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

X-FACTOR vol 4 #6
“Suite No. 6: Scio Me Hili Scire ‘Second Movement'”
by Leah Williams, David Baldeon & Israel Silva

COVER / PAGE 1: Siryn, with her voice forming the image of a death spirit of some sort.

PAGE 2: An epigraph from Siryn, though with an asterisk to something redacted. Presumably this is supposed to indicate that it’s actually the death spirit that’s possessing her (of whom more later). Though this seems to be an original quote, the basic observation that death is comparable to waking from a dream isn’t new.

PAGES 3-4. X-Factor relax at home.

“May have gotten lonely and left an ill-advised voice mail to Alex last night.” Alex Summers (Havok from Hellions). Lorna and Alex were a couple for decades, but haven’t had many dealings lately. It feels a bit odd for people on Krakoa to talk about using regular mobile phones.

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

WOLVERINE vol 7 #8
“War Stories” by Benjamin Percy, Viktor Bogdanovic & Matthew Wilson
“The Past Ain’t Dead” by Benjamin Percy, Adam Kubert & Antonio Fabela

COVER / PAGE 1: Wolverine face to face with Maverick, which doesn’t actually happen in this issue.

PAGES 2-3. Wolverine arrives to visit Jeff Bannister.

We last saw Bannister (and his back garden) in issue #3, when the gate was planted. Evidently it’s become fully grown since then.

PAGES 4-5. Bannister tells his story.

Needless to say, there’s no established continuity involved here. Bannister is basically telling us that he became disillusioned as a CIA agent when he found that he’d been sent to kill other Americans in order to stop them from brokering a peace deal. It’s a fairly standard trope about the secret services having their own agenda. Bannister claims to be sticking around to do what he can from within.

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

X-MEN vol 5 #16
“Sworded Out”
by Jonathan Hickman & Phil Noto

COVER / PAGE 1: Cyclops in the Quiet Council chamber, in front of the face of Krakoa.

PAGES 2-6. Cyclops, Cable and Prestige watch the appearance of Arakko.

“So how’s this going to work?” There’s some very tongue in cheek technobabble here, for those who really care. Basically, Arakko is brought back to Earth via the External Gate (which doesn’t really make sense, because the External Gate connected Krakoa with Otherworld, not with Amenth – let’s assume Saturnyne is helping out somewhere). The mechanics don’t matter, of course. But this does explain why Krakoa was so keen for the External Gate to remain open, in “X of Swords”.

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

EXCALIBUR vol 4 #16
“They Keep Killing Braddocks”
by Tini Howard, Marcus To & Erick Arciniega

COVER / PAGE 1: Rogue, Meggan, Rictor, Jubilee and Gambit in Otherworld.

PAGE 2. Breakfast with Rogue and Gambit.

Rogue is summarising the “X of Swords” crossover.

We’ve heard mention of the Marauder bringing in goods from outside Krakoa before. Why you can’t just go through a gate to get them is never entirely clear.

PAGE 3. Jubilee and Rictor.

Shogo is (or so Jubilee assumes) upset at no longer being a dragon, now that he’s outside Otherworld. It’s a very mild parallel to Rictor and Rogue.

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

X-FORCE vol 6 #15
“Trench Warfare”
by Benjamin Percy, Joshua Cassara & Guru-eFX

COVER / PAGE 1: X-Force interrogate Omega Red.

PAGES 2-4: Beast and Wolverine talk while Marvel Girl interrogates Colossus.

We’re picking up here where we left off in issue #12, before “X of Swords” interrupted. X-Force were just about to start the psychic interrogation in that issue, and evidently they’ve finally got around to it.

Wolverine and Marvel Girl don’t trust Beast because of his increasingly authoritarian and manipulative behaviour of late, and you can hardly blame them. Despite his repeated miscalculations, Beast continues to believe that he is uniquely well placed to get the required answers, and that Marvel Girl will mess it up without him.

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

NEW MUTANTS vol 4 #14
“Welcome to the Wild Hunt”
by Vita Ayala & Rob Reis

COVER / PAGE 1: Scout, Karma, Mirage, Wolfsbane, Warpath, Magik and Warlock, apparently just finishing off a session in the “Wild Hunt”. The Wild Hunt was shown in the map of Krakoa in House of X #1, but this is the first we’ve heard of it since then; evidently it’s some sort of woodland sparring area.

PAGES 2-4. The origin of Amahl Farouk.

Amahl Farouk first appeared in X-Men vol 1 #117, in an extended flashback to a young Professor X’s first encounter with an evil mutant. For years, that was all there was to know about him, but in the late 1980s he was retooled as the Shadow King, an all-purpose embodiment of psychic malevolence. The suggestion that the Shadow King is a possessing entity, and that Farouk used to exist independently of him, has come up before but has never really been explored.

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

JUGGERNAUT #4
“Scalpel to the Soul”
by Fabian Nicieza, Ron Garney & Matt Milla

PAGE 1 / COVER. The Juggernaut fighting Primus.

PAGE 2. The usual introductory text page. As it points out, there has always been a mismatch between the Juggernaut’s physical power and his role as either a directionless pawn or someone pursuing largely trivial goals like personal revenge.

PAGES 3-4. The Juggernaut breaks into Arnim Zola’s base.

D-Cel’s summary of the previous issue is basically accurate, except that in that issue, Quicksand’s isotopes were said to be traceable to a for-profit prison run by Absolution Solutions, under the control of Arnim Zola. Here, D-Cel describes it as “an abandoned Factor-3 base built into this mountain”. The private prison angle is largely dropped in this story, and there’s some fuzzy plotting going on. Damage Control identified the isotope as belonging to the prison, rather than tracking its location. But according to this issue, the location of the prison is secret. So why does Juggernaut come here? Is this the officially-listed location of the prison, while the real prison is somewhere else? (If so, Cain never really reacts accordingly.)

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

MARAUDERS #16
“Consequences”
by Gerry Duggan, Stefano Caselli & Edgar Delgado

COVER / PAGE 1: Emma and Kate together, standing over the defeated Sebastian. Incidentally, both on the cover and throughout the issue, Kate isn’t wearing the necklace that Kurt gave back to her in issue #12. Make of that what you will.

PAGE 2. The epigraph is Kate’s last words before drowning at the end of issue #6.

PAGE 3. The combined recap and credits page, now in the line-wide post-“X of Swords” design.

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

S.W.O.R.D. #1
“Mysterium”
by Al Ewing, Valerio Schiti & Marte Gracia

S.W.O.R.D. S.W.O.R.D. (the Sentient World Observation and Response Department) was introduced in the first arc of Joss Whedon and John Cassaday’s Astonishing X-Men in 2004. As originally presented, they were a sister agency of S.H.I.E.L.D. (hence the name), focussed on alien and extraterrestrial security threats. They had a series before in 2010, which only lasted for five issues.

COVER / PAGE 1. The cast, obviously. Interesting to see Magneto given so much prominence here.

PAGE 2. An epigraph from Abigail Brand (of whom more in a bit). Unlike the usual Krakoa-era epigraphs, the graphics are overlaid on an image of sunrise from space. The metal ball is Magneto flying up to S.W.O.R.D.’s space station, as we’ll see in a couple of pages.

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.