RSS Feed
Aug 26

Hellions #3 annotations

Posted on Wednesday, August 26, 2020 by Paul in Uncategorized

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

HELLIONS #3
“Nothing People”
by Zeb Wells & Stephen Segovia

COVER / PAGE 1. Madelyne Pryor, as the Goblin Queen, stands over a pentagram displaying the Hellions.

PAGE 2. Another epigraph from Nightcrawler, as in the first two issues.

PAGES 3-6. Madelyne talks to Havok.

We’ll skip over the irritatingly stupid grimdark bit. The four panels on the right hand side of page 4 are basically recapping Madelyne Pryor’s history up to Inferno. The first panel shows Madelyne in her pilot outfit from when she had just met Cyclops (though I’m not sure she ever wears precisely this outfit on panel). She talks about how she gave that up to be with Havok’s brother Cyclops.

The second panel shows her while she was pregnant with Nathan Summers. Scott and Madelyne were actually still together at the birth (just before Uncanny X-Men vol 1 #201), but Scott did indeed leave shortly after when his “first love” Jean Grey returned. What Madelyne doesn’t spell out here is that she turned out to be a clone of Jean Grey, even though she didn’t know it at the time.

The third panel, with Madelyne as a blank figure, is a reference to a dream sequence in Uncanny X-Men vol 1 #233, in which Madelyne imagined all of her identity being taken from her and given back to the real Jean, leaving her as a blank. (This was one issue after she had seen Scott and Jean together on television and realised why Scott had left her.) The “nowhere place” is presumably the X-Men’s Australian ghost town base, where she was living at the time.

The fourth panel shows her in the present as the Goblyn Queen, but it was also the next part of her character’s original evolution, as “Inferno” followed within a year or so of that.

Havok’s speech refers to the romantic subplot between himself and Madelyne that ran from roughly Uncanny X-Men vol 1 #221 through to Inferno in Uncanny X-Men vol 1 #239-243. As Havok says, the end impression was that Madelyne was using him as a stand-in for his brother to try and recreate an imitation of her marriage.

PAGES 7-8. Credits and recap page.

PAGES 9-11. Psylocke faces down Wild Child.

PAGES 12-15. Madelyne and Havok continue talking while the Marauders try to break into Nanny and Orphan-Maker’s armour.

“It’s very, very unwise to pretend I don’t exist. It’s my least favourite thing.” The idea here is that Madelyne’s driving motivation remains – as in the pre-Inferno era – the sense that she’s being ignored, overlooked and cast aside. As she mentioned in the previous issue, Madelyne returned a while back but, well, nobody seemed to care. Clearly, she’s not happy about that.

“You shot me in the head and stole my baby.” The Marauders stole Madelyne’s baby on Mr Sinister’s orders in Uncanny X-Men vol 1 #206. The actual attack is shown in flashback in Uncanny X-Men vol 1 #215, and it involved Scalphunter and Arclight.

“He made us like this, in this lab.” Madelyne was a clone of Jean Grey created by Mr Sinister in the lab underneath the orphanage. This particular Scalphunter presumably was too, though by all appearances the Marauders have originals out there somewhere.

PAGES 19-22. Psylocke defeats Wild Child.

PAGE 23. Data page. Somebody reflects on Psylocke’s role in the group.

As in previous issues, it’s unclear who’s writing this. It clearly isn’t either Cyclops or Psylocke, both of whom are referred to in the third person. It’s clearly a member of the X-Men from some time back, who served under Cyclops as team leader. Maybe the most likely candidate is Nightcrawler, who must keep getting epigraphs for a reason.

“She was raised from youth by a mystical ninja murder cult.” The Hand, as shown in various flashbacks in Fallen Angels. (Ah, Fallen Angels. It seems so long ago already.)

The writer suggests that the Hellions will wind up following Psylocke rather than Mr Sinister, and also wonders why Psylocke has agreed to work for him. In Fallen Angels, Psylocke’s motivations for agreeing to work with Sinister were left somewhat vague (beyond her initial need to reach Apoth, which is no longer an issue). In the final issue, she agreed that Sinister could call on her “if I believe your need is just”. She also disbanded the just-formed Fallen Angels team because the book was being cancelled because she had come to realise that given her own disturbed past, she would wind up making them all like her. Perhaps she thinks that the Hellions are so bad to start with that that would be an improvement.

PAGES 20-21. Madelyne announces her great plan.

Basically, she’s so determined to be noticed that she’s going to unleash all of the cloned Marauders as an army of mutants who will flood Krakoa and kill everyone.

“Only fools will argue I never existed.” Madelyne is presumably alluding to the hazy question of what exactly she is. Inferno implied that she was a clone that had no mind or soul of its own until it was animated by the same part of Jean Grey that had previously been borrowed by Phoenix (and was initially rejected by Jean due to all the Dark Phoenix stuff). On that reading, Inferno ends with Madelyne being reabsorbed into Jean, so that Madelyne apparently never existed as anything more than a splinter of Jean. Obviously, that’s inconsistent with the fact that she later came back – but that was done by Nate Grey, and there’s a plausible reading of those stories too on which the revived Madelyne is some sort of copy of a psychic echo.

PAGES 22-24. The Marauders breach Orphan-Maker’s armour.

Back in X-Factor vol 1, it was repeatedly suggested that Orphan-Maker was wearing containment armour for a very good reason, though the main implication seemed to be that it was arresting his development and preventing him from reaching puberty and manifesting mutant powers that would be in some way horrifically uncontrollable and destructive.

PAGE 25. Wild Child comes to his senses.

PAGES 26-27. Trailers and credits. The Krakoan reads NEXT: BOW DOWN.

Bring on the comments

  1. Chris V says:

    Wasn’t the reappearance of Madelyne Pryor during X-Man explained away during the Warren Ellis run?
    It wasn’t actually Madelyne at all.

    Scott and Madelyne were technically still together at the time she gave birth, but if I remember the story correctly, Scott wasn’t there while she actually gave birth and she gave birth on the floor of the mansion.

  2. SanityOrMadness says:

    @Chris V

    The story literally contradicts itself on what exactly was going on with Evil Queen Jean and when she replaced Madelyne, but Marvel’s firm position last time I checked is that X-Man Maddie was Evil Queen Jean all along, yes.

  3. Dysc says:

    I took the jovial tone of the data page to suggest it was Beast that wrote it?

  4. Krzysiek Ceran says:

    My money’s on Beast as well. And the reverence to the professor mentioned in this issue put in my mind that the writer’s supposed to be one of the O5.

    I’m usually not a fan of grimdark, but this actually worked for me. The book was already dealing with grotesque, so leaning more into horror-ish territory was… fitting? Don’t know how to put it into words exactly. Not a fan of grimdark but this works for me.

  5. Diana says:

    I’m normally willing to give Wells the benefit of the doubt, but this all feels like such a pointless exercise. There’s a story that _could_ have been told here about Krakoan protocols resurrecting Madelyne, and what place a clone might have in that society; but nothing she’s doing is a consequence of or reaction to anything that’s been going on lately. As both she and Paul point out: she’s been back for a while now. It just seems like more meaningless wheel-spinning until Hickman deigns to indicate where all this is meant to be going.

  6. Chris V says:

    Would Madelyne, technically, be considered a mutant?
    If I remember correctly, Sinister cloned her as a non-mutant female, and it wasn’t until she made a pact with demons that she had any powers.
    So, Krakoa wouldn’t resurrect her.

    It is interesting though, in that she was a clone of Jean Grey, but she wasn’t given any memories from Jean. Sinister created a completely new history for her.
    For all intents and purposes, she was a distinct individual from Jean Grey.
    It would definitely play on Hickman’s seeming constant concern about the nature of clones.

  7. Diana says:

    She should be – a genetic duplicate of a mutant would still carry the mutant gene. And if Sinister’s goal was to get a Summers/Grey kid out of Madelyne, that purpose would hardly have been served if he’d made her a baseline human.

  8. Chris V says:

    That was later ret-cons that implied that Sinister was interested in creating a mutant from the Summers/Grey bloodline.
    Based on that though, yeah, you’d be right.

    If I remember correctly, Claremont intended the Sinister/Madelyne thing to be a lot more creepy.
    Nathan Essex was stuck in a perpetually adolescent body, even though he was decades old.
    He was obsessed by Scott Summers from their time in the orphanage.
    He created Madelyne as a clone to vicariously sleep with Scott and have a child with him.

    Claremont might have changed those plans with Sinister by the time he left Marvel though, based on ideas I read about where Claremont was planning to go with Sinister if he had stayed at Marvel.
    Well, I’m sure Marvel editorial would have never allowed Claremont’s original idea anyway.

  9. Chris V says:

    What was the deal that Madelyne made with S’ym though?
    After making that deal was the first time she showed herself as having any powers.

    She made a second pact with demons to get her son back, but the initial pact she made with the demons was that S’ym would give her powers so she could make those who had abused her pay.

  10. SanityOrMadness says:

    Paul> On that reading, Inferno ends with Madelyne being reabsorbed into Jean, so that Madelyne apparently never existed as anything more than a splinter of Jean. Obviously, that’s inconsistent with the fact that she later came back…

    Well, two points to that – (1) for the next year or so of stories, Madelyne existed as a seperate personality in Jean’s body; until (2) Jean purged her in a huge blast at the end of Judgement War, meaning she was no longer part of Jean (except for residual memories).

  11. Allan M says:

    Madelyne is a mutant. It is, in fairness, a plot point that Sinister considered her to be a failed clone at first since she didn’t develop powers at puberty (or come to life until the Phoenix Force got involved). And she’s played as a baseline human until she gains her Goblin Queen powers.

    But she does mention at the end of Inferno (in X-Factor v1 #38) that her first, unconscious use of her powers was to influence the Cyclops/Storm duel for leadership of the X-Men. That’s well before she gets her demonic Goblin Queen powers, so they have to be mutant ones. I seem to recall her using her mutant-y powers post-resurrection as well but my memory of those stories is pretty weak.

  12. Chris V says:

    Poor Claremont. Poor Madelyne.
    I bet that little line about Madelyne using her powers to cause Scott to lose to Ororo drove him nuts too.
    All to appease the fans who were so upset that a powerless Storm could beat Scott.

    That was the same issue with the completely out-of-touch Scott telling Madelyne she can quit her job and raise the baby, while he continues to go on adventures.
    Only to have Madelyne remind him, “I’m the only one with a job that actually pays money, dumbass!”.

    It really did end up as this perfect story about a woman pushed so far by what had been done to her that you sympathized with her making pacts with demons.
    They had to ruin that story by doing everything they could to make Scott and Jean look better.

    I was young when Inferno was released…what? 1988? So, I would have been in 8th grade, I think.
    Even then I sympathized with Madelyne. The poor woman.
    That dream sequence, with Madelyne ending up a faceless mannequin, was so creepy and so perfect.

    Anyway, yeah, Madelyne Pryor would have presented a perfect opportunity to look at a number of issues on Krakoa with the resurrection process and Hickman’s hang-up about clones.
    Instead, she’s just another villain of the month while Krakoa goes through the motions.
    Just another missed opportunity…

  13. Luis Dantas says:

    The years leading up to and including Inferno were certainly a weird phase of Claremont’s writing. I can’t help but feel that he did not know where he wanted to go with many characters, including Scott and Madelyne.

    But it was more noticeable with the New Mutants. He kept piling up ever darker themes and plots with the transmodal virus and Illyanna’s ongoing corruption, and I really don’t think he had any idea of how to resolve them.

    Come to think of it, Illyana’s soulsword never had anything resembling a convincing explanation or origin. I expect that we will see it again during X of Swords alongside the Cerebro Sword and the Sword that Young Cable has been using as of late. IIRC it was seen during Powers of X as well.

  14. Chris V says:

    Claremont has to work with editors and their mandates.
    That was part of it, but certainly not all of it.

    Scott and Madelyne, Claremont just wanted Scott to retire and live a normal life with Madelyne. That was his whole plan.
    Then, Jim Shooter got the idea that the original X-Men should be in a book called X-Factor. Roger Stern and John Byrne had an idea of how to bring back Jean.
    So, now Claremont’s intentions for Scott are off the table. He has to join X-Factor and be with his ex-girlfriend.
    Bob Layton wrote the first issue of X-Factor and did such a horrible job that Claremont decided that Scott must be a horrible person. He abandoned his wife and son so he could hang out with his old buddies and be with his ex-girlfriend again.
    So, Claremont and Louise Simonson were left to try to make it so that Scott wasn’t just a complete ass.

    Some ideas, like the Soulsword…yeah, no idea. He probably didn’t really know where to go with that.

    Other ideas, he had long-term plans, but it seemed like Claremont would get a big idea, and he’d drop some of his other plots, so he could tell his new idea. Then, he’d sort of forget about those other ideas. He probably planned to come back to some of them later, but never got around to it.

  15. Aron says:

    I’m not so sure that Wells is blindly overlooking the parallels with Krakoa’s resurrection process.

    I think the subtext here is that the orphanage is like a dark mirror of Krakoa. Maddy is cloning an army of mutants in order to demonstrate her own agency and autonomy against a world that has disparaged and disgraced her, which is not so different from what the X-Men are doing.

    There was a lot of a gruesome stuff in this issue, which worked OK when it was clearly the product of trauma. The overlapping trauma of Madelyne, Alex, Scalphunter worked pretty well, but the parts with the cloned marauders having unending hunger seemed kind of unnecessarily over the top.

  16. CJ says:

    Yeah this was really nasty. And I hope Madelyne’s backstory doesn’t hinge on the convoluted one from X-Man #67-70.

  17. Col_Fury says:

    I started reading X-Men shortly-ish before Inferno, and I guess that’s why I’ve always had a soft spot for Madelyne. Having said that, this issue really, really worked for me.

    Like Chris V I’ve always sympathized with Madelyne. All this crap’s been dumped onto her for her entire life, and now’s she’s just a broken person. This issue conveyed that very well. She doesn’t think right because she can’t anymore, and it doesn’t help that she’s raging against a world that she feels doesn’t value her. Given everything she’s been put through, her anger is justified I’d say, if not her actions.

    Also, I’m glad they got her costume right here. A few years ago during Secret Wars (in the Inferno mini) I was happy to see *a* Madelyne, but she was wearing a crop top. That’s just not right; Madelyne needs her underboob cleavage to be Madelyne. 🙂

    Great issue!

  18. wwk5d says:

    I think Maddie also during Inferno mentioned (retroactively) that she used her powers to help survive being attacked by the Marauders.

  19. Drew says:

    Man, Zeb Wells really likes that “magic spell that removes someone’s mouth” device, huh?

    Based on that, I’m guessing this is the same pipe organ Cypher used against the Limbo babies back in “Rise of the New Mutants.”

  20. FUBAR007 says:

    Chris V: Wasn’t the reappearance of Madelyne Pryor during X-Man explained away during the Warren Ellis run?

    No. The Red Queen, the evil Jean from a parallel Earth, told Nate Grey that she killed and replaced Madelyne. This occurred off-panel just before the beginning of the Ellis/Grant run on X-Man. Many people misread this as the Red Queen having been “Madelyne” all along.

    IIRC, Madelyne’s last appearance before the Ellis/Grant run was during the “Apocalyse: The Twelve” crossover in an issue of Cable. She was hiding out in the astral plane and tried to talk Cable out of confronting Apocalypse.

    Then, Jim Shooter got the idea that the original X-Men should be in a book called X-Factor. Roger Stern and John Byrne had an idea of how to bring back Jean.

    To this day, I’m mystified as to why no one at Marvel came up with the obvious solution: reveal that Madelyne really was Jean all along. Madelyne looked like Jean, sounded like Jean (Rachel mistook her for Jean when hearing her voice over the phone), acted like Jean, and had almost no past before meeting Scott. They could’ve even used the Phoenix replacement retcon to explain her amnesia and lack of powers.

    Revealing Madelyne as Jean would’ve been the seamless win/win option. Scott and Jean already back to together and available to participate in X-Factor with no character assassinations necessary. And yet, no one–not Shooter, not Claremont, not Layton, not Byrne–thought of it.

    ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

  21. Thom H. says:

    That is a beautiful, elegant solution to the original X-Factor problem. IIRC, Claremont stood in the way of Madelyne being revealed as Jean. He had worked for so long to make her not-Jean that editorial decided they needed a work around. If only he’d given in, he would have gotten *most* of what he wanted.

    As for this book, I enjoy an everything-you-think-is-going-to-go-wrong-does-go-wrong story, so not bad. And the horror aspects work pretty well, especially as a counterpoint to the Krakoa “clones are totally normal and not creepy” vibe as Aron points out above.

    I do get the sense that Wells is mostly interested in the Limbo/demonic/mystical aspects of the X-Men’s past. The main thing wrong with his New Mutants run was that so much of it took place in Limbo, which is such an undefined non-place. At least this story is on Earth.

  22. Krzysiek Ceran says:

    Also, this being ‘the villains book’, I wonder if Madelyne might actually be brought to Krakoa or even put on this team. If not now then maybe later down the line.

  23. Chris V says:

    Thom-I think Marvel editorial could have easily overruled Claremont on that, if anyone did think of it as the solution.
    Claremont was also opposed to the X-Factor book and Jean coming back to life, but Marvel editorial got their way. It’s not as if Claremont owned Madelyne.

    Claremont left enough early hints that it would have been easy to reveal that Madelyne really was Jean.
    Claremont wanted to make some sort of statement about synchronicity, but that would have allowed the editors to easily ret-con Madelyne as Jean.
    Stuff like the fact that she got in a plane crash at the exact moment when Jean died. She just happened to be working for Scott’s grandfather’s airline. Things like that.

    Oh well. I liked how things happened in Inferno.

  24. Allan M says:

    I think Maddy works as a good counter to this team, as she’s someone who was cruelly victimized by what are now Krakoan elites (Sinister, Cyclops), snapped, and became a villain. But since she’s representative of some awkward history that said elites evidently want to avoid dealing with, she’s left out of Krakoa. Sinister himself, meanwhile, gets a Quiet Council seat and a personal hit squad. Sinister gets a promotion and a coverup, his victim gets left in the memory hole.

    She is very much like the team itself, many of whom were innocent victims damaged by circumstance (Nanny, Orphan Maker, Psylocke, whatever’s going on with Havok right now). Or are driven to violence by their powers like Wild Child and Empath. All of whom Krakoa was all too happy to toss into the Pit and forget about rather than dealing with their issues. The notable exception is Scalphunter, who pointedly and repeatedly refuses to deny or seek absolution for what he’s done. In a story about literally destroying the past, with a villain who’s deeply angry about being forgotten, it’s a nice sideline.

  25. Thom H. says:

    @Chris V: Fair enough. I could have phrased that better. I assume, based on things I read, that editorial went around Claremont because they knew he wouldn’t be amenable to their ideas, elegant or otherwise. It’s pretty telling that he wasn’t involved in bringing Jean back at all.

    And I suppose editorial could have forced him to write anything they wanted, but they also had a vested interest in keeping him happy. He was the writer of their best selling book for years — you don’t want him bailing quite yet.

    Which is why we get such an unsatisfying compromise. Editorial is going ahead with the story no matter what, and Claremont has a “hands off my toys” attitude. That’s too much tension to result in the straight-forward solution FUBAR007 suggested.

    No one probably thought of it at the time, but the conditions also weren’t right for people to be doing their best work.

  26. SanityOrMadness says:

    FUBAR> No. The Red Queen, the evil Jean from a parallel Earth, told Nate Grey that she killed and replaced Madelyne. This occurred off-panel just before the beginning of the Ellis/Grant run on X-Man. Many people misread this as the Red Queen having been “Madelyne” all along.

    Yes, she said that; but she ALSO said she was “Madelyne” all along – that’s what I meant about the story literally contradicting itself. Marvel have long plonked their flag on “all along” for some reason.

    FUBAR> To this day, I’m mystified as to why no one at Marvel came up with the obvious solution: reveal that Madelyne really was Jean all along

    Because Shooter would have vetoed it. Remember, Jean was killed off because he said someone who comitted genocide could not be on a hero team. That still held c. X-Factor’s launch, ergo going with Kurt Busiek’s idea that Phoenix replaced/copied Jean, so that the real Jean could be innocent of Phoenix’s crimes.

  27. Krzysiek Ceran says:

    ‘someone who comitted genocide could not be on a hero team’

    Ah, a simpler, more innocent time.

  28. MasterMahan says:

    They wasted a perfectly good soap opera setup by just having Scott ditch his wife the moment Jean returned. They could have had Scott trying preserve his marriage and fatherhood while working his first love. Jean would have to deal with the man she loves having moved on. But no, instead he runs off to play fake mutant hunters. Fake mutant hunters who look just the mutant team X-Terminators that appeared around the same time. Man, Louise Simonson inherited a mess.

    Editorial also could dealt with the genocidal dead Jean, married dad Cyclops issues by bringing a copy of the O5 into the future.

    No, never mind. That sounds kinda dopey.

  29. FUBAR007 says:

    SanityOrMadness: Yes, she said that; but she ALSO said she was “Madelyne” all along – that’s what I meant about the story literally contradicting itself. Marvel have long plonked their flag on “all along” for some reason.

    In that case, it’s a continuity glitch/editorial foul-up. The pre-Ellis X-Man stories with Madelyne don’t make sense if she’s the Red Queen. For that matter, neither do the post-Ellis Madelyne stories.

    The Red Queen had no reason to give a rat’s flying arse about avenging herself on Scott, 616 Jean, Sinister, or the X-Men. She had no past with any of them.

    Because Shooter would have vetoed it. Remember, Jean was killed off because he said someone who comitted genocide could not be on a hero team. That still held c. X-Factor’s launch, ergo going with Kurt Busiek’s idea that Phoenix replaced/copied Jean, so that the real Jean could be innocent of Phoenix’s crimes.

    That’s why I said they could’ve used the Phoenix replacement retcon to explain why Madelyne didn’t remember being Jean. Instead of what we got, Marvel could’ve made it such that the Phoenix wiped Jean’s memory when it replaced her, and, through some chain of events, amnesiac Jean ended up as Madelyne Pryor.

    Revealing Madelyne to be Jean and absolving Jean of Dark Phoenix’s crimes didn’t have to be mutually exclusive.

  30. Thiago Garcia says:

    Come on guys, this issue was so much fun. I think it makes Madelyne´s motivations much more well defined, that makes even CC´s version better.

  31. the new kid says:

    “Wasn’t the reappearance of Madelyne Pryor during X-Man explained away during the Warren Ellis run?
    It wasn’t actually Madelyne at all.”

    An oddity that didn’t track with what came before. It didn’t stick.

Leave a Reply