Wednesday saw the release of Jeph Loeb and Ed McGuinness’s Avengers: X-Sanction #1 (look for our review of the issue here). The book features the return of the X-Men’s Cable that was teased at this year’s San Diego Comic Con and is the first appearance of the character after his noble death during X-Men: Second Coming. As a fan of Cable, I have very mixed feelings about his resurrection, but with the recent announcement of next Summer’s blockbuster Avengers vs. X-Men series this series’ importance has seemingly increased. As a high profile book, Marvel has seen fit to ship seven different covers for the first issue ranging in price from its $3.99 cover price to over $200 from Midtown Comics’ online store.

More variants are planned for each issue of the series and we’ll have updates here they ship.

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Age of X: Chapter 4 hit the shelves yesterday and it’s another fantastic installment of Mike Carey’s mysterious X-Men saga. Within its pages, we finally learn what happened to the world we know, but the revelation is so over the top crazy that it only raises new questions about who could have done it and how. With two chapters remaining in this crossover, the timing and nature of the reveals here are pitch perfect as things really start to escalate.

Spoilers for the issue and series will follow.

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Marvel’s Age of X hit the midway point this week with the release of X-Men: Legacy #246. The mystery of this strange new world deepens and we see some heavy hitters step into the foreground. The book is a solid 4 out of 5 and writer Mike Carey’s latest X-Men masterpiece is really commanding my attention.

Spoilers to follow.

The issue sports another great Lenil Yu cover featuring the Age of X versions of the New Mutants (Cypher, Magma, Karma, Dust, Moonstar and Eclipse/Sunspot). The team spends most of the issue hunting down Legacy (Rogue), who has learned that all is not what is seems in their world. While the suspense and action is great here, what struck me most about the book is how much I’m enjoying the small details that seem to reflect moments from X-Men history.

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There was a lot for this X-Men fan to be thankful for this week as all four major X-titles shipped on Wednesday. While in many ways this is great, I can’t help but recognize how much the publishing scheme for these books has changed after they had been coming out weekly for almost all of 2010. With this in mind, I thought it might be a good time revisit the state of the books post-Second Coming.

This will probably contain what some would consider spoilers, so keep that in mind if there are things you’d rather not know about these books.

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