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

HELLIONS #13
“Don’t Look Back, part 1: Weary Travellers”
by Zeb Wells, Rogé Antônio & Rain Beredo

COVER / PAGE 1: The returned Sinister clone stands triumphant over the “original.”

PAGE 2. An epigraph from Nightcrawler. These show up repeatedly in Hellions, even though the character himself rarely appears, but we haven’t seen one since issue #10. Obviously, they anticipate his spiritual leader role in Way of X. In this story, of course, it’s Sinister whose past is catching up with him.

PAGES 3-5. The Right despatch their Zeta team.

This is going back to the Hellions’ battle with the Right in issues #7-8. Since there are two entire storylines that have passed since then, either the rest of the Right have only just got around to investigating what was going on here, or this is technically a flashback. We’re told later on that over a month has passed since this story.

The specific Right members seen here appear ot be new, including Zeta Team. Zeta Team are wearing facepaint with the traditional Right smiley faces, but don’t have any of the other familiar high-tech armour. For whatever reason, their facepaint is in green and yellow, normally the colours of HYDRA rather than the Right.

The Right scientists are absolutely correct in their conclusion that the Smileys were destroyed after being infected with a Krakoan virus, and that “the Hodge Code” – the AI that believed itself to be Cameron Hodge – led to the Smileys mutating and developing their own AI. We saw all that in issues #7-8.

PAGE 6. Nanny cares for the Right AI.

This is the baby AI that Nanny secretly retrieved at the end of issue #7. As made very clear in that story, the Krakoans are determined to eradicate emerging AIs, so this thing would be in great danger if the authorities found out about it.

PAGE 7. Recap and credits. The recap doesn’t quite fit with the way the Hellions are actually portrayed at the start of this story, with some of the group actually getting on better than before.

PAGE 8. Empath, Wild Child and Greycrow talk.

Empath doesn’t remember what happened in issue #8 because he was restored to his most recent memory backup upon resurrection. What Greycrow says here isn’t exactly wrong, but Empath is basically right to intuit that he wouldn’t have died heroically for the team. What happened is that he tried to run away, he got captured by the Smileys, and when he tried to use his powers on Hodge, he discovered that Hodge was just an AI. He did, to be fair to him, go on to use that information to provoke Hodge into going off the rails, and in that sense what Greycrow says is true. But Greycrow is either winding Empath up or trying to nudge him in a more improving direction (or maybe both). This is certainly the most friendly we’ve seen Greycrow towards Empath, and Empath himself seemed to be softening a little bit in the previous issue.

Note, by the way, that the art shows the Hellions base as entirely mechanical and spartan. It’s completely divorced from the normal appearance of Krakoa, reflecting their exclusion from polite society.

PAGE 9. Greycrow and Psylocke.

Greycrow considers the mission against Arcade in issues #9-11 to have been a tremendous success that bonded the team together (something that matters to him a lot, as the most team-spirited member of the cast – note that Havok, ostensibly the nicest team member, makes no effort to bond with the others and considers them all beneath him). What Greycrow doesn’t know, but Psylocke does, is that issue #11 ended with Mastermind making the other Hellions believe that they’d scored a great win. So the team bonding event is actually hollow, and Psylocke is feeling guilty about that. Greycrow is understandably bemused by this sudden reversal in what seemed a promising relationship.

PAGE 10. Nanny and Orphan-Maker.

Nanny did indeed tell Orphan-Maker to stay out of her room in issue #8.

PAGE 11. Greycrow and Orphan-Maker.

Greycrow, as usual, is trying to be supportive to his teammates – even the Very Weird ones like Orphan-Maker.

PAGE 12. Data page – a memo from Prodigy of X-Factor pressing for further information about the deaths of the Hellions. Prodigy is basically recapping the plot of issues #5-6, so far as known to him. The bit he doesn’t know is that Sinister sent a clone of himself on the mission to Amenth rather than going himself. But Prodigy correct to infer that the Hellions didn’t make it back with serious injuries and then keel over – Sinister killed them on their return, so that he could retrieve the cell samples they had brought back, and then have then rebooted with no memories of what they had done for him. Later in this issue, the clone Sinister describes them as “the genes of monsters”.

PAGE 13. Mr Sinister and Mastermind.

Sinister and Mastermind hijacked Arcade’s base to set up a secret facility in issue #11, apparently in order do something with the cell samples that were recovered from Amenth, and keep it secret from the Krakoan authorities. Mastermind got his “new role at X-Corp” in X-Corp #2, hence his bidding farewell to this storyline.

PAGES 14-15. The clone Sinister confronts the original.

The clone Sinister fought Tarn in issues #5-6 and got cut into pieces – hence the stitches.

“I won the noble contest!” In issue #5, the two Sinisters decided who was going to go to Amenth with a “noble contest” – rock paper scissors. I think this is the first time we’ve been told that Sinister Prime screwed over the clone on that too.

The cape. Sinister did indeed let his clone take the cape to Otherworld. He traded it to Jamie Braddock for a horse in issue #5.

PAGE 16. Greycrow and Orphan-Maker.

A father-son bonding moment. Greycrow’s natural urge to hold the team together leads him to take a fatherly role towards Orphan-Maker. By Orphan-Maker’s standards, he’s actually having a fairly normal conversation here, and he’s openly starting to doubt Nanny. Greycrow is clearly a positive influence.

Peter’s back story remains vague, but Nanny supposedly rescued him from Mr Sinister. Presumably he wound up with Sinister via the Nebraska orphanage. Peter seems to imply here that he does remember his mother.

PAGE 17. Havok.

As Greycrow says, Havok was studiously ignoring the Hellions last issue at the Hellfire Gala, and trying his best to distance himself from them. Greycrow is quite plainly the better team player in this context, even if Havok is being civil to his teammates. The “fight” was Wild Child attacking Daken out of jealousy over Aurora, as seen last issue.

PAGE 18. The Sinisters fight.

“King Jamie showed up… [c]laiming I was in his debt.” In issue #5, the Sinister clone offered to make a new body for Jamie, as part of his trade. Jamie called in that favour in Excalibur #16, to get Sinister to make a new body for his sister Betsy.

PAGES 19-21. The Hellions arrive.

The Hellions (those who made it back) learn here that Sinister killed them on their arrival in Krakoa in issue #6. In this case, that includes Psylocke.

The clone Sinister reveals that he was put back together by Tarn (well, he was hardly going to sew himself back together, was he?) and now works for the Locus Vile.

Wild Child and Nanny, who both died in Amenth and were changed on reincarnation, sense the arrival of the Amenth characters. It’s not clear at this stage whether their link goes any further than that. For whatever reason, Orphan-Maker, who also died in Amenth, doesn’t react in the same way. It’s maybe worth noting here that while Orphan-Maker came back larger and seemingly older than before, he doesn’t seem to have undergone the sort of personality change that the other two did. Or maybe it’s just getting blurred with him acting slightly older.

PAGES 22-23. The Locus Vile

Only the five members of the Locus Vile appear here, and not their leader Tarn. The others are Mother Rapture (on the left), Hex Butcher (with the spikes), Mudgear (the misshapen thing in the foreground), Sick Bird (the goth one in the background) and Amino Foetus (the enormous thing that says “gor gor”).

Hex Butcher did indeed cut off Havok’s hands in issue #6. According to his profile in that issue, Hex Butcher eats body parts of defeated enemies for power, so he’s being absolutely literal when he says that he ate them.

PAGE 24. Trailers. The Krakoan reads NEXT: A VILE FATE.