X-Men: The Trial of Magneto #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN: THE TRIAL OF MAGNETO #1
“Dial M for Wanda”
by Leah Williams, Lucas Werneck & Edgar Delgado
This is a five-issue miniseries following on from the murder of the Scarlet Witch during “Hellfire Gala”.
COVER / PAGE 1. The body of the Scarlet Witch with Magneto in the background. To avoid spoilers, the solicitation art showed a chalk outline in place of Wanda.
PAGE 2. Opening quotation. The Scarlet Witch is talking about immortality being a curse, the irony being not just her own death but the pride that the Krakoans take in their resurrection technology. Note that over in Way of X this week, we’re also being told that resurrection has a major downside (specifically, it provides a route in for Onslaught).
Although the quotation is said to be from “years ago”, as far as I know it’s original.
PAGE 3. Recap and credits. Wanda’s body was found in X-Factor #10.
The small print reads “murder investigation – trial of X” in the top left, and “Who killed Wanda?” in the central bottom. The choice of characters to highlight in the cast section more or less presents this as X-Factor #11.
PAGES 4. Daken examines the crime scene.
For any newcomers, that’s X-Factor’s leader Northstar in panel 1, with members Daken and Prestige (Rachel Summers), accompanied by her Warwolf pet Amazing Baby. X-Factor’s normal role is to verify that mutants have died so that they can be resurrected without risk of duplication, but they’re the closest thing Krakoa has to murder investigators.
Also present are Wolverine (Logan) and Domino from X-Force, the “mutant CIA”, and Wolverine (Laura Kinney) and Synch (Everett Thomas), who were literally just voted onto the X-Men a few hours ago in X-Men #21.
The Scarlet Witch (Wanda Maximoff) has a horrendously complicated back story, caused in part by efforts to distance her and Quicksilver from the X-Men for licensing reasons during the period when the X-Men and Avengers movie licenses were in separate hands. For present purposes, it’s enough to know that she and her brother Quicksilver were for many years believed to be Magneto’s children, and that in 2005’s House of M event, she had a breakdown and wiped out the powers of most mutants on Earth. Krakoan culture views her as a hate figure.
PAGE 5-6. Rachel views the past.
Rachel’s powers include the ability to see events from the past, something that dates back to Excalibur.
X-Force were shown working as the Hellfire Gala event security in X-Force #20 and Wolverine #13.
PAGES 7-9. X-Force and X-Factor examine the body.
According to page 12, this is the “corpse garden” in X-Factor’s grounds, where bodies are allowed to decompose for purposes of scientif study.The people gathered around the body are X-Force’s Beast, Sage and Wolverine, plus Prodigy and Eye-Boy (who normally do the forensic work for X-Factor) and Cecilia Reyes, Krakoa’s main regular doctor (as opposed to mutant healer).
Sage, plus . Prodigy and Eye-Boy, who normally do the forensic work for X-Factor both get dialogue. I think the woman who speaks first is X-Force member Sage, though we never get a clear shot of her. Wolverine (Logan) is there too. Up in the gallery are X-Men Cyclops, Jean Grey and Polaris (who only just left X-Factor a few hours ago), plus Egg, Tempo, Proteus and Hope from the Five. Their fifth member Elixir is absent for some reason.
Note that while Beast is characteristically trying to take control of the situation, Wolverine stays back and lets his son Daken do his job. He only intervenes to prompt Daken when he thinks something has been missed.
The facts that her murderer had a white cape and used metal is, very obviously, meant to point to Magneto.
Cecilia says that Wanda died at 2.56am. That contradicts S.W.O.R.D. #6, in which she didn’t even arrive at the venue to meet Magneto until 3.17am, 21 minutes later. Most likely this is an error, but the timeline of the Hellfire Gala was fairly consistent throughout the tie-in issues, so maybe not.
PAGES 10-14. Magneto tries to persuade the Quiet Council to resurrect Wanda.
The Quiet Council. The ruling body of Krakoa. Going clockwise from top in page 10 panel 1, we’re seeing Magneto, the empty seat that formerly belonged to Apocalypse, Mister Sinister, Exodus, Mystique, Kate Pryde, Emma Frost, Sebastian Shaw, Nightcrawler, the empty seat that formerly belonged to Jean Grey, and Storm (still on the Quiet Council even though she’s also been appointed to its equivalent on Arakko).
Magneto has switched to a version of his black costume (from his 2014 solo series), presumably as a show of mourning.
Obviously, the fact that Magneto is pushing so hard to resurrect Wanda points strongly away from his having murdered her. In S.W.O.R.D. #6, he claimed that he still thought of her and Pietro as his children despite the subsequent retcons. But the main reason he gives here is that “you’re all wilfully making a choice to endanger the Krakoan experiment.” We don’t see him explain what he’s referring to there, but everyone seems to understand.
Resurrection. Normally available only to mutants, who are backed up on Cerebro. But, Professor X explains, Wanda and Pietro are an exception because they do have Cerebro back-ups. Uncanny Avengers vol 2 #4 eventually revealed that they were not mutants, but had been disguised by the High Evolutionary. The logic, I suppose, is that they must have registered on Cerebro as mutants at the time, as otherwise their absence would have been noticed – particularly during the time when Quicksilver was actually a member of X-Factor.
Note the wider implications, though. Xavier seems to be saying that Cerebro stopped recording them once the true position became known, but presumably that was due to a conscious decision on his part. It’s unlikely that Cerebro was reading Uncanny Avengers. He certainly seems to be saying here that the supposedly mutant-centric technology of resurrection is in fact perfectly capable of being extended to ordinary humans – at least in principle. The volume of humanity might still be beyond his resources.
“Multiple potential suspects with supernatural abilities.” I’m not sure who exactly Magneto is identifying as having “supernatural” abilities among X-Force and X-Factor, unless he’s using “supernatural” to mean generically superhuman as opposed to magical.
The vote. The three votes in favour of resurrection come from Magneto himself, the consistently nice Nightcrawler, and Kate Pryde, who voices a surprisingly traditional moral line. Those voting against are the four outright villains (Sinister, Exodus, Mystique and Sebastian Shaw), Emma Frost and Storm. The motives of the latter two are interesting – Emma seems to just see Wanda as a liability to mutantkind, but Storm says nothing to explain her decision. Magneto takes them to be simply shrugging their shoulders and accepting that normal human limitations apply to everyone but them – even though Professor X has very clearly just told them that it isn’t true.
Note that Professor X, as chair, doesn’t cast a vote one way or the other.
“I carved myself out of torture to stand tall upon the ruins of my subjugation.” Magneto is alluding to his back story as a Holocaust survivor.
PAGES 15-17. Magneto refuses to be arrested.
The generic Krakoan s are celebrating the death of their national hate figure (“the pretender”, because she pretended to be a mutant).
Note that in S.W.O.R.D. #5 (just one month before the Gala), Magneto gave a speech to the Council telling Fabian Cortez that if he committed murder “again, for any reason, I would face exile. And face it gladly, for we must be a nation of laws.” Even assuming he’s innocent, he’s not exactly honouring that commitment to due process – but the reality is that the Krakoan legal system is so rudimentary that it doesn’t have any due process. There are no judges, and no meaningfully specific laws – just the whim of the Quiet Council.
PAGE 18. Kyle comforts Tommy.
Tommy is Speed, formerly of the Young Avengers, who was Wanda’s reincarnated son. Kyle Jinadu is Northstar’s husband, seemingly the only human living on Krakoa (for reasons that have still never been explained, despite the Krakoans steadfastly refusing to accept human refugees in other stories).
“I called my brother, but there’s been some sort of space emergency.” Tommy’s brother is Wiccan (Billy Kaplan), who is married to Hulkling, the current emperor of the combined Kree/Skrull empire. The “space emergency” is the “Last Annihilation” storyline over in Guardians of the Galaxy, which also tied in to S.W.O.R.D. #7. That issue confirms that Tommy’s intuition is correct: Billy has been trying to contact Wanda, and assumes that his inability to do so is because something is blocking his signal.
PAGE 19. Professor X tells the Avengers about Wanda’s death.
Captain America, Iron Man, Wasp and Vision attend (rather than the current line-up of the Avengers, which would have people like Blade and Ghost Rider who barely know Wanda). Vision is Wanda’s ex-husband from the 1980s.
Xavier can be quite high-handed with the non-mutant heroes during the Krakoan era, but he’s being much more like his old self here.
PAGES 20-26. Magneto is captured.
As in the autopsy scene, Wolverine is played here as a father taking pride in his son’s accomplishments.
Magneto assumes that the person using his powers against him is newly elected X-Man Synch, who does indeed have the ability to copy powers. He may be right, because we do see Synch a little bit later. But it doesn’t seem to occur to him that it could be his daughter Polaris, until she actually shows her face. He then goes on a rant about how inconsistent and ill-defined her personality is, which was a concern raised in early issues of X-Factor. It’s fair to say that Lorna has indeed been a hazily defined character over the years.
Lorna accuses Magneto of trying to “break” her and “rearrange the pieces of me back into your perfect daughter”. I’m not really sure what they have in mind there. The closest would probably be the time she spend on Genosha with him at the turn of the century, helping to prop up his powers during a period when he was depleted – but that’s not really a period of mental instability. She did have a phase later on, during the Chuck Austen run, of erratically following in her father’s footsteps – but Magneto himself wasn’t really involved in that.
Quicksilver shows up without explanation – as a non-mutant, he shouldn’t be able to use the gates, but perhaps he’s just done the speedster trick of running across the sea. The art doesn’t show this very clearly, but Northstar scoops him up and takes him away before he can kill Magneto. Quicksilver accuses Magneto of having “always talked about” killing Wanda, which isn’t really true, but probably does fit with the sort of threats he would have bandied about when they were all members of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants back in the Silver Age.
Pietro insists that Wanda was “just unwell” and “a very sick woman” who “needed help.” That was true at the time of House of M, but it isn’t really how she’s been played in recent years (including in her solo book), nor is it how she was written in S.W.O.R.D. #6. Admittedly, she was shown as being unhealthily obsessed with atoning for House of M in Empyre: X-Men. Note that Pietro is making these comments to Northstar, whose sister Aurora has also been plagued by mental health problems over the years (much more so than Wanda, in fact).
PAGE 27. Scott, Jean and Logan discuss Magneto.
This is where we finally get a “classic” X-Men line-up, away from the others. Logan asks the obvious plot-problem question of why they don’t just read Magneto’s mind, and gets some blather about the difficulties of reading sleeping minds. That would kind of make sense if it had been established over the years, but here it really does feel like something that’s been conjured up to try and cure a plot hole.
PAGES 28-29. The surviving Brotherhood members in the Green Lagoon.
The other two at the bar are the Toad and Mastermind (now of X-Corp), both of whom were also members of the original Brotherhood of Evil Mutants back in the day. Toad always had a crush on Wanda, which never went anywhere. The bartender, as always, is the Blob.
PAGES 30-33. Wanda’s vision.
Wanda imagines herself in white, being killed by the white-robed figure, and bleeding out to turn her costume back to its usual red. There’s no sign in this sequence of her hands being restrained, so presumably this isn’t a literal depiction of how she died. The flowers motif normally points to Krakoa in the current era, which is curious.
PAGE 34. Trailers. The Krakoan reads NEXT: AVENGERS ASSEMBLE.
There’s something weird going on with the second paragraph for PAGES 7-9.
Also, I’m pretty sure that’s Elixir we can see to the right on the first panel of page 7 (as a healer, he’s the one member of The Five who makes sense as participating more actively in the autopsy).
Leah Williams has stated in an interview that this was originally supposed to be X-FACTOR #15 (and thus #9-10 had to rush through material initially planned for 6 issues instead of 2).
I’m not sure if it’s purposeful, but what interested me in this issue was a seeming hint at a bond between Mystique and Emma.
I probably wouldn’t have noticed it without seeing the cover to Inferno #2.
My guess is that Emma is going to make a power play to replace Xavier and Magneto as Krakoa’s ruler.
Emma has promised Mystique she will immediately resurrect Destiny if Mystique helps her.
I assumed that Mystique planned her revenge by first eliminating Magneto. She disguised herself as Magneto and framed him for Wanda’s murder.
This would leave Xavier alone as Krakoa’s ruler, making him an easy target for Emma and Mystique’s goal.
I think Elixir is absent because he is still on Arakko (Planet-Size X-Men #1).
Yeah, I listened to Leah Williams’s recent interview and it confirmed what I had always believed: that ‘The Trial of Magneto’ was supposed to be a future arc of X-Factor that got turned into its own miniseries as that book got cancelled. Leah says it was supposed to be issue 15, so in her outline it was probably something like:
Issues 6 – 9: the Morrigan case, ending with Shatterstar and Siryn becoming Krakoan gods*
Issue 10: Hellfire Gala tie-in, probably setting up the Prodigy case
Issues 11 – 14: likely the Prodigy case
Issues 15 – 19: the Wanda Maximoff case
If we assume normal publishing patterns with no gap months, issue 15 would have come out in December, with Wanda probably being revealed dead in the issue 14 stinger. (a bit like how Siryn was revealed dead in issue 5 to set up the Morrigan case). This also means that other than some references, this story likely has very little to do with Inferno or Onslaught.
* In her original outline, Shatterstar was going to end up as the Krakoan God of War (like Ares or Tyr) and Siryn would have become the Krakoan God of Death (like Hades or Hela), independent of the Morrigan. Leah was trying to build some kind of Krakoan pantheon. There was some reference to this in X-Factor 10, but it got cut out as it went to print.
I thought there might be an Emma and Mystique team-up too back when the Hellfire Gala was coming out. As in, Mystique gets Emma’s help to go against Professor X, Magneto and Moira X.
I’ve since changed my mind. The teasers for Inferno have put Magneto, Emma and Professor X into one group (OUR LEADERS CAN’T BE TRUSTED) and Mystique, Moira and Destiny into another group (OUR ENEMIES CAN’T BE TRUSTED). The Mark Brooks poster for Inferno shows this too. Upon reflection, this makes more sense to me.
Inferno will probably feature the breakup of Moira from Xavier and Magneto. This was hinted at in Powers of X 6, where Charles and Erik tell her to step aside and let them rule Krakoa. In the meantime, Emma will conduct an independent investigation and find out about this. The Kara Kutuca (Emma was looking for this in X-Men 21) has something to do with this. This was also hinted at in Powers of X 6 where Moira says that Emma is up to something. Emma will probably catch Xavier and Magneto as they fall.
Professor X, Magento and Moira broke all the rules and realized their dreams when they founded the nation of Krakoa. While Charles and Erik fully believe in Krakoa (This is all there is, Erik. We live and die with this, you and I.), the older and more radicalised Moira believes that it is not enough and that eventually even Krakoa will fall. To this end, she does not want the resurrection of precognitives, who can confirm this truth. At the same time, she is in possession of the Books of Destiny and is reading them, presumably to learn of threats to Krakoa before they happen. Through plot circumstances, I believe that Mystique have a confrontation with Moira, where they discuss things. About the ‘burn Krakoa down’ thing, I don’t think Destiny ever intended for her wife to literally burn down Krakoa. It was something to motivate Mystique into setting off a chain of events that will culminate in an outcome that Destiny wants. I could be wrong, but I think there was a similar gambit in Wolverines.
I do believe that there will be a Destiny resurrection and an Irene / Raven reunion in Inferno though.
The cover to the first issue of Inferno seems to imply that the “wrong woman to mess with” is actually Moira rather than Mystique.
I also believe that Xavier and Magneto have gone in their own direction (they were from the beginning when they gave power to Sinister, when Moira didn’t want Sinister even on the island).
My original feeling was that Sinister was going to begin cloning the people that Krakoa refused to resurrect, including Destiny.
It doesn’t seem this is the direction events are headed anymore.
I thought that was the point where Moira would grow tired of Xavier and Magneto’s incompetence. They made a deal with Sinister against her wishes. They couldn’t even prevent Destiny from being resurrected.
The cover to issue #2 shows Emma holding Magneto’s helmet and the Cerebro helmet of Xavier, which seems to imply that Emma has taken Xavier and Magneto’s place as ruler of Krakoa.
That doesn’t exactly fit with my idea that Moira is the one that Xavier and Magneto need to be aware, rather than Mystique.
That would seem to play in to Emma taking Krakoa from Moira by eliminating Xavier and Magneto’s power.
I still do believe that Moira is the one who Xavier and Magneto should be wary, rather than Mystique though.
I also don’t think Moira is that concerned about precognitives. I think she is specifically concerned about Destiny.
There is an Omega-level precognitive living on Arakko now, and it hasn’t been a concern.
Destiny is the only one who will be aware of Moira.
Moira doesn’t want to reveal to Xavier that in life two she decided that mutants were “a cancer in need of a cure” and the history between her and Destiny.
So, instead, she claims she doesn’t want any precognitives on Krakoa.
Chris V, I’ll respond to your comments on Inferno in a while. Sorry about that.
A bit more on the Trial:
Williams also revealed that the ‘The Trial of Magneto’ title (and by extension, the covers) were a product of the marketing department and that the story is not really about Magneto (or I suspect, about an actual trial). I’ll go a bit further and postulate that the entire ‘whodunit’ angle to this story is also a product of marketing.
I believe it was Aro in the comments of X-Factor 10 annotations who made the very astute observation that ‘nearly every mystery X-Factor has investigated in this series had the victim being an active participant in their own murder, either willingly (Aurora and Prodigy) or through some kind of coercion (Wind Dancer and Siren)’. Hence, the being that killed Wanda was likely some kind of chaotic manifestation that she conjured either willingly or through manipulation.
The ‘circle with arrows’ seen in the final data page on page 33 is the Sigil of Chaos, from Michael Moorcock. Clearly there is chaos magic afoot in this story.
This series is likely a character drama with the aesthetics of a whodunit, which is how Williams has written the other arcs of X-Factor.
The first issue was about Wanda’s relationship with her former family (Magneto and Polaris).
Issue 2 would be about her relationship with the Avengers.
There will probably be an issue about her relationship with Chthon and chaos magic.
And another about her relationship with her sons Tommy and Billy (once he shows up post-Last Annihilation).
Or something like that. In any case, it was a foregone conclusion that Wanda will be back to life before the end of this series, stronger than ever. While you can kill characters for a story (Gabby, for example), it’s bad form to just leave them dead, especially when other people might want to use them. What’s more interesting is what will happen to Wanda after this series. She could either go back to the Avengers (the likelier outcome) or stay on Krakoa in one of the X-Books (less likely, I say this because there is already an overabundance of characters on Krakoa either without books or soon to be without books – I’m anticipating a downsizing after Inferno).
There is one other possibility: as mentioned above, Williams was interested in building some kind of Krakoan pantheon. Shatterstar and Siryn could still be in it, it was never conclusively stated what happened to them at the end of X-Factor. Wanda could end up as some kind of Krakoan God of Chaos / Magic at the end of this. It’s not very likely, but it’s a possibility.
“The logic, I suppose, is that they must have registered on Cerebro as mutants at the time, as otherwise their absence would have been noticed – particularly during the time when Quicksilver was actually a member of X-Factor.”
It’s not just that- it’s that they were actually shown to show up on mutant detectors over the years. For example, in Avengers 104, Wanda shows up on the Sentinels’ mutant detector. There’s a line in Uncanny Avengers 4 about how the Evolutionary disguised them as mutants to explain these scenes. I’m not sure if either of them showed up on Cerebro but I can see why Williams thought that having them show up on Sentinels’ mutant detectors but not Cerebro would be too complicated.
Why does Xavier describe Wanda’s and Pietros’ backups as “very. very old backups”? Uncanny Avengers 2 was cover-dated April 2015. That’s what- a year ago, two in Marvel time?
Paul, I’m surprised you didn’t realize why Storm refused to resurrect Wanda- clearly, there’s a clause in Krakoa’s bylaws that prohibits resurrecting redheads who became villains after they lost their husband and children and started lusting after their brother-in-law. 🙂
I’m not sure I buy Mastermind and Blob mourning Wanda. Blob was a member of Magneto’s Brotherhood for a few hours and Mastermind let his own daughter be kidnapped for the sake of a scam a couple months ago in Hellions, so I’m not buying he had deep feelings for Wanda. (Admittedly, it’s possible that he no longer cares if his daughter’s killed, raped, tortured, etc. since she can just be resurrected without the memory of any traumatic experiences but if that’s the reason for the distinction, it could have come across more clearly.)
From discussions on Reddit, I’m leaning towards another Wanda killing Wanda.
That’s why one Wanda dances with Magneto after the other is dead. That’s why the only blood or DNA they find is Wanda’s.
——–
Elixir is there at the autopsy on the right.
Over in Way of X, Legion’s psychic prying revealed that Mercury has a sadistic streak that she keeps hidden from the world, so a theory circulating on another site I visit is that maybe she killed Wanda. It would explain the metallic restraints on Wanda’s wrists. As to motive, I’m not sure what that would be as I don’t expect WOX’s Onslaught plotline to have much impact outside that book, though it would be fitting if she was one of the people listening to Exodus rant about how Wanda is Satan day in and day out and finally decided to do something about it. At least it would force the Krakoans to pay some attention to the dark underbelly of their national culture.
In general I think the most fitting reveal would just be that Wanda was killed by some random Krakoan child, a complete innocent, driven to murder simply by absorbing the propaganda of Krakoa’s leadership and acting accordingly. You can’t just build a mythology around someone as the Great Enemy of everything you know and love, and not expect the impressionable among your audience to take it to heart.
I’d be willing to bet all the money in the world the answer to who killed Wanda isn’t going to be Mercury.
It being a random kid would be interesting, but they aren’t going to do something that questions Krakoa like that. The writers have made it very clear- Krakoa is great and right.
As others have noted, Elixir is at the autopsy using his powers.
I really like the idea that some random Krakoa kid killed Wanda, but I agree it’s probably something else.
My read of Magneto’s argument to the Quiet Council was that Wanda’s death is going to result in the Avengers insisting on coming to Krakoa to do their own investigation, which will set up any number of possible problems… not the least of which is that they could discover the resurrection tech.
@Uncanny X-Ben — I’m not sure I agree that the writers have been unequivocal that Krakoa is a good thing. In fact, I’d say that most of the books in the line have gone out of their way to hint at problems beneath the surface… the Crucible, Onslaught’s presence in the resurrection system, the lack of any real accountability for the Quiet Council, the unilateral terraforming and declaration of Mars as the Sol capital, Beast’s storyline in X-Force, the double standards surrounding resurrection, etc. I’ve been assuming that hinting at problems being papered over is part of the remit for each book in the line, to be honest.
Note the wider implications, though. Xavier seems to be saying that Cerebro stopped recording them once the true position became known, but presumably that was due to a conscious decision on his part. It’s unlikely that Cerebro was reading Uncanny Avengers.
It’s a kind of reverse Schrodinger’s cat. As long as you ‘know’ she’s a mutant, you can detect her as one.
Even though hes not a mutant, id love the answer to be that the Grim Reaper killed Wanda, from a long term booking perspective.
The Leah Williams interview on Battle of the Atom was eye-opening. It sounded like X-Factor was pulled out from under her just so they could turn one of her upcoming storylines into an Event. My impressions based on that interview may be coloring my reaction, but I thought Trial of Magneto1 was a pretty angry comic. Magneto’s words and actions, X-Factor telling the other X-characters to leave them alone to do their job, the party to celebrate Wanda’s death, Pietro, Tommy, Toad… the primary expression of grief was anger. Maybe Leah Williams was working out her own anger and grief at X-Factor’s unexpected cancellation in the pages of this comic? I freely admit I could be way off-base here.
Anyway, between the high emotions and horrifying details revealed during the murder investigation, I found this comic to be viscerally effective. The art was excellent. Character-acting, physical conflict, and more surreal aspects were all well-executed. I’m looking forward to the rest of the series.
@CitizenBane: I really like that idea. It’s more powerful and less obvious than simply “Mystique did it”.
I am enjoying how this series feels like a planful continuation of X-Factor, at least. Williams’ writing is very grounded in character, and it shows well here, even with a large cast.
Also nice touch with the original Brotherhood drinking in the bar 🙂
Ben Johnston-I think there has been a push and pull between Hickman’s vision and the crop of writers.
I think Hickman was planning a pretty dark road for his version of Krakoa.
Meanwhile, I think the other writers like this direction as a new status quo for mutants.
The creepier aspects of Krakoa seem to have been being resolved as the stories have progressed.
The other writers seem to be saying that Krakoa isn’t the mutant utopia that was promised, but they are working on it.
I don’t think that was Hickman’s intent.
There are interviews with different creators where they have basically backed up what Uncanny X-Ben stated.
Benjamin Percy recently gave an interview where he said that Krakoa is the Marvel mutant version of Black Lives Matter or “Me Too”.
I’d say that goes a long towards showing that the creators do see Krakoa as a good thing.
Yes Chris V that’s my take on it as well.
Onslaught has been ignored in the other books, we haven’t actually seen specifically that Onslaught is what caused most of the Krakoan weirdness, and plenty of non-resurrected characters are fine with Krakoa.
No one has shut down the Crucible and it’s barely been critiqued. Even Nightcrawler was like “Hmmm maybe this isn’t great, but whatever.” He hasn’t done anything about the orphaned babies.
Kids are still going Lord of the Flies with no education beyond combat.
Not one person has really bucked against the Quiet Council.
No issues with Krakoa sucking the life force out of everyone.
There has been very little to indicate all the racism and nationalism is problematic.
Storm being named Queen of the Solar System is being treated as a “fuck yeah!” thing not an “Oh god!” thing. Imagine if Tony Stark terraformed Pluto and named himself Sun King.
There are certainly critiqurs here and there, but by and large it’s “this is fantastic mutant empowerment let’s go hang out at a bar with serial killers!”
Mike- I thought there was definitely some legit anger in this too, and some sadness.
Intentional or not.
I see your point. I’ll be curious to see where the line goes post-Inferno.
Certainly some of the best books so far have had nothing to do with Hickman and his original storyline, so it’s possible this may all work out for the best.
Krakoa does not work as an equivalent to “Me Too” or Black Lives Matter. It is an isolationistic community that achieved nation status. MT and BLM are reformation movements from inside a given society.
I don’t really see the Krakoa society as a good thing (it takes a form of miracle for me to sympathize with nationalistic plots, let alone species superiority ones), but to be fair, plots require some amount of uncertainty and drama.
“It’s fair to say that Lorna has indeed been a hazily defined character over the years.”
I disagree. Lorna is very clearly defined. She’s defined as a hazily defined character. Her undefinedness being her defining characteristic. When stories are actually pointing out how undefined she is, then this is truly what defines her. It’s fine. She’s fine.
@MikeL – agree that was a very interesting interview with Williams on the the Battle of the Atom podcast. I thought she toed very close to the line of what a current author could say without being censured – she mentioned inserted lines of dialogue, art pages she did not have sight of. I believe her account too, as she describes it as a learning experience working for a large machine driven by editorial fiat.
@Chris & UncannyBen,
I agree with your theories that the more dark and unpleasant aspects of Krakoa are being watered down or explained away, in favour of ongoing narrative or writers enjoying the set up. I’d have preferred a couple of conscientious objectors (Kate? Nightcrawler? Polaris?) trying to pick it apart while several other characters who should know better perhaps embrace it too whole heartedly (Storm? Cyclops? Moonstar?). The darker road is more interesting as a single authorial vision – but we’ll see. Still plenty of time yet.
I’ll use how often the deeply unpleasant crucible is depicted on page as a barometer…
As a random question, is there any character likely to make it through this era without death and resurrection, or has so far avoided it? I can only think of Jubilee as “untouched” by resurrection protocols, or the 5 themselves. Thinking how that plays into a narrative too.
I’m pretty sure Iceman, Storm and Rogue are the three longest-serving X-Men not to have been killed and Five’d. As you move down the list (and into the spinoff teams), there are more, but a lot of those are because they’ve been minor characters and/or mostly absent.
Did Gambit ever die? Bishop?
It’s be fun to see a team of the unreborn have to fight Onslaught.
You can’t blame it all on Onslaught either, Storm has embraced everything about Krakoa hook line and sinker.
BLM and Me Too are based on accountability and equality under the law.
The total opposite of Krakoa.
Do the writers and some fans not see that?
I just saw someone on Reddit call Apocalypse killing kids in the Crucible “heartwarming” unironically.
I have a hunch that it will turn out that Polaris is somehow the killer.
From a meta perspective, this is a plot that from all appearances was meant to be shown in X-Factor and is still being presented by the same writer.
X-Factor was a very character-driven book that had Polaris as team leader until recently, yet did not seem to focus too much on her. It also lampshaded in the first issue that Magneto somehow feels entitled to have expectations about Polaris, apparently simply because she is his daughter.
Polaris’ history with Magneto is a bit surprising, all things considered. In her first appearance it was believed that she is Magneto’s daughter, but very soon it was established that this was a con. It later turned out that Magneto did not even know of that con at the time.
Much later still (in 2003) it turned out that she is Magneto’s daughter after all. And while there were a couple of stories and plots involving that significance-optional relationship, and Magneto seems to never have met a mutant that he was not willing to accept reverence from, there is precious little indication of how close or distant they are or want to be from each other.
Polaris may well feel that far too many people have far too many expectations about her while having little time or interest to actually know or learn who she is. She would be justified IMO.
Seeing Wanda and Magneto so chummy despite Wanda being about as despised as anyone can be in current Krakoa society and not even a true biological daughter of Magneto may have broken something inside her. It may also lead to some very welcome exploration of Magneto’s psyche and its shortcomings.
I have a feeling Hickman is skipping to his third act with Inferno, but pulling back from Krakoa fully collapsing. That should give us some closure while allowing the status quo to continue. At least that’s what I’m hoping.
It would be nice to see Lorna depicted as someone who is drafted into superheroics more or less against her will on a regular basis. She has great motivators: either she’s one of only a dozen known mutants in the world, mind controlled and can’t help getting involved, or related to mutant royalty so feels obligated. It would explain her haziness and give her a kind of “exasperated veteran” quality that would be appealing.
As other people have noted- this was originally an arc of X-Factor, and all the deaths in X-Factor before it’s cancellation had the victim somehow being involved in their own death.
I really, really liked this issue. This is probably one of my top three comics of the year so far. The narration near the end of the issue about grief was super good.
“Whistling through the haunted ruins of you”
I’m quietly hoping this mini will reverse the Uncanny Avengers retcon, while knowing that it most likely won’t.
The Quicksilver attacking Magneto scene was well done, I think. Everyone’s confused about his helmet dropping, then you turn the page and find out what happened. Good stuff.
Also, that cover is FANTASTIC. I kind of want it as a poster.
@Thom – Interesting, but I don’t recall any of those applying to Lorna when she agreed to join PAD’s X-Factor back in the day. In fact, I don’t recall what reasons she had for doing so, or if they were even stated.
Seems like she keeps getting wheeled out mainly just because she’s been around for so long, not because anyone has any strong about who she is or what to do with her.
I think she’s also the earliest X-Men member, apart from the Mimic, to never have appeared in any of the, to-date, seven X-Men feature films.
That’s quite a snub given how long she’s been around (and also considering some of the bozos who actually did make appearances those films). Yeah, she was in “The Gifted” but that’s like “Dances with the Stars” for X-Men characters.
She hasn’t been in a film, but she was a lead in The Gifted (which I think had some influence on her visual design in X-Factor).
@ASV – Yeah, I pointed that out in my post.
“Interesting, but I don’t recall any of those applying to Lorna when she agreed to join PAD’s X-Factor back in the day. In fact, I don’t recall what reasons she had for doing so, or if they were even stated.”
I think it was basically because Alex was on the team.
The problem with Lorna as a character now is that her very haziness/mental instability is her actual in-universe description. It’s hard to row back from ‘lack of definition’ as your defining feature.
I also think she’s one of a handful who never got the full Claremont treatment. So despite her longevity there’s no key arcs, personality traits or relationships (other than Havok) to glob onto. That emptiness has an appeal though.
And the on-off Magneto familial relationship is probably more a burden than anything.
Xavier: “…Wanda and Pietro are the sole non-mutants to decieve Cerebro long enough…”
Franklin Richards: “AM I JOKE TO YOU?!”
All jokes aside:
Dear X-Office, more Leah Williams, less Tini Howards, please.
“I think it was basically because Alex was on the team.”
I don’t think he was at that point, though. I vaguely remember Lorna, Guido, and Jamie sharing a scene and that Alex hadn’t yet accepted the job.
Hey, does anyone have the issue handy? Because now I’m really wondering what she may have said or thought in that scene, which is definitely strange for me because, until now, the only thing I’ve ever wondered about in regards to Lorna is whether or not the carpet matches the drapes.
Val Cooper approaches Lorna and Guido about the re-creation of Freedom Force in X-Factor v1 #70 and mentions that she’s already approached Madrox. Polaris objects to joining a group that used to have Blob as a member, and Val says that the name isn’t important but the idea is. Lorna puts her off and says that she’s only interested in one person’s views on her future re: mutant teams (Xavier).
X-Factor #71 picks up a bit later, with Lorna, Guide and Madrox already having joined X-Factor and at its headquarters. They know at this point that Havok’s being approached to lead the team and Lorna is fretting that she isn’t sure how their reunion will go given how she’s been mind controlled so many times, and isn’t sure there’s still a relationship to go back to. This is the first occurrence I am aware of the “Lorna’s identity is scrambled” thing. So we don’t get an explanation on-panel for why she joins. Funnily, we get explanations for why every other member joins over the next two issues or so, so Lorna’s the outlier. Xavier strongly backs the creation of X-Factor so presumably he had some influence on her.
Alex is the one where Lorna being on the team is expressly part of the pitch (by Xavier and Cyclops) to join and lead X-Factor.
Nice, thanks Allan.
“So we don’t get an explanation on-panel for why she joins. Funnily, we get explanations for why every other member joins over the next two issues or so, so Lorna’s the outlier.”
Makes sense. She’s so vaguely-defined even PAD wasn’t sure why she joined.
Yet eventually Alex left (to join the Uncanny Avengers) while Lorna remained with X-Factor for the last few issues of that iteration and through all of the All-New X-Factor run.
PAD tried hard to develop her as a character of her own, apart from Alex.
I think he did a good job, but all of that seems to have been forgotten. I wish All-New X-Factor had been remembered more.
When they announced that Lorna was being tapped to join this new version of the X-Men, I quite rightly said that she’s never had a truly iconic, definitive, memorable storyline as part of the core team. (Maybe throwing Krakoa into space in Giant-Size #1…)
Lorna’s entire history has been one of mind control, madness, and reluctance, and her finest treatment as a character was under PAD in X-Factor. Otherwise, she’s basically circled the team, defined by her relationship to Alex or to Magneto.
I thought this was very good. Really refreshing after the mess that was X-factor #9-10.
I didn’t listen to the Leah Williams interview, just read the broad strokes, so I didn’t catch the bit about the Krakoan pantheon until now. Have to say, I’m glad that didn’t come about. Without more context, it doesn’t sound like a great idea.
I love all this Lorna talk! I have such a soft spot for her as the lost original team member.
It would just take a little dialogue or captioning to show that she’s aware of how much she drifts in and out of these people’s lives without much purpose. I wish some writer would lean into her lack of internal motivation. That could actually be a fairly pivotal moment for her and redeem much of the time she’s spent mind controlled or written by Chuck Austin.
And since PAD didn’t really give her a reason to join X-Factor, it would be pretty easy to retcon in something like “Val told me Alex would be there.” Staying in the team after he left could just be lack of anything better to do.
She reminds me of a friend who is maybe a little depressed and can’t seem to find her place in the world. She’s the personification of “wherever you go, there you are.”
I think that Polaris’ lack of motivation/uncertainty was something Williams was going to utilise in her X-Factor (for example, how she turned down the leadership role). Again, a shame how Lorna was moved into X-Men following the popular vote.
It’s interesting how Lorna as a character resonated with a lot of people based off her disassociated, gothy persona from the Gifted TV show (which I thought was quite a fun attempt to use minor x-characters). The show did capture a few of her recent character beats from the last decade or two of comics, but she was far more driven in her purpose (inference being she was heading in the direction of her unnamed father, i.e. Magneto).
In the classic X-Factor 87, Peter David and Joe Quesada mapped out characterizations and motivations for each member of the team, informing their portrayals for years to come…
… except for Polaris, who had body issues so she switched to an overtly-sexualized costume. Ugh.
The Gifted had the best portrayal of Lorna in any medium. She was angsty but tough, which made sense given her history and the world she inhabited. I think the Polaris we’ve seen in recent X-Factor and now in the X-Men is that version of the character finding her way and realizing she has potential for greatness. I really hope she isn’t the killer, although Luis Dante made a good case for that in an earlier comment.
@ Luis Dantas: Apologies for miswriting your name above!
Well, I can’t believe I’m about to cheerlead for Polaris, but count me in as another vote for how Peter David handled her in the X-Factor Investigations era. She joins the team because Wolverine sent her and Havok to help out when Jamie and Layla were gone. She stays because for the first time in her life she’s not in thrall with someone else’s mutant-centric agenda.
And she was very much the exasperated veteran, shepherding that group of bozos through one adventure after another and finally turning them into something resembling a functional team.