Noteworthy Issues: X-Men #10 (July, 2020)

Did I say this series was starting to build storylines?  Yeah, I may have been wrong.

Issue:  X-Men #10, July 2020

Writer:  Jonathan Hickman

Artist: Leinil Francis Yu

The Plot:  The other Summers brother goes for a walk.

Commentary:  I’m not sure I have much to say about this issue.

See, this is a tie-in to some Marvel crossover event called Empyre.  I haven’t read that.  I don’t even plan on reading that.  It may even be a good crossover as crossovers go.  I just have no plans to read it.  All I know is it involves another space war, probably between the Kree, the Skrulls, and who knows who else.

Instead, I have here an issue involving the third Summers brother Vulcan.  He’s staying in the family house on the Moon with two mutants I don’t recognize named Sway and Petra.  They apparently just want to relax and mix drinks.  Vulcan, he’s haunted by things that happened to him out in space.

Vulcan, see, used to be a supervillain type of mutant, one who had colossal energy powers.  He was part of a (retconned into existence) team of X-Men sent to Krakoa to save the original team but were believed to have been wiped out before Xavier sent in a second batch of mutants, the more familiar team consisting of the likes of Wolverine, Storm, Nightcrawler, and Colossus.  But it turned out Vulcan and his teammate Darwin had survived.  Darwin survived because that’s what his mutant power does.  Vulcan survived because he was that powerful.  The X-books had been teasing for years there was a third Summers brother, even suggesting a character with the most 90s name imaginable in the form of Adam-X the X-Treme was the guy.  But no, it was Vulcan, and he managed to actually start a space empire before he and Black Bolt fell into a rift between dimensions and then some more happened and why haven’t I written a Misplaced Character column on this guy yet?

Regardless, Vulcan is in the Moon house with Sway and Petra, and he’s bothered by nightmares.  Scott left a note saying he and Jean took the kids (Rachel and the young version of Cable) to a Shi’ar moon for a beach trip, and he has the run of the place.

But then he goes for a walk, meets some plant aliens that look like Groot only are far more articulate, and when they try to kill him, Vulcan pretty much takes care of all them rather easily with an assist from his PTSD.

And…that’s basically the issue.  The plant aliens know Krakoa is a place and may be gunning for it, but this series doesn’t exactly stick to a single plot line, so I have no idea if that happens next or not or what any of this has to do with Empyre.

That said, it did successfully demonstrate both how powerful and how disturbed Vulcan is, even if he’s a lot calmer now.

Grade:  C+