X-Men #36 annotations
X-MEN vol 7 #36
“A Theft”
Writer: Jed MacKay
Penciller: Netho Diaz
Inker: Sean Parsons
Colourist: Arthur Hesli
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
COVER: The Chairman, taking Magneto’s bloodstained helmet from him. Once again, this issue is billed as a DNX prelude.
THE X-MEN:
Cyclops, Temper, Kid Omega, Psylocke, Beast, Magik and Juggernaut. To be honest, there’s not much to say about the core cast as individuals in this issue. Temper and Kid Omega continue to fight as something of a duo. Kid Omega has a routine where he can telepathically provide his team-mates with a video-game style map of their environment and the locations of their opponents; Psylocke regards this as a bit gimmicky, but genuinely useful.
SUPPORTING CAST:
Magneto. We get some further explanation of Magneto’s mysterious condition, originally identified by the X-Men as “resurrection-linked degeneration sickness”. In the “Age of Revelation” event, we learned that nobody in that future timeline had any memory of Magneto having this condition. Now, in this issue, the Chairman says that Magneto’s condition is due to “information sent from the future, encoded into your DNA”. Magneto says that “we” have the same theory, presumably meaning at least himself and the X-Men’s Beast.
The “message” would presumably be one of the two messages that were sent back in time in X-Men: Age of Revelation using Schwarzchild’s powers – one sent by the Chairman, in the body of the future Beast, and the other sent by the real future Beast after he returned. Quite why either of them would choose to send the message by encoding it onto Magneto’s DNA isn’t explained yet. According to the Chairman, the message is the last piece of information he needs to create his X-Virus, which would tend to suggest that it’s the Chairman’s own message. Cyclops also concludes at the end of the issue that the Chairman wanted Magneto’s DNA for this purpose.
Magneto is underwhelmed by the Chairman’s invocation of the “Magneto was right” slogan, which he associates with platitudes – it dates from the Grant Morrison run when he was being treated as a Che Guevara figure. He refuses to endorse the X-virus plan, not because it involves violence but because it involves genocide. On that basis, Beast just beats him up and takes cell samples.
Ben Liu. For some reason, it’s Ben who’s the first to figure out that Magneto was the real target, and he seems particularly agitated about it.
Animalia and Xorn are also around.
VILLAINS:
The Chairman. He says that he’s close to re-creating the X-virus from the “Age of Revelation” timeline, but that mentions that he’s had to use workarounds, because he doesn’t have access either to Revelation’s powers, or to the Technarch biomass that Revelation took advantage of.
He claims to be able to fix Magneto’s powers, but might just be bluffing in order to get his hands on the sample. Still, his clear preference is to recruit Magneto rather than just to take the samples. He talks up how much Magneto has done for mutantkind over the years, and his symbolic value – some of this seems to be acknowledging his own radicalisation during the Krakoan era, and recognising Magneto’s importance in legitimising Krakoa at the time.
The Chairman claims that Magneto became the X-Men’s teacher during his time as a villain, and quotes The Merchant of Venice: “The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard, but I will better the instruction.” In the original context, this is Shylock promising revenge for the way he has been treated by Christians.
Joseph. 3K don’t actually know that Schwarzchild is a prisoner of the X-Men. Instead, their mission is to keep the real X-Men occupied while the Chairman goes after Magneto. Joseph chooses to tell Cyclops that it’s all a distraction once he’s been defeated – possibly just to try and turn a defeat into a victory and regain his dignity. H
He insists on being called Magneto, as he did in issue #24, and is obviously irritated when anyone calls him Joseph. He refers to the 3K X-Men as “my X-Men”, and generally carries himself as their leader, but they don’t seem to have any time for him. They certainly don’t show any teamwork with him, and Cyclops defeats him singlehandedly.
Once defeated, he calls “mother” for extraction – in other words, his creator Astra, who is a teleporter.
The 3K X-Men (Constellation, Galatea, Juice, Psychovore and Timebomb). Kid Omega says that Cassandra Nova has “psychically hardened” them to the point where he can’t simply shut them down remotely. Presumably he means that they have the same sort of psychic traps as Schwarzchild and Ben Liu did in previous issues.
The 3K X-Men are really not happy about being saddled with Joseph as their new leader, and actively cut him out of their communications channels. Timebomb winds him up by calling him “Joseph”, and tells the others that he’s a “petulant child” who hasn’t earned his place among them. She may, of course, also be aggravated that she didn’t get promoted to take Schwarzchild’s place after he was booted out of the group. Still, Galatea sides with her, and Psychovore talks about cutting Joseph down to size once the mission is complete. The only one who seems to accept Joseph as their leader, even grudgingly, is Juice, and he seems to be so slow on the uptake that he hasn’t previously twigged how his teammates feel.
It’s still so weird that we have two different new characters both calling themselves Timebomb.
Sadly, I still feel like the 3KX-Men represent one of MacKay’s weaknesses: creating villain groups who don’t really stand out apart from interesting visuals. Apart from Schwartschild, I don’t think I could have named any of these from memory without nametags.
It’s a little sad that the 3KX team made easy work of the real X-Men, save for Joseph getting his rear handed to him. I know we need to have the obligatory fight scenes because comics, but there -are- some seasoned veterans on this team…
“The “message” would presumably be one of the two messages that were sent back in time in X-Men: Age of Revelation using Schwarzchild’s powers – one sent by the Chairman, in the body of the future Beast, and the other sent by the real future Beast after he returned.”
I never understood the Chairman as using Schwarzschild’s powers to send a message back in time. I only thought he used Schwarzschild’s powers to send himself back in time to his body. The Chairman had no need to send a message back in time- he could just memorize whatever information he needed.
I interpreted the message as being from the real future Beast (that seems to be the understanding of most of the internet).
It’s good we’re FINALLY getting an explanation of how Magneto’s condition came about. I wonder if R-LDS was originally supposed to be a red herring or not. Hopefully Magneto will be out of the wheelchair by the time this crossover is over.
Note that Scott says he’s going to end 3K. He doesn’t say that he’s going to kill the Chairman. I’m not sure if Scott is willing to kill the Chairman at this point or if he even CAN kill the Chairman, who claimed to be immortal thanks to his cloning technology.
It does seem as if Marvel is getting ready for another relaunch as they’ve finally been forcing all these neverending dangling plot-threads to be wrapped up by the time of DNX. Graymalkin in Uncanny. The mystery of Magneto’s R-LDS here. If not, we’d probably still be dealing with this stuff in the background until at least issue #50.
Marvel is really working to regain the market share they lost to DC. A Star Wars/Marvel Universe crossover by Kevin Smith. The Midnight Universe, which is going to draw in a lot of people who were drawn in by DC’s Absolute Universe. Miracleman joining the Avengers, guaranteeing the new Avengers series topping the sales charts for some time.
Throw in some new #1 issues for the X-Men, even if the X-titles are looking like much less of a priority for Marvel compared to all their upcoming gimmicks. Meanwhile, DC is wrapping up the “Next Level” initiative launches, and the Absolute Universe might start to look old in comparison to the shiny-new toy of the “Midnight Universe”.
I’m dubious about the Midnight Universe. Horror takes on Marvel’s properties, headlined by Hickman, Percy and Johnson, will appeal to a certain audience and has a novelty factor, but I see Percy and Johnson as niche writers holding up the darker corners of the MU without wider acclaim. Hickman runs hot and cold–his Spider-Man was a standout in the new Ultimate Universe, but both Imperial and G.O.D.S. fell flat by comparison.
Meanwhile, the Absolute Universe is headlined by some more all-around talent like Snyder, Camp, Thompson, Aaron, etc, and has proven, so far, to be pretty strong on all fronts.
Midnight’s gonna have to work hard to establish itself on a long term basis, assuming it’s not already set for a limited run.
It’ll, at the very least, get some speculator interest for at least a bit of time. The Midnight Universe doesn’t interest me because Hickman is the only writer I enjoy out of the three, and he is writing the X-Men versus vampires, which is not something I ever wanted to see again.
Agreed. I have no interest in whatever Percy is doing, and I can’t wait for Johnson to be done with Infernal Hulk, so those two titles are already both on my “meh” list. I’ll check out Hickman’s X-Men for a few issues but it’s not exactly lighting my fires.
I don’t even know if all three titles are sharing a universe or thematically connected stand-alones.
Hear me out: in order to make the Chairman see the error of his ways, DNX is going to end with Cyclops and Magik going back in time to retrieve the original teenage X-Men, who will then stay in the present day for far too long. Beast will organize a mutant march and then get killed by the Inhumans
If Midnight X-Men can hit the same balance of fantastic character reinvention and amazing creative talent as the Absolute Universe books I’ve read, then I’m in. I love some alt-universe X-Men. So far, I’m not inspired by “Cyclops with a beard and a buzz cut,” but Hickman usually has some twist up his sleeve.
Also: if they really add Miracleman to the 616 Avengers, then that will be interesting for about 3 issues before no one cares anymore. High powered characters don’t play well in the Marvel Universe. But maybe Zdarsky can find some new angle that makes MM not Marvel-Superman or Marvel-Shazam or Sentry 2.0.
“Hear me out” – Chris M
ROFLOL
>Miracleman joining the Avengers, guaranteeing the new Avengers series topping the sales charts for some time.
I’d like to think I’m a relatively informed comics nerd, and I don’t think I could name three facts Miracleman. The new new Avengers lineup already looks pretty fun, and I’ve liked Chip Z’s work so I’ll pick it up, but I don’t know if I’m alone in not caring about Miracleman.
On the topic of this issue, MacKay seems to have a hard time writing fight scenes that can happen in one issue. We got the two teams lining up to fight, setting up matchups, then… it ended. Which I guess is fine since they’ll certainly fight in DNX but it was still odd to spend page space setting up a fight that didn’t happen.
The Magneto/Chairman stuff was good. The Chairman continues to be defined by his blind spots when it comes to human behavior – trying to pitch Erik Lensherr to join in a genocide while he’s in a synagogue is such a failure to read the room that it reminds us why he needed Sage and others to have X-Force’s plans not immediately go all ACME.