X-Men #7 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN vol 6 #7
“The Secret Origin of Captain Krakoa”
by Gerry Duggan, Pepe Larraz & Marte Gracia
COVER / PAGE 1. The X-Men fly into action, with Cyclops as “Captain Krakoa”.
PAGES 2-4. Dr Stasis drugs his chimeras before sending them to battle the X-Men.
Stasis’ use of animal chimeras sets him up as a parallel to the High Evolutionary and his New Men, who we saw in issue #3. It also echoes the references in House of X and Hellions to Mr Sinister developing “chimera” mutants as a way forward.
Bornan is the same aide we saw with Stasis in issue #2.
PAGE 5. Recap and credits.
PAGES 6-7. Cyclops is resurrected.
This storyline isn’t told in chronological order, so this scene shows Scott being resurrected after his death at the hands of Dr Stasis (which he see later in the issue). Emma really just tells us what we already knew from last issue: Scott died in a way that was so public that he can’t simply go back to the X-Men in New York without giving away the secret of Krakoan resurrection.
X Deaths of Wolverine #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X DEATHS OF WOLVERINE #1
by Benjamin Percy, Federico Vicentini, Dijjo Lima & Frank Martin
X DEATHS OF WOLVERINE. This is the companion miniseries to X Lives of Wolverine, which started last week. The structure is obviously intended to echo House of X and Powers of X, the two parallel miniseries that launched the Krakoan era. As with that series, the first book is the relatively straightforward one, while this one seems to have a wider agenda. It also makes it rather clearer why these books were promoted as major stories for the line, something which wasn’t exactly apparent from Lives #1.
COVER / PAGE 1. A techno-organic version of Wolverine. We’ll see him later in the issue.
PAGES 2-6. Moira MacTaggert flees to Scotland.
This is a direct continuation from page 41 of Inferno #4, where Cypher and (very reluctantly) Mystique and Destiny depowered Moira, gave her the techno-organic arm we see here, and allowed her to flee Krakoa through the gate. Moira’s opening narration is just recapping the premise of her role in Hickman’s stories: she lived multiple past lives, she told Xavier and Magneto what she’d learned, and they were keeping her hidden beneath Krakoa until she was discovered and driven into exile.
House to Astonish Presents: The Lightning Round Episode 7
It’s time for another adventure with the Marvel Universe’s most neurotic super… er… heroes? Villains? Something along one of those lines, or possibly both. Anyway! We’ve got Graviton, Charcoal, and the addition of a crucial element of the Tbolts mythos, plus: A pug in a hoodie! Some French! An old lady from Elgin! It’s all go around here.
The podcast is here, or here on Mixcloud, or available via the embedded player below. Let us know what you think, in the comments, on Twitter, via email or on our Facebook fan page. And since it’s not yet the done thing to walk around without a shirt on, why not let us help you avoid that scenario by buying one of our great tees?
Charts – 21 January 2022
I love unexpected number ones.
1. Carolina Gaitan, Mauro Castillo, Adassa, Rhenzy Feliz, Diane Guerrero & Stephanie Beatriz – “We Don’t Talk About Bruno”
Or “The Cast of Encanto“, if you prefer, but that’s the official credit. “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” is a great song, but it’s an unlikely number one. It’s a song designed to advance the plot of a musical, and it doesn’t really make much sense if you haven’t seen the movie. And it’s a Disney song. Yes, “Let it Go” hung around the top 40 for ages, but it peaked at number 11.
Death of Doctor Strange: X-Men / Black Knight
THE DEATH OF DOCTOR STRANGE: X-MEN / BLACK KNIGHT #1
by Si Spurrier, Bob Quinn & Israel Silva
So here’s an early entry for 2022’s most “technically” technically-an-X-book. Tie-in to a wider event that doesn’t affect the X-Men in the slightest? Check! Co-starring with a character the X-Men have nothing to do with? Check! Written by that character’s regular writer? Well… as much as Black Knight has a regular writer. Spurrier wrote the recent Black Knight: Curse of the Ebony Blade miniseries, after all. So sure! Check!
Don’t worry if you haven’t been following Death of Doctor Strange, because it’s one of those stories that’s set up to have a bunch of tie-ins around the margins. All you really need to know about the main story is that with Strange dead, his barrier spell is fading and Earth’s dimension is being invaded by weird stuff. That’s literally it.
So… it’s a team-up between the X-Men and the Black Knight, is it? Well… depends how generous you’re feeling, to be honest.
X Lives of Wolverine #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X LIVES OF WOLVERINE #1
by Benjamin Percy, Joshua Cassara & Frank Martin
X LIVES OF WOLVERINE is one of two linked miniseries running over the next ten weeks, the other being X Deaths of Wolverine. It replaces most of the regular X-books during this period (but not all) and effectively serves as a season break before the next relaunch. This issue has been made available on Marvel Unlimited on its release date. I can’t imagine direct market retailers are going to be very happy about that, but that – and the reasons why Marvel might have done it – are a matter for another day. At any rate, if you have a Marvel Unlimited subscription, there is no need to buy this.
COVER / PAGE 1. Ten incarnations of Wolverine, all entwined in Omega Red’s tentacles. Specifically, the ten incarnations are:
- At the top, present-day Wolverine.
- Row 2, on the left, Wolverine as Weapon X.
- Row 2, on the right, Wolverine as he appeared in his debut in Incredible Hulk vol 2 #181.
- Between them, Wolverine as Patch, in the white dinner jacket from the early issues of his solo series.
- Row 4, on the left, a soldier Wolverine – I think this is Wolverine as shown in flashbacks to World War I.
- Row 4, on the right, Wolverine as a member of Team X.
- Between them, a Logan with no shirt and ragged trousers – probably Logan as a wilderness dweller after Origin.
- Row 6, on the left, what seems to be a cowboy Logan, presumably from his early post-Origin days.
- Row 6, on the right, Logan in the clothes from this issue, when he shows up at the Xavier Mansion.
- Right at the bottom, a Wolverine in a light grey version of his costume, probably from X-Force vol 3 (the Craig Kyle, Christopher Yost & Clayton Crain run).
S.W.O.R.D. #7-11
S.W.O.R.D. #7-11
by Al Ewing, Stefano Caselli, Guiu Vilanova, Jacopo Camagni & Fernando Sifuentes
The period between “Hellfire Gala” and “Inferno” has been a mixed bag for the X-books. Several books feel like they’ve lost their way, or are marking time waiting for the new season to start. S.W.O.R.D. is the one that goes the other way, with its own stories and its future direction coming to the fore.
Up to this point, S.W.O.R.D. has been remarkably heavy on the crossovers. Its first seven issues include three tie-ins to King in Black, one to “Hellfire Gala”, and one to “Last Annihilation”. That’s over 70% crossover, which is a bit much. But with these five issues – yes, we’ve got a “Last Annihilation” tie-in in issue #7, okay. After that, though, the focus is squarely on Storm establishing her authority on Arakko, Abigail Brand’s inveterate scheming, and Henry Gyrich’s hamfisted attempts to outwit her. The direction of the book becomes clear, and it’s set up for next season’s X-Men Red.
Issue #7, admittedly, devotes a lot of time to “Last Annihilation” material that, with hindsight, isn’t all that important to the book. I do get the desire to ground S.W.O.R.D. in the Marvel Universe, and in particular in the cosmic events that Abigail wants to interact with – in a sense, her priorities lead S.W.O.R.D. to get involved in this stuff – but there’s a lot of Hulkling in that issue, and relatively little of Abigail’s manipulations at the end. Still, Al Ewing is really good at sketching out some of these characters we’ve never seen (in this book) before, and getting the point of someone like Captain Glory across quickly.
Charts – 14 January 2022
Well, here we go. Now we’re getting back to regular business.
1. Gayle – “ABCDEFU”
This is one of the handful of non-Christmas songs that hung in there during the Christmas period when everything was swamped with Christmas records. As a result, it reaches number one on its ninth week, with the improbable track record of 40-14-2-5-5-6-14-2-1. Rather depressingly, this is the first number one not to feature any of Ed Sheeran, Elton John or Adele since last July (when Olivia Rodrigo was number 1).
X-Men Legends #10
X-MEN LEGENDS #10
“…The Eighth Circle!”
by Fabian Nicieza, Dan Jurgens, Scott Hanna & Alex Sinclair
X-Men Legends seems to be tweaking the format. It started with had short arcs by bygone writers (and occasionally writer/artist teams), designed to fit into their original runs and do a bit of gap-plugging. Then it shifted to something more like “fill-in arcs we could have done”. Legends #10 is a little different – a one-issue story written in the margins of an earlier story.
Well, kind of. The story in question is X-Men vol 2 #34 (July 1994), which isn’t exactly in the top tier of memorable issues. It’s the one where Gambit and Psylocke explore Mr Sinister’s old Nebraska base, fight off some wonky Marauders clones, rescue Threnody, and escape before the place blows up. (No, don’t ask me how that fits with the first arc of Hellions. That’s a whole other question.)
But Legends #10 isn’t especially closely tied to X-Men #34 – it’s a story about what Mr Sinister was up to while his base was getting destroyed. And the base getting destroyed does tie to the plot, but not all that centrally. The real high concept of this story is something else entirely, and you could have done it at pretty much any point in X-Men history before Krakoa.
Marauders #27 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
MARAUDERS #27
“Bon Voyage”
by Gerry Duggan, Matteo Lolli, Phil Noto & Rain Beredo
This is the final issue of Marauders vol 1; a new series with a different creative team launches in the spring. It’s the season finale, then.
PAGE 1. The cast pose on the cover. It’s a homage to the cover of issue #1. The inclusion among the cast of Tempo is interesting, since her only major appearance was in issue #23. Apparently she’s in the new volume, but her appearance on this cover has a distinct whiff of “plans changed”.
PAGES 2-4. Kate Pryde talks to Forge.
“You didn’t forget about my little problem, did you?” Kate’s inability to use the Krakoan gates was a major plot point in early issues, contributing to her depression, but it’s been largely downplayed since her resurrection. Kate is nodding to the fact that the plot has fallen by the wayside, as well as reintroducing it so as to set up the epilogue.
Forge’s “mission for the Quiet Council” doesn’t seem to be anything in particular.
“[Y]ou’ve disrupted every technology you’ve encountered…” Kate disrupts any electrical systems that she phases through. That’s been the case since day one.
