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Apr 23

S.W.O.R.D. #5 annotations

Posted on Friday, April 23, 2021 by Paul in Annotations

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

S.W.O.R.D. #5
“Giallo”
by Al Ewing, Valerio Schiti & Marte Gracia

COVER / PAGE 1. A relaxed-looking Fabian Cortez with Magneto standing behind him, and a dead Snark. One of these two things happens in the issue, and it’s not the one Cortez would prefer.

PAGE 2. Data page, of sorts. These are the thoughts of the We-Plex Supreme Intelligence System, which is the version of the Supreme Intelligence from the home timeline of Noh-Varr (Marvel Boy). The 18th Kree Diplomatic Gestalt was Marvel Boy’s group in his home timeline. I’m not particularly up on Utopian Kree continuity, but basically they’re a more peaceful offshoot of the Kree Empire under Plex’s government.

The top right panel lists a bunch of problems that Plex has been dealing with lately: Knull (from King in Black), the Olympian gods (from Guardians of the Galaxy), the mainstream Kree (just generally), and “the Korvac apotheosis” (presumably referring to the return of cosmic villain Korvac over in Iron Man). But right now, Plex is mainly concerned with the Snarkwar – the war for succession among the Zn’rx, which began over in Guardians of the Galaxy and has already been mentioned in earlier issues.

Wezel is one of the competing claimants to the Zn’rx throne. We were already told in issue #3 that he was “besieged at the edge of Utopian Kree space” and “[a]ttempting negotiation with the Supremor for safe passage”, so evidently not much has changed since then.

PAGES 3-4. Wezel negotiates badly.

Obviously, the Utopian Kree aren’t quite as lacking in pragmatism as Wezel was hoping.

Wezel’s killer is identified later in the issue.

PAGE 5. Recap and credits.

The title, “Giallo”, is Italian for “yellow”, though it’s also the name of a pulp fiction genre.

The recap is headed “Murder Dresses in Gold”, and the cast headshots are colour coded in line with S.W.O.R.D. colours (where appropriate). Cortez’s division colour is officially yellow, but he insisted in issue #2 that it should be referred to as gold.

Most of the non-S.W.O.R.D. aligned characters are shown in black, though for some reason Magneto is singled out for grey. Abigail Brand is listed simply as Brand, as she was in the flowchart in issue #1. There are purple and yellow boxes with the contents redacted out. Yellow is presumably the new character introduced later as Cortez’s replacement (who gets a brighter yellow – and yes, Cortez’s colour was slightly greyed out in previous issues too). Violet is “observation / analysis”; we seemed to have established that this was Mentallo, so it’s not clear why he’s redacted.

PAGES 6-9. Cortez is reborn and taken direct to the Council chamber..

Cortez is (understandably) expecting the routine ceremony that we saw quite frequently in the early days of Krakoa, though to be honest, resurrection seems to have become so commonplace that the Krakoans are starting to dial that stuff down anyway. How many resurrection ceremonies can even the most enthusiastic Krakoan be bothered attending, after all?

Cortez did do something vaguely useful while fighting Knull in “King in Black”, and Magneto is granting his request to address the Council – though in the most unhelpful way imaginable. Magneto could have simply told him to get lost, but seems to be taking the opportunity just to humiliate the guy. As we’ll see, pretty much everyone else appears to be on board with this idea; Cortez doesn’t seem to be too good at making friends.

We might wonder about this. After all, about the only thing Cortez actually achieved in his supervillain career was to create the Acolytes as a cult under his leadership. That tends to suggest he has at least some degree of charisma on his side. But the Acolytes were mostly nobodies – he’s dealing with A-listers here. And even to lead the Acolytes, Cortez had to trade on Magneto’s reputation. Oh, and he nearly killed Magneto too in X-Men vol 2 #1-3, which surely doesn’t endear him to the guy. Magneto makes sure to rub it in by presenting minor villain Peepers as a more important character, just as he did in issue #1.

As foreshadowed in last issue’s data page, there are only nine members of the Council present – Professor X, Magneto, Storm, Nightcrawler, Emma Frost, Sebastian Shaw, Mystique, Exodus and Mister Sinister. Two seats have been vacant since “X of Swords”, and the twelfth belongs to Kate Pryde, who is presumably off dealing with Marauders business.

PAGES 10-11. Khondor and Lyga talk.

We were told in issue #3 that these two are “moderate reformists” who have agreed to ally together to take everyone else out, before settling matters in single combat. From the look of this scene, this is mainly Lyga’s plan, and Khondor is stringing her along. By Snark standards, Lyga is practically a liberal, though mainly she just seems to find the whole war of succession undignified.

Djagyar was murdered in issue #3, and we’ll find out who killed him in the course of this issue. (The coloured speech balloons make clear it’s the same killer.)

PAGES 12-13. Cortez addresses the Council.

Cortez’s basic argument is that mutants should not be singling out humans for special protection in their laws, which he sees as excessively generous to what he considers an oppressor class. He makes a somewhat bizarre argument that since humans are mortal, they’re functionally dead anyway, and therefore can’t really be murdered. The interesting question to ponder here is – why is Cortez bothered about this? Leaving aside his attempts at oratory, which obviously aren’t winning him any friends, he doesn’t really seem to gain anything from making this argument unless he genuinely believes it – which seems slightly at odds with his depiction as being concerned solely with his personal prestige. Does he think this will be received as an insightful contribution to mutant nationalism, and that it’s the speech that the Council want to hear? If so, he seems to have entirely misjudged them – but he doesn’t seem to be very good about reading the room generally.

We haven’t heard the word “flatscan” in a while. It was the go-to insult for mutants describing ordinary humans in the 90s, Cortez’s heyday.

PAGES 14-15. Khondor and Lyga are killed.

Self-explanatory.

PAGES 16-20. The Council meeting continues.

Nobody really seems very interested in discussing any of the points that Cortez has raised; Magneto pays lip service to them being worth considering, but talks as if Cortez had been making points about manslaughter and negligence (neither of which would be covered by a rule against murder in the first place, unless Krakoa has an unusually broad concept of “murder”).

Peeper changes the subject entirely and starts questioning Cortez about why he hasn’t chosen a mutant name. This might be thought a slightly risky line of inquiry in the company of Abigail Brand, Emma Frost and Sebastian Shaw. But Cortez’s response is basically that he’s attached to the perceived prestige of the name, and sees it as symbolising his entitlement to be in the ruling class. (Note that “We bent continents to our whim” accompanies a panel of Storm.) Cortez is presumably claiming to be descended from the Conquistador Hermán Cortés (1485-1547), who was indeed Spanish nobility, and contributed to the fall of the Aztec Empire.

Cortez’s problem isn’t so much that he lacks the suffering and moral authority of Magneto, as that he delusionally believes that his (self-proclaimed) aristocratic status will be recognised as giving him that authority. In fact, Abigail has now found a replacement for him, so the one value he actually had – the ability to contribute to the Six – is removed.

He mentions in passing his sister. That would be Anne-Marie Cortez, who died in X-Men vol 2 #3. Of course, this is the Krakoan era, so she might be back at some point to offer her own version of events.

Magneto suggests that the punishment for murder is “exile”. It’s normally stated to be imprisonment in the hole aloong with Sabretooth, which I suppose could be seen as a form of exile.

Amelia Voght refers to herself and Cortez as “old friends” because they were members of the Acolytes together.

Khora, Cortez’s replacement, debuted in issue #3 when she killed a Snark, but this is the first time we’ve seen her clearly.

PAGE 21. Data page, or rather, a collection of excerpts from three different data pages.

The first is a repeat of a data page from issue #3, which was Brand’s personnel notes on Fabian Cortez. Khora’s entry was redacted on that page, but is now shown. Also unredacted is the last line of Boost’s entry, which now reveals him being considered for “deniable ops”.

The second is a list of targets for the Snarkwar. Essentially Brand wanted Kuga to become emperor. In issue #3, Khuga was described as the rank outsider to win the Snarkwar, a “radical modernist”, and currently in retreat after suffering a catastrophic defeat. The third is a new document, with Brand’s personnel notes on Khora.

PAGE 22. Everyone abandons Cortez.

It seems unlikely that this is the last we’ve heard of Fabian Cortez, in which case everyone might live to regret treating him like this.

Amelia Voght was Professor X’s partner up until shortly before the X-Men were formed (she left at around the same time he took in Cyclops). This was all established in Scott Lobdell stories in the 90s. It’s nice to see them on good terms.

PAGES 23-24. Magneto and Abigail.

Abigail evidently takes the second law literally as applying only to humans, leaving her free to kill aliens. Note that the Quiet Council weren’t told how they had made Kuga the emperor, though Magneto appears to know (or drew the correct conclusion).

The room at the end appears to be a whole warehouse of the Mysterium artefacts, one of which was retrieved in issue #1. Whether S.W.O.R.D. have been knocking out copies, or the Six have just been retrieving a whole load of them, isn’t clear.

PAGE 25. Trailers. The Krakoan reads NEXT: LAST DANCE.

 

Bring on the comments

  1. Uncanny X-Ben says:

    Another good issue, though I’d like to have seen more ify some of the other cast members by this point.

    Is utterly humiliating Cortez just a bad idea that’s going to come back to haunt them or a scheme to manipulate him?

    Are they just being incredibly arrogant in thinking he’s a non-entity?

  2. Mathias X says:

    Between Magneto, Frenzy, Cortez & Amelia, it does seem clear that SWORD is intent on playing into the legacy of the Acolytes. I wouldn’t have thought there’s a whole lot to mine there, but it’s clearly a legacy that everyone but Cortez holds in contempt.

    There must be some cause to the degradation of Cortez — I certainly believe Magneto despises any and all people who have taken his agency away and used his name, but I also feel he has generally been more strategic when working with old foes in the past. This might be more than a personal animus — are they attempting to undercut Cortez’s ambitions to stop him from ever forming another group? Or are they trying to “break” him so that he might act normal?

    I never thought I’d be interested in the fate of Fabian Cortez, but Ewing has managed to hit the right note with the character.

  3. Ben Johnston says:

    Re: Why is Cortez bothering with this

    My read was that there’s someone he specifically wants to be allowed to kill, probably the human members of his family who cast him out. Hence him asking for “special dispensation” toward the end of the meeting when it becomes obvioius this isn’t going his way.

    Peepers figured out why he cared, which was the point of that whole line of questioning.

    I’ve really been enjoying S.W.O.R.D., and it’s nice to see the book getting back to the interesting material from the opening issue now that King in Black is done.

  4. Mathias X says:

    I legitimately cannot tell if Magneto trusts Peppers’s insight or if Peepers is a joke to him; I hope it’s the latter, because it’s nice to see Magneto care for literally anyone that’s not Charles.

  5. Adam says:

    @MathiasX: I was also under the impression from the first issue that Magneto genuinely liked Peepers (and thought it was great), but after this issue I lean more Paul’s interpretation that the point is Cortez’s humiliation. Hope we’re wrong.

  6. Jon R says:

    I see Cortez pushing against the law as Cortez basically just not liking being told ‘no’. He doesn’t have a list of people he plans to kill or anything, he just hates the fact that he can’t kill the ‘flatscans’ if he wants to. I *could* see him wanting to off his family for the insults he brought up, but it’s something he probably could have done in his time leading the Acolytes if he really cared.

    Magneto certainly was leaning into humiliating Cortez. I’m not sure if he really did have a reason aside from despising Cortez or not. Gathering people together and the timing of Khora entering seem to indicate that he was orchestrating things deliberately. And apart from their history, I can see him disliking what Cortez stands for, as it’s really pretty anti-Krakoa. Cortez is all about personal aggrandizement, worming his way into power and then stabbing people in the back, etc. His history is all about taking a community that believes in someone else, manipulating the leaders, and twisting things to give himself power.

    And thinking it through, that might be the reason that Magneto did this publicly. After that demonstration, Cortez is probably going to have a lot of trouble ingratiating himself with anyone on the Council. Sinister or Shaw might be happy to use him, but no one there is going to think he’s more than an entitled guy who’ll expect to be paid handsomely for anything he gives them. It pissed off Cortez, but that was always going to be the endgame of replacing him. In return it undercuts his ability to try building another power base immediately.

    I’m very happy to see Khora. It’s nice to actually have a probably-main character from Arakko in *one* of these books.

    As far as the Mysterium.. I don’t think this is right, but my immediate thought on seeing the piles and piles of it was to think about the ongoing plotline in the galactic arena about the economy tanking. If the mutants could generate a whole bunch of magical awesome metals that have inherent worth, could they be trying to distribute and tease the galactic economy onto the Mysterium standard? Like I said, I don’t think that’s right after thinking about it — if nothing else, they’d need a LOT of that stuff.

  7. Paul says:

    I think Cortez must want to kill someone (and the family are the obvious candidates), but it seems a weirdly ambitious approach to try and get the law abolished instead of just covering up his involvement in the murder.

  8. Paul says:

    I think Magneto’s relationship with Peepers is partly genuine and partly performative for Cortez’s benefit.

    On the one hand, if you go back to Captain America Annual #4, Peeper is positioned as Magneto’s right hand man in the group. Magneto seems genuinely appreciative of his work, Peeper talks to him in a relatively familiar and supportive way, and the most pushback he gets is Magneto grumbling that Peeper never remembers to knock before coming into his office. He certainly wasn’t the Toad.

    On the other hand, Magneto’s paid no attention to this guy in many, many years, and it’s hard to see why he would suddenly start making such a thing of him now, if irritating Cortez wasn’t a big part of it.

  9. Evilgus says:

    @MathiasX
    “I never thought I’d be interested in the fate of Fabian Cortez, but Ewing has managed to hit the right note with the character.”
    Agree with this. Best thing to come out of HOX is development of more incidental characters, instead of our more exhausted main heroes. Even if everything resets one day, there’s so much to have come from this.

    And it’s fairly evident everyone’s dismissal of Cortez will come back to bite them! He’s an arrogant tosser but you do have to wonder about this high handed treatment. I’m also not sure that casually manipulating intergalactic conflict is the best idea.

    I wonder if we’ll get more Exodus in this series too, given his Acolytes ties.

    Really enjoyable though!

  10. GN says:

    Paul > I’m not particularly up on Utopian Kree continuity, but basically they’re a more peaceful offshoot of the Kree Empire under Plex’s government.

    If I’m not mistaken, the new Kree status quo comes from ideas established in Death of the Inhumans and Royals. After the destruction of Hala and the permanent death of the Universe-616 Supremor, the Kree Empire was destroyed and descended into civil war. Two factions emerged: the Imperial Kree (led by Tanalth the Pursuer) and the Utopian Kree (led by the We-Plex Supremor, grown by Marvel Boy from a seed brought over from his home universe).

    During Empyre, the Imperial Kree joined forces with the remnants of the destroyed Skrull Empire to form the Kree-Skrull Alliance, led by Emperor Hulking. In Guardians of the Galaxy, the Kree-Skrull Alliance have salvaged the remnants of Hala and transformed it into Throneworld II, their new capital.

    Hence, the new status quo is the Kree-Skrull Alliance (which controls all Skrull territory and a portion of Kree territory) and the Utopian Kree (which controls the other portion of Kree territory). In this issue , “Kree Imperium /// Crisis Inactive” means that the Imperial Kree are no longer a threat as Emperor Hulking wants to reform the Alliance’s warmongering ways.

    Paul > Magneto is singled out for grey. Abigail Brand is listed simply as Brand, as she was in the flowchart in issue #1. There are purple and yellow boxes with the contents redacted out. Yellow is presumably the new character introduced later as Cortez’s replacement (who gets a brighter yellow – and yes, Cortez’s colour was slightly greyed out in previous issues too). Violet is “observation / analysis”; we seemed to have established that this was Mentallo, so it’s not clear why he’s redacted.

    Magneto is presumably in grey because he works for S.W.O.R.D. – he is the Quiet Council representative to S.W.O.R.D., which is why he is a member of this book’s cast. In an early interview, Al Ewing did mention that this might be a rotating role, where a different Councillor takes up the role after a period of time.

    The redacted violet box is for Peeper, who is “Observation / Analysis” under Mentallo. I assume he was redacted to not spoil the fact that he shows up to the meeting.

    The redacted yellow is definitely “Khora of the Burning Heart”, and her box is properly yellow to show that she is a proper part of the yellow “Medical / Energy Resources” team. Cortez’s box is gold, as Cortez previously insisted it should be, and to show that he was never a proper member of the team. The line passes around him in the Org Chart after all.

    Paul > How many resurrection ceremonies can even the most enthusiastic Krakoan be bothered attending, after all?

    SPOILERS FOR X-MEN 1 IN JULY

    It is interesting that Jean mentioned that Sunfire got an enthusiastic ceremony upon resurrection for his heroic efforts during the Knull invasion. It sets up how he might be popular enough to be voted to join the new X-Men. The same applies to Synch and Wolverine. If the fact that they agreed to go on a dangerous mission and spent centuries in the Vault is well known amongst the Krakoan public, it makes sense how they would be rewarded.

    END SPOILERS FOR X-MEN 1 IN JULY

    Paul > This might be thought a slightly risky line of inquiry in the company of Abigail Brand, Emma Frost and Sebastian Shaw.

    I can’t be certain about Brand, but Frost and Shaw do have mutant names, it’s “White Queen” and “Black King” respectively. Yes, it’s also their positions on the Hellfire Trading Company, but that’s how it seems to be.

    The reason that they are only very rarely labelled by their mutant names in cast lists and such is that they belong to a certain group of mutants whose formal names are far more popular and marketable than their mutants names in real life: Emma Frost (White Queen), Sebastian Shaw (Black King), Katherine Pryde (Red Queen), Jean Grey-Summers (Marvel Girl), Rachel Grey-Summers (Prestige) and so on. For these characters, marketing uses a mixture of names, but more often than not, they use their formal names. For example, “Giant-Size X-Men: Jean Grey and Emma Frost” is far more marketable than “Giant-Size X-Men: Marvel Girl and White Queen” but conversely “Giant-Size X-Men: Nightcrawler” would sell better than “Giant-Size X-Men: Kurt Wagner”.

    Paul > Magneto suggests that the punishment for murder is “exile”. It’s normally stated to be imprisonment in the hole aloong with Sabretooth, which I suppose could be seen as a form of exile.

    When Sabretooth is condemned to the pit in House of X 6, Professor X says “you are EXILED”, so presumably this is what Krakoan exile looks like.

  11. Chris says:

    I hate the (in-universe real name as real world brand name) thing they do with Jean and Emma

  12. GN says:

    By the way, does anyone know who the two mutants guards were near the end of the issue? Their uniforms show that they are part of the Security Team under Cable. I presume one of them is Forearm on account of the four arms, but who is the other? Generic random?

    Jon R > I’m very happy to see Khora. It’s nice to actually have a probably-main character from Arakko in *one* of these books.

    Yes, it’s nice to see some Arakkii presence in our books, though I’m not sure about ‘main character’. We’ll probably see a lot of her using her powers with the Six though.

    I also have a pet theory that we might be seeing Storm head over to Arakko and join the Great Ring there after the Hellfire Gala is over, and that this might either be the premise or at least the partial focus of the new book that Hickman is launching in September after he leaves X-Men. If I’m right, we will be seeing plenty of the Arakkii in that book.

    Evilgus > I wonder if we’ll get more Exodus in this series too, given his Acolytes ties.

    The X-Office’s new policy seems to be that every mutant should only be in the cast or supporting cast of one book (the exceptions being the two with solo books, Wolverine and Cable). I have previously theorised that Exodus would end up as a cast member of Way of X, so I’m not sure if he is free to join S.W.O.R.D. One the other hand, Exodus is a member of the Quiet Council, so he could end up as the next Council representative to S.W.O.R.D. once Magneto’s turn is over.

    Evilgus > And it’s fairly evident everyone’s dismissal of Cortez will come back to bite them!

    This is definitely a given – Ewing is setting him to be an antagonist in this book. However, I think that this issue disqualifies him from being the mole that Gyrich was talking about in issue 3. It would diminish the storytelling here if Cortez did not fully believe in Magneto and S.W.O.R.D. until the meeting.

    So I wonder who the mole could be or if the mole even knows that they are a mole. It has to be a named member of the cast. Could Ewing possibly go there and make Peeper the mole? That’ll definitely twist the knife in the reader’s and Magneto’s back – would make for great drama though.

    Jon R > As far as the Mysterium.. I don’t think this is right, but my immediate thought on seeing the piles and piles of it was to think about the ongoing plotline in the galactic arena about the economy tanking. If the mutants could generate a whole bunch of magical awesome metals that have inherent worth, could they be trying to distribute and tease the galactic economy onto the Mysterium standard? Like I said, I don’t think that’s right after thinking about it — if nothing else, they’d need a LOT of that stuff.

    I don’t think the Mysterium is metal – it seems to be condensed kirbons, but this was the general idea that I had when I saw the piles too.

    In general, S.W.O.R.D. seems to be about taking ideas developed in House of X and bringing them to the intergalactic stage. The Six were the first example of that – an evolution of the Five, which are central to the Krakoan project.

    Xavier used the Flowers of Krakoa to buy the Krakoans nationhood and a seat at the United Nations. Now, Brand is going to use Mysterium to buy the Sol System a seat at the Galactic Council. If Ambassador Frenzy is sent there and gets to be part of intergalactic decision-making, that could be a huge game-changer for the S.W.O.R.D. project. It’s also interesting that the Guardians of the Galaxy are no longer a rag-tag team of misfits. As of Guardians of the Galaxy 13, they are now an official intergalactic superhero team sanctioned and funded by the Galactic Council, and they are expanding their roster rapidly. This could lead to some interesting crossover between S.W.O.R.D. and Guardians of the Galaxy. If S.W.O.R.D. has some say in the Council, could some mutants be joining the Guardians down the line?

    One thing I’m not too convinced of is that Mysterium would be used as a currency standard. A source of clean energy or something sounds more likely to me. But then again, I was never entirely sold on the galactic economy is crashing plotline. I get that the Kree-Skrull wars were fuelling war profiteering but the idea that super-advanced alien empires were using fiat currency in the first place is ridiculous. Even more ridiculous is the idea that they reverted to barter when the “credit” collapsed. It sounds like such a Dan Slott idea of how interstellar finance might work. This really goes back to the sliding scale of science fantasy vs science fiction on how to approach Marvel Cosmic. I feel that a more sci-fi oriented writer like Christopher Cantwell or Jonathan Hickman might have approached this idea in a better way: even something like “quantum banking bits” as currency would be preferable.

  13. alsoMike says:

    I was wondering about the two guards at the end too. I’m not sure we’ve seen any Savage Land Mutates on Krakoa, so Forearm seems more likely than the also four-armed Barbarus.
    As for the other guy, I’m thinking either classic Morlock Sunder or Nasty Boy Slab. The brushy eyebrows suggest Slab but I seem to remember he was shorter than this. Maybe I’m just thinking of his shrinking sister Thumbelina. 😛

    Another great issue of SWORD and helpful annotations by Paul!

  14. Uncanny X-Ben says:

    I also thought it was Forearm and Slab or Sunder.

  15. Luis Dantas says:

    Sounds like this is the book that will examine the dangers and contradictions of nationalism, what with all the former Acolytes, the strong focus on Magneto, and the presence of intergalactic politics as a slightly removed proxy for real world considerations.

  16. Paul says:

    Forearm and Slab seem to be the consensus.

  17. Dave says:

    BRAND works perfectly well as Abigail’s code name, given her power. Has nobody in-universe ever said this? Actually, this meeting would have been the obvious time for it.

  18. Uncanny X-Ben says:

    I would be fine with an Abigail Brand/Pete Wisdom “spies with hot hands” team up book.

  19. Scott B says:

    “BRAND works perfectly well as Abigail’s code name, given her power.”

    In an issue of Astonishing X-Men she said that it wasn’t a surname, so it essentially is her codename.

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