A.X.E.: Judgment Day #6 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
A.X.E.: JUDGMENT DAY #6
Writer: Kieron Gillen
Artists: Valerio Schiti with Ivan Fiorelli
Colourist: Marte Gracia
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
COVER / PAGE 1: Members of the X-Men, Avengers and Eternals giving the thumbs down sign (presumably their verdict on the Progenitor).
PAGE 2. Obituary for Mike Pasciullo.
PAGES 3-4. Recap and credits.
PAGES 5-6. Captain America brings Jada to the Eternals’ city.
Jada is still sitting in the place where she was talking to Captain America last issue (and still has the Starbucks coffee that she shared with him). Seems awfully quiet for New York, but obviously the scene works better when she’s not just a face in the crowd.
PAGE 7. The civilians react.
Everyone has some degree of turning point or realisation by the end of this, with the possible exception of Komali, who is just resigned to death. Tom finally and decisively realises that he’s got it wrong, albeit too late to do anything about it. Katrina actually does something instead of just talking about it. Daniela had already turned her focus to her family, even if she remains somewhat distracted by practicalities. Jada gets to reconnect with someone (which is another reason why she couldn’t be in a crowd in the last scene) and Kenta is forced to take the situation seriously.
PAGE 8. Starfox and Nightcrawler discuss tactics.
Starfox is very much enjoying the adulation that the Eternals are getting for saving the world (from a threat that they created in the first place). He’s written in this issue as somewhat naive – he seems to have jumped to the conclusion that everything is now going well, and he’s unreasonably confident that the X-Men will similarly be rewarded in the public mind for their heroism, in the face of all historical evidence. Nightcrawler is presumably here to serve as a contrast – he’s the most persistently optimistic member of the X-Men, but he comes across as a level headed pragmatist next to Starfox. Nonetheless, it’s no coincidence that the last leaders standing (the mutants being rather depleted right now) are the most idealistic X-Man and Avenger.
“Phastos resetting the Machine gave us time.” In A.X.E.: Death to the Mutants #3.
“My A.I. … colleagues are at work.” Orchis. Nightcrawler enlisted their aid in Immortal X-Men #7.
PAGES 9-10. The Progenitor heads straight for the Reality Loom.
The Reality Loom appeared in Eternals #4-6 (2021), where it was presented as the core of the Machine; Phastos was working away on it.
Starfox is completely panicked by the realisation that the plan is going awry, and again is positioned as more idealistic and unrealistic than Nightcrawler – or, for that matter, Captain America.
PAGES 11-13. Inside the Progenitor.
Mr Sinister mentions twice in this issue that the Celestial hasn’t judged him yet. This hasn’t been too obvious until now, since three of the incursion team only got judged in the recent A.X.E. one-shots, but our attention is drawn to it in a way that suggests it’s significant. When you bear in mind that the Progenitor found time in Captain Marvel #42 to judge Captain Marvel’s cat, it does seem curious that Sinister seems not to rate his attention.
“The Stark boy’s become unbearable since he passed his test…” In A.X.E.: Avengers #1.
“…and Jeannie has become unbearable since she failed.” In A.X.E.: X-Men #1. Jean is not taking any lectures on genocide from a creature that’s destroying the world on purpose.
“Our God temporarily deactivated our protocols and resealed our firewalls…” As set up in A.X.E.: Eternals #1, at least for Ajak – the Progenitor told her that “In those final moments, you will have true freedom.” The point here is that the Eternals can’t defy the “principles” which require them to defend Celestials, including the Progenitor; they deliberately allowed the mutants to mind-control them so that their powers could be used against the Progenitor.
The Progenitor appears ultimately to be a human-sized figure controlling a much larger entity.
“Betsy’s move, but it’s a good one. My psychic totality will blow this sky-high.” Psylocke’s old psychic knife routine from the late 80s and 90s, which (particularly under Claremont) was repeatedly described as “the focussed totality of my psychic powers” or such like. A direct attempt to kill the Progenitor would normally trigger the Principles, but as Ajak just told us, those have been switched off – which is why only Ajak responds, and does so voluntarily.
PAGES 14-16. The Progenitor attacks the Eternals’ city.
“There’s an unusual mutant circuit. We’ve been saving it…” Presumably referring to the stunt we see on the next page, with assorted mutants including Hope, Synch and Proteus channelling their powers into Exodus, who in turn channels them in to Syne.
PAGES 17-19. Ajak makes her case, and Jean just tries to kill the Progenitor.
Ajak is arguing against killing the Progenitor so that it can be prevailed upon to reverse the damage that it has done. As Ajak points out, the fact that the Progenitor has carried on testing people even after issuing its verdict on the planet indicates that “This is still a test” – or at the very least that the Progenitor remains open to persuasion. It’s something of a reversal of normal roles to have the zealot Ajak and the hyper pragmatist Iron Man making this case while Jean, normally the spirit of compassion and all that, is rooting to just kill him.
The Progenitor’s conclusion from all this is that everyone is just acting out of self-interest; he seems to misread Ajak’s motivations and concludes that the Eternals have proven that they cannot change (even though neither Makkari nor Sersi attempted to defend him).
PAGE 20. Sersi reveals the Eternals’ secret to humanity.
Her attempt to keep this secret – which was indeed self-interested, because she wanted to preserve the Eternals’ heroic image – was indeed what got the Progenitor to fail her.
PAGE 21-23. The heroes make their case to the Progenitor.
Note that Starfox was also well aware of the secret and he too was evidently fairly comfortable with preserving the Eternals’ image.
Anyway, Ajak, Jean and Iron Man each make their separate case to the Progenitor for changing course. Ajak argues that the Progenitor would himself fail to meet her standards as a better god; Jean argues that he will never forgive himself for destroying the world; and Iron Man argues that it is never too late to change course and make amends.
PAGES 24-27. Progenitor restores the Earth and dies by empowering Ajak.
As we establish later, this isn’t an outright Cosmic Reset Button, because everyone does remember what happened – he simply restores the world to the way it was before. Also, he only resets it to the point of his judgment, so it doesn’t reverse earlier events like the death of Magneto and the attack on Arakko.
As for Ajak, she declares herself the new god of the Celestials, with a rather greater emphasis on striving to be worthy of the role.
PAGE 28. Montage of the civilians.
Everyone is just a little bit better for the experience.
The Progenitor continues to narrate, justified on page 27 as a reflection of its Celestial power – it made similar claims at the start of issue #1, when it began narrating before it had actually been created.
PAGES 29-31. Zuras apologises to the mutants.
Evidently Starfox voluntarily relinquishes the role of Prime Eternal once the crisis is over. Zuras, the traditional distant leader figure, isn’t exactly diplomatic but he does do the right things – note that instead of saying outright that Druig’s approach to mutants is wrong, he simply describes his own view as “more conservative”. Zuras is not a hero so much as a figure of the established order which was disrupted by Druig seizing control. That said, Zuras is pretty obviously correct: for all that the Eternals talk about their ability to interpret the principles, the intended meaning of “excess deviation” is surely demonstrated by the point where they’re compelled to act.
PAGE 32. The X-Men launch the Phoenix Foundation.
This is the X-Men’s way of heading off criticism about monopolising resurrection: they’ll make 5% of their resources available to resurrect “the vulnerable, the weak, the poor and those whom the world has abandoned.” We’re not really told how they’re choosing candidates from within that very large category, which suggests this might not go quite as smoothly as Scott and Jean think, certainly from a PR standpoint.
Orchis are apparently now an outright public organisation, benefitting from the good PR of fighting to defeat the Progenitor.
PAGE 33. The Avengers move back in to Avengers Mountain.
Apparently we’re sticking with the dead Celestial body as Avengers HQ. Oddly, Iron Man seems to be the only one who really has a problem with this, and his rationale is more about PR (rather than, say, sensitivity).
PAGE 34. Steve and Jada share coffee again.
PAGES 35-36. Ajak continues her work.
The Progenitor seems here to be talking as if it continues to exist within Ajak, and the main lesson the two of them have learned is that the judgment process needs to take more time before Ajak can take a view on whether to destroy the world. So that’s nice.
PAGES 37-39. Trailers and design art.
Another potential problem with the Phoenix Foundation: the Five are going to resurrect “those whom the world has abandoned” and then… do what with them? Send them back where they came from to be abandoned some more?
Sinister grousing about not being judged suggests that he would only be judged if he were the original (which he believes he is), and he’s not (and therefore maybe Dr. Stasis is).
Also, if Zuras offering Storm (and Arakko) an hour of Uranos’ time isn’t a rifle being hung on the wall, I don’t know what is.
The one thing that was missing from this crossover, for me, would be the Progenitor saying to anyone:
“There are no judgment-free zones today”
Disappointing that the highlighted human characters turned out to be completely unimportant.
“the vulnerable, the weak, the poor and those whom the world has abandoned”
– very vague, but that makes it sound like if you’re an average person who gets some really unpleasant disease then it’s still just tough luck. I guess if you’re murdered then you count as vulnerable/weak.
Spending 5% of your resources on random people hardly seems to outweigh repeatedly sending mass murderers like Omega Red to the head of the line, no?
Kind of hilarious how Jean went from “the Progenitor must die” to “poor genocidal creatures” in just a couple of pages. I get the point though- once Jean realized that she still needed to make up for the harm the Phoenix had done, she was able to empathize with the Progenitor. That’s also one of the reasons that it’s called the Phoenix Foundation.
Douglas-Sinister should realize he’s not the original. The original (or we assume, I guess) Sinister created a gestalt hive-mind. During House/Powers, we saw the Prime Sinister (or we assume, I guess) murdered by a Sinister which was willing to make a deal with Xavier, while the current Sinister murdered that Sinister close to take up the mantle of Sinister after Xavier and Magneto left (due to the realization that Xavier had tampered with the mind of that Sinister clone). So, there’s absolutely no reason for the current incarnation of Sinister to believe he is the Prime Sinister.
@ChrisV: Eh, Sinister didn’t create a hive mind, he created a society of genetically-similar clones, each with a mind of its own. (A hive mind is what Life 9 Sinister did with the fourth generation Chimeras).
My understanding of ‘Prime Sinister’ is that he is the clone currently in charge of the Sinister line (that resides in Bar Sinister). Like you said, the identity (and allegiance) of Prime Sinister has changed numerous times. The conflict between Sinister and Stasis is that Sinister believes himself to be a direct genetic successor to Essex but Stasis shows up to claim that he actually is Essex.
In reality, the original Nathaniel Essex is probably long dead and Doctor Stasis is also a clone, but from a different, parallel branch (the Clubs) of the Essex genetic line. This also implies the existence of two other branches in the Essex line. I’ve speculated this here before but I suspect Orbis Stellaris contains another Essex clone, from a branch that went into space. So we potentially have Sinister (diamonds), Stasis (clubs), Stellaris (hearts or spades?) and another one.
Immortal X-Men 8 is supposed to be a flashback issue where Destiny and Mystique meet Nathaniel Essex in Victorian London, so we will probably get a clearer picture on what really happened.
As predicted, and obvious to anyone, the Cosmic Reset Button was hit on all of the mass destruction and death we saw in later parts of the storyline.
Though I guess everyone is -left- with the memories of being killed by the cosmic space god. Mass PTSD incoming… yet again, especially for civilians not already numb to the experience.
The only -real- casualties are thusly Magneto (with loopholes for resurrection against his will), Sersi (again with loopholes for resurrection but she’s a C-lister even after the movie so who cares?) and a whole lot of mostly anonymous Arakkoans (with possible loophole for resurrection because they’re mutants, but really who cares?)
Avengers Mountain is back until Jason Aaron is done with it.
The Earth Machine was rebooted, but that presumably doesn’t affect anyone but the Eternals. Can the Eternals still be brought back, at the cost of a human life, whether they want or not? It’s a little unclear how that works after the Cosmic Reset Handwave.
I suppose we’ll learn more about any lasting consequences in the Epilogue Issue.
I think it’s kind of interesting that the closest any of the mutants came to interacting with Jada, who’s playing the role of the heart of this story, is Jean reading her mind from a distance and pitying her. Cap has multiple interactions with her where they talk philosophy, but Nightcrawler pointedly ignores her because talking to Cap is more important for him and it seems likely that none of the Eternals are even aware she exists.
I guess that makes sense? She’s a little too real to be an X-men character. It usually goes poorly when they interact with people who are disadvantaged by real life factors as opposed to being oppressed by their inferiors for being a member of the glorious destined master race. And for the Eternals the only possible role she could fill is “victim.”
Maybe that will change in the Omega issue, but I’m definitely noting Jada down on the list of “weird and interesting interactions Gillen’s X-men books have with characters of color.”
I hadn’t considered Sinister wasn’t the original. I figured he was either lying or programmed a backdoor into the Progenitor after going through Judgement Days before resetting the timelines.
The Phoenix Foundation makes sense as a step, but I can see it going south quickly. “Why are you resurrecting x but not y?” could be the words that start a riot, then the mutants defending themselves but being blamed for the violence, etc.
I kind of doubt that Sinister being judged is the result of him not being the main Sinister or whatever. I have a feeling it’s gonna come up somewhere else at some point.
Sersi (again with loopholes for resurrection but she’s a C-lister even after the movie so who cares?)
– but among comic readers she’s the (other) Eternal who was an Avenger, at least.
I don’t get how we SAW Sinister create his race of Sinisters about a decade ago, but then saw that they were around long before that. Plus there was Miss Sinister, who was the failsafe for if THE Sinister died. Hopefully some of it is going to have an attempt at clearing it up either soon in Immortal or in the Sinister event.
Kieron Gillen
Kieron Gillen certainly knows his reset buttons, considering how a certain other Gillen book just ended with its own reset button on the world being changed forever.
Resetting is not just for shared universes and multimedia franchises!
@Jenny: Yeah, I don’t quite get the link between Sinister being a clone and Sinister not being judged. I guess Kraven got ignored by the Progenitor but I think that was because Kraven judged himself for being a clone and the Progenitor bases its judgment on the judgee’s own criteria. Sinister doesn’t have this particular hang-up.
I agree with Mike Loughlin that either Sinister is lying (and he did get judged) or something else went down between Sinister and the late Progenitor. There has to be some link that will be revealed in due time.
@Mike Loughlin: “Why are you resurrecting x but not y?” feels like an exceptionally stupid position for a MU human to take, which means that it will definitely happen.
The X-Men are under no obligation, none whatsoever, to resurrect humans. It is entirely a case of charity. It’s not as if the humans are paying for this service, but even if they were, the mutants are well within their rights to pick and choose who they want to serve.
@GN- the preview for X-Men Red 10 says “a sinister hand deals the Ace of Spades”. So probably the spades Sinister will show up there
Yeah I’m a KG fan but this didn’t really work for me at all.
It just felt generic and meandering and then everything is magically fixed except for a few prerequisite event deaths.
And the Phoenix Foundation… Oh boy.
Douglas Also, if Zuras offering Storm (and Arakko) an hour of Uranos’ time isn’t a rifle being hung on the wall, I don’t know what is
Yeah, but… how the hell are they going to keep him pointed at the “right” target? The whole reason he’s been kept locked up is the Eternals’ inability to reform or control him, after all.
That cover is hilarious! It looks like the characters are trying to warn me that the content of the book sucks.
@GN – Gillen is so good at historical flashbacks so im stoked for that Immortal issue. As for the human resurrection-as-charity : i agree with you wholeheartedly and it’s so problematic! Will they let them pick how they come back? Will it be already-dead humans? What if they, like, resurrect JFK? So many potential problems there.
@K – are you talking about Once & Future re: reset buttons?
They can only resurrect those who have been scanned and for whom they have created a backup. Hence, no, they cannot bring back JFK or anyone who died prior to October 2022.
Unless they use time travel.
Which the X-Men have access to on a regular basis.
Let’s hope no one remembers that.
I assume Eternal resurrection will be hashed out in the Omega issue and Sersei will be excluded from the machine or whatever. Of course since this is comics that doesn’t stop her from coming back when someone wants to use her.
The crossover as a whole was meh for me. But… as I find the vast majority of these crossovers to be infuriatingly stupid that is a relatively high grade. There were some nice tie ins (e.g. Uranus first release in X-Red and Captain Marvel) but even the most stupid crossovers usually have some obligated tie in taking the piss and doing someone funny or interesting.
I thought Judgement Day was great! Lots of cool character moments, an engaging premise, good art, and some excellent tie-ins. I like how Gillen wrote the characters, even the “inconsequential” humans that got a spotlight page every issue. Gillen made their stories feel important, and used them as a lens through which the Progenitor viewed himself and his actions.
The major flaw was the fact that the reset button HAD to be pushed. I wouldn’t have killed off tons of civilians and major characters (except Cap) just to make such a reset necessary. There were a few places in the story in which major events were just brushed over (a problem shared with most crossovers). Ultimately, however, I think the good far outweighed my criticisms.
“Mass PTSD incoming… yet again, especially for civilians not already numb to the experience.”
PTSD almost can’t really exist in a world where major cities and countries get semi-routinely flooded out by a World War II hero, literal gods of mythology sometimes stop into your local coffee shop, vampires are real, and the general public is aware that time travel and reality altering powers exist and multiple sociopaths and people with severe mental health problems have access to them and are just… out there. Like, the world wouldn’t be able to function. Why bother going to your job when Kang might sneeze tomorrow and your company founder was never born?
MU denizens must have mental coping/ignoring mechanisms the likes of which we can’t even imagine.
To me the event feels just way too timid.
There was ample opportunity to take clear stances about characters and their motivations, but far too many of the actual published pages go out of their way to keep matters vague and undecided. We had a bit with Sersi and Ajak in this issue and arguably some set-up with Legion, Exodus, Magneto and Storm previously, but that was it.
An event such as this ought to be a true direction changer. It ought to establish which way the wind is blowing for character dynamics and politics for the time being. It ought to shake things up in the way that Beast bringing the original five forward in time or Cyclops being unexplainably blamed for the terrigen mists cloud did. And it is better suited for such a shake up than most were.
But apparently it is not to be.
If they’re going to resurrect “sick kids,” is Proteus going to reality-warp the sickness away during the process? In which case, why not just cure the sick kids before they die?
Yeah, I was talking about Once & Future.
That story shares something with this one – it was necessary to wreak massive havoc on the world in order to get the cathartic story moments where certain people get what’s coming to them (King Arthur ripping off the British PM’s head, the ultrarich escape rocket being vaporized with a thought).
You know, this might be comics’ most introspective crossover event ever. It doesn’t change character dynamics because the story is about how people do not change – not overnight, not even in millions of years. What you can take away from it is just asking yourself, can I change?
And the answer is entirely between you and your judgment-rendered of choice.
@Drew
“MU denizens must have mental coping/ignoring mechanisms the likes of which we can’t even imagine.”
I’ve always thought as much. And my theory is that characters like Deadpool and Madcap and the Impossible Man exist as psychic safety valves, bleeding off the mass subconscious pressure before it reaches untenable levels. They’re completely insane/bonkers/off the rails because they’re safely releasing the insanity of everyone else, like opening the pressure valve on the Instant Pot so it doesn’t explode when you remove the lid.
Even in a comic book world, you have to figure there’s “normal” levels of “what the fuck just happened” and then there’s the direct and unavoidable experience of dying because a space god deemed you unworthy, and then returning as though nothing had happened.
Because it’s been established that for vast parts of the world, the superhero stuff doesn’t happen on a regular basis except what you see in the news or hear third-hand by Cousin Joey who went to New York three years ago and saw She-Hulk jogging, or Miranda down the street is a mutant with the power to change the color of her roses and she’s considerate enough not to flaunt it.
No mention of Druig being thrown into the Exclusion cell with Uranos with its unpleasant undertones of being violated in prison? I know that nobody likes him, but nobody else in the Exclusion goes through that.
This crossover was just terrible from about the fifth issue, and the ending was a miserable, predictable fizzle. I can only hope that the writers of Dark Web have the sense of humor to have Madelyne Pryor use the excuse “I’m backing you up, aren’t I? So, let me run rampant a bit.”
“Of course since this is comics that doesn’t stop her from coming back when someone wants to use her”
– Seems like Krakoa could resurrect her easily enough.
It does indeed, @Dave.
Krakoan voters are apparently accepted as proper by the Uni-Mind, and as “de facto” members of both the Deviants and Eternals. It doesn’t really make sense, and disappoints me; I expected this event to highlight the contrasts between Eternals and Mutants, but instead it dissolved them.
Looks like Kieron Gillen does not like to constrain the characters that he writes.
Right now it feels like this event had three main consequences.
1. Ajak’s situation, which is not likely to have many actual consequences.
2. Humanity being reminded that they have reasons to fear, hate and also to be grateful towards mutants (and now also Eternals).
3. Orchis now occupying a similar place to that of mutants in society; neither quite secret nor quite trusted.
I suppose it also reassures readers that the X-Men and Avengers do, in fact, exist in the same continuity and can interact if they happen to want to.
Not a particularly meaningful event, despite the rather ambitious set-up. But it puts the Eternals back in a sufficiently reassuring status quo from where they can be brought back when desired, and it puts the Krakoans in a new if sudden and arbitrary place from where new situations, more politically oriented, may now be used for stories.
Clunky, but useful.
Where was it actually revealed that mutants are an offshoot of deviants? I really like the idea, but I can’t remember ever seeing it explained.
@Si
It wasn’t stated in quite those terms, but it is somewhat implied by the latest and very recent Eternal series, which retcons the roles of Eternals and Deviants.
This event also has the Deviants being recognized by the Krakoan gates as if they were mutants. That can be explained in other ways, but it is a strong hint.
Oh okay, I’ve seen the hints, and I assumed there must have been a big revelation somewhere.
I do hope the idea gets developed more, it’s very clever I think.
My first thought when Druig was tossed in with Uranos was, well, he’s not going to last too long. Uranos doesn’t seem like one to torture — it’s not as efficient as destruction. And then does a human die to resurrect Druig? Answers to come in the wrap up issue, maybe.
I also wonder if Sinister had a lot of false starts trying to get through Judgment Day with his Moira reset, what happened in those timelines, and how much effect they had on his actions here. Did he just avoid the bad endings and luck into a way through?
And is he doing the smart thing and starting a fresh batch of Moiras immediately after getting past this event (a permanent save, as it were)? That would at least have the meta effect of locking in everything that’s happened in the Marvel Universe since he started using Moiras.
Can he reset the timeline to the moment of his choosing based on which clone he kills?
such questions
Moira’s life always resets to her moment of birth. This can be controlled and manipulated by Sinister with the clones. So, yes, as long as he keeps a log of the exact moment he created each Moira clone (which, it’s Sinister, he does), he can reset the timeline to the exact moment he chooses.
You make the Marvel Universe sound like a video game now. That’s hilarious. Sinister is playing his character, gets to a certain point in life, quickly clones another Moira so that he can save his place in the timeline.
What I want to see next is a time loop in the Marvel Universe. Imagine if Krakoa, with all of its Moira clones, was destroyed. It would reset the timeline, but the Moira clones would be left unprogrammed, so Sinister would be unaware of events which occurred before the resetting of the timeline. So, events play out exactly as before leading to Krakoa being destroyed. Over and over again, for all of eternity, the Marvel Universe now exists as a series of months repeating.
Plus, the idea of every Moira clone being killed at once is eminently appealing. Imagine it. The timeline resets to the exact moment when each Moira was created, but all the Moira clones died at the exact same instant.
Kieron used to review video games, so it’s fairly certain he’s realized this is basically a multiverse-altering save-scum set-up.
I liked it. I liked how it organically came out of Eternals and the prime Eternals and X-Men titles smoothly crossed over with it, the X-Force and Avenger crossovers were ignorable.
Between the idea of Moira resetting the timeline every time she died… and Sinister realizing the exploitable value of said power, I fear the writers have locked themselves into a sticky corner.
Sure, maybe Moira is eliminated as a timeline resetter, but now there will ALWAYS be the faint possibility that Sinister, or a Sinister clone, has a backup Moira facility somewhere capable of resetting the timeline to whatever arbitrary point or points exist or will exist in the future.
Considering we’ve already seen what has to have been Sinister using Moira to navigate through dozens of potential futures to determine what lies ahead (and having navigated through Judgement Day, has identified more potential branches…)
Who’s to say there’s not a Sinister Save Point that would put him pre-Judgement Day again?
Yeah, Age of Sinister is coming up, and presumably that goes horribly wrong, necessitating a return to an earlier Save Point.
But this is a plot point which can never be fully wiped out, only handled with writer/editor restraint (No, Kieron, you can’t reset the Marvel U back to 2022 again.) Because as we’ve seen, there’s always another Sinister clone, another Sinister scheme, another secret Sinister lab that even other Sinisters don’t know about. And even “No More Sinisters” or “No More Clones” only works for so long.
I do like that, in the one panel where Orchis is shown opposing the Progenitor, we do get a (partially obscured) look at one (maybe two?) of the crazy transformed ape scientists from Hickman’s X-Men #1.