X-Men / Fantastic Four #4 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
This is the final issue of the miniseries. I’ll review the whole thing soon, but in the meantime let’s cover the last chapter. Like most final chapters, it doesn’t really call for much annotation…
COVER / PAGE 1. Dr Doom reaches out for Franklin; Kitty reaches through Doom to get to him first. All of the issues of X-Men / Fantastic Four have had similar group shots on the cover, but this is the first one to feature Doom and to have a black background instead of a white one.
PAGES 2-3. Everyone starts fighting Doom’s “Latviathan” Sentinels.
“they ignored my orders and murdered a Latverian mutant”. The X-Men did indeed ignore his orders, but they killed a mutant who had been sealed inside what appeared to be a Doombot. Pretty obviously, Doom was engineering this in order to have a pretext to set his Sentinels on them.
(more…)Empyre: X-Men #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and the page numbers go by the digital edition.
EMPYRE is the big crossover event of spring summer 2020. It’s principally an Avengers / Fantastic Four story, so the X-Men are on the margins. This is a four issue tie-in series. X-Men #10 and #11 are also Empyre tie-ins, and X-Men #10 was originally supposed to have come out first, but, well, times change.
For the purposes of this series (at least so far), all you really need to know about Empyre is that a race of alien plants called the Cotati are invading Earth. The Cotati come from the Kree’s back story in 1970s Avengers stories, and traditionally they were cosmic peace types, so something is obviously up – but that’s probably not this book’s concern.
The fact that the Cotati are plant people might potentially play into the X-Men’s current reliance on Krakoan plant-based technology, but you surely didn’t need me to point that out.
(more…)Hellions #2 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
COVER / PAGE 1: Kwannon / Psylocke and Wild Child fighting while Mister Sinister looks smug about it. This doesn’t actually happen until the last panel, so yay spoilers.
PAGE 2: Epigraph. A vaguely compassionate quotation from Nightcrawler (original, as far as I know). Another quotation from Nightcrawler also opened issue #1, which is interesting, since he’s not otherwise a presence in this issue.
PAGE 3: Recap page. Note that Kwannon is definitely now being billed as the new Psylocke. Oddly, Havok is described as “theoretically reformed”, which doesn’t really seem to fit with the back story.
(more…)Wolverine #3 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
COVER / PAGE 1. Wolverine charges headlong towards people shooting at him. Generic image, basically.
PAGES 2-3. Wolverine drinks Magneto under the table and steals his helmet.
The Green Lagoon was previously established in X-Force as Krakoa’s main nightspot, as was the Blob‘s role as barman.
Magneto’s helmet has long been established as containing circuitry that shields him from telepathic attack (though this issue never actually spells that out in terms, and it’s not obvious what the point is of taking one helmet when his plan involves a whole team). It’s really not very in character for Magneto to get this drunk, and it’s not as if other books are showing him as particularly complacent on Krakoa – though he’s certainly right that he has plenty in common with Wolverine. Wolverine hasn’t really been a villain since debuting in 1975, aside from brief periods of mind control, but it’s fair to say that he was effectively a villain for stints of his back story when he was under the control of Romulus.
(more…)New Mutants #11 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
COVER / PAGE 1. The New Mutants inside Tashi Repina’s candy-coloured happy dreamworld – which does happen in this story, but only for a couple of pages. Magik isn’t present for the actual scene, either.
PAGE 2. Armor’s parents tempt her to drop her shield.
Picking up from the cliffhanger in issue #10. As we’ll see later, they’re just an illusion. What’s interesting is that unlike most of the nightmares in Tashi’s psychic orb, this seems to be calculated to interfere with the New Mutants’ attempts to help. We’re told later on that once Tashi is asleep (and her powers are active) her body seems to try to keep her that way. But this feels as if something a little more directed is going on. Note also that there’s a vague parallel with the fate of Tashi’s own parents.
(more…)Giant-Size X-Men: Magneto #1
The Giant-Size X-Men one-shots have a slightly odd place in Hickman’s line. On the one hand, they’re written by Hickman himself, and they feature what seem to be significant plot points for his wider story. On the other, they differ in tone from his X-Men stories, with a more relaxed pace and none of the data pages that normally provide heavy-duty exposition. They feel a little detached from the rest of the line. After all, even when something seemingly important happens – like Storm’s infection by the Children of the Vault – it never gets mentioned anywhere else, and vanishes into the narrative ether.
Granted, the long interruption caused by the pandemic probably makes that look worse than it is. But there’s a definite sense of Giant-Size X-Men being off to the side somewhere, creating Schrodinger’s plot developments that won’t feel like they really matter until another book mentions them.
Read moreThe Incomplete Wolverine, Part 3
Part 1 – Origin to Origin II
Part 2 – 1907 to 1914
We’ve reached World War I, which is… untapped territory, for the most part. Not entirely, though. Wolverine: Origins #17 tells us that Logan fought in World War I as part of Romulus’s “Devil’s Brigade”, some sort of black ops or mercenary squad who fought alongside the regular troops. Daniel Way seems to have picked this up from Alpha Flight vol 1 #33, where Wolverine mentions in passing his service with the Devil’s Brigade. In reality, the Devil’s Brigade was the nickname of the First Special Service Force, a US/Canadian commando unit that existed between 1942 and 1944 and is regarded as the forerunner of modern US and Canadian special operations forces. Maybe Daniel Way didn’t get the reference, or maybe he was suggesting that that unit was also part of Romulus’s conspiracy.
Flashbacks in WOLVERINE vol 3 #57-60
“Logan Dies, parts 1-4” by Marc Guggenheim & Howard Chaykin
November 2007 to February 2008
22 April 1915. Logan is fighting with (apparently regular) Canadian forces. At the Second Battle of Ypres, the Germans use chlorine gas for the first time. Everyone else dies, but Logan survives to see a mysterious figure with a sword. Being Logan, he promptly fights and kills the guy, who immediately reappears alive and well and says they will meet again. This is Lazaer, an angel of death. (Yes, it’s an anagram of “Azrael”.) The nagging sense that he has defied the order of nature leads Logan to fall into a depression, to the point where he attempts suicide – but evidently he comes to terms with it over time.
Charts – 17 July 2020
I suppose we’re coming out of lockdown season now – but this is another lockdown singles chart, in which not much would be happening if it weren’t for a single major album release.
1. Jawsh 685 & Jason Derulo – “Savage Love (Laxed – Siren Beat)”
Three weeks. It needs one more week in order to match 2015’s “Want to Want Me” as Derulo’s longest-running number one.
“Head & Heart” by Joel Corry featuring MNEK climbs 15-3. That makes it the highest placed single for both artists. Both had previously peaked at number 4 – Corry with his previous single “Lonely”, and MNEK with his debut hit “Ready for your Love” back in 2014.
9. Juice WRLD & Marshmello – “Come & Go”
11. Juice WRLD & Halsey – “Life’s A Mess”
15. Juice WRLD – “Wishing Well”
iWolverine 2020 #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
iWOLVERINE 2020: This is a two-issue miniseries ostensibly tying in to the Iron Man 2020 event. Albert debuted in Wolverine vol 2 #37, by Larry Hama and Marc Silvestri, and he was a recurring character throughout Hama’s Wolverine run alongside his partner Elsie-Dee. The back story is that Donald Pierce came up with a convoluted scheme to assassinate Wolverine which involved making a robot duplicate of Wolverine, and a little girl robot with a bomb inside. The girl was accidentally given superhuman intelligence, broke her programming, and upgraded the Wolverine doppelganger at the same time, naming him Alfred. Since then, they’ve basically been wandering adventurers.
(more…)Giant-Size X-Men: Magneto #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
And before anyone asks, I haven’t read the Free Comic Book Day story, which isn’t available digitally. From the sound of it, it’s basically a bunch of cryptic teasers for X of Swords.
COVER / PAGE 1. Magneto, in shadow, looks at the camera.
PAGES 2-4. Magneto arrives at Mykines and asks to buy it from its owner.
Mykines is the westernmost of the Faroe Islands, which are about 200 miles north of Scotland. It does indeed have a lot of puffins. In real life, there’s a small village on the island, including a guest house for the small number of tourists (who are acknowledged in this scene, and who can reach the place by regular ferry and helicopter services). Most of the houses are now second homes; according to a BBC article about the Faroes written in 2018, the current permanent population is nine. The Greek-sounding name is thought to be a corruption of a Celtic term for “pig island”.
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