X-Factor #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-FACTOR vol 4 #1
“Suite No. 1: Prelude: Aurora Moratorium”
by Leah Williams, David Baldeon & Israel Silva
X-FACTOR. This is the fifth X-Factor series, and the others have no particular common thread. X-Factor vol 1 ran from 1986 to 1998, and started off as a reunion of the original X-Men, before relaunching as a government-sponsored team with issue #71. X-Factor vol 2 was a four-issue miniseries from 2002 about an FBI mutant civil rights task force. X-Factor vol 3 ran from 2005 to 2013, and featured Jamie Madrox’s X-Factor Investigations detective agency – the obvious forerunner for this book. And All-New X-Factor ran for 20 issues in 2014-15 with a corporate-sponsored team.
COVER / PAGE 1. Symbolic image of the cast in front of a DNA Helix. For recognisability, they’re all in costume, though they don’t actually wear costumes in the story. (Eye-Boy never had a superhero costume, and is shown in his school uniform.)
(more…)Giant-Size X-Men: Magneto #1
The Giant-Size X-Men one-shots have a slightly odd place in Hickman’s line. On the one hand, they’re written by Hickman himself, and they feature what seem to be significant plot points for his wider story. On the other, they differ in tone from his X-Men stories, with a more relaxed pace and none of the data pages that normally provide heavy-duty exposition. They feel a little detached from the rest of the line. After all, even when something seemingly important happens – like Storm’s infection by the Children of the Vault – it never gets mentioned anywhere else, and vanishes into the narrative ether.
Granted, the long interruption caused by the pandemic probably makes that look worse than it is. But there’s a definite sense of Giant-Size X-Men being off to the side somewhere, creating Schrodinger’s plot developments that won’t feel like they really matter until another book mentions them.
Read moreCharts – 10 July 2020
Another album maxes out its singles chart allowance…
1. Jawsh 685 & Jason Derulo – “Savage Loved (Laxed – Siren Beat)”
Two weeks. That’s as far as Jason Derulo usually gets, but he did manage four weeks with “Want to Want Me” in 2015. Of course, the typical length of a run at number one has been creeping up since Jason was last having regular number ones.
The top 6 is completely static, and our highest new entry is…
7. AJ Tracey & Mabel – “West Ten”
(more…)The Incomplete Wolverine, Part 1
Because you can’t spell “quixotic” without an “X”.
So the Moira thing went well, but it goes without saying you’d be completely insane to do the same thing for a character like Wolverine. Still, we had a long gap this year with no new comics coming out, and so I thought I might go back and read Wolverine’s pre-X-Men back story in chronological order to see if it made any kind of sense.
And so in this series of posts, we’re going to go through Wolverine’s history in more-or-less chronological order – some of this stuff just can’t be placed precisely, but there are certainly clear phases of his life where appearances have to go. Obviously there’s got to be a cut-off point somewhere, but we’ll cover at least his history up to joining the X-Men and see where we go from there – I’ve read up as far as Uncanny X-Men #200 at time of writing, which is around the point where he’s fully developed into the familiar character. It’s also “Incomplete” because I can’t be 100% confident I’ve caught anything, but also because it’s clearly going to stop somewhere. Once the ongoing comics are coming out again, these will probably settle into a less frequent schedule than the Moira posts – the current material takes priority.
(more…)Marauders #10 annotations
And we’re back. Now, how did this go again…
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
PAGE 1 / COVER. It’s Emma, Storm, Iceman and Forge fighting the guys in the armour that we’ve seen in previous issues. As in X-Force, Forge is using the “organic tech” that he’s been working on since coming to Krakoa.
PAGES 2-5. Sebastian Shaw enjoys Krakoan whiskey. Storm tells Forge that his old power-dampening technology has resurfaced in Russia. Forge admits that one of his underlings from the time had a photographic memory.
Port Genosha. The first time we’ve seen Genosha’s first distillery. For some reason it’s been named after the previous mutant island nation, which was wiped out by Sentinels in New X-Men vol 1 #115. From the scale of this thing, it looks as if Sebastian Shaw is trying to develop a business that isn’t based on pharmaceuticals… which is probably quite sensible for the Krakoan economy, to be honest . But obviously the trope here is the rich villain who’s killed someone and is mostly interested in his luxury goods.
(more…)Marauders #8 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
COVER / PAGE 1. Storm and Emma Frost, in a very stylised version of their argument from later in the issue.
PAGES 2-6. Bishop reports Kate’s death to Emma Frost.
Mars. We’ve seen the Mars outpost mentioned a few times before, and I think this is the first clear confirmation that it’s being used as a farm for Krakoan flowers (or at least that’s a big part of it). This makes a degree of sense; Krakoa isn’t big enough for large-scale agriculture, and they need to grow the flowers somewhere that’s entirely inaccessible to hostile forces. (Wolverine this week suggests that they’re still struggling to keep up with demand, though, to the point where the transformative effect of Krakoan drugs remains somewhat theoretical as far as many humans are concerned.)
Forge’s automatons. These are new. Presumably they’re just organic tech robots… but, um, isn’t that essentially a person…?
(more…)The Complete Moira, Part 6
For previous chapters, see Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5.
This time round, we’ll cover Moira’s early 90s, where she… well, gets passed around various books for a while, then lands in a title that barely has a regular writer. Despite that, these issues set the course for Moira’s remaining stories.
X-Men vol 2 #1-3 by Chris Claremont, Jim Lee & Scott Williams (“Rubicon”, “Firestorm” and “Fallout”, October to December 1991). The last Chris Claremont story (for now, at least). Magneto’s manipulative new aide Fabian Cortez provokes him into taking up villainy again, and tells him that he has been subjected to genetic engineering. Magneto works out that it must be something Moira did to him during the period when he had been turned into an infant, and he was under her care. So he abducts Moira (and Professor X) to Asteroid M in order to yell at her. Moira confirms that her tests suggested that his body couldn’t handle the energy being processed by his powers, and so she modified his DNA to remove the instability, hoping that the same process could be used to cure Proteus. Magneto is outraged by what he sees as an interference in his free will. The rest of the story sees Magneto force Moira to use the same process to alter the personalities of half the X-Men so that the team can kick off their new series by fighting one another – but it turns out that the process quickly wears off when mutants use their powers. Magneto ends up sending the X-Men and Moira home, and seemingly dies aboard his exploding satellite.
(more…)The Complete Moira: Part 3
Three posts into the series, we finally reach Moira’s first published appearance! (For part 1, see here; for part 2, see here.)
X-Men vol 1 #96 by Chris Claremont, Dave Cockrum and Sam Grainger (“Night of the Demon”, December 1975). And here we are. Moira shows up at the X-Men’s Mansion, responding to the invitation from Professor X (which we saw her receive in Classic X-Men #2). This is the point where she gets introduced to the X-Men, who at this point consist of Cyclops, Banshee, Storm, Colossus, Wolverine and Nightcrawler. Later retcons will establish that Moira has met Cyclops and Wolverine already, but neither of them remember it. Sean is immediately taken with Moira, kicking off their romantic subplot which will later settle into a long-term status quo.
Moira and Charles both tell the X-Men that she has been hired as the new housekeeper, to look after the house and the X-Men while he’s away. At that point, the demon Kierrok attacks, and Moira promptly gets a machine gun from the armoury to fight it – though Banshee actually bundles her to safety before she has the chance to use it, and the X-Men defeat Kierrok without her. This story is reprinted in Classic X-Men #4, which adds a page of Moira and Charles having a private conversation where they reminisce about their past relationship.
(more…)Fallen Angels #4 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers are by the digital edition. And to be honest, there’s not all that much to say about this issue, annotations-wise…
COVER/PAGE 1. X-23 and Cable on the run from… some sort of weird shadowy things.
PAGE 2. Flashback. Young Kwannon is shown a dying man who was poisoned while trying to broker peace.
The moral, presumably, being “nice guys finish last.”
PAGES 3-6. Psylocke and X-23 discuss what to do.
Reasonably enough, X-23 has concluded that the whole scenario is being engineered by Apoth to lure Psylocke/Kwannon in, and that this means Psylocke shouldn’t trust the vision that she had in issue #1. For some reason X-23 suggests asking the other Psylocke for help, though it’s not clear what Betsy could really contribute, and it feels more like an excuse to raise her name so that Psylocke/Kwannon can reject her again.
(more…)New Mutants #4 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
COVER / PAGE 1. Boom-Boom in a cornfield. The Krakoan letters are “NM” for “New Mutants”.
PAGES 2-3. Recap and credits. This is “Fast and Furious” by Ed Brisson and Marco Failla. Most of this issue speaks for itself, annotation-wise, by the way.
PAGES 4-5. Boom-Boom learns that Armor has been gone for three days.
This version of Boom-Boom, like the version in the recent New Mutants miniseries, is clearly an alarmingly heavy drinker if not an outright alcoholic. The seemingly incessant partying of Krakoa allows her to fit in without being too obvious. And again… just how party-centric is this place?
(more…)