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

HELLIONS #15
“Don’t Look Back Part III: Fire and Brimstone”
by Zeb Wells, Rogé Antônio & Rain Beredo

COVER / PAGE 1: Just a straightforward picture of Psylocke with the rest of the cast behind her.

PAGE 2. Our opening quote comes from Tarn. The idea that Amino Fetus cannot be allowed to eat was established when he debuted in issue #6, and the rest of the Locus Vile have always been very keen to stop him doing it. The reasons haven’t been explained until now.

PAGE 3. The Right approach Krakoa.

These are the Right’s ZETA Team, who were introduced in issue #13, and were described by one of their own colleagues as “psychopaths”. They’re meant to be looking for the rogue AI that Nanny picked up from the Right in issue #8. They’re named here as Cobb (apparently the leader), Barker, Martinez and Susan. Susan appears to be a religious zealot, which Cobb (at least) doesn’t share.

(more…)

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition – with a caveat that we’ll get to at page 22.

CABLE: RELOADED #1
“Call in the Big Gun”
by Al Ewing, Bob Quinn & Java Tartaglia

This is a one-shot published as part of the Last Annihilation crossover. It could arguably count as Cable #13 or S.W.O.R.D. #7.5, and certainly contains plot points that are relevant for S.W.O.R.D. readers.

COVER / PAGE 1. Cable posing. Note that he’s carrying both the signature big gun and the Light of Galador sword that Kid Cable was carrying around throughout his recent solo run. Cable kept it behind in Cable #12 when his younger self returned to the future.

PAGE 2. Cable sets the scene.

Graymalkin II, the second version of Cable’s space station, was first seen in Cable vol 4 #11.

The Breakworld was an alien planet introduced in the 2004 Astonishing X-Men run by Joss Whedon and John Cassaday. It’s one of those alien planets locked in constant war.

PAGE 3. Cable prepares to dive.

Belle, the AI which appears as a “tattoo” on Cable’s arm, was introduced in Uncanny Avengers and showed up again in the last couple of issues of Cable.

(more…)

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

X-MEN: THE TRIAL OF MAGNETO #1
“Dial M for Wanda”
by Leah Williams, Lucas Werneck & Edgar Delgado

This is a five-issue miniseries following on from the murder of the Scarlet Witch during “Hellfire Gala”.

COVER / PAGE 1. The body of the Scarlet Witch with Magneto in the background. To avoid spoilers, the solicitation art showed a chalk outline in place of Wanda.

PAGE 2. Opening quotation. The Scarlet Witch is talking about immortality being a curse, the irony being not just her own death but the pride that the Krakoans take in their resurrection technology. Note that over in Way of X this week, we’re also being told that resurrection has a major downside (specifically, it provides a route in for Onslaught).

Although the quotation is said to be from “years ago”, as far as I know it’s original.

PAGE 3. Recap and credits. Wanda’s body was found in X-Factor #10.

The small print reads “murder investigation – trial of X” in the top left, and “Who killed Wanda?” in the central bottom. The choice of characters to highlight in the cast section more or less presents this as X-Factor #11.

(more…)

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

X-CORP #4
“A Carrot on a Stick”
by Tini Howard, Alberto Foche & Sunny Gho

COVER / PAGE 1: Selene and Mastermind. By the way, that mock-pharmaceutical branding is already starting to look a bit odd considering that it only took three issues before the series moved on to broadband.

PAGES 2-3. Mastermind covers for the failed launch.

“It looks like we’ve got some intruders on board.” This scene plays as if the failure of the demonstration is something to do with Noblesse intruders, but that’s not what happened in issue #3. In that issue, Madrox just made an error in his calculations. At first glance you might think that Madrox is simply lying to cover his tracks, but we’ll see the intruders later in the issue. But they have nothing to do with the previous issue and they contribute nothing to the plot. See also pages 6-8 below.

Mastermind is using his illusion-casting for PR exactly as foreshadowed in issue #2 – though surely this only works for people who are actually in the room. Does X-Corp not do streaming?

(more…)

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

WAY OF X #5
“The Fall”
by Si Spurrier, Bob Quinn & Java Tartaglia

COVER / PAGE 1: Onslaught marches forward, dragging Nightcrawler behind him. This is pencilled by Giuseppe Camuncoli, but it really reminds me of Adam Kubert.

PAGE 2. Professor X is resurrected.

Legion and the Xorn brothers annihilated Professor X and a whole bunch of surrounding customers in the Green Lagoon last issue, when Onslaught started to manifest there. The first panel is Onslaught, in the “Patchwork Man” guise where he’s appeared as a bogeyman figure on Krakoa.

Resurrection requires a telepath to restore the memories from backup. Normally Professor X does this, but it’s all hands on deck here, so Emma Frost, Jean Grey and even Exodus are all visible joining in. Oddly, they’re all drawn with their own Cerebro helmets, and I’m pretty sure there’s meant to be only a limited number of those in separate locations.

(more…)

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

MARAUDERS #23
“Time for Tempo”
by Gerry Duggan, Ivan Fiorelli & Rain Beredo

COVER / PAGE 1: Kate, Bishop, Banshee and Tempo in action.

PAGE 2. Opening quote from Cyclops.

Tempo was shown using her time-manipulation powers to make rapidly-maturing whisky for Sebastian Shaw in issue #10, and Port Genosha whisky has shown up a few times since then. In the real world, Tempo was one of the characters who was put up in a public vote to determine the final member of the new X-Men team, which is (in practice) what Cyclops is referring to when he says “She wasn’t elected to the X-Men this year” – presumably, in-universe, she did actually put herself forward for it in some way.

PAGE 3. Recap and credits.

PAGE 4. Emma recaps the plot.

“The biggest party this world’s ever seen…” Last month’s “Hellfire Gala” crossover.

“We terraformed the first mutant world.” Mars was terraformed in Planet-Size X-Men #1.

“But then somehow had to go and murder the Scarlet Witch at my party.” Her body was discovered in X-Factor #10.

“The Marauder is a total loss after it was attacked.” In Wolverine #13-14. It was carrying a consignment of logic crystals and was destroyed as part of a scheme by Solum, the full details of which are still working themselves out over in Wolverine.

“Aliens were the last ones aboard.” Well, Arakkii pirates (see Wolverine #14). I suppose they count as alien if they were born while Arakko was in Amenth, or simply on the basis that Arakko is now on Mars.

“Our medicines are temporarily in short supply.” The recap page ascribes this entirely to the destruction of the Marauder, which doesn’t really make sense – that one boat can’t be responsible for the whole global distribution network. On page 6, Sean refers to “production problems”, presumably the destruction of the Savage Land flower farm in X-Corp #1. Emma’s comments on page 18 about farms on Arakko reinforce that.

PAGES 5-6. Banshee calls for help.

Banshee. We haven’t seen much of Sean Cassidy during the Krakoan era. He has a long history with Emma Frost from the 1990s series Generation X, where they were joint headmasters of the Massachusetts Academy.

Banshee is fighting one of the new Reavers created by Homines Verendi, as seen in issues #18-19. At least in those issues, we were told that the Reavers were humans who had been injured fighting mutants and who had been reconstructed as cyborgs. Banshee apparently blasts one to pieces in this scene, which looks an awful lot like a violation of the no-killing-humans rule. Possibly the Reavers aren’t regarded as human for this purpose (which would fit with Krakoa’s paranoia about post-humanity), or maybe Banshee is figuring that as long as the core of this guy is intact, the rest can be rebuilt.

“The Irish Constabulary”. Ah, Americans writing about Ireland. The Irish police force is generally known as the Gardaí (literally, the Guardians). It hasn’t been called the “Irish Constabulary” since independence in 1922.

PAGES 7-10. Banshee recaps the plot.

Fair enough, I’ll buy this as a drawing of an industrial estate on the outskirts of an Irish town. Although page 17 has it inexplicably as a single warehouse in the middle of an otherwise residential area…

“With the UK suddenly changing its tune on mutants…” In Excalibur #21. Let’s assume this warehouse literally is supplying all of Ireland, i.e. including the North.

“You know seventeen people named…” Um, Cassidy isn’t a particularly common name for Irish people. It doesn’t rate in the top 20 surnames in Ireland (in fact, one page I found didn’t even include it in the top 100). Sean is a consistently popular name in Ireland, though. So the joke would have worked if Banshee’s name was Sean Murphy, is what I’m saying.

PAGES 11-12. Emma and co arrive, and Jumbo Carnation is in action.

I think this is the first time we’ve seen Jumbo Carnation in any sort of fight (unless you count the time he was mind-controlled and made to attack Kid Omega). He’s a non-combatant and it’s not really obvious why you’d bring him along to this, unless you were pretty desperate. That said, he does have a reasonably useful defensive power which makes him very hard to injured, so he’s unlikely to get hurt. And yes, his Teflon skin was established way back in the Grant Morrison storyline that created him.

PAGES 13-18. Tempo saves the day.

Basically, Tempo slows down the bomb long enough for everyone to get to safety, and then Kate phases herself and Tempo so that the explosion does no harm.

“My days in the Mutant Liberation Front…” Tempo was a member of Stryfe’s Mutant Liberation Front when she debuted, and for some years afterwards. Some efforts were made to rehab her during the 90s.

PAGES 19-22. The Stepford Cuckoos and Wilhelmina Kensington.

This follows up on the Wilhelmina subplot from the last two issues, which hasn’t got any more subtle. The basic problem remains that Wilhelmina has always been a joke character; now she’s being written “seriously”, but only in the sense of giving her a traumatic history in lieu of a personality.

Wilhelmina kills her father in the same way that she apparently killed her mother.

“Stay out of the hole.” This would be the penalty for killing a normal human. The Cuckoos don’t do this, but they certainly enable Wilhelmina to do it herself.

The Cuckoos’ response to a single comment from a passerby is wildly disproportionate to anything he’s said or done, and plainly an abuse of their power. Possibly the idea here is to undercut the previous scene.

Emma’s dialogue refers to the Cuckoos being “all together” in London, but the art only shows three of them with Wilhelmina. A fourth appears right at the end to lead them to a gate.

PAGE 23. Wilhelmina quits Homines Verendi.

Doesn’t she own actual cases?

Wilhelmina interprets Kade’s motivation – at least currently – as jealousy at Krakoa’s success. That sounds reasonable.

PAGE 24. Data page – an extract from Pyro’s romance novel. He was established as an author back in his earliest appearances, though he’s been written inconsistently since then. Of course, he’s written himself as the lead in this story. His publisher, “Timely Publishing”, was one of the forerunners of Marvel.

PAGE 25. Trailers. The Krakoan reads NEXT: SPACE PIRATES.

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

X-FORCE vol 6 #22
“Cemetery Flowers”
by Benjamin Percy, Robert Gill & Guru-eFX

COVER / PAGE 1: X-Force and Man-Slaughter fight the telefloronic attackers.

PAGES 2-3. The Man with the Peacock Tattoo approaches Dr Bloodroot.

Dr Bloodroot is, shall we say, not a common name, if it exists in the wild at all. But it’s not a completely inconceivable one; a bloodroot is a kind of flower, so called because of a red fluid that comes out when you cut it. We saw Bloodroot briefly last issue, talking to the Man with the Peacock Tattoo, though he only got one line of dialogue. In Weapon Plus: World War IV #1, the one-shot that introduced Man-Slaughter, the lead scientist was identified as one Andrew Plimpton, but Man-Slaughter killed him rather emphatically at the end of the story, so this can’t be the same guy.

Bloodroot’s belief that a growing plant is a more fitting tribute than a dying flower isn’t that weird. 

(more…)

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

CHILDREN OF THE ATOM #6
“Party of One”
by Vita Ayala, Paco Medina, Walden Wong & David Curiel

This is the final issue of the series.

COVER / PAGE 1: Gimmick walks away from the rest of the team, towards a Krakoan gate that only she can use.

PAGES 2-3. Carmen argues with her teammates.

This scene picks up from the end of issue #5, where Ororo shows up to give Carmen her invitation to the Hellfire Gala. Apparently Ororo left straight away, rather than stick around for this awkward conversation.

“You lied to us about who you are.” Hypocrisy klaxon. The whole point of Children of the Atom is that the team have been pretending to be mutants when they weren’t. But this is also a callback to issue #1, where Buddy was self-righteously denouncing the school bigots, not simply for their opinions, but because “Spreading lies can get people hurt or killed.” Even without her tantrum about being left behind by Carmen, Buddy has always been seemingly oblivious to her own hypocrisy on this issue.

(more…)

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

X-MEN vol 6 #2
“Fearless, Chapter Two: ‘Catching the Wave'”
by Gerry Duggan, Pepe Larraz & Marte Gracia

COVER / PAGE 1. Group shot of the team. Of course, actually having a team is a significant thing we’re trying to stress in these issues.

PAGE 2. A quote from Nova about the Annihilation Wave. This really isn’t my area of continuity, but I don’t think Nova did die fighting the Annihilation Wave, did he? Maybe he means it destroyed his home and lifestyle.

PAGE 3. Rogue breaks up Gambit’s card game.

The other players are the Black Cat, the Thing and the Rhino – hardly the worst people around, but Rogue clearly doesn’t want any bad publicity attending this new X-Men team. This feels like an unspoken change of attitude for the Krakoan era, where mutants have been prone to loudly proclaiming how little they care about what humans think. But the X-Men are based in New York, not Krakoa.

The Bar with No Name is a supervillain underground bar, which has been around in the Marvel Universe since the 80s.

(more…)

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

HELLIONS #14
“Don’t Look Back Part II: The Judgment of Angels”
by Zeb Wells, Rogê Antônio & Rain Beredo

COVER / PAGE 1. Tarn holds the Hellions in his hand.

PAGE 2. Opening quote from Tarn, the mad sadist. Tarn is obviously a counterpart of Mr Sinister as Arakko’s mad scientist. That said, Tarn seems to be a scientist for the purposes of sadism, while Sinister seems more of an amoral scientist.

PAGES 3-4. The Great Ring of Arakko.

The Great Ring are Arakko’s equivalent of the Quiet Council, first described in a data page in X-Men vol 5 #16. They’re meant to sit in groups representing Dawn, Dusk and Day. There’s also a hidden “Night” grouping who don’t appear here, but the room layout shown in X-Men #16 suggested that they might not sit at the table, in which case they could be behind the camera in page 3 panel 2. From left to right, these characters are:

• Sobunar, standing beside his chair for some reason. Identified as a member of the Day group in X-Men #16, he appeared in Planet-Size X-Men #1.
• Storm, apparently appointed to the Ring after becoming regent of Arakko/Mars in S.W.O.R.D. vol 2 #6. Since there are Day members either side of her, she’s apparently taken one of the Day seats. (The name of the third Day member was blanked out in X-Men #16.)
• Lactuca the Knower, another Day member, and also seen in Planet-Size X-Men.
• Isca the Unbeaten, from the Dawn group, who appeared extensively in “X of Swords”.
• Idyll, the prophet who was mentioned occasionally in “X of Swords” and its lead-in. Another Dawn member.
• Tarn the Uncaring, also in the Dawn group.
• What seems to be an empty chair.
• Xilo the First Defender, the caterpillar. Xilo appeared in Planet-Size X-Men #1, and is apparently sitting as a Dusk member. However, the Dusk members listed in X-Men #16 were Ora Serrata, Stulgid and Lodus Logos, so apparently something has happened to one of them.
• Someone with blue skin in a white robe, who isn’t named, and is presumably one of the aforementioned Dusk members, making their debut.

(more…)