X-Men #39 annotations
X-MEN vol 7 #39
“Siege”
Writer: Jed MacKay
Penciller: Netho Diaz
Inker: Sean Parsons
Colourist: Arthur Hesli
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
COVER. John Greycrow defends Glob Herman from Z*E*R*O.
PAGE 1. Abbie Bennett briefs Z*E*R*O.
Z*E*R*O. This group previously appeared in issue #19, as a splinter group of exceedingly anti-mutant O*N*E agents who consider the main organisation insufficiently radical. They attempted to kill Revelation, with predictable lack of success. Strictly speaking, it was Bei who killed the Z*E*R*O agents, not Revelation himself. Abbie Bennett is a new character, and I don’t think her husband was actually named in the original story.
PAGES 2-4. Xorn and Greycrow at the Factory.
The X-Men are absent in Philadelphia appearing in DNX. As with other X-Men tie-in issues, this is a character spotlight, focussing this time on Greycrow.
Greycrow has been hanging around on the fringes of the X-Men since the start of the series (and also in the Psylocke solo title), mostly assisting Psylocke but keeping his distance from the X-Men proper. Obviously that ties in with his general feelings of self-loathing and unworthiness from his time as one of the Marauders. In the “Danger Room” arc (issues #26-30), he and Xorn were effectively acting as members of the X-Men in an extended sense.
It’s not entirely clear why he’s so keen to be fighting by Psylocke’s side on this occasion when she’s off on missions quite a lot of the time. Maybe he does feel like this all the time and we just haven’t seen much of it. Or maybe it’s tied in with being specifically asked to help out as a guard.
Greycrow’s claim that he’s “been in more fights than you [Xorn] have years on this Earth” is… not actually that impressive?
The “salvaged Shi’ar starship drive” which the X-Men have as a power supply might be from the ship that Corsair crashed in issue #11.
PAGES 5-6. Z*E*R*O in the power plant.
S.W.O.R.D. The files that Z*E*R*O have got their hands on presumably come from the original, pre-Krakoan version of the organisation, when it was basically S.H.I.E.L.D. for extraterrestrial threats; it seems reasonable that O*N*E would have access to some of their records.
The Z*E*R*O members are weirdly determined to go and kill mutants personally even though they ought to be wiped out by the upcoming explosion, but then they’re a bunch of crazed extremists.
PAGES 7-13. Greycrow fights through the Factory.
Greycrow says that he can’t use his mutant powers to interface with alien technology. This is a bit weird. Greycrow’s powers have always been rather hazily defined, but they’re something to do with manipulating and shaping technology to create improvised devices. It’s not immediately obvious why his powers should exclude alien technology. But perhaps they only really work effectively when coupled with him having some idea of what he’s doing, and this stuff is too far removed from what he knows. Another way of approaching this might have been to say simply that Greycrow isn’t Forge: he needs to know what he’s trying to achieve, and he doesn’t understand this technology well enough to know what that is.
Xorn assumes that the Z*E*R*O members will not have realised the risk to the local human population, but Greycrow seems to be correct in thinking that they simply don’t care. Some of this seems to be persuading him that the X-Men have a need for someone like him after all. He extends a single claw from the back of his hand before setting out, which is obviously positioning him here as a Wolverine figure. He’s also essentially putting himself forward for a traditional Wolverine role of the guy who does the black ops stuff so that the other X-Men don’t have to – though that’s maybe a less clear divide in a team that includes Magik, Kid Omega and Juggernaut. More specifically, he seems to see this as a role where he can shield Psylocke in particular and create the space for her to redeem herself.
Glob Herman. He’s still unconscious and on life support after being shot in issue #26. (Don’t ask when his current appearances in Infernal Hulk take place.) Greycrow reasonably assumes that all the dead Z*E*R*O agents lying around Glob were killed by Xorn, but we’ll come back to that.
PAGES 14-15. Greycrow and Xorn again.
Greycrow now seems willing to join the X-Men. His immediate concern, though, is to dispose of the bodies of the dead Z*E*R*O agents by incinerating them. He seems to regard them as a purely practical problem. To be fair, even Xorn seems to regard the pile of corpses as regrettable only in the sense that there’s nobody left to interrogate.
PAGES 16-20. Flashback: Glob kills the Z*E*R*O agents.
A single panel on the first page of this scene seems to show that Abbie Bennett actually survived and escaped, unnoticed by Greycrow or X*O*R*N.
Abbie says that Glob was “shot by an unknown attacker”. Presumably it isn’t widespread knowledge within O*N*E that Frank Bohannan hired Beyond to carry out that attack.
Glob suddenly comes to life, slaughters everybody, and lies down to go to sleep again. This doesn’t seem to be the real Glob in the body, though – he says these people are the first human beings he’s seen in “years”, and he clearly hasn’t been in a coma for that long.
I thought for a moment that it might be John Sublime, but it was not that long ago that we saw him.
There is speculation online that it may be the AoR counterpart. Makes as much sense as any other possibility.
AoR Action Glob was my assumption, though how and why isn’t immediately clear.
I can’t believe I’m actually rooting for John Greycrow, who started off his career as a child murderer and general merciless assassin. But given he’s been on a redemption arc for a few decades now, and has gone through a few cloned bodies in the meantime, I suppose he’s exceeded the statute of limitations and is thus eligible for the X-Men Forgiveness Program.
(Other alumni of the program include Rogue, Emma Frost, Magneto, Juggernaut, sometimes Apocalypse. Those who flunked out clearly include Sebastian Shaw, Sabretooth, Sinister, Cassandra Nova, and Mystique…)
Until recent years, I always thought his mutant power was just healing factor and longevity, and the whole guns thing (constructing weapons from the components on his costume) was external. Imagine my surprise when he was refined as a technopath. I’m glad he’s restricted in that capacity, just to give him limits.
Glob being possessed by Future!Glob makes sense given how much of this storyline is informed by the events of AoR, but this version seems exceptionally violent and cruel/anti-human so maybe we’re dealing with an extradimensional variant. I really hope we get the good Glob back. It would be a crime to lose him.
I did wonder at first if we were getting a return to the earliest Morrison-depicted Omega Gang version.
Still, this issue really does feel like a side quest to explain what’s happening to the members of the Alaskan X-Men not involved in the current mini. It could have been slated in anywhere, so long as the main team was out of office for the duration.
“Greycrow’s claim that he’s “been in more fights than you [Xorn] have years on this Earth” is… not actually that impressive?”
I think MacKay was thinking of a Chuck Dixon story where Ra’s al Ghul tells Bane that he’s killed more people in swordfights than Bane has had DAYS on this earth. That’s actually impressive- assuming Bane is at least 25 at the time of the story. Ra’s is claiming to have killed over 7,500 men in swordfights. Greycrow, on the hand, is claiming to have been in a few dozen fights.
This really isn’t Glob’s week- in this issue his body is possessed by whatever this is and in Infernal Hulk vs. Fantastic Four, he’s used by the Eldest to grow its army.
My guess is that this isn’t the Age of. Revelation Glob in Glob’s body- he saw a human recently in Limbo. The solicits for Jean Grey’s limited series have her fighting an ancient evil- my guess is that this is the ancient evil.
Re: when Infernal Hulk takes place- Magneto is still reliant on the chemicals to use his powers in Infernal Hulk, so Infernal Hulk has to take place before DNX and presumably before Glob is shot. The real problem is Armageddon- Johnny still has his mustache in Armageddon and he’s missing his mustache in Infernal Hulk vs. Fantastic Four so you’d think that Infernal Hulk takes place after Armageddon. The problem is that Carol still has her hair and her powers and Captain America is with the Avengers, so Infernal Hulk seems to take place before Armageddon. My personal theory is that since the Eldest is the King of Horrors, it can make Johnny’s mustache disappear and reappear whenever it wants. 🙂
I’m pretty sure that’s AoR Glob Herman inside of there. He does the hurr hurr hurr laugh that used to be his signature tic, signposting that it’s a version of Glob. The AoR version was brutal and wouldn’t normally see humans.
I’ll give MacKay props for the reveal. How do you determine if Glob is really unconscious?
In terms of whether the X-Men are good neighbors, they have a power plant that will destroy the entire town if one part is removed. That is a criminal level of recklessness.