X-Force #33 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-FORCE vol 6 #33
“The Hunt for X, part 4: Memento Mori”
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Robert Gill
Colourist: Guru-eFX
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Mark Basso
COVER / PAGE 1: Wolverine squares off against Kraven and his Shadow Room dinosaurs.
PAGE 2. Obituary for Mike Pasciulloo.
PAGES 3-5. Kraven hunts the Beast in the Shadow Room.
All fairly straightforward. It’s the good old “a villain has trapped us in the Danger Room and switched off the safety protocols” story, an X-Men standard for decades.
PAGE 6. Recap and credits.
PAGES 7-9. Wolverine in the Shadow Room.
Wolverine spells out here what this story is supposed to have to do with Judgment Day: Kraven thinks it’s the end of days and he wants to go out by proving himself against Wolverine. Honestly, that’s a pretty token link to the main story, and though it’s more-or-less claimed on the recap pages of this issue and last, I wouldn’t be in the slightest surprised to learn that this was an already planned storyline that had a few Judgment Day elements worked into the background so as to justify the crossover tag. It is a crossover to the wider storyline, but nothing actually seems to turn on that fact.
PAGE 10. Data page: the alarms go off. Presumably the third unknown “victim” of the Shadow Room is Kraven himself, and the alarms are just listing everyone inside.
PAGES 11-12. Sage finds Omega Red and Deadpool.
“[Omega Red] started it when he dismembered [me]…” In issue #30. Sage is ludicrously unsympathetic to Deadpool’s completely reasonable complaint here – Omega Red is of no sensible use to the team if he’s going to randomly attack his own teammates. But a recurring theme has been Sage turning a blind eye to the worst of Omega Red because she’s so determined to believe that he can be redeemed (and by analogy, apparently prove her own ability to overcome her worst traits). Her emotional investment in Omega Red seems to be leading her in the wrong direction. Then again, Percy tends to write everyone to treat Deadpool as a punching bag, so Sage is kind of following the lead there.
PAGES 13-14. Kraven monologues.
This is probably the clearest attempt to tie the story to Judgment Day. The specifics of the wider plot don’t matter, but it does make sense for Kraven to find something motivational and primal in the threat of global annihilation.
PAGES 15-17. Wolverine and Beast in the Danger Room.
As Beast notes, he hasn’t been in action for a long, long time – and as usual, he confidently proclaims his ability moments before tripping up.
PAGES 18-24. X-Force defeat Kraven and escape the Shadow Room.
All pretty straightforward. Wolverine refuses to indulge Kraven’s obsessions and declines to kill him (though he leaves him to the mercy of the Danger Room). This makes sense; even though Wolverine shares some of Kraven’s obsession with the primacy of nature and such like, Wolverine sees killing as a regrettable necessity, and views his own homicidal urges as something to be suppressed. So he has little sympathy for Kraven’s vision of hunting as a primal contest.
PAGE 25. Data page – an exchange between the two Wolverines, Logan and Laura. Logan repeats some themes he’s been mentioning throughout Percy’s stories, principally his concern that Krakoa is making the mutants complacent. This is the side of him that does agree with Kraven, and sees the threat of death as something that gives meaning to life. It’s a bit weird to have him presenting Kraven as a paradigm-shifting incident for the Krakoan population alongside the Progenitor, though. More impressive threats than Kraven have made it onto the island in the past.
PAGE 26. Kraven visits Avengers Mountain.
Kraven apparently survived being eaten by the Shadow Room dinosaur – despite all that stuff about the safeties being off – because the room itself was failing at the same time. As for how he got off the island, who the heck knows? Anyway, this is presumably after Judgment Day (spoilers: the world doesn’t end), and apparently the Progenitor has been turned back into Avengers Mountain (which… actually is kind of a spoiler, and I wouldn’t have given it away here).
PAGE 27. Trailers.
Judgment Day 6 was supposed to come out this week as well, so it wasn’t an intentional spoiler.
@Jenny
They could still have delayed this issue to match. Especially since it was two XF issues in two weeks *ahyway*
Oh for sure, but it is what it is.
The climax or end of a crossover should never be revealed and/or spoiled in an inessential tie-in. I mean, we know Earth has to survive, but giving a hint as to how is annoying.
Would it kill the writers and artists of a comic to do cursory research on current theories of dinosaur appearances? Or at least look further than Jurassic Park? I can chalk the nonsense dinosaurs and pterosaurs to “Beast was a lazy programmer,” but it was still grating.
What happened to Death To The Mutants #3?
@Dave : Paul has mentioned before that he views Death to the Mutants as a continuation of Eternals, i.e. not an X-book, and thus won’t cover it as annotations. (None of the previous issues were covered, either.)
Yeah, after I posted I realised the others weren’t done. Never noticed at the time as I was behind, but I’ve caught up in time for the ending.
To be fair, Avengers Mountain existing post-Judgment Day was a foregone conclusion anyway since Jason Aaron’s Avengers run is not yet over. It would be bad form for Gillen to completely get rid of AM during his Eternals event just as it would be bad form for Aaron to nuke Krakoa during an Avengers event. Play with the toys but put it back after you’re done.
There are still some ongoing Avengers plot points – the mind of one of Avenger Prime’s Deathloks got trapped inside the Mountain in Avengers 53. (I daresay we will see a Deathlok-piloted Avengers Mountain join the Avengers against their war against Mephisto next year.)
That said, I’m confident Sinister will nick some parts of the living Celestial before it becomes a corpse again. He very likely needs Celestial resources for his mass Chimera operations.
Death to the Mutants is in fact an Eternals book. According to Gillen, DttM 1-3 used to be Eternals 14-16 on his original outline, but got renumbered with a new title for event purposes.
Similarly, A.X.E. Starfox 1 was supposed to be the fourth Eternals ‘historical one-shot’, but it was changed into a Judgment Day tie-in.
A pity they’re keeping Avengers mountain. Living in a dead giant is a bit too weird for a superhero comic, and not the good kind of weird. Knowhere was at least more of a fantasy sci fi setting.
No such thing as too weird for a superhero comic!
@GN: Sure, unless they’d planned it together, which is possible. Like, Hal Jordan’s home town was wiped out in a Superman story, but Gerard Jones, who was writing Green Lantern, was involved in this and had a story planned that played off it. (Of course, then DC decided they didn’t want to do that, they wanted to create Kyle Rayner and handed the book to a new writer to do so, but in theory…)
@Mike
Clearly the programmers of the Room are more concerned with aesthetics than reality when it comes to dinosaur designs, and that’s valid. <3
Is it possible that the Progenitor-creators only took *some* of Avengers Mountain, leaving a hollowed-out husk, as shown here? If so, I don’t think that was conveyed adequately anywhere.
I need to go back to check, but aren’t there scenes where Iron Man, Ajak and Sersi are being all ‘Oops, new Celestial wasn’t a great idea’ inside Avengers HQ? I kept wondering if that meant they were still inside the Progenitor.
For the record, this week’s Avengers issue seems to be post Judgement Day and they’re back in a highly damaged Avenger’s Mountain.
Spoilers abound I guess.