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

MARAUDERS vol 2 #5
“Hell Can Wait”
Writer: Steve Orlando
Artist: Andrea Broccardo
Colourist: Matt Milla
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Design: Tom Muller
Editor: Jordan D White

COVER / PAGE 1: Bishop fights Nemesis – I guess? I mean, in terms of the layout, it looks more like they’re fighting side by side, but that doesn’t make sense.

PAGE 2. Xandra is resurrected.

Xandra was assassinated by the Kin Crimson in issue #3. We already learned in X-Men Red #4 that Xandra survived her assassin by psychically transmitting her memory and her genetic code to Cerebro (don’t ask how she’s able to sequence her own DNA), and that explanation gets repeated in this issue.

PAGE 3. Aurora and Daken fight Chronicle and the Kin Crimson.

PAGE 4. In the past, the Acolytes react to the fight with Nemesis.

A footnote confirms that this scene takes place during X-Men #42 (1995). So, here’s how the story played out the first time round:

In X-Men Prime (1995), Apocalypse’s son from the Age of Apocalypse timeline – I’ll come back to the name – is one of several characters to show up in the main timeline after the end of that crossover. He shows up in orbit, frozen in a lump of ice. Exodus decides that he’s a sign, and has the Acolytes bring him aboard their space station.

In X-Men #42, the Acolytes inspect the strange bandaged man and conclude that he’s a massively powerful mutant. Exodus (whose religiosity is alienating many of the Acolytes by this point) decides that this is truly wonderful. Overnight, the newcomer absorbs the life energy of a couple of Acolytes to recharge himself, and escapes. He recognises Exodus as one of the X-Men from his timeline, and Exodus quickly does a U-turn and decides that he must kill the blasphemer. They fight and, on page 19, there’s a big explosion. The Acolytes react to the chaos, and Amelia Voght teleports to Earth to get help in the form of Scott and Jean.

In X-Men #43, Scott and Jean get sidetracked fighting some of the more fervent Acolytes. Exodus and Nemesis continue to fight and tear the space station apart. Scott and Jean then help the Acolytes to evacuate, while Exodus and Nemesis fall to Earth under their own power.

The version of events in this issue isn’t faithful to the original, in what looks like a mixture of deliberate changing of some rather contentious elements, possible outright mistakes, and possible deliberate smoothing over of some minor points of detail that might have called for explanation:

• Apocalypse’s son goes by “Holocaust” in the original story, not “Nemesis”. Obviously, invoking the Holocaust for a C-list villain was always extremely questionable, it felt very dodgy at the time, and I’m all for pretending it never happened. He did also use the name “Nemesis” later on, and it was meant to be his real name.
• Nemesis was found in a lump of ice (Rusty Collins thaws it out), not a “crystal shard”.
• Nemesis wasn’t wearing his armour. It was completely missing throughout this story. This story suggests that the armour is a psychic construct created by Nemesis using his powers, and that Bishop absorbs it. That doesn’t explain it, though. Nemesis is seen in X-Men #42 without his armour throughout. Besides, his armour wasn’t psychic, it was crystalline. In Nemesis’s next appearance after this story, X-Force #49, he has to get a replacement set of armour from Sebastian Shaw.
• Rather more trivial, but the Acolytes mostly weren’t in their regular costumes in the original story – at this point Exodus had the women, in particular, wandering around dressed like nuns. Amelia Voght, in particular, is shown wearing her nun outfit at the moment she first notices the fight and at all points subsequently.

Steve Orlando is nothing if not obsessive about continuity so I assume he’s well aware of a lot of this and has opted to go for instant recognisability over accuracy. Nonetheless, it’s a bit of a continuity trainwreck. It’s possible that the reference at the end to altering memories is supposed to cover this stuff.

The four Acolytes in the control room are:

• Marco Delgado, one of the original Acolytes. He shouldn’t be here. He died in X-Men vol 2 #3. (The first name was given to him in the Handbooks, to make clear that he isn’t the same character as the SHIELD agent Harry Delgado who was introduced in the same issue as him. Some sort of connection was clearly intended and Marvel have wavered over the years about whether they were meant )
• Rem-Ram, who shouldn’t be here either, because he didn’t debut until X-Men: Magneto War #1 (1999), which twice describes him as “new”.
• Amelia Voght, who was prominently in the original story (but not in this costume).
• Suvik Senyaka, who shouldn’t be here either – he was booted out of the Acolytes in Uncanny X-Men #304.

PAGE 5. Recap and credits.

PAGES 6-11. The Marauders get caught up in the fight between Exodus and Nemesis.

This Nemesis knows the status quo of humans on Earth which, again, he really shouldn’t – in the original, he only figures out that he’s jumped reality during the course of the story, and doesn’t actually know anything about where he is yet.

Zzxz. Cassandra picked up this mutant symbiote in issue #3 when one of the Kin Crimson had “lobotomised” it “for weaponised blood”. She described it there as brain dead, but apparently she’s healed it fairly quickly after it was freed from the Kin Crimson. I didn’t pick up on this in the annotations for issue #3, but Zzsz is a pre-existing character who debuted in X-Men: Kingbreaker #2 (2009) and floated around various cosmic stories in 2009-2010. It was last seen in the Realm of Kings: Imperial Guard miniseries (2010).

Barnacle, seen briefly on p11, is another minor Acolyte who didn’t debut until the Magneto War one-shot in 2009, and shouldn’t really be here.

Red Lotus. Somnus says that he’s picked up some martial arts by using his time-dilation trick to let Red Lotus give him years of training in just one night. He’s an Australian martial arts hero who appeared in a handful of Claremont stories starting in X-Treme X-Men #5 (2001), and doesn’t seem to have been mentioned anywhere since 2005. As far as I’m aware, he’s not a mutant, but Somnus didn’t say that he caught up with the guy on Krakoa.

PAGES 12-13. Daken kills Chronicle.

This clarifies that the Kin Crimson have kept Chronicle’s Lupak gland (essentially, his soul from which he can be reconstituted on death) in the real world, rather than in the pocket dimension where it would usually reside, making him killable… for no readily obvious reason. I honestly don’t follow the plot mechanics here, since Chronicle seems think that by killing him, Daken will reveal the “truth” which “will poison both our species”. But… as Psylocke points out on page 16, Chronicle’s whole function was to record the Kin Crimson’s true history, so killing him just erases history.

PAGES 14-15. The Marauders recover the time drive and return to the present.

Zzxz has always been interested in eating brains, apparently for reasons connected to its mutation.

PAGES 16-18. The Marauders arrive in the present and Deathbird kills Delphos.

Chak’balaar has indeed shown up as a random Shi’ar insult before – see e.g. Uncanny X-Men #482.

PAGE 19. Data page. Oracle wraps up the plot. Self-explanatory, really.

PAGES 20-21. The Marauders’ audience with Xandra.

Fang is the Lupak member of the Imperial Guard. It’s been established in the past that any dead Guardsman is just replaced by someone else who takes their name, but this Fang assures us that the name is a cultural fixture for them anyway.

“Once, your father stole our colours.” Wolverine stole the original Fang’s costume to replace his own in X-Men #107 (1977) and wore it for a few issues afterwards.

Warbird was a supporting character in Wolverine & The X-Men, but hasn’t appeared in anything more than cameos in about a decade.

Somnus’s sleeping partner is Neutron of the Imperial Guard. This is presumably a new one, taking the place of the unfortunate Neutron who got killed in S.W.O.R.D. #9 last year. Stygia is just his homeworld. The Stygians aren’t particularly known for fashion – they’re basically a race of powerhouses – but presumably they have a whole developed culture that we’ve never seen.

PAGE 22. Psylocke visits the Green Lagoon.

At least, I assume it’s the Green Lagoon rather than a long overdue rival bar. Greycrow from Hellions is behind the bar, which seems a bold choice considering how widely hated he is on Krakoa due to his time as a Marauder. He and Psylocke are clearly still a couple.

Also present around the bar area are Mammomax, Marrow, a grey guy who might be Skin, Thunderbird, Warpath, Glob Herman and Pixie.

PAGE 23. Data page: a memo from Bishop. We’ve skipped over the Hellfire Gala since the last page, and the remainder of this issue takes place in the gap between the Gala and the start of Judgment Day.

PAGE 24. Kate meets Cerebra.

Presumably that’s “days later” compared to the previous scene, rather than the previous data page, since otherwise Cerebra has been kept waiting a long time.

Cerebra. Bishop’s data page tells us that this is a mutant from the future who was brought back in time by a version of Cable, died on the spot, and was then resurrected. She is, presumably, the character from X-Men 2099 or at least a version thereof – the 2099 continuity has been through a lot of overhauls and alternate presentations in recent years. This probably has something to do with the use of X-Men 2099 villain Brimstone Love in Marauders Annual #1.

PAGE 25. Trailers.