Cable #12 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
CABLE vol 4 #12
“Shakespeare in the Zark”
by Gerry Duggan & Phil Noto
COVER / PAGE 1. A close up of the older Cable’s face. This is a companion piece to the cover of the previous issue, which features the other half of the young Cable.
PAGE 2. The opening quote – “Cable, you’re relieved of your duty” – is what the younger Cable said when he killed his older self in Extermination #1. This issue completes the exercise of reversing all that, as the young Cable goes back to his own time to pick up his life as it ought to have proceeded, while the older Cable resumes his place as… well, Cable.
This is the final issue of Cable, though there’s a “Last Annihilation” tie-in oneshot to follow.
PAGE 3. Recap and credits.
PAGE 4. Cable Classic and Stryfe fight.
“Maybe I’ll keep you alive until Krakoa burns.” Stryfe might be anticipating that he’s going to burn down Krakoa, or he might be aware of how Krakoa turns out. Certainly Destiny’s instructions to Mystique in X-Men #6 were to “burn that place to the ground”, hence the title of the upcoming Inferno miniseries.
X-Men #16-21
It’s past time I started on another batch of reviews, which I was planning to start as soon as the Hellfire Gala finished, but, well, close enough.
X-MEN vol 5 #16-21
by Jonathan Hickman, Phil Noto, Brett Booth, Mahmud Asrar, Francesco Mobili & various others
These six issues complete volume 5 of X-Men, which promptly gets relaunched for a new season under Gerry Duggan. So, in a sense, these issues complete Jonathan Hickman’s X-Men run.
Except of course they don’t, because Hickman remains the moving force behind the X-books as a whole. And that’s going to be an odd thing to have lurking in the background behind Duggan’s run, though I suppose no more than in the days when we had heavier input at the editorial level. Still: the point here is that volume 5 of X-Men is going to read very strangely if you try to take it as a thing in its own right. It only really makes sense when understood as part of the wider picture of the Krakoa-era X-Men books.
There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s how the book is intended to be read. In some ways it’s a throwback to the time when the X-books were marketed much more heavily around their contribution to wider continuity, but this time round there’s more of a sense of it being driven by a creative agenda (even if it’s one that was no doubt developed with an eye to supporting a line of books). Still, Hickman’s X-Men is a strange, fractured thing – it doesn’t feature an X-Men team, or even a regular cast, but instead offers a selection of short stories that don’t directly connect to one another, instead feeding in various ways into the big picture. There isn’t even a regular artist, so much as a common talent pool.
Charts – 23 July 2021
It’s one of those singles charts that would be dead if it wasn’t for the spillover from album releases.
1. Ed Sheeran – “Bad Habits”
Four weeks. It’s still not growing on me.
14. Pop Smoke featuring Dua Lipa – “Demeanor”
This is the lead single from “Faith”, which enters the album chart at number 3. It’s his third album, two of which were posthumous. Posthumous albums are a dubious exercise at the best of times, at least when they go beyond completing a final product to pillaging the archives for material that the artist consciously chose not to release during life. This single is perfectly fine on its merits, but it’s hard to look past the fact that it’s essentially an unreleased Pop Smoke fragment plastered over a Dua Lipa track.
New Mutants #20 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbersgo by the digital edition.
NEW MUTANTS #20
“Secrets & Lies”
by Vita Ayala, Alex Lins & Matt Milla
COVER / PAGE 1: The Shadow King looms over Scout. Seems like a cover that would have fit better an issue or two back.
PAGES 2-4. Anole, Cosmar, Rain Boy and No-Girl decide what to do with Scout.
The previous issue ended with them finding Scout’s body. The strong implication was that Scout had been killed by the Shadow King, after she confronted him in issue #18 about her concerns over his influence over these four.
The group is named later in the issue as “Lost Club”.
“Cosmar asked for their help, and they gave her platitudes.” Issue #15. Cosmar, who believes that her distorted appearance is not a feature of her powers but merely a self-inflicted injury when her powers were out of control, asked Dani to kill her in the Crucible so that she could be resurrected in her original form. Dani refused and gave her a mutant-pride speech, which went down very badly.
Marauders #22 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
MARAUDERS #22
“The Morning After”
by Gerry Duggan, Matteo Lolli, Klaus Janson & Rain Beredo
COVER / PAGE 1: Lourdes Chantel and Emma Frost stand over a chessboard, with Emma laying a figure of the Black King (Sebastian Shaw) on his side. Normally in chess you’d put your own king on its side as a way of resigning, but okay. The other identifiable chess piece represents former Black Bishop, Harry Leland.
This is a callback to the cover of issue #2, in which Sebastian and Emma are shown in the same poses, with Emma using the same… whatever you call it, the shoving thing… to move a figure of Kitty and Lockheed over a map.
PAGE 2. News coverage of the aftermath of the Hellfire Gala.
“I’m glad I never wanted to visit the fifth planet in our solar system.” Referring to the terraforming of Mars in Planet-Sized X-Men #1. Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun (the fifth is Jupiter), so it’s a Fox News joke.
“Feilong Industries.” Referencing a storyline from Duggan’s own X-Men #1.
Charts – 16 July 2021
Sometimes the lag in a weekly chart is more noticeable than normal…
1. Ed Sheeran – “Bad Habits”
Three weeks at number one. It’s still growing, too.
3. Dave featuring Stormzy – “Clash”
First-time collaboration by two of the big names of UK rap, so it was bound to do well. It’s musically compelling even if you have no idea what they’re going on about (I don’t pretend to pick up references to trainers without resorting to the annotations, and I have no idea where Jeremy Corbyn fits into anything). I’m sure he’s a big fan of Aston Martins too.
X-Corp #3 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-CORP #3
“The Madrox Workflow”
by Tini Howard, Valentine de Landro & Sunny Gho
COVER / PAGE 1. Corporate Madrox, with a bunch of dupes tessellated behind him.
PAGES 2-3. Who is Dr Jamie Madrox?
This is a more or less straight recap of Madrox’s back story. Madrox’s family tie to Los Alamos, and his powers emerging at birth, both come from his debut in Giant-Size Fantastic Four #4, as does the panel of him with Professor X and Mr Fantastic. I’m pretty sure the bit about his childhood interest in science is new. When first introduced, Madrox’s gimmick was that he was a naive farmboy (his parents moved to Kansas soon after he was born) whose parents had died and who was living alone on the farm as a community of one.
The idea that some Madrox duplicates were going out to learn about entire skills and then return with what they had learned, contributing to the skills of the whole, comes from Peter David’s X-Factor. Howard entirely ignores the usual depiction of Madrox as a bit of a comedy figure or (at the very least) everyman, which admittedly wouldn’t make much sense for something written in the tone of X-Corp pseudo-advertising. The idea that Madrox is “brilliant” is, um, novel. Still, the idea that his accumulated skills would allow him to work efficiently by churning out the duplicates and then reabsorbing them periodically to work as a one-man team… that makes sense.
Way of X #4 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
WAY OF X #4
“Heirs and Graces”
by Si Spurrier, Bob Quinn & Java Tartaglia
COVER / PAGE 1. Nightcrawler keeps Professor X and Legion separated, while Onslaught’s face looms in the background.
PAGE 2. Data page – a detail of the map of Arakko previously seen in Planet-Size X-Men #1. “Tharsis” is a volcanic plateau on Mars.
Beneath it, a quote from Nightcrawler’s book of philosophy (the title of which continues to be redacted for some reason). As so often in this book, Way of X offers a rather more sceptical view of the grand achievements which Planet-Size X-Men was praising.
PAGES 3-4. Lost’s story.
A fairly straightforward parable about a wronged girl whose demands for revenge are rejected by elders who want an amnesty for the greater good. Nightcrawler draws the fairly obvious conclusion that the girl is Lost herself, the bad guy is Fabian Cortez (given her reaction to him last issue), and the amnesty is the general amnesty that Krakoa extends to all ex-villains.
Excalibur #22 annotation
As always, this post contains spoilers and page numbers go by the digital edition.
EXCALIBUR vol 4 #22
“Treasures of Britain”
by Tini Howard, Marcus To & Erick Arciniega
COVER / PAGE 1. Excalibur as prisoners of Merlyn.
PAGES 2-5. Excalibur and the Beast visit Blightspoke.
Blightspoke. This is one of the various Otherworld realms that we saw during the “X of Swords” crossover. Generally, it’s been depicted as a sort of dumping ground for things from failed realities, with plenty of useful stuff there if you can get at it safely. The suggestion that the land is actively poisonous comes from a data page in Cable #5, though this is the first time it’s really come up.
The Beast is taking scientific measurements of samples from Blightspoke, which in itself seems like a perfectly innocuous thing to do. But over in X-Force, the Beast is mainly being written these days as a dangerously overconfident amoral schemer, so god only knows what he wants with this stuff, but it can’t be good.
“Logan says this place can be unwelcoming in more ways than one.” Wolverine fought Summoner in Blightspoke in Wolverine #7.
Charts – 9 July 2021
This is what you call a dead week.
Two weeks. And for our highest new entry we find ourselves going all the way down to…
32. Brent Faiyaz featuring Drake – “Wasting Time”
