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Welcome back to the latest edition of The All-New Uncanny X-Piles! Where it’s all about the Children of the Atom all the time. If you’ve been keeping up with their exploits lately then you know some huge revelations have hit the X-Men courtesy of Jonathan Hickman’s House of X and Powers of X. And now we enter the mutant’s first big event of the year with X of Swords! Here we take a look at Chapters 9-10 and see how the event holds up so far.

Excalibur #13
Publisher: Marvel
Writer: Tini Howard
Art: R.B. Silva
Colors: Nolan Woodard
Letters: Ariana Maher
Cover: Mahmud Asrar & Matthew Wilson

It’s a sibling double cross adventure as we travel to Otherworld to see how the Braddock twins are holding up against the hidden agenda of Saturnyne. But first they have to decide which of them will take up the mantle of Captain Britain once and for all. An issue that has been a point of contention between them for some time and threatened their relationship. However, with the contest looming ahead and a prophecy needing to be fulfilled they don’t have time to argue over such things.

Howard puts a rush on things here and the pacing really enhances the time constraints on the siblings but it also doesn’t allow other aspects of the story to be fleshed out. Her portrayals of the Braddock family are the highlight of the issue as we see Brian humorously navigate Saturnyne’s thirst for him and his brother’s joking of the issue. The tension between Betsy and Brian is played perfectly and Howard seems to make their bond even stronger by the issue’s end. However, the rush of things really makes a certain death of a long standing character seem trivial as well as what seemed like an all too convenient way to settle the issue of who wields what. Much like the resolution of Wolverine #6.

Silva and Woodard do kill it on visuals here and the full design of Captain Avalon is just awesome! Details on the backgrounds just enhance everything else and they send the narrative into another level with the facial expressions nailing every mood. It’s also great whenever we see a panel that has Jaimie casually showing off his spoils from Sinister. It’s a hilarious nod to an earlier issue and I hope this joke keeps going on for some time. 3/5

X-Men #13
Publisher: Marvel
Writer: Jonathan Hickman
Art: Mahmud Asrar
Colors: Sonny Gho
Letters: Clayton Cowels
Cover: Lenil Francis Yu & Sunny Gho

With this issue, Hickman puts the focus back on Apocalypse and in turn, that of his family. Taking place during his painful healing session we discover more layers and hidden mysteries to En Sabah Nur that take this character to new heights. Hickman shows us a side of Apocalypse that we’ve rarely seen and reveals where his drive to see that only the strong survive originated from. If you’ve been a fan of the character for a while there’s a lot to unpack here but even if you’re new to him, Hickman still makes this quite the impactful sequence of events.

Asrar’s visuals display the flashback in brutal fashion from the healing sequence to the battles taking place. What was an impressive part of the visual storytelling was how worse the events got in the story the more Apocalypse was healing. It was a great juxtaposition and really put the narrative over. There’s also some design elements that show a synergy between Genesis and her husband. Gho’s colors keep the dark and dreadful tone of the story until those four panels as husband and wife say farewell to one another. It’s the softest moment in the issue and he makes it stand out perfectly.

Another strong issue here with Apocalypse at the center of it all and a must have chapter before we get to the halfway point in X of Swords: Stasis! 4.5/5

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