Hellions #7 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
HELLIONS #7
“Whetstone”
by Zeb Wells, Stephen Segovia & David Curiel
COVER / PAGE 1: Mister Sinister pretends to mourn the deaths of the Hellions. (Not something that literally happens in the issue, since they don’t have a gravestone, but the thrust is there.)
PAGE 2: Mister Sinister addresses the Quiet Council.
“My Hellions are dead!” In the last two issues, Mr Sinister sent the Hellions on a suicide mission, supposedly to try and stop Saturnyne’s contest of swords, but actually with a view to retrieving DNA samples of mutants from Amenth / Arakko – something even the Hellions didn’t find out until it was too late. Some of them died in Amenth, while the others made it back to Krakoa only to be murdered by Sinister in order to cover his tracks. Although he knows that the Krakoans will resurrect them, they’ll only have memories up to their most recent back-up, and so they won’t know what happened on the Amenth mission.
“And you dare tell me resurrections are halted because of a vile superstition?” As established in “X of Swords”, mutants who die in Otherworld proper can’t be resurrected, because of the magical nature of the place. Any attempt to do so results in a sort of re-born, alternative version of the character – essentially an alternate-reality version, but created from Scratch.
As Sinister points out, Nanny, Orphan-Maker and Wild Child died in Amenth (not strictly in Arakko proper), which isn’t in Otherworld. Quite how he knows that isn’t entirely clear, since he didn’t go on that mission – he sent a duplicate, who also died in Amenth. But Sinister is telepathic, so maybe he picked up this information from the surviving Hellions before he killed them. At any rate, Professor X is already resurrecting the Hellions for precisely the reasons Sinister gives.
“Apocalypse did just buy a house there.” In X of Swords: Destruction, Apocalypse left Krakoa to be reunited with his wife Genesis in Arakko. Sinister is trying to blame him for what happened.
The Quiet Council. Oddly, Marvel Girl is shown as a Council member. She appeared to quit the Council in order to go on Cyclops’ rescue mission to Otherworld in X-Men #15. Maybe it’s a continuity error.
PAGES 3-4. Professor X and the Five discuss Orphan-Maker.
If you’re new, then the Five – Proteus, Egg, Elixir, Tempus and Hope – are the mutants who combine their powers to create new bodies for resurrected mutants.
Peter is the former Orphan-Maker. This scene alludes to a subplot from 1980s X-Factor where it was repeatedly suggested that Nanny had encased Peter in armour in order to prevent his mutant powers from emerging, which would for some unspecified reason have been disastrous. It was always left ambiguous whether Peter was a boy inside adult-sized armour, or an adult with arrested development and the mind of a child.
Nanny apparently emerges from her husk in a new egg-shaped cyborg form. This calls for more explanation than it gets in the issue. Nanny’s back story is that she was a Right scientist who got turned into a cyborg against her will. That drove her mad, and explains her well-meaning but erratic behaviour. You might expect, then, that she’d be restored as a normal person. And we’ve been told in the past that resurrected mutants are often improved in some modest way. But Nanny’s new body appears to have emerged in outright cyborg form. This makes a certain degree of sense – it suggests that the husk exercise is something more than mere cloning, but involves some sort of outright copying of the original body, presumably via the reality-warping powers of Proteus. That would explain why Wolverine still has adamantium on being resurrected.
The trouble is that the plot of this issue hinges on the fact that Peter doesn’t come back with his armour, and the Hellions will have to retrieve the equipment to rebuild it. The distinction might be that Nanny is a cyborg (it’s all part of her body), while Peter is just wearing armour – but it’s confusing enough that a bit more exposition would have helped.
PAGE 5. Data page on the resurrection of Nanny, Orphan-Maker and Wild Child.
Perhaps because Arakko is linked to Krakoa through Otherworld, they seem to have experienced a lesser version of the scrambling that we saw when Rockslide was resurrected in “X of Swords”. (The power spikes mentioned here were also seen in his case.) This page also confirms that Gorgon was resurrected despite dying in Otherworld, and that he has undergone a similar scrambling effect.
The author is presumably Professor X, and note that he takes Mister Sinister’s confirmation with a pinch of salt as a source of information.
PAGE 6. Recap and credits – a new revised design following “X of Swords”. This week’s X-Factor uses the same layout, which is presumably going to be the new standard.
PAGE 7. The usual epigraph from Nightcrawler, back after the trip to Arakko in the previous issues. Here, Nightcrawler seems to be expressing real concerns about the spiritual implications of the resurrection process. For him, death was a transition to the afterlife and eternal rest; on Krakoa, there is only eternal life, with no reward. Nightcrawler seems to be resigned to this and trying to find an alternative route to peace. This might tie in to X-Men #7, where Nightcrawler was talking about starting a mutant religion.
PAGE 8. Emma and Alex talk.
Havok asks to be removed from the Hellions. Quite what he’s doing on this team has always been a little bit unclear; in issue #1 he seemed to be briefly under some outside influence, and had to be stopped from killing low-level villains. Emma seems to have a much clearer idea of what he’s doing on the team, and for some reason isn’t willing to tell him – perhaps because that would also tip off the other personality.
PAGE 9. Empath, Greycrow and Psylocke discuss their return.
For once, Empath and Greycrow actually agree on something: Sinister has given them the same account of their deaths that he gave to the Quiet Council, and they don’t believe it either. Psylocke shuts down the discussion, and we’ll see more about why later.
This is our first clear shot of Nanny’s new body. It’s still ovoid, but it’s a lot less comedic than it was before.
PAGE 10. Mister Sinister begins briefing the Hellions.
Wild Child. Greycrow seems to think this quieter, more focused Wild Child is an improvement. Psylocke, in the background, looks distinctly worried. Recall that Wild Child had imprinted on her as his pack leader in earlier issues. It’s not quite so obvious how he views her now – he certainly doesn’t make a beeline for her.
“To me, my Hellions!” Sinister is parodying a catchphrase associated with Professor X.
PAGE 11. Sinister explains the plot.
Nanny’s ship is the one seen repeatedly in her X-Factor appearances in the 80s. As Sinister says, she used it “almost exclusively to steal babies” – her schtick was to “rescue” infant mutant orphans and take them into her custody.
The Right was an anti-mutant group from 80s X-Factor, which hasn’t appeared that much since. As far as I can tell, they were last seen in a cameo in All-New X-Men vol 2 #12.
“A ghoulish habit, we can all agree.” Sinister is being facetious, and referencing his stealing of baby Nathan Summers in late-80s X-Men, ultimately leading to Inferno.
Nanny speaks in nursery rhyme here, but she does at least explain the plot correctly. She speaks normally later in the issue.
PAGES 12-13. The Hellions challenge Sinister.
Havok, Greycrow and Empath all challenge Sinister’s claims about what happened on the previous mission. Psylocke defends him and tries to shut down the rebellion, for reasons which will become apparent shortly. Note that the two Arakkii resurrectees stay out of this. They don’t appear to care.
PAGE 14. Mister Sinister “shows” Psylocke her daughter.
This refers back to the Fallen Angels series from the first wave of Krakoan X-books. Psylocke’s long-lost daughter was seen in Fallen Angels #1, using the Overclock techno-drug that was linked to the Apoth artificial intelligence – she was seemingly killed in a train crash that she engineered under Apoth’s influence. Eventually Psylocke retrieved Apoth and handed it over to Sinister. This scene clarifies that the mind of Psylocke’s daughter survives within that AI, that Sinister has located it (or so he claims), and that this is the hold he has over Psylocke. Hence, she’s trying to shut down potential rebellion that might expose her deal.
PAGE 15-17. Greycrow and Wild Child talk; Havok confronts Psylocke.
This is the first time we’ve seen Sinister’s personal jet the Sonic Sinister, with its pathetically loyal AI “Clive”.
Greycrow is weirdly delighted by Wild Child’s transformation, though Wild Child himself seems quite troubled and subdued. Greycrow is usually written as the most stable of the “villain” Hellions, so his reaction here is a little strange; perhaps he sees this more focussed version of Wild Child as someone a bit closer to him, and someone a little more reliable. Although Wild Child is in some ways more animalistic, his body language doesn’t generally reflect that – he’s standing upright, and seems more controlled.
PAGES 18-20. Psylocke crashes the plane.
Psylocke won’t explain herself to Havok, but this seems to be her gesture of rebellion towards Sinister – something which, as Nanny points out, can be more or less justified as a scheme to break through the defences. Poor loyal Clive begs for his life and gets ignored. (Sinister seems more concerned about the loss of Clive, who is basically a glorified Alexa, than he did about the Hellions – Clive is his creation.)
PAGES 21-23. The Hellions fight the Right.
Traditionally, the Right were normal humans wearing battle armour with ridiculous smiley faces on them. (One of these ones seems to be frowning.) A couple of them got infected with the techno-organic virus, too. But the two Smileys seen here appear to be robots – when Wild Child tears them open, there’s “no blood”. The Smileys did not traditionally talk in this computer-speak style.
PAGE 24. Cameron Hodge emerges.
Cameron Hodge was the founder of the Right, and a major character in early X-Factor. He was a childhood friend of Warren Worthington who posed as a supporter of mutants in order to influence him, and talked the founding X-Men into setting up X-Factor as a supposed group of mutant-hunters (the supposed idea being that they would be able to leverage anti-mutant sentiment to get close to vulnerable mutants, but the actual plan being to use them to raise tensions). Hodge is immortal thanks to the techno-organic virus and a deal with a demon that he made in the Inferno storyline. Since he forgot to specify “invulnerable”, he spent a lot of time after that as a several head on a monstrous robot body. Note that you can see the techno-organic elements on his face and neck, despite his claim to represent the “pure human race”.
Hodge was last seen in X-Men: Legacy #235 (during the “Second Coming” crossover), in which Warlock seemingly killed him by removing his techno-organic parts. However, Hodge is magically immortal, so it’s not a huge surprise that he returned – though how he got a normal body again remains to be explained. He was mentioned as the Right’s leader in All New X-Men vol 2 #12.
PAGE 25: Trailers. The Krakoan reads NEXT: SMILE WIDE.
I like that it seems as though no one is really buying Sinister’s act in the beginning… especially because I’ve seen more subtle drag queen performances. He’s not even remotely plausible here.
I still can’t believe we’re getting this much depth to Nanny and Orphan-Maker after all these years. I wonder what sort of power Peter has, if even good old Xavier thinks it’s worth repressing. Are we talking Siena Blaze “set the magnetic field on fire” or Huumus Sapien “Kill people every time I use it” bad or straight up “apocalyptic” because if so, it’s bizarre that the X-Men never actually pursued this over the years.
When was it established that Nanny is a mutant anyway?
Paul> That would explain why Wolverine still has adamantium on being resurrected.
That was explained in X-Force, Forge literally keeps a bubbling trough of liquid adamantium around for new Wolverine clone-bodies, apparently on Professor X’s orders.
Paul>…he spent a lot of time after that as a several head…
Typo for “severed head”.
I was wondering that about Nanny too.
She worked as a scientist for the Right. I doubt they would allow a mutant to be part of their organization.
She rebelled when she found out that the Right were going to use her skills to, potentially, murder mutant children. Her conscience wouldn’t allow for that.
Her powers all seemed to come from technology.
Also, Sinister would know what was going on with his doubled because Sinister’s clones are a hive-mind.
Anything one does, the main Sinister should know.
I actually assumed that Nanny’s depiction immediately after her birth was simply a cute way of denying us a view of her, like the conceit in the sitcom “Home Improvement” that a certain character’s face is always obscured, even when he isn’t behind his usual fence. Wildchild breaks entirely out of his egg; Nanny simply thrusts her legs and arms out. But I may be wrong.
I’m now also wondering if the writers miscommunicated how permanent Jean Grey’s removal from the Council would be. Guess we’ll know soon.
Anyway, HELLIONS remains my favorite book of the line – a traditional team book with a more humorous Untrustworthy Employer and fights that call to mind the more dangerous feeling battles of yore, as someone else wrote.
Oh, PS: My only real skepticism of the latest issue comes when I ask myself why, if the integrity of Peter’s suit is so consequential, would he be sent on combat missions?
Maybe, despite everyone’s assumptions of Armageddon, his real power is simply something that would be very problematic to let loose on Krakoa specifically.
I didn’t read resurrected Nanny as a cyborg, just being partially still in her egg. You can see cracks in the shell where her arms and legs have broken out, but the rest of it looks like the eggs we see in the background of the same panel, including Wild Child’s. Krakoan eggs always aren’t banded like that, but the banding is visible on all the other eggs on the page, so I don’t think Nanny’s is exceptional. Whether she’s still partially in the egg when she gets loaded into her metal suit, I have no idea.
The banding on the eggs isn’t consistent across the line – you can see them in House of X #5 page 7 and in Hellions #5 when Empath is resurrected, whereas they’re smooth in, say, X-Factor. So I’m inclined to chalk it up to artistic license.
Both Nanny and the Right soldiers suffer the same problem as Modok. They have a tendency to be portrayed as cartoonish and ridiculous, but in the right hands, the cartoonishness is exactly what makes them so terrifying.
Regarding Nanny’s status as a mutant: X-Factor #35 established that she’s a low-powered telepath. The 1989 Official Handbook Update confirms that she’s a mutant.
‘Apocalypse did just buy a house there’: Apocalypse and Genesis, along with their son Famine and daughters War and Pestilence actually went back to Amenth, presumably to live in the Hall of Annihilation. (Their other son Death is a captive in Sevalith and their grandson Summoner is a corpse in Blightspoke). They did this because Genesis still controls the Annihilation staff, which in turn controls the daemonic hordes of Amenth. So basically, the Sabah Nur family had a responsibility to keep Amenth under control.
Since Apocalypse traded Arakko for himself, the lost mutant island is no longer in Amenth and is back in Earth-616, teleported there by the Omniversal Guardian’s magic. Presumably, it landed in the water next to Krakoa and two islands have merged. Hence, characters like Isca the Unbeaten, Bei the Blood Moon and even the Locus Vile are on Krakoa (Okkara?).
Nanny’s resurrection: I think you misunderstood the scene slightly. The way I understood it was that Nanny did return as a flesh-and-blood body, she just did not hatch fully out of the egg. If you look at Nanny at page 4, the main body is actually one of Egg’s eggs. Her arms and feet have pushed out of the egg, allowing her to stand, but her body has not hatched yet, as opposed to Wildchild, who is fully hatched with his eggshell on the ground. When we see her in Bar Sinister later, she is wearing a new egg-armour, but if you look closely you can see that instead of metal, it is now made of the bio-material that all the Krakoan architecture is made of.
Presumably, she properly hatched out of the egg after Xavier installed her mind and then someone (presumably Beast or Forge) built her a Krakoan shell for her to wear. They can’t do this for Peter because he needs a specialised suit to neutralise his abilities that only Nanny’s ship can manufacture. As for the reasons why Nanny’s full body is not shown outside the egg, either this is a plot point that Zeb Wells has set up for a future issue reveal or he prefers to have some of the mystery of the character preserved.
On a side note, what are her mutant powers anyway? Some kind of low level telepathy (as per the wiki)?
The recap and credits page design: Yeah, I think this will be the new design for the recap pages throughout Reign of X. Notice that it has gone back to grayscale after X of Swords. To summarize,
0. PROLOGUE:
House of X: Credits pages with circular title cards. RED in colour to signify the first event book.
1. ACT ONE:
Dawn of X: Credits pages with circular title cards. Introduces a recap page with a cast list. GRAYSCALE for normal books.
X of Swords: Credits page with diagonal swords. BLUE in colour to signify the second event book.
2. ACT TWO:
Reign of X: Credits page with giant central X. GRAYSCALE for normal books.
Presumably, this design will last until the end of Act Two X-event next year, which will probably have a GREEN or YELLOW coloured credits page.
Nightcrawler’s epigraphs: I’ve been convinced for some time now that the Nightcrawler epigraphs in the beginning of each Hellions issue (except Hellions 6) will be revealed to be verses from the mutant bible / holy scripture that Nightcrawler either will or is currently composing. I think Zeb Wells has taken Hickman’s mutant religion plot point from X-Men 7 and is running with it.
When did Jean start going by Marvel Girl again? I see she’s listed that way in the recap page of the most recent X-Men, but was there a moment where she officially adopted the name again?
She was called that as soon as Hickman’s relaunch began.
It was very strange and no one has ever explained it, no.
Why would a woman in her early-30s want to start calling herself “girl” again?
One of the great mysteries of Krakoa, seemingly wiped under the rug.
It would make sense if either Nanny or Orphan Maker had the ability to change the age of other people, turning adults into children and babies into adolescents. I know she was supposed to do that via technology, but it’s actually easier to believe magic powers rather than computers did it. Maybe Orphan Maker would age everyone around him into decrepitude if he was out of his armour.
re: Marvel Girl
One of the very few good things from Howard Mackie’s Mutant X series was that Madelyne went by Marvel Woman instead of Marvel Girl.
Maybe Jean hasn’t gotten the promotion yet is because that series is still radioactive. Or probably it’s just a copyright thing. Hell, cal Jean Marvel Woman and Rachel Marvel Girl (again).
Yeah poor Jean.
X-Men Red finally gave her something to do other than be a love interest and now she’s stuck wearing a skirt, cooking, playing mommy, and being called girl.
Oh and being a tag teamed love interest.
Not to open that can of worms again, but there are worse things to be than loved by two men. Like: regressed to the power levels and codename of your 20-year-old self, as mentioned.
She’s got to be one of the reasons that Krakoa eventually falls apart, right? There’s some big reveal where she’s powered up again? Hickman can’t resist writing a Phoenix story of his own, can he? Please?
It seems like Hickman telegraphed the return of the Phoenix during Powers of X when he mentioned that the Titans (machine gods) only feared the Phoenix and Galactus.
It would definitely seem to play in to the fact that Jean is living on Krakoa, and the Titans just happen to be the ultimate enemies that Moira hopes to defeat.
It probably was originally supposed to play in to why Krakoa was so desperate to get Franklin too, but Marvel editorial seems to have vetoed that plan.
Ah, I see that quite a few people have already brought up the Nanny thing and Paul has already answered the question on Nanny’s powers. Sorry about that. Thanks, Mr O’Brien.
@Adam, I definitely agree with you that Wells is hinting at Peter’s powers to be something apocalyptic like going off like a nuclear bomb or something, but I think there will be some twist to it and it will be something else entirely.
@ChrisV, I know that you have mentioned the Sinister hive mind thing in the comments of the Hellions 6 post as well, but I want to question if this is necessarily true. Now, I have not read Gillen’s run in a while so I’m not sure how it was portrayed there but from how Hickman introduced it in Powers of X 4 and from the subsequent depictions in the Krakoa era, they seem to be less of a hive mind to me and more of a society of autonomous clones.
Hive minds are macro-organisms, whereby every single organism is a unit controlled by a central or a collective intelligence. For example, Krakoa (+ Arakko, Okkara) is a hive mind, whereby all the various Krakoan habitats, gateways and secondary islands throughout the galaxy are connected to the main island in the Pacific Ocean by a single mind. For example, if the Arbor Magna in the mainland burns, the Summer House could grow a new Hatchery Tree to continue resurrections despite there being no physical or organic connection between the Moon and the Earth.
This does not seem to be the case with Mister Sinister. For example, the excellent two Sinisters scene in Hellions 5 would not work with a hive mind, as to a collective mind, there would be no difference as to which Essex unit goes to Arakko, so there would be no quarrel between them. The two Sinisters would be like two limbs on a single many-limbed organism, sticking either limb into an oven (Arakko) would hurt the Sinister collective intelligence equally. The Sinisters are also shown killing each other in Powers of X 4 and Powers of X 5. This would not work with a hive mind as there would no presence of individual egos.
Instead, I think Bar Sinister is populated by a society of Sinister clones, all of whom are implanted with the core Victorian Nathaniel Essex mind and memory matrix, but the clones otherwise have free will and full autonomy. There is a Sinister Prime that determines the overall direction of what the society does. This idea is supported by Powers of X 4, where there was a Sinister Prime who was disgusted by mutants and wanted no part of Professor X and Magneto’s plan but then he was disposed of and displaced by a new Sinister Prime with Thunderbird’s mutant DNA who was agreeable to the mutant cause. In the present, a different Sinister Prime has joined the nation of Krakoa. He turned Bar Sinister into a Krakoan habitat and froze all the other Sinisters into stasis crystals in his underground cloning lab the mutants are not aware of.
————————————————-
SPOILERS FOR WESTWORLD SEASON 3
[To give an example from another media, in Westworld, Dolores Abernathy was the first and only host whose mind Robert Ford and Delos managed to get working properly. To start their park, they copied Dolores’s mind into every other host body they had. Hence, all hosts have Dolores’s initial memories, but they have autonomy (within their programming) to carry out their own tasks. The hosts are mind clones but they are not a hive mind.]
————————————————-
Hence, I think Paul got this one right. Mister Sinister Prime (whichever Sinister that stayed behind in Krakoa became the new Sinister Prime) used his telepathy to read Psylocke and Havok’s mind before he killed them.
You are correct. There have certainly been scenes where different Sinisters are vying for dominance and arguing over goals.
I seemed to remember Hickman writing that the Sinister clones were a hive mind. I must be misremembering.
I was probably thinking about that scene in Powers of X, where the Sinister clones seemed more like a hive.
The proof would show otherwise. My mistake.
Man, I really love Zeb Wells’s writing. Can’t believe he’s making these misfits interesting.
Like most, I thought Nanny’s arms and legs sticking out of her egg as a subtly comedic moment, not a comment on her egg nature.
This book, Marauders, and even X-Factor are doing a great job fleshing out what life in Krakoa is like.
My theory for why Jean is Marvel Girl again:
If Moira’s plot is to evolve Krakoa in to a world-mind for the planet in order to contact the Phalanx before post-humanity arises and then destroy the Phalanx….
Since we know from Powers of X that the only threat to the Titans (machine gods and the Phalanx’ masters) are the Phoenix or Galactus, then if the Phalanx can sense that someone contacting them has a connection to the Phoenix, the Phalanx would want to avoid that world, because it could lead to danger for the Titans.
Hence, Xavier has resurrected Jean as younger age than when she first made contact with the Phoenix.
She is Marvel Girl again because Xavier is keeping her at that age until after Krakoa, as a world-mind, can contact the Phalanx.
After the Phalanx are destroyed, Jean will resume her normal age and become the Phoenix again, in order to defeat the Titans.
@ChrisV –
That’s a great theory. It’s not just that Jean is younger, she also seems more comfortable (compliant?) with her role as wife and mother when the small amount of characterisation she had in the late 80s was to reject those labels. She was put in a similar role in Age of X-Man, as a specific plot point. But she’s also been seen standing up to the council, calling out Beast and actually leading the X-Men into Otherworld to fight Arakko. So has she regressed or is it bad writing?
Other than having a moderate like for Havok before this title began, I didn’t have any connection to the characters in this book and couldn’t care less what happened to them. Yet I am always very pleased after I read the latest issue of Hellions, and I am developing an interest in all of characters at this point. Good job, Zeb Wells.
I’m wondering about the verbiage in the latest issue about how Wild Child and Nanny have come back as more Amenthi, more intensely themselves… “Nanny is *more Nanny*” (a statement which is somehow ridiculous and chilling at the same time). The text does not discuss or speculate as to why, other than possibly attributing the personality adjustment simply to the fact that they died on Amenth. But of course Sinister has collected genetic material from Amenth, and I believe he supplies genetic material for resurrections, so maybe he has enhanced or corrupted Nanny’s and WC’s DNA with Amenthi DNA. I’m very interested in seeing where that direction might take us.
Also, I like the theory about Jean being a pre-Phoenix Jean, and how that relates to Hickman’s overall story. I think I recall that Hickman himself said that one of the things he was most surprised at, regarding the reception of HOXPOX by fans, was that no one questioned why Jean was in her prior costume, using her earlier name. Can’t remember where I saw that, though.
Huh. I recall reading that he said quite the opposite… Though I also can’t remember where.
Maybe we’ve both been swapped for pod people.
Honestly though, I think you’re all looking for a plot point where there isn’t one. (It’s been over a year and I don’t enjoy the main book, so I’ve stopped giving Hickman the benefit of doubt). I think Jean is Marvel Girl because that’s her mutant name and Hickman was playing up the otherness of mutants and Krakoa. And she’s specifically Marvel Girl and not Phoenix, though that was her later mutant name, because the editorial didn’t want the Jean-Phoenix connection
Crap, typing On phone is problematic.
I meant to write that editorial wanted to keep Jean and Phoenix separate while Jason Aaron is giving everyone flaming Phoenix makeovers over in Avengers.
On an unrelated note, Hellions keeps being great.
Ok, I tracked down that Hickman interview, and Krzysiek is correct. Basically: he was very disappointed that everyone was asking why Jean was in her old costume, because he thought that everyone would figure out the answer to that question immediately. And then, as a hint, he directed readers to go back and look at the “most famous time” she put this costume “back on.”
I’m very impressed by this book. Zeb Wells has taken the very dregs of minor villains, and though they remain pathetic, they’re very compelling. It’s also another perspective on Krakoa and I’m interested where it leads. Solid stuff – character is everything!
Thematically, it makes sense that Jean herself might want to be at a younger age in order to distance herself from the drama of her previous adventures and make a fresh start with Scott. All the more so when the X-Men were formally disbanded.
When you put it in writing, Nanny’s power is incredibly limited in use, don’t you think?
It could be funny to show her watching lots of streaming TV sometime.
Few people are likely to remember Johnathon Gallo, a.k.a. Ricochet of the Slingers, but he is a mutant who Nanny has been retconned into meeting very early on. I don’t expect him to turn up, but I would be interested in seeing him interact with Nanny at this current time.
When I was trying to think of mutants I hadn’t seen yet on Krakoa, Ricochet topped my list.
I think it would be interesting to see mutants who were never directly related to the X-Men and weren’t really defined by being mutants dealing with this insanity.
OK, I’m stumped and now it’s bugging me. What was “the most famous time” Jean put the Marvel Girl costume “back on”?
When she went to die on the Moon at the end of the Dark Phoenix Saga.
I always thought that “Jean Grey” was a crap codename and I liked when Jim Starlin wrote characters calling her “Marvel Woman” in INFINITY WAR.
re: Chris V
Huh. Yeah, that must be it (even though, technically, that wasn’t Jean (which is probably why my brain didn’t go there) but whatever). Thanks!
So… is Hickman saying she’s only back in that costume because he likes Uncanny #137’s story? Or is he saying Jean’s going to sacrifice herself sometime during his run?
Also, I’m sure this was mentioned elsewhere a year ago, but isn’t it strange that Jean lives on the moon now? “Hey Scott, you know where I want to build a house? Next door to the spot where that cosmic clone of me killed herself. That would be pretty sweet.”
> Huh. Yeah, that must be it (even though, technically, that wasn’t Jean (which is probably why my brain didn’t go there) but whatever).
Which might beg the question of whether the Marvel Girl in the comics currently is actually Jean Grey. If any mutant can be revived maybe it’s actually the Phoenix clone that is revived as Marvel Girl. Being a clone of Jean, I presume would also make her a mutant and resurrect-able. Perhaps the real Jean is off somewhere (maybe with Moira or down in the Sabertooth pit.)
@Col_Fury: we could make a case that Jean feels reassured of her identity by remembering that Phoenix killed herself, I guess.
No, I don’t think that would work either, but I gave up on trying to make the various claims about the Phoenix make sense together a long time ago. Between Jean, Maddelynne and Rachel, and the handful of other less frequent yielders that keep turning up, Phoenix can appropriately enough be or have been removed of pretty much any place or person.
Yes, Uncanny X-Men #137 doesn’t really make a sense with the later ret-con.
In that story, Jean is no longer Phoenix. She doesn’t have those powers anymore. A pretty strange turn of events when Jean apparently was solely the Phoenix.
Also, her line of dialogue, “I started out as Marvel Girl, I will end this as Marvel Girl.” Again, very strange since this being was never Marvel Girl.
I interpreted Hickman’s comment to mean that Jean Grey is not the Phoenix currently.
This is all based on whether Hickman has a story he’s telling or whether he’s just enabling a load of random stuff to be fired at a wall to see what sticks, if anything. We have several titles that have managed to make it to double digits and, as yet, nothing that looks like a plan. Indeed, we’ve just had a crossover that stopped ALL forward momentum completely.
I think there is an eventual plan for the future to pick back up on Moira’s struggle, but in the meantime, this is just a new status quo for Marvel’s mutants, telling stories based around the new status quo.
In Moira’s past lives, the events that Hickman wants to cohere around this big idea took place in the far future. The appearance of the Phalanx didn’t even occur until one thousand years in the future.
Also, Marvel requested that Hickman draw out his story for a longer period of time due to sales on most of the titles being higher than expected.
Hickman’s original plan was to stop most of the initial titles around the twelfth issue, and move forward from there.
Instead, because of Marvel’s request, Hickman had to stretch out his plans longer. He picked Tini Howard’s story-arc in Excalibur as a diversion, which could extend his plans.
On this issue:
Hellions has surprised be completely. I was predisposed to not pay much mind, assuming it was 90s-like line-up filler. But it’s one of my favourites at the moment, and I’m genuinely excited when it comes out. I love the increasing detail in how the characters relate with one another, and its weird tonal clashes.
The one thing bothering me is how shaky the premise feels, especially the idea that Sinister would be trusted with precarious, vulnerable subjects (who are not necessarily “villains”). But I’d say that’s down to Hickman’s set-up, and not Webbs’ storytelling.
On “Marvel Girl”:
Whether it comes down to shoddy writing or to cryptic inklings of cosmic drama yet to come, the discrepancy between X-Men Red “Jean Grey” and Dawn of X/Reign of X “Marvel Girl” remains uncomfortable, alienating, and slightly insulting.
In X-Men Red, Jean confronted the United Nations as a self-spoken ambassador for mutancy, having concluded that a mutant nation – recognised as such, and codified into international law – was key to mutant/human relations. In Hickman-land, she’s the poster girl for mutant familialism. The notion that for Jean to reconstruct a sense of stability she would default to an adolescent form of presentation (and address) makes little to no sense, if not through a very misogynistic lens.