X-Men: The Trial of Magneto #1 annotations
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.
X-Corp #4 annotations
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?
Way of X #5 annotations
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.
Marauders #23 annotations
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.
Charts – 13 August 2021
It’s a good week for new entries.
1. Ed Sheeran – “Bad Habits”
Seven weeks at number 1. I can’t say it’s growing on me, but there it is. It still needs another two weeks to match “Drivers License”. The top three is static, with Kid Laroi & Justin Bieber at 2 and Jonasu at 3.
13. The Weeknd – “Take My Breath”
This is the lead single from the Weeknd’s fifth album, and it’s firmly in his 80s epic disco mode. Weeknd hits tend to be slow burners that take a couple of months to reach their peak position, so number 13 is fine as a debut. Bear in mind that “Save Your Tears”, from the last album, is still at number 10 – it’s been in the top 40 for 31 weeks, and took nearly six months to reach its peak position of number 2.
X-Men Legends #5-6
X-MEN LEGENDS #5-6
by Peter David, Todd Nauck & Rachelle Rosenberg
Three arcs into X-Men Legends, we’re seeing the limitations of this format. It’s a nice idea: get some fondly remembered creators from X-books of yesteryear and give them a couple of issues to do an untold story from their run. But generally you end up with an inconsequential story, because otherwise you’d have seen the consequences the first time round. What’s more, for most of their history, the X-books have stressed long-form, soap operatic stories… so the moment you do a self-contained two parter, you’re already straying from the tone of the original run. That’s maybe not as big a problem – there have been strong X-Men annuals down the years – but it’s still an issue.
Fabian Nicieza’s opening arc found a neat solution to the problem by tying up a genuine dropped plot from back in the day. The Simonsons plugged a few continuity gaps in their X-Factor run. But Peter David seems to just be going for a standalone X-Factor story, and it’s a rather half formed one at that.
X-Factor are being questioned by a Senate committee about a recent mission at the Latverian Embassy. That’s the framing sequence. The main story is the mission itself, in which a group of Latverian mutant terrorists take over the Latverian Embassy in the name of democracy and X-Factor get the somewhat unwelcome job of dealing with them.
X-Force #22 annotations
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.
Children of the Atom #6 annotations
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.
Cable #7-12
CABLE vol 4 #7-12
by Gerry Duggan & Phil Noto
Farewell, Kid Cable. We hardly knew ye.
Well. We knew him for a bit over two years, in fact. The Extermination miniseries, then a year of pre-Krakoa X-Force, and then this solo title. That’s long than Teen Tony Stark managed, isn’t it? Chalk that up as a win!
Kid Cable was introduced with much fanfare in a baffling plot twist where he showed up and killed his own older self because… Um. Integrity of the timeline something something need to send the Silver Age X-Men home something something bang thud. It never made any sense, and while X-Force made a heroic effort to convince us that it was something that needed doing to stop time unravelling or something, it was still a plot point which called for an awful lot of goodwill from readers willing to shrug their shoulders and accept that random gibberish just happens in time travel stories.
This is not a promising thing to have at the heart of a character. Kid Cable was being rehabbed almost from the moment he first appeared.
Charts – 6 August 2021
This is one of those weeks when everyone gets out of the way of a major album release, so we get a quiet chart. But first!
1. Ed Sheeran – “Bad Habits”
I still don’t think much of this, but Britain evidently disagrees. That’s six weeks at number 1.
7. Billie Eilish – “Happier Than Ever”
28. Billie Eilish – “Getting Older”
32. Billie Eilish – “Oxytocin”
The album “Happier Than Ever” enters at number 1, giving her a second number 1 album. Predictably, it maxes out its three-song allocation. The earlier singles from this album have performed patchily – “Therefore I Am” and “Your Power” both made the top 5, but “Lost Cause” and “NDA” missed the top 10 and vanished quickly.
