: Mystery stories are often built around the sleuth picking up some last clue that paints in the whole picture. Here we get Logan spinning a whole yarn off an off-hand comment that again ties back to him just knowing the chemical scent and its unscent. A whole issue of the two of them actually investigating and having to discern who is and isn’t lying could have been more fun. While the reveal has some possible down-the-line merit, the randomness of the killers’ sudden appearance wasn’t even something the reader could guess with what was on the table.

Armaan: The mystery was a mess, that’s for sure. The murder was unimportant — heck, Shaw himself’ll probably be back in about a year. Murder mysteries can be a little like parties — they’re just an excuse to get a bunch of interesting people in a room. 

It’s a flimsy excuse. Anyone even glancing through this issue can pick apart this mystery and see that it doesn’t hold up at all. Honestly, is this book that different from the swimsuit issue? 

That said, I kind of like what it sets up. A Hellfire Brotherhood? Mystique, Destiny and Co. using Shaw’s money to make things better for mutants? I want to see that series — so I was immediately disappointed to find there’s no upcoming series that covers this turn of events. Which means this may just be a throwaway idea that we won’t see come into effect until about a year or so from now when a writer wonders what Mystique’s been up to. 

I had fun with this issue — but disappointingly, there’s not much more to the book beyond that.

Stephanie: I’ll take all the costumes here over a swimsuit issue. More to see (but, also, less to see).

Tony: I think they did a good job laying out clues, but then they over-wrote so much of it (pointing back to Adam’s example about the chemical name). It was fun, which is important, but it falls apart under scrutiny.

I do love what it sets up, though. Armaan, you pointed out the Hellfire Brotherhood — which is a great name — and not only do I love that concept, I love who’s involved. Seeing Empath and Lady Mastermind front and center in something so key is very fun. Toad provides the link to the past of the Brotherhood. And yes, let’s give Raven and Irene a mission.

My problem though is that I do not trust this X-office to execute this at all, unless the Brotherhood were to get their own series. Look at X-Manhunt, and the Hellfire Vigil. They keep acting like this is a line with a level of cohesion like Krakoa, but that just DOES. NOT. EXIST.

It’s a great concept. But how many times has this office created great concepts that just landed flat on their faces?

Stephanie: Each time, with one exception so far, that they’ve created a concept?

Adam: I think we’ve landed on the most important flaw here. Especially knowing we’re headed for an X-office shake-up in the near future given Marvel’s move to Burbank, any dramatic reveal is going to come up a little short. It’s worth pointing out that on the “follow the X-Men in…” page there are only three current ongoing X-Men comics: Uncanny, Adjectiveless and United. The last of those is rumored to be done after issue #10. Even if we include Inglorious X-Force, the line is as small as it’s been in a very long time. Where exactly would the plotlines extending out of this jam issue play out? Jed is busy with the upcoming DNX Fantastic Four crossover, and Gail is doing horror-genre of the week. 

Austin: And heading into a (presumably) multi-issue arc to pay off (or at least advance) the Cannibal Dragon Gambit plotline.

But Adam, perhaps the events of this issue will be followed up in one of the approximately* three thousand 5-10 issue solo series that comprise the bulk of the X-line? Or maybe in a few years we’ll get a retro series set in the immediate aftermath of this issue? 

*not actually approximate

Adam: I also want to jump on the macguffin at the end of this issue, and that is the continued use of Forge’s power neutralizer. When used by Claremont, it was a story-based reason to have one of his favorite characters confront who she was. When used by Hickman, it was a Chekhov’s gun that pushed the Moira X story into new, bizarre territory. Here — even as a box of dust — it feels meaningless. A callback to better stories that knew when to use such a powerful totem. 

We also know it’s meaningless because Wolverine won’t tempt fate (and Destiny’s accuracy) by telling Jubilee what the real deal was. Add to that the odd epilogue revealing the real killer was Emma, and there are no lasting repercussions to this story whatsoever, making it easily forgotten. 

Stephanie: I’m not gonna forget Idie’s costume. I’m starting to think we did read a swimsuit issue. Without the swimming.

Scott: Beyond well said. The constant use of the power neutralizer as a plot device is tiring. While Shaw has worked against mutantkind numerous times, the whole point of this still doesn’t even gel for me. Especially since, as already pointed out, we know none of this is likely to ever go anywhere beyond this one-shot. Just another notch in this era’s post of recreating the Leo pointing meme at every given opportunity.

Stephanie: But it’s eye candy! And Shaw gets killed! I think I’m feeling satisfied by the whole reading experience because there’s so much design and so much eye candy and because I came in with such low expectations about the overall plot. I mean, just looked at the number of credited writers. IDK who’s your favorite line editor, or issue editor, or Head of X — Simonson? Hickman? — but the best you’re gonna get with so many writers and so many characters is probably a set of neat costumes, pinup-worthy fashion (Idie’s outfit!), cute three-panel dialogue moments (Kitty dancing with … Sage?), and a slender wire of story that doesn’t fall apart unless you tug on it. But here we are, tugging.

Imagine Empath and Mastermind/Lady Mastermind working together for more than three minutes without trying to kill each other (impossible).

Tony: I will say that I liked the Emma twist from the perspective that it essentially restores the excellent character work from X-Men Black: Emma Frost, but once again, I just do not trust this editorial group to shepherd that in any meaningful long-term way.

X-traneous Thoughts

• The art throughout the book is really well done. My favorite might be Aaron Kuder’s Namor and Emma pages. Making Emma look seductive despite having a large crescent across her face isn’t easy, but Kuder does it with panache. 
• I thought it was nice of Shaw to acknowledge Hellion’s shenanigans in NYX, a book that came and went but isn’t forgotten.
• Logan never once popped his claws on his right hand, maintaining continuity with the Wolverine title (on a level we haven’t seen this line have).
• Maybe there IS linewide cohesion in Tom Brevoort’s X-line! 
• Emma’s flirtations with Namor serving to give herself an alibi and nothing more really worked for me.
• The page numbering in the credits doesn’t make sense given stuff like the editorial notes and the credits page itself, and that’ll be even worse when you also add ads into the mix. So good luck figuring out who did what, unless you’re really good at discerning artists in Marvel’s house style from one another.
• If this special is a way to get Joelle Jones to work for the X-Line, I’m so game for it.
• It was Armaan. Armaan murdered me. The clues were there all along. God, it’s like you weren’t even paying attention!

Buy X-Men: The Hellfire Murder #1 here. (Disclaimer: As an Amazon Associate, ComicsXF may earn from qualifying purchases.)