Hellions #6 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
HELLIONS #6
“X of Swords, Chapter 18”
by Zeb Wells, Carmen Carnero & David Curiel
COVER / PAGE 1. Tarn the Uncaring stands over the defeated Hellions.
PAGE 2. Epigraph from Tarn, which pretty much speaks for itself. Tarn is (presumably) a new character – for what it’s worth, the Marvel Universe does have a previous Tarn, who was a minor Spaceknight, but that’s probably just coincidence. Oh, and a tarn is a small mountain lake.
Note that Hellions normally opens with an epigraph from Nightcrawler. I suppose Tarn gets the slot here because they’re such a long way from home.
(more…)X-Force #14 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-FORCE vol 6 #14
“X of Swords, Chapter 17”
by Benjamin Percy, Gerry Duggan, Joshua Cassara & Guru-eFX
COVER / PAGE 1. Wolverine holding up his new Muramasa blade, with Professor X, Cyclops, Marvel Girl and the Beast shown in reflection – which has nothing much to do with any scene in the issue.
PAGES 2-3. Magik fights Pogg Ur-Pogg.
“Things are about to get busy.” As we’ll see in Cable #6, there are apparently 25 battles in total. We’ve already had six of them, and this issue takes us up all the way through to battle 22. So it’s something of a montage issue.
(more…)Review: Wolverine #1-5
WOLVERINE vol 7 #1-5
issues #1-3 by Benjamin Percy, Adam Kubert & Frank Martin
issues #4-5 & issue #1 backup by Benjamin Percy, Viktor Bogdanovic & Matthew Wilson
February to September 2020
The revived Wolverine solo title turns out to be a companion book to Benjamin Percy’s X-Force. The team show up in the first arc; the Russian super soldiers for issue #3 turn up again in X-Force; and when we get to “X of Swords”, we’ll see the Wolverine chapter running through both books as if they were indistinguishable.
If nothing else, it helps to keep things straight between Wolverine’s solo and team books. And certainly the tone is very similar, though this book does benefit from being able to keep its focus on a single character.
It also carries over some of X-Force‘s flaws. The first arc immediately rubs me up the wrong way by having Wolverine kill off the rest of X-Force. The Krakoan resurrection set-up can easily tempt writers into killing off characters, because it no longer has consequences. But we’re past the point of establishing the concept now, and instead it just feels like a repeat of What If? syndrome, where characters charge into situations they’d normally take in stride, and die en masse like poisoned lemmings. It’s quite literally overkill.
(more…)Review: Cable vol 4 #1-4
CABLE vol 4 #1-4
by Gerry Duggan & Phil Noto
March to September 2020
It’s past time that I started clearing my review backlog. So let’s go through the ongoing titles and talk about what they were doing before “X of Swords” started.
Cable had the misfortune to launch just before the delays caused by the pandemic, leading to a delay of over four months between issues #1 and #2. That’s beyond the control of anyone involved, but it means stories played out much more slowly than originally intended. Still, the impact on Cable is rather less than on other titles, because it had barely got going in the first place – its first issue is mostly about establishing its take on the title character, and setting up the story to follow.
(more…)Wolverine #7 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
WOLVERINE vol 7 #7
“X of Swords, Chapter 16”
by Benjamin Percy, Gerry Duggan, Joshua Cassara & Guru-eFX
COVER / PAGE 1. Symbolic image of Wolverine impales by loads of swords, with images of the Arakki champions arranged in an X behind him.
PAGE 2. An epigraph from Saturnyne, alluding to all the tarot cards we keep seeing.
PAGES 3-6. Magik battles Pogg Ur-Pogg
This involves going through Merlin’s Holy Republic of Fae to Roma’s “Floating Kingdom” – initially shown upside down, as it was in X of Swords: Stasis. As far as I’m aware, the pseudo tarot card has no significance.
(more…)Excalibur #14 annotations
As always this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
EXCALIBUR vol 4 #14
“X of Swords, chapter 15”
by Tini Howard & Phil Noto
COVER / PAGE 1: Apocalypse, Captain Britain and Magik offer moral support to a terrified Cypher. This bears no resemblance to anything in the story, but Cypher does at least appear prominently.
PAGE 2. Epigraph from Apocalypse. Obviously he’s referring to his relationship with Genesis, but the parallel here is the unlikely pairing of Cypher and Bei from later in the issue.
PAGE 3. Betsy psychically checks in with Jubilee.
We last saw Jubilee and Shogo in issue #11; they’re staying with the Priestesses of the Green while Shogo recovers from the injury he suffered in issue #9.
(more…)Marauders #15 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
MARAUDERS #15
“X of Swords, chapter 14”
by Gerry Duggan, Benjamin Percy, Stefano Caselli & Edgar Delgado
COVER / PAGE 1. A smug-looking Saturnyne stands over her unconscious, and presumably poisoned, guests. None of the Marauders appear here, and this is another of those “X of Swords” chapters which is an issue of the title in question in name only.
PAGE 2. Two epigraphs. The first is indeed a quotation from Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. Given the way this week’s issues play out, the point is presumably that the whole contest is essentially rigged by Saturnyne, or at least open to rigging. The second is from one of the Arakkii champions, who we know has a hundred followers that he raises from the dead with his healing powers every day.
(more…)The Incomplete Wolverine: 1974-1975
Part 1: Origin to Origin II | Part 2: 1907 to 1914
Part 3: 1914 to 1939 | Part 4: World War II
Part 5: The postwar era | Part 6: Team X
Part 7: Post Team X | Part 8: Weapon X
Part 9: Department H | Part 10: The Silver Age
After ten chapters of prehistory, last time we reached an Erik Larsen flashback story that ended with Wolverine arriving back at Department H, and being told that he was needed to fight the Hulk. Yes, we’re here at last.
Just 46 years to go!
And in this extra length episode, we’re going to cover Wolverine’s stories from 1974 and 1975. There aren’t many of them… or rather, there weren’t many of them. But a vast amount has been added around the edges over the years.
INCREDIBLE HULK vol 2 #180-182
“And the Wind Howls … Wendigo!” / “And Now … the Wolverine!” / “Between Hammer and Anvil!”
by Len Wein, Herb Trimpe & Jack Abel
October to December 1974
Wolverine is sent to face the Hulk (Bruce Banner), who is already locked in battle with the cursed Wendigo (at this point, a guy called Paul Cartier). Wolverine is given six hours to beat the Hulk, and is very keen to try and pull it off. Wolverine doesn’t know or care why the Hulk and the Wendigo are fighting – but basically, Cartier’s sister Marie is planning to cure him by magically transferring his curse to the Hulk, so she’s lured the two monsters together.
(more…)Marauders #14 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
MARAUDERS #14
“X of Swords, Chapter 13”
by Gerry Duggan, Benjamin Percy, Stefano Caselli & Edgar Delgado
COVER / PAGE 1: Storm dances with Death. This issue is pretty straightforward, by the way.
PAGE 2: Data page. It’s the menu for Saturnyne’s pre-contest dinner, and pretty self-explanatory. The “raw delicacies originating from the Dryador Sea” are the last of their kind because the seas were destroyed by the Horde of Amenth when they invaded Dryador in X of Swords: Creation.
Saturnyne’s quote has fairly obvious religious overtones with the bread and wine. It’s vaguely possible that it’s meant to echo Proverbs 9:5 (“Come, eat of my bread / And drink of the wine I have mixed / Forsake foolishness and live / And go in the way of understanding”), which would cast Saturnyne as Wisdom, but more likely it’s just general Christian imagery.
PAGE 3. Credits.
PAGE 4. Recap page.
(more…)X-Men #14 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN vol 5 #14
“X of Swords, Chapter 12”
by Jonathan Hickman, Mahmud Asrar, Leinil Francis Yu & Sunny Gho
COVER / PAGE 1: Apocalypse with his sword and a bunch of skulls.
PAGES 2-3: Recap and credits.
PAGES 4-7: Apocalypse and Genesis meet in the Starlight Citadel garden.
Genesis. This is the first time we’ve seen her speak at any length, and she seems to be if anything more “survival of the fittest” than Apocalypse himself. Presumably she was a big influence on him. She does seem to still have some genuine affection for him, but we’ll see later that she’s now at least merged with Annihilation, and driven by Annihilation’s goals.
(more…)