X-Men #2 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN vol 6 #2
“Fearless, Chapter Two: ‘Catching the Wave'”
by Gerry Duggan, Pepe Larraz & Marte Gracia
COVER / PAGE 1. Group shot of the team. Of course, actually having a team is a significant thing we’re trying to stress in these issues.
PAGE 2. A quote from Nova about the Annihilation Wave. This really isn’t my area of continuity, but I don’t think Nova did die fighting the Annihilation Wave, did he? Maybe he means it destroyed his home and lifestyle.
PAGE 3. Rogue breaks up Gambit’s card game.
The other players are the Black Cat, the Thing and the Rhino – hardly the worst people around, but Rogue clearly doesn’t want any bad publicity attending this new X-Men team. This feels like an unspoken change of attitude for the Krakoan era, where mutants have been prone to loudly proclaiming how little they care about what humans think. But the X-Men are based in New York, not Krakoa.
The Bar with No Name is a supervillain underground bar, which has been around in the Marvel Universe since the 80s.
PAGES 4-5. Gameworld announces its latest bet.
The Annihilation Wave was, strictly speaking, the entire invading force of Annihilus from the 2006 crossover Annihilation. The bugs who appear in this issue were only one part of that force. They’re supposed to be a cosmic level threat, but it looks like their aura of unstoppability is going to go the way of the Juggernaut’s. Mind you, given that the original Annihilation Wave supposedly wiped out millions of worlds on day one, you’d have thought that even the most lunatic villain would be reluctant to release the thing at anything approaching full force. Realistically, what’s getting unleashed in this issue is an Annihilation Wave cell that gets nipped in the bud. The narrator describes it as “a small batch” later on.
As far as I know, the Numari and Kriv Yu are new.
PAGE 6. Recap and credits.
PAGES 7-8. The Annilation Wave is released in Kansas.
The narrator tells us that there is no motivation for any of this beyond “sport” and “profit”. I’m not entirely sure I buy even mercenary profiteers being up for betting directly on the deliberate annihilation of planets for no other purpose, to be honest – that doesn’t really seem to me to map on to anything in the real world of cynical profiteering.
PAGES 9-10. Synch practices telepathy with Jean Grey.
Incidentally, the recap page has gone back to calling her “Jean Grey”, and not “Marvel Girl”.
“Your time with Wolverine in the Vault.” The Vault trilogy from X-Men vol 5 #5, 18 and 19, where Synch, Wolverine (Laura) and Darwin were stuck in the Children of the Vault’s time-warping Vault for centuries from their standpoint. Wolverine doesn’t remember this, because she was resurrected from memories backed up before she entered the Vault. As a result, she doesn’t know that she and Synch were a couple in the Vault. Synch confirms here that he hasn’t told her yet, and is trying to find a way to.
“Whoever threw this at us knew to avoid Arakko on the way into the system.” Really? There’s only one Arakko orbiting the Sun… can you really infer that anyone was consciously avoiding it, as opposed to just coming from the other direction anyway?
PAGES 11-20. The X-Men defeat the Annihilation Wave.
There’s a lot of powers being used in combination here, a recurring feature of the Krakoa-era X-Men when the story wants to justify mutants doing something extraordinary. In particular, it’s Jean and Polaris working together to read the mind of the dead guy who brought the Annihilation Wave to Earth. That’s an image of Gameworld and Cordyceps Jones she sees in his mind.
The Blob. Cyclops is thinking of the 1958 film starring Steve McQueen, which does indeed involve an alien blob that lands on Earth and gets bigger with everything it eats. We’re not being subtle with the influences here. The other Blob referenced by Cyclops, the B-list villain, is the standard barkeeper at the Green Lagoon tiki bar on Krakoa.
The Unity Squad. The Avengers team that Rogue served on in Uncanny Avengers.
PAGES 21-22. Sunfire talks to the locals.
The first panel seems to show young Shiro mourning a relative. In his origin story from X-Men vol 1 #64, she was killed by the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, which obviously no longer works due to sliding time. Alpha Flight vol 2 #7 tried to retcon it into being Sunfire’s grandfather (who survives but eventually dies of radiation poisoning). But by 2021, even that’s a stretch. This story chooses to be vague about it rather than give a specific retcon.
“By the time I realised I was born gifted…” Sunfire’s origin story involves his powers emerging while visiting Hiroshima, which is presumably what we see here.
“I fought for my country.” In X-Men vol 1 #64, Sunfire was being manipulated by a Japanese nationalist relative, and was motivated heavily by revenge for Hiroshima. It… wasn’t very subtle.
“Then I fought for the X-Men.” In Giant-Size X-Men #1, though he quit almost immediately.
“Later, I fought for the Avengers.” In Uncanny Avengers #5.
“I had already found fighting for country to be unfulfilling…” Like Cyclops in the previous issues, Sunfire seems to be disavowing the mutant nationalism angle of Krakoa and playing up the X-Men as fighting for all humanity.
“I have always served a powerful interest, with the goal of self-enrichment.” That’s a really odd comment, unless he means his goal was enrichment in the spiritual sense.
“Those were the words I spoke on behalf of myself at the Hellfire Gala.” I think this material is new. It presumably reflects what he said during the “election” sequence in X-Men vol 5 #21.
Of course, we wind up with everything right with the world.
PAGES 23-24. Stasis kills his family.
This is the same guy we saw at the end of the previous issue, still working on his investigation into how mutants are resurrecting their dead. His file in the final paragraph seems to contain information about how the X-Men died while raiding the Orchis Forge in House of X.
Last issue, Stasis was also shown working on human/animal hybrids with the Oblivion Institute. One of them, Bornan, seems to be serving him here. His name and appearance suggest he’s meant to be a hybridised Bornean tiger.
Bornan indicates that the wife and son who die here are just the latest in a series of despatched individuals. Since Stasis seems to be living on an ordinary suburban street, one wonders how the neighbours have failed to notice the steady turnover of fifties wives. Perhaps his influence runs beyond just the house.
Stasis’s interest in human/animal hybrids – and his name – suggest a parallel with the High Evolutionary, who doesn’t appear in this story, but was in Gameworld last issue.
PAGE 25. A memo from Dr Stasis.
Stasis is described as a “Human / Resources Director” – humans as resources, presumably.
Again, his memo is discussing the events of House of X. Leaving aside his bizarre agenda, his interpretation of events to date is essentially correct.
Doctor Devo is the leader of Orchis, as seen in House of X and the previous volume of X-Men.
“A reporter at the Bugle … seems to already have a whiff of the story…” Ben Urich, last issue. But how does Stasis know that…?
PAGE 26. Trailers. The Krakoan reads NEXT: HIGH STAKES.
The Nova *corps* died at the beginning of Annihilation, but Rich Rider Nova got a whole new comic out of it. He “died” fighting the cancerverse in Thanos Imperative.
But quoting something about the Nova Corps being destroyed is like quoting something about the time the helicarrier crashed.
And yeah, travelling through the solar system and avoiding Mars is way, way easier than travelling through the solar system and travelling near Mars. When they launched the Voyager probes it was really hard to time it so they’d go by just two planets.
“Then I fought for the X-Men.” In Giant-Size X-Men #1, though he quit almost immediately.”
Technically, he never joined. I don’t care what the official handbooks say. From the dialogue between Shiro and Xavier on page 2 of X-Men #94, it’s clear that as far as Sunfire was concerned, he was only lending the X-Men an assist..
Xavier: “I don’t understand. I thought you agreed to join us.”
Shiro “I agreed to HELP you.”
^On the basis of that, the handbooks, up until now, should’ve identified Sunfire as an ally or an associate, not a past member. He didn’t join anything.
The Annihilation Wave was already nerfed during Hickman’s Avengers Infinity crossover to make HIS bad guys seem more powerful.
Hickman nerfed the Annihilation Wave even before his Avengers run. In his FF run, a single Kree armada was able to hold back the Annihilation Wave when they were under Johnny Storm’s control. In the original story, it took Galactus himself going apeshit and destroying multiple star systems to stop the Wave.
This is a really good book. I like the one-and-done nature of the primary threats, a bit of a carryover from the Hickman run. I hope Pepe Larraz and Marte Gracia stay on this book for as long as possible. I know Javier Pina is doing a fill-in for issue 4 (the Halloween issue) so that they can catch up.
In hindsight, looking at the cover of issue 1 (the full wraparound cover) might give us some clues on the threats that the X-Men team will face:
Wolverine slicing metallic tentacles: the Mind Reaver in issue 1
Sunfire burning a giant bug: the Annihilation Wave in issue 2
Four-armed monkeys with guns: the New Men of the High Evolutionary?
Rogue and Synch fighting velociraptors: a visit to the Savage Land?
Polaris fighting a giant robot: Ultron? (This one might be a stretch) Could be AIM or Orchis as well.
One thing that feels a little inconsistent to me is that clearly XENO DOES know about resurrection, because they’ve collected a Cerebro, killed multiple mutants, and collected their bodies. And whomever collected the Wolverine hand that was auctioned may well have also collected a full Wolverine corpse. So if Orchis is only JUST figuring this out, their connections to other anti-mutant groups is looser than expected.
I don’t think they have connections with other anti-mutant groups.
They see themselves as the last hope for humanity which has managed to escape the Earth before Krakoa took over.
The organization is made up of scientists who worked for major international organizations like SHIELD or AIM. They have contacts in governments, like Gyrich. I think they probably see themselves as above a typical speciest grassroots anti-mutant militia like XENO.
On the one hand I appreciate the one-and-done stories. On the other hand ‘a bunch of guys sit on a moon and send monsters to Earth’ is… a bit random, a bit silly, but most of all a lot Power Rangers.
I’m hoping the longer-term subplots of the evil doctor and Ben Urich’s investigation carry more weight in the future.
Yeah it’s very “make my monster grow!” so far.
I still feel very removed from the characters so far, which is a recurring theme of Hickman’s era.
It feels like I’m watching a TV show playing in a storefront window.
I get what’s happening, but it all feels very disconnected.
They learned what’s up at the end of this issue, so I figure the “pattern” (if two connected points can qualify) will break in # 3.
I feel like this book was a good idea. We needed an X-Men book featuring a strong roster just doing traditional superheroics, an equivalent of DC’s JLA. Seemed strange that the most old-school book in execution on the stands during the Hickman Era was HELLIONS.
“an equivalent of DC’s JLA”
Isn’t that what the Avengers are for?