X-Men: Hellfire Vigil #1 annotations
X-MEN: HELLFIRE VIGIL
Writers: Jackson Lanzing, Collin Kelly, Jed MacKay, Stephanie Phillips, Geoffrey Thorne, Gail Simone, Eve Ewing, Alex Paknadel, Jason Loo & Murewa Ayodele
Artists: Javeir Garrón, Sean Parsons, Roi Mercado, Marcus To, Luciano Vecchio, Federica Mancin, Declan Shalvey and Sara Pichelli
Colour artist: Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Tom Brevoort
Honestly, I wavered about whether to give this an annotations post at all – it’s basically an anthology issue of mostly five-page stories by the creative teams of various X-books, the unifying theme being an anniversary event to commemorate the fall of Krakoa. But it does include 11 pages of material from the X-Men creative teams which are somewhat important to that book. Treating it as a single story doesn’t make sense, so instead we’ll take each segment in turn.
PAGES 1-5: NYX
Ms Marvel attends the New York vigil.
The New York event, held at the Treehouse, appears to be a fairly sombre affair, with characters in mourning dress holding candles. There are anti-mutant protestors visible in the background, but the police are apparently keeping them away. I’ll run through the list of visible attendees at the end of the post, although there are a good number of background generics in there too.
According to Anole, the combined abilities of Prodigy, Forge, Sobunar and Local have created lapel pins that reactivate the Krakoan gates for one night only. Anole claims that they were teleported to “everyone with an X-gene”, but he can’t possibly mean that literally – particular as he then goes on to say that Mr Sinister and Apocalypse weren’t invited. At least some non-mutant superheroes have also been invited.
As usual, Ms Marvel reminds us of her status as the last mutant to be resurrected on Krakoa, who joined the community just in time to see it collapse. She’s now told her parents that she’s a mutant. That hasn’t happened yet, so I think it may be an unintended spoiler for the Giant-Size X-Men one-shots currently in progress.
We’re told that there’s also a related event in Chicago’s Millennium Park; as we’ll see, this is basically Dazzler putting on a free concert, which isn’t my idea of a vigil, but okay. Sophie Cuckoo has already left for that event, planning to meet up with her online friend Tarnishedmoodring; that’s Axo, and it’s a subplot from both NYX and Exceptional X-Men. We’ll come back to it later.
(EDIT: I forgot to mention this originally – the reason why the invitation to Arakko has been ignored is presumably because of the attack on Arakko by Aeon the Knife in Power Man: Timeless, also written by Lanzing and Kelly. That story isn’t on Unlimited yet – it seems to have been generally understood as summarily wiping out Arakko, although Tom Brevoort seems to have denied that it was intended to be read as such.)
PAGES 6-8: X-MEN (1)
Everyone at the Factory except for Cyclops and Ben Liu is planning to attend the Vigil. Most are planning to drop by the Chicago event first, although Magneto, Xorn and Juggernaut are going straight to New York. Ben can’t go because the X-Men faked his death in X-Men #2. Cyclops initially offers excuses about someone needing to be on monitor duty, but then runs through the events of X-Men to date and declares that he doesn’t think the mutants have anything to celebrate. He disapproves of the entire event.
As usual in X-Men, Psylocke steps up as spokesperson for the team, but note that her reasoning seems to be that the X-Men ought to be seen at this event for PR reasons, if they want to position themselves as the face of mutantkind.
PAGES 9-13: PHOENIX
This is a self-contained story. Phoenix is sad that she can’t be at the Gala or “see Scott”, and finds some crystals left by mutants who took refuge in space in the past. That’s pretty much it. She will in fact see Scott later in the issue, but perhaps she draws an important distinction between doing it telepathically and in person.
Phoenix mentions “the reappearance of my presumed-dead sister Sara”, which is the current storyline in her own book – however, this could happen during the gap between Phoenix #10-11 where she’s searching for Sara, so it doesn’t actually resolve any ambiguity about whether Sara is real.
PAGES 14-16: X-MEN (2)
Kid Omega doesn’t like Dazzler, regarding her as a “total industry plant”. He’s starting to think he made a mistake breaking up with Temper in Wolverine and the X-Men vol 2 #6 (2014), but she’s clearly more interested in Ransom right now. Glob mentions that another of Kid Omega’s exes lives in New York – that’d be Phoebe from the Stepford Cuckoos.
Jen Starkey is delighted to be at a mutant event (this being the first time she’s left Alaska since the X-Men rescued her in X-Men #4. She regards Beast as someone who can understand gaining powers later in life, since although he had mutant powers from birth, he did become blue and furry as an adult. The two seem to be bonding.
Dazzler’s repertoire includes “Beauty in the Beast”, which is obviously based on the Beauty and the Beast Beast/Dazzler miniseries from 1984-5.
PAGES 17-21: X-FORCE
This is an epilogue to the cancelled X-Force series, with Colossus and John Wraith having a conversation. Wraith indicates that Colossus has spent too long focussing on his supposed duties as a mutant and not paying enough attention to his own nature. Wraith has no real interest in his mutant identity – which is consistent with the way he’s always been written – and doesn’t care about the Vigil.
Colossus obliquely indicates that the point of the Tank persona he used in X-Force was to distance himself from being Colossus and to shield himself from further mind control after his experiences on Krakoa. X-Force did indeed establish that telepaths couldn’t detect his mind when he was wearing his Tank costume – Betsy and Rachel wondered whether he was a robot. He defensively points out that it only lasted a few weeks, which is correct in continuity terms.
The cosmonaut career of Colossus’ brother Mikhail is long-established, dating back to the 70s.
Colossus quotes Professor X telling him “I need your help. I need you to fight. For the world. For mutants.” That’s not a direct quote from Giant-Size X-Men #1, but the general thrust of Professor X’s original pitch is that Colossus’s power is needed by the whole world and not just the Russian state. There’s a break in the scene where something along those lines could easily have been said.
PAGES 22-26: UNCANNY X-MEN
The Uncanny and X-Men casts (those who went, anyway) meet up at the Louisiana gala. Deathdream is more or less pressured into dancing by Psylocke, though he seems happy enough about it. Psylocke has met Deathdream before properly in her own book.
Temper and Ransom take the opportunity to pair up, building on exchanges between them in the “Raid on Graymalkin” and “X-Manhunt” crossovers. Rogue and Psylocke describe this as a Romeo and Juliet relationship, although the state of relations between the two X-Men teams doesn’t seem at all bad right now.
Jitter and Calico also run off happily together, hand in hand, building on their subplot in Uncanny.
PAGES 27-32: EXCEPTIONAL X-MEN
Bronze, Axo and Melée are in the crowd for Dazzler’s concert. Melée insists on buying bootleg merchandise on value grounds. Somehow or other, this event also seems to be mutant-exclusive, and a bunch of characters we also saw in New York (such as Anole) are here. Axo and Sophie finally meet up, and seem very happy together.
Kate, like Scott, refuses to go. Iceman decides to stay with her. Emma does show up, and gives an inspirational speech to the crowd.
PAGES 33-34: ASTONISHING X-MEN INFINITY COMIC
Banshee meets up with his daughter Siryn, who has apparently been sent there as a loyalty test to determine her reaction. Siryn recites the trustees’ pledge about being born unworthy (from “Raid on Graymalkin”) and makes a point of letting Sean see her.
In previous issues of Astonishing X-Men, Sean has been unaware of Siryn’s status as a trustee, and under the impression that she just wanted him to leave her alone. Somewhere along the line, Cyclops has told him that she’s in Graymalkin – it certainly wouldn’t make any sense for that information to be withheld after “Raid in Graymalkin”, once both X-Men teams were aware.
Siryn claims to be surprised that Sean has come to this event at all, given how traumatic Krakoa was for him, not least his betrayal by Moira (and his discovery that their relationship was apparently a sham). Sean did indeed have to be dragged along at the last minute, which is why he’s not dressed for the occasion – this is covered in this week’s Astonishing X-Men.
PAGES 35-40: DAZZLER
Yes, this miniseries gets a segment. The Wolfpack Sentinels and O*N*E attack the concert and arrest Dazzler on charges of reckless endangerment (presumably under reference to continuing her world tour in her last miniseries, despite the repeated attacks). The band and security members are all as previously established in Dazzler, and hold the authorities at bay while she finishes her “Last Krakoan Dream” song – which is as subtle as all the other Dazzler songs. She references the Green Lagoon bar.
Dazzler is carted off to Greymalkin, which could use a few more recognisable inmates before it gets shut down.
O*N*E have access to Blightswill, the poison from Otherworld that can suppress mutant abilities.
PAGES 41-45: STORM
This has very little to do with the rest of the issue. It opens with a couple of flashback panels: the first shows young Ororo with her mother N’Daré, and the other is her mother’s death from the flashback in X-Men #102.
Storm takes a pregnancy test (presumably in light of her liaison with Wolverine in Storm #3) and finds that she is not pregnant. Eternity then gives her a vision of her future daughter, apparently on the view that Storm needs some hope to fight on in order that she can serve most effectively as his host in the battle against Oblivion – this is the main storyline in Storm.
Storm’s daughter Furaha is shown several years in the future (old enough to be at school). She doesn’t directly identify her father, but says that he has black hair and fangs.
Storm holds her own event in the Storm Sanctuary, attended by characters like Callisto and Manifold who we’ve seen hanging around there in the past. Of some note, Jumbo Carnation is there, despite the fact that he’s a non-combatant and shouldn’t have returned to Earth to fight in Rise of the Powers of X. Presumably he chose to stay on Earth in X-Men #35.
PAGES 46-51: X-MEN (3)
Phoenix manifests in the Factory to persuade Scott that he ought to attend the Vigil and join other mutants in celebrating what they have. This gives us a montage of the current state of the main characters.
However, Cyclops never makes it to the Hellfire Vigil, because the event gets interrupted by 3K. 3K take the opportunity to make a speech to the assembled mutants, accusing Cyclops’ team of using a Sentinel to fight a fellow mutant in issues #17-18 – they identified this as a propaganda coup at the time. 3K’s pledge to mutants is to deliver the long-term goal of a human-free Earth, renamed New Krakoa, by the year 3,000. Hence the 3K name. All this fits with the idea of 3K presenting themselves as the “real” X-Men and the true representatives of mutantkind over in X-Men.
The 3K speech is delivered by the Chairman, flanked by Wyre, Cassandra Nova, Astra and Joseph – all of whom are clearly visible. Joseph is in his Magneto costume, with no indication that he’s not the original. However, it’s not 100% clear whether this panel reflects something that the audience can actually see.
THE ATTENDEES
There are a lot of generic background characters at the vigil and the concert, but here are the recognisable attendees.
- Ms Marvel, obviously.
- Looloo, from the supporting cast of NYX. She’s handing out candles as Kamala arrives.
- The guy towards the left side of the opening double page spread with the mohawk and the vaguely Japanese costume is presumably Hellverine.
- Doop is near the middle of the same spread.
- Rockslide is to his right. He was apparently restored to factory settings at the end of Rise of the Powers of X, but we haven’t seen him since.
- Cable is just below Doop.
- Deadpool is talking to Cable. It might just be a lighting effect, but he seems to have chosen his light blue X-Force costume and, for once, he seems to be behaving appropriately.
- Exodus is to Deadpool’s right.
- Eye-Boy is just in front of him.
- Emma Frost and three of the Stepford Cuckoos are front-right in the double page spread (Sophie Cuckoo is in Chicago and has a scene with Axo later).
- For want of any better candidates, the guy wearing a crown and a king’s robe is probably Jamie Braddock, who we haven’t seen since Krakoa fell.
- Synch is to Eye-Boy’s right.
- Chamber is to his right.
- Aurora and Northstar are probably the duo with pointy ears to Chamber’s right – Northstar’s suit has his signature symbol.
- Sobunar and Caliban are to their right.
- Prodigy is in front of Sobunar and has plenty of dialogue.
- Steve Rogers, wearing a shield lapel badge, is in the foreground.
- Miles Morales is to his right.
- Bishop is just to his right and behind him.
- The big bald guy in the front right is rather generic, but since he’s standing in the non-mutant superhero group, he’s probably Luke Cage, and the otherwise generic woman next to him is probably Jessica Jones.
- Captain Avalon is behind them.
- Anole has actual dialogue.
- Mystique and Destiny arrive together through the gates during the NYX segment. Mystique seemed to be in terrible health and on the verge of death at the end of her recent miniseries, but apparently she got better.
- Also coming through the gate with them are Shatterstar and Forge (with an unrecognisable guy between them – it’s not Rictor, because he shows up next to Shatterstar in the background of the Temper/Ransom scene).
- Longshot is on the far right of the same panel.
- Wolverine (Laura Kinney) and Kiden Nixon are on the last page of the NYX scene and get some dialogue.
- Magik, Beast, Psylocke, Jen Starkey, Temper, Kid Omega and Glob Herman all arrive together at the first Chicago scene.
- Nightcrawler, Jubilee, Gambit, Wolverine and Rogue all show up at the start of the Uncanny segment, with Calico, Deathdream, Jitter and Ransom a couple of panels behind.
- Beak is standing just behind Temper in the panel where she greets Ransom. There’s a cat-girl in the background of the same panel who looks plausibly like Catseye. If you look really closely, the woman to Beak’s left seems to have an artificial right leg which means she’s probably meant to be Karma – except that’s the wrong leg.
- Two panels later, the woman with multicoloured hair is Tommy from the Morlocks, and the girl with very short red hair is probably Wolfsbane.
- Gentle is sitting at the next table when Temper and Ransom are talking.
- In the panel where Ransom asks Temper whether he can see her again, the green haired woman on the left is almost certainly Polaris, and the duo on the right are obviously Askani and Captain Britain.
- Axo, Melée and Bronze are all in the Exceptional segment, obviously.
- Maggott walks behind them in the first panel of that scene.
- A few panels later, the woman with an eyepatch in the bottom right of the page is Callisto.
- Dazzler is singing, obviously. Shark-Girl is on drums, as in the Dazzler mini.
- Angel is near the front for Dazzler’s concert as the Exceptional kids push to the front. (Storm seems to be there as well, though she has other things to do in this issue.)
- In the panel where the Exceptional kids hug, Manifold is in the background behind them.
- The front row audience placing their hands on their hearts when Emma gives her speech seems to include Maggott, Dani Moonstar, and three fairly generic women – the one in glasses seems to be Flourish and the one on the right could plausibly be Frenzy. We see them all more clearly later on.
- Husk, Skin, Banshee and Siryn are all in the Astonishing segment.
- Pixie is among the audience members reacting to Dazzler’s arrest.
- The people arriving together at Storm’s event appear to include Callisto again, Flourish, Jumbo Carnation (who ought to be in the White Hot Room, so I guess he chose to return to Earth in X-Men #35), Manifold, Gateway, Dani Moonstar, possibly Frenzy, and a little girl who seems to be being led by Gentle – she might be Abeni, a girl who Storm brought to Krakoa in Black Panther vol 7 #23..
- Magneto can be seen reacting to 3K on the last page. We’re told in dialogue that Xorn is there too, but we don’t see him.
A. Emma’s speech was terrible, I kind of expect better from Ewing.
B. Dazzler’s songs were worse.
C. Millennium Park doesn’t have and doesn’t allow for the catwalk stage Dazzler uses, something that bugged me to no end.
The lack of X-Factor related things is a bit weird, I guess Russel didn’t want to write anything for this.
He might have left Marvel. He’s back doing indy work.
I am going to assume Loo is writing these terrible song lyrics on purpose. I can’t believe he would actually expect people to find these lyrics endearing. He’s not a bad writer. I can’t believe an editor isn’t asking him if he can’t do better (or maybe I do believe that about these editors). It has to be a running joke.
I’m sorry, but there’s no way that those song lyrics are bad on purpose
I’m afraid I came away from this with a sense of “meh” on almost every aspect. I mean sure, there was some cute stuff about Idie and Ransom, Axo and Sophie, but the Dazzler segment was just — oof. (And one of the worst artistic depictions of Guido I’ve ever seen. He’s not supposed to look normally proportioned! Even before depowered by the Blightswill!)
And yeah, Dazzler’s lyrics are painful.
I have no interest in whatever Jean’s up to, and not sure why they felt the need to do a “here’s your potential daughter in the future” for Storm.
This really was less of a -story- and more of a clip show from across the line.
I’m annoyed by the Kamala-telling-her-parents spoiler, and annoyed that Mystique just “got better” so quickly offscreen after her miniseries.
The editing on this line is so lackluster.
This era and this comic in particular is showcasing a weird splitting the baby problem on Krakoa – they realize that ppl have affection for it and they have to acknowledge and consider it but they also want to make sure we know it was a mistake and will in no way be returning. There wasn’t a segment of this that had me interested in where it was going.
There are a few books that are decent enough to keep reading, but the line as a whole has regressed entirely back to the dark days of about a decade ago where it was just kind of a franchise popular enough to keep rebooting but running entirely on fumes. And this comic really showcased how much it’s impossible to care about almost any of these characters right now.
Reading Paul’s rundown of this book makes me think that it should have been a Free Comic Book Day book, or maybe Superman the 10 Cent Adventure from 2003 that was meant to draw in readers. This feels like an ad for the X-men line, and, if the online prices are real (I saw $8), one that Marvel expects you to be happy to pay for.
Cyclops disaproves of a vigil to commemorate the loss of the mutant homeland because he “doesn’t think the mutants have anything to celebrate”? Is he as confused about what a vigil is as Dazzler?
Actually, based on these annotations, I get the sense the whole thing is kind of confused as to whether it’s about mourning or celebrating (and yes, I get that a commemoration of a tragedy can also be about remembering the good times, but this doesn’t feel exactly like that? ICBW.)
Yeah, this is bunch of X-Men Unlimited vignettes thrown together in the shape of an issue, ans it’s really depressing.
If they wanted to do a general issue catching readers up on recent events, they might as well continue with the 1990s nostalgia bit and do an “X-Men: Alpha”.
The ultra-nationalist spiel Emma voices is both completely uncompelling and off-character, the entire Dazzler section is below average fan fiction material, and having Kamala as a point of view character just makes it that much more obvious that one of the Extraordinary kids should be in that position instead – both for the characters’ and the story’s stake.
Ms. Marvel voicing how woundrous and strange and utterly different from everything it is to be a mutant has no traction whatsoever: she’s a costumed superhero, for heaven’s sake. What’s there to be so deeply shocked about?
Amd because no one actually wants to deal with Krakoa itself and actually confront how it was both really exciting and really messed up, we get a completely flattened depiction of the metaphysical “promised land”, mother to any and all mutants.
Gross and simplistic Zionist logics creeping in? Check.
And of course Storm has historically suffered from not being complicated enough, and absolutely needs pregancy/motherhood thrown onto her at the same time she becomes a literal godess.
…
Damn. I cannot think of q *single* nice thing about this issue. What a ridiculous waste of time – and of the premise itself.
TL;DR: I hate this and I can’t spell.
The logic of this entire premise for the X-line is the dumbest shit. “We got attacked, so we can’t be a nation anymore. It’s impossible to just rebuild the Green Lagoon, after all. I mean, that’d be like rebuilding the X-Mansion — imposshible! Imposshible! Thank goodness it never got blowed up while we were using it.”
Anole says they didn’t hear back from Arakko- that’s probably because of events in the Power Man:Timeless series.
MacKay has to find a better way to handle Ben. First he hits on Magneto then Scott and it’s treated like a joke. The problem with having only one gay character in a series is that either their sexuality is treated like an Informed Sexuality or they keep hitting on people who aren’t interested ,which just makes them seem creepy.
It’s disappointing that we didn’t get to seem Emma reunite with the Cuckoos or Quentin reunite with Phoebe or even get a clear explanation of whether the X-teams consider the Cuckoos friends or foes at this point aside from Sophie, who’s an ally.
I don’t know why anyone thought that we needed to see five pages of Jean interacting with Mutant Crystal Ghosts or whatever. It’s especially annoying because the page space could have been used to deal with the Cuckoos. for example.
It’s nice to see that someone remembered that John Wraith could have a conversation without quoting Bible verses.
It’s nice that they tried to give us an explanation for Colossus’s Tank phase but it’s still not clear why Colossus had to keep his identity a secret from everyone except Forge. He could have just said “I’m Colossus and I’m wearing this helmet to protect me from mind-control”.
Some people complained that Illyana had to take Peter to Limbo to change his clothes, since Illyana hasn’t had her “can’t use magic on Earth” limitation for years. Thorne explained that what he meant was that yes, illyana can cast magic on Earth, but the X-Force costumes are resistant to magic, so Illyana had to take Peter to Limbo to affect the clothing Forge created. (I was a little fuzzy on the fact that the X-Force costumes were resistant to magic.)
I’m not buying that Banshee couldn’t stop Siryn from leaving. I get that he was worried about her hurting someone but with all the superheroes present there had to be SOME way to subdue her without anyone getting hurt.
Similarly, numerous readers couldn’t believe that Dazzler just surrendered to the ONE goons and all the mutants present just let Ellis’s goons leave with her. Yes, Ellis’s goons had Blightswill darts but Blightswill darts only work if they actually make contact with their targets. Some of the mutants present were SPEEDSTERS- they should have been able to take out the ONE agents in a fraction of a second. Jason Yoo felt the need to apologize for this scene- he admitted the mutants should have resisted more.
Was Madrox also taken to Graymalkin? One of his dupes was responsible for what happened on Dazzler’s tour.
And we’re supposed to believe everyone just continued partying after Dazzler was kidnapped?
Storm’s wanting to be a mother was odd since she’s shown no sign of that in her own series.
You said that he wrote his segment of the Hellfire Gala late last year. If the Hellfire Gala segments were all written over six months ago. that could explain some of the issues with these segments.
One person must have thought Hickman’s aborted plot for Storm at the end of those Giant-Size issues (not to be confused with the current Giant-Size issues) was a good idea.
Hickman’s plans for Krakoa were far better than the changes which occurred after Hickman left, but that was one idea by Hickman it was better got left behind.
@Chris V- Loo might not be a bad writer in general but all the Dazzler- related stories he wrote in the last yer (the Dazzler limited series, Concert of Champions. the Dazzler segment of the Vigil) have all been horrible. The Dazzler limited series had Evil Maddox Dupe #675 as the villain and this issue had everyone just letting Ali be abducted.
@The Other Michael- Mystique is rumored to appear in Giant-Size X-Men 2- it’s possible she’ll get better there.
“this being the first time she’s left Alaska since the X-Men rescued here in ISSUE”
Come on, Paul. Don’t keep us in suspense. Tell us which issue. 🙂
@Michael:
“It’s disappointing that we didn’t get to seem Emma reunite with the Cuckoos or Quentin reunite with Phoebe or even get a clear explanation of whether the X-teams consider the Cuckoos friends or foes at this point aside from Sophie, who’s an ally.”
Three of the Cuckoos are standing with Emma in the middle of the splash page, so I guess that’s meant to indicate where things are.
“Storm’s daughter Furaha is shown several years in the future (old enough to be at school). She doesn’t directly identify her father, but says that he has black hair and fangs.”
Wow, she gave Dracula another chance.
One other thing- NYX 10 left the question of Local’s fate ambiguous. His mind was obviously still alive but aside from that it was unclear what happened to him. Yet In this issue, it’s mentioned that Local porovided logicstical support for the Vigil. That could have been elaborated on further.
Clearly, her daughter is from an alternate future timeline where Miles Morales stayed a vampire, became an adult, and charmed her with his good nature.
What, it’s no weirder than her having future kids by Black Panther, Dracula, Blade, Wolverine…
Gerry Duggan had Jumbo Carnation fight some thugs in Marauders, so presumably decided to become an effective combatant with his Teflon skin.
@Paul , actually based on the official preview designs from last month , Catseye is the girl with big Storm-style hair in the foreground (her classic 1980’s hairstyle) while the catgirl with short Beast/Wolverine-style hair in the background , is according to her fans on the CBR x-forums , Feral (in her classic 1990’s hairstyle) , apparently recovered from her injuries in X-Factor (we never saw her actually die after all , she was still conscious and alive when we saw her with what looked like a steel girder through her midsection) and the other female she’s with , with longer traditional hair , is logically then her sister Thorn . Also , in case anyone else is a fan , the big fat guy with black hair in a topknot facing Rockslide is arguably Sumo (obviously , same powers as Blob) from the MLF (I guess Tempo did have him resurrected after all , as she told Birdy she would) . The big globby guy between them I thought was Apocalypse’s youngest offspring Genocide (I.e. AoA Holocaust’s 616-counterpart) , since his outline is the same shape as Genocide’s armor , but it may apparently an all-new character since that looks like a Cyclopean eye instead of a skull .
No-Prize : maybe Scott had a different understanding of the word “vigil” because either the word had acquired a new connotation in 616 (just like in IRL , global youth slang changes too fast) or he’s familiar with the rest of the extended X-nation to know that they’re just going to end up just throwing a party anyway (which is indeed what happened) . Either that , or everyone is simply drunk or high or both LOL
And maybe it’s just me , but based on a lifetime of listening to pop music , there are often times when otherwise-cringey lyrics can be ignored if the actual sounds of the music itself is melodious enough , so maybe that’s why Dazzler is still relatively popular enough despite clearly needing a better songwriter for her songs
I feel that to say this was a mixed bag would be a very charitable reading. It was surprisingly incoherent – well, maybe not to surprising if all the creative teams did their work separately. Often I had no idea where a scene was taking place or when in the evening.
So that’s the overall feeling. The scenes in particular… I liked a lot of them – basically everything with the newest mutants, from the Outliers (not that Jitter and Calico had anything to do) and the Exceptional gang to the surprisingly sweet Jen and Beast scenes. I like Psylocke essentially becoming the co-leader of the Alaskan team.
I disliked about an equal amount of scenes. The Jean interlude was as random as whatever generally happens in her series, the Storm interlude was… pretty much the same (Storm has had conversations with an alternate future daughter in past books already, Furaha isn’t the revelation Ayodele seems to think she is). But these scenes weren’t actively bad. Unlike the Dazzler thing, which unfortunately serves as the finale of the issue. (The 3K thing being an epilogue).
On the whole, though… yeah, it was a mess. The characters who should be here due to their Krakoan history weren’t there or were sidelined. The characters who should be questioning the memorial were happy to be there (Idie! The girl was thrown into an abyss by a Krakoan kangaroo court!).
And also – well, the actual people who should be here were not. If this is a celebration of the Krakoan Age, a few pages by some of the writers and artists who worked on the previous status quo would be a welcome addition. Might even make the whole thing feel like a passing of the torch, which the actual transition from Fall of X to From the Ashes definitely wasn’t.
I feel like the only plot that took into consideration how Krakoa impacted the character was the Astonishing X-Men tie-in, with Banshee being forced to be there and finally meeting Siryn. Who, unfortunately, is still shackled to the sad Graymalkin plot. (Why isn’t anybody doing anything about that, by the way? Yes, the evil podcaster has space lasers. That’s a problem that needs to be worked on by the nominal superheroes, not an explanation why they’re not doing anything).
Well, I didn’t intend to write this much. I guess I have some unresolved feelings about Krakoa that this issue brought up. Who would have thought.
Storm is the latest Candidate to be Marvel Wonder Woman, (after a decade of pushing Carol in that role).
She is being linked to the God’s, Joined the Avengers and now to line up with the current WW run she is being given possible Future Daughter ala Trinity. But the Current WW run has been interesting (for a king book), while the Storm book is messy and ponderous.
“Dazzler’s repertoire includes “Beauty in the Beast”, which is obviously based on the Beauty and the Beast Beast/Dazzler miniseries from 1984-5.”
In that case, shouldn’t it be called ‘The Beast in Beauty’?
Hey-oh!
“Siryn claims to be surprised that Sean has come to this event at all, given how traumatic Krakoa was for him, not least his betrayal by Moira (and his discovery that their relationship was apparently a sham).”
Ugh, I didn’t realize they were going with the idea that Moira was faking their entire relationship. Nope, sorry —much like the skinning scene, that notion is now officially Stricken From Continuity.
(Also, dammit — yrzhe stole my joke about Dracula! Grrr.)
Moira basically needed to be faking her entire relationship with Banshee, and well, almost everyone. She had lived nine lifetimes by that point, and her purpose was to put an end to the endless cycles of mutant/human conflict. It doesn’t make sense she’d decide to just settle down and start dating some guy in the middle of her manipulations to make the world fit her image of perfection. The question still remains why Moira would bother to pretend to have a relationship with some random man.
Her marriage was retconned to be part of a plan with Xavier to breed a reality-manipulating mutant, so that relationship was explained away by Hickman’s revelation. Maybe Moira actually did have feelings for Sean, but she couldn’t admit to them after for the sensible reasons. Moira was, cumulatively, over 1,000 years old by Life Ten too.
Honestly, as someone only mildly invested in the Banshee/Moira relationship, the retcon still irks me. More than the standard ‘but we’ve met Moira’s ghost in the afterlife’ stuff that will never fit neatly with the retcon.
“…they also want to make sure we know it was a mistake and will in no way be returning”
There’s a chance I’m mixing it up with the end of the previous era, but hasn’t it been referred to as the FIRST Krakoan age?
Not to get too “real world” about this, but even serial killers and dictators form primary romantic relationships. How much their significant others mean to them is up for debate, but I’m sure the companionship feels nice as they go about their crazy schemes.
Most of them don’t wear the skin of their SOs, but then most of them aren’t written by Benjamin Percy. And maybe we can say that Moira was a little far gone by the time she did so to Sean? Not that I think it was a good story choice. Thinking of it that way might preserve the idea of previous iterations of their relationship, though.
@Chris V- The idea that her relationship with Joe MacTaggart was a ruse raises Unfortunate Implications, though, considering that she was explicitly said to have been raped- basically, Moira wanted to be raped, if you believe Hickman’s retcon.
I’d say Moira comes out of it looking better than Xavier. Moira wasn’t aware that Joe would rape her leading to the pregnancy. Moira stayed in an abusive relationship for a higher purpose.
Xavier, on the other hand, wasn’t just taking advantage of a mentally unwell woman who was under his medical care…he explicitly did it simply to use this woman to give birth to a child. Xavier went from unethical quasi-rapist to complete scum of a human being.
Yeah, this was pretty disjointed. We got follow-ups for which no one asked (Dazzler) and follow-ups to the least interesting parts of the book (NYX) and follow-ups to remind is these books are completely disconnected from the X-Men (Phoenix, Storm).
Though I did enjoy Colossus admitting that he started wearing an anti-mind control helmet because he keeps getting mind-controlled.
The setup for the next chapter of X-Men happening here was odd. As was the reference to the two X-Men teams being warring houses – it feels like they’re trying way to hard to make Schism 2 a thing, when the first one was pretty awful but at least came from a sensible underlying conflict.
I hate the unfortunate implications of the Moira retcon. I can still accept the retcon itself, as it was so audacious and led to amazing stories that felt like it moved every character forward!
Still, wearing someone’s skin is just gratuitous really.
Doesn’t Storm still have an alternate future kid from Battle of the Atom running around? With animal powers? Hmm
[…] THE HELLFIRE VIGIL #1. (Annotations here.) This is an attempt to keep the Hellfire Gala one shots going, but not a terribly successful one. […]
@Alistair – I think this is at least Marvel’s second attempt at making Storm their Wonder Woman; back in the 90s she was Diana’s opponent in Marvel Vs DC, and while those match-ups weren’t all counterpart character, exactly, they did follow it up by literally making her Wonder Woman in Amalgam Comics.
@Evilgus: that was Kymera. She appeared from the future during BotA, then stayed on for a while in Brian Wood’s X-Men book (with her panther), then left the school. I thought the character had potential, but has she ever appeared again? I don’t recall ever seeing her on Krakoa.
So if a writer wanted to confront Storm with a future daughter, he could have used the already existing one.
On another note: I know that Siryn was on Krakoa before she was saddled with the Graymalkin mess, but before Krakoa, the last I remember of her was the late PAD turning her into the Morrigan. What became of that?
The Morrigan thing was gotten rid of in X-Factor (the Krakoan one). I don’t recall the story very well, but it was something like, as the mutants had defeated death, the Morrigan wanted to extract all the death she was owed they were not keeping from her by killing a bunch of them every year as a sacrifice or something, and Siryn made the deal with her Morrigan self that *she* would sacrifice herself to…herself or something instead.
So Siryn kept killing herself and/or dying in ways weird enough for X-Factor to flag it and investigate and something something Shatterstar stabbed the Morrigan and Siryn was cured the end.
*extract all the death she was owed they WERE keeping from her*,
sorry
I think that in the end, the good news of this book was not The spotlight on the most famous characters of all time, but rather that forgotten or underrated characters appeared, albeit in a modest way. It really is Feral (hairy, orange, with spiky hair and white streaks) in the background, it is clear if we enlarge the image. I also think that it would be easy for her to survive a serious injury thanks to her healing factor, and her look of pain indicated that she was alive at the end of X-Factor #1.
“Moira was, cumulatively, over 1,000 years old by Life Ten too.”
This sort of “old mind/young body” thing comes up a fair bit in genre fiction, and because it’s a situation that doesn’t happen in real life, it’s pretty open to interpretation.
Is the reincarnating Moira X really “old” in the sense of having grown and changed over time, or does she just have knowledge of things she literally never lived through a la Layla Miller? Is there a difference?
(Jeph Loeb had an apocalyptic-timeline-gets-undone in Batman/Superman where our heroes basically decided “If we remember it happening but it never did, then it was no different than a dream so let’s not worry about anything weird we did”)
Is the mind/body divide important here? Is Edward from Twilight a cradle-robbing predator, or is his ageless vampire nature a symbol of his arrested development as a teenager who goes on, but never grows up? How “old” is Peter Pan?
Either way you read her, the clearest thing about Moira X is that she’s a tremendous missed opportunity. I bet her never-happened Al Ewing series would have dug into this kind of thing, but it… never happened, and Hickman conspicuously didn’t do anything before Inferno right before he left, and then Benjamin Percy picked up the baton and broke it in half.
Well, they did address the age issue with Synch and Laura after the Vault story. Personally, I don’t have a problem with such age discrepancies, myself. It’s not as if Moira was dating a thirteen year old or something. Of course, she’d be lying to her lover, by not sharing with Sean that she was a near-immortal mutant planning to either save or damn mutantkind.
I meant it more as Moira lived a thousand years into the future in Life Six and saw amazing sights that no one alive will probably ever see again. I’m just thinking of how that perspective changed her. So, why would she want to, and what would she find in common, with Sean by this point in her cumulative life? I find her closer to a machine (cold, calculating, unemotional, seeing mortal beings as mere toys to shape) by Life Ten than the woman she started as in Lives One through Four.
My own opinion was that by this point, after nine failures, why not just give up on the cause and retire to relive the life she had with her husband in her first life. Of course, the answer is that she wouldn’t have been able to go back to that life. The woman she was in her first two lives was, figuratively, dead.
That’s why Percy is so frustrating. He turned Moira into a Silver Age loon, thinking it was frightening that Moira would act like a psycho. He completely misunderstood the character. Moira is the most terrifying character in the history of the X-Men comics because Moira is absolutely right. She has seen the future. It is unavoidable. The human/mutant conflict leads to extinction for both, and there is no way around it; Xavier’s dream is simply a dream because mutants are the future, but humanity isn’t going to stand by and watch itself go extinct. There was no way out of the cycle, except to take the most drastic measures. Moira wasn’t evil. She wants to do the most evil of acts (genocide) in the most humane way possible and for the sake of the future.
This is a truly chilling character. Percy had this character to work with and instead he gave us a cliche.
@Chris V- Except that. as Gillen had Sinister point out, the idea that “mutants always lose” can’t be extrapolated from a. mere ten lives because ten is too small a sample size. Even in Inferno, the future that Evil Karima came from seemed to be pretty good for mutants.
The real issue is that Hickman only decided that Moira was evil AFTER he established that the resurrection process was her idea. And Inferno never explains why she would make the Krakoans immortal if she wanted to get rid of mutants.
@Jack: Thank you. (I didn’t read the Krakoan X-Factor, so I missed that.)
I was hoping for an issue in which characters spent some time exploring, explaining, or wrapping up Krakoa storylines. Instead, we got X-Men Prime 2025. At least the younger characters had fun at the concert.
As someone pointed out above, Idie shouldn’t have anything good to say about Krakoa. I would have liked a scene with the other Exiles, written by Victor LaValle, in which they pointed out the bad side of Krakoa. I would have liked a Al Ewing-written scene in which Storm interacted with some of the cast of X-Men Red. I’ll even throw Gerry Duggan a bone and say I would have liked a page of Firestar talking about her experiences. And where is Jeff Bannister saying “how come you never call me, Logan?”
Such a wasted opportunity.
@ChrisV, that’s an excellent summation of Moira’s character! Thank you
I agree with @MikeL and others. In all the hagiography of Krakoa, it’s been forgotten how very weird and unpleasant much of it was. (The pit? Abandoned babies?!) Again, a lot of story potential wasted. Surely Temper as a character would have raised some more of this??
Re: Moira. There are so many wasted story opportunities! A time loop character is inherently a tragedy; they’re growing and changing while everyone else around them repeats the same patterns, and they’re ultimately stuck doing the same while wishing desperately they could do something else. You could get so much drama out of the idea that Moira struck up a relationship with Sean because she wanted something normal and simple after her life becomes increasingly repeated tragedies, and doomed the relationship because she could never be wholly open with him.
The Moira/Krakoa story I’d rather have seen would be Moira cynically turning her back on mutantdom, then be grudgingly won over to the idea of utopia over time. And then having that all blow up in her face because of the wheels she set in motion. She wanted to create a better future but ultimately can’t because she’s too rooted in the patterns she’s shaped by and perpetuates. (And you could do some nice contrasts there with Magneto, Xavier, and other Krakoa bigwigs.)
Instead we got I’m wearing your skiiiiiiin serial killer Moira. Bleh.
Did Moira and Wolfsbane ever have a reckoning?
@PersonOfCon , they didn’t , and considering the current editorial regime , they probably never will tsk tsk tsk. I also wonder just when exactly did OG Moira replace herself with the “Shiar flesh golem” (which is just a fancy way of saying CLONE) who died* in Claremont’s 2000 run on Uncanny XMen (which led to the Legacy Virus Cure issue that started Lobdell’s brief return before Morrison took over), and just how much did this Clone Moira know ? Did OG Moira selectively edit her memories or did she get Charles to do it for her ? Which would be most ironic is CM had an intensely emotional goodbye/farewell scene with CX as she was dying.
*this Clone Moira was also the one in Chaos War:Dead XMen
Jdsm-I thought that Hickman should have established that Moira replaced herself with the Golem prior to Ellis’ Excalibur, as Moira was pretty fun-loving during that period, and it retains the old Moira that many fans enjoyed. It could be the version that Moira could have been had she not had the tragedy of living her life over and over, making her end-point seem all the more tragic.
However, I seem to remember in comments made on this site as Hickman’s run was ongoing that Moira only replaced herself shortly before the death. I’m not sure the reasoning behind that, as it seems like a missed opportunity by Hickman.
As far as I’m aware, she did selectively edit the Moira Golem, to erase knowledge of her past lives or the fact that she was a mutant. She must have erased those memories for fear that a telepath might have discovered her secret. Also, the Golem couldn’t have been cloned with Moira’s X-gene, as otherwise Mystique would have reset the timeline when she killed “Moira”.
As far as the “death of Moira” scene, Hickman did mention that Xavier used earlier backups from Cerebro twice to edit his memories due to not being able to deal with what he was doing with Moira. Hickman never revealed which two times caused him to edit his memories, but I think one of those times would have been used to explain why Xavier acted as if the original Moira had died.
Please, include Feral in the ATTENDEES list.
Good to see Tommy and Caliban. Morlocks are awesome. In my oppinion or taste, the b-side, forgotten characters are most interesting and cool than a lot of main, activist or overrated characters.