X-Men Red #8 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN RED #8
“Mission to the Unknown”
Writer: Al Ewing
Artist: Madibek Musibekov
Colourist: Federico Blee
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Design: Tom Muller
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. Cable fighting Orbis Stellaris (or rather, Orbis serving as the head of the giant body).
PAGES 2-4. Cable and Khora recruit Weaponless Zsen.
Gosnell’s Bar is a bar which appeared in several issues of Al Ewing’s Guardians of the Galaxy run.
Weaponless Zsen was last seen in Legion of X #5, where she left Nightcrawler a letter and signed up to work as an interstellar mercenary. As she says, she managed to leave the planet just before a massive war broke out – Legion #5 ended with Uranos showing up to attack Arakko.
This scene confirms that she’s the daughter of the Fisher King and sister of Khora, as very strongly implied by a data page in issue #6. Fisher King “returned from his shadows” in issues #6-7 when the Night Seats members of the Great Ring resurfaced in the wake of Uranos’s attack. We don’t know yet why she and Fisher King aren’t talking.
As established in Legion of X, Zsen’s power is a hazily defined thing about painting with truth, which she’s rather dismissive about – despite the fact that her creations seem to have significant psychological impact. She calls herself “Weaponless” because her powers have no military application; Cable tells her directly here that they do.
Zsen says that she “paid dearly” for her weapons upgrades; she got them from Tarn’s Locus Vile outfit, so the cost was probably rather unpleasant.
Blackjack O’Hare is a mercenary who debuted in Incredible Hulk #271 (1982), and used to be a Rocket Racoon villain. He also resurfaced as a mercenary in Ewing’s Guardians of the Galaxy, which is also where he hooked up with…
The Prince of Power, who debuted in Guardians of the Galaxy #3 (2020). He’s a well meaning, attractive, vacuous moron. He’s the current possessor of the Power Stone, a job way, way above his mental pay grade.
“I hear little Khora performed assassinations for Abigail Brand.” Khora killed various claimants to the Snark throne on Abigail Brand’s orders in S.W.O.R.D. #5 (2021).
Cable‘s reasons for going after Abigail Brand are explained later in the issue.
PAGE 5. Recap and credits.
PAGE 6. Data page: a list of the attendees (and obvious absentees) from the meeting in the next scene. This is mostly recapping established roles, and the other points of interest are largely flagged up in dialogue.
PAGE 7. The meeting begins.
The Kree/Skrull Emperor is Hulkling, who is a nice guy and doesn’t want to start a war. An obvious question that nobody raises is why he isn’t attending the meeting himself, given that his Shi’ar opposite number is attending – he doesn’t even show up on the data page. Since the absence of the Super-Skrull is noted, it’s curious that Gladiator doesn’t raise this question.
“[The Super-Skrull] swore an oath not to commit murder in the Emperor’s service.” Presumably as a consequence of Hulkling transferring him to diplomatic duty in Empyre – Aftermath: Avengers #1 (2020), as punishment of sorts for his previous brutality.
“Again, the Voice of Sol has no time to speak to us…” Storm also no-showed the arrival of a Shi’ar delegation in S.W.O.R.D. #9 (2021). As of last issue, Lodus Logos has the regent seat on the Great Ring, so presumably Storm isn’t actually the Voice of Sol any more, but word of this hasn’t reached Gladiator. We’re never quite told directly what Storm is up to (Frenzy merely ventures a guess), which seems significant.
PAGE 8. Abigail Brand and Mentallo watch.
Mentallo seems to be the only member of Brand’s group who remains loyal to her, or at least willing to take the money.
Frenzy has been in unrequited love with Cyclops since the Age of X crossover, where they lived an alternate life as a couple.
PAGES 8-10. Xandra accepts responsibility for the Shapeless Ridge incident.
Shapeless Ridge has come up in some previous Ewing stories. The first mention seems to be Rocket #5 (2017), where a character called Max Sekuri is rumoured to be “ex-Kree military, disowned after his part in the Shapeless Ridge massacre”. Captain Glory mentioned that he “led the charge at Shapeless Ridge” in Empyre #3 (2020), suggesting that this somehow helped him to recognise Skrulls. In Empyre #6, the Super-Skrull describes Glory as “the butcher of Shapeless Ridge”. This is the first clear explanation of what actually happened.
The Ten Shames are parts of Shi’ar history suppressed by the Kin Crimson cult, as covered in the first arc of Steve Orlando’s Marauders. Shapeless Ridge was indeed listed as the fourth of the Ten Shames in a data page in Marauders #2. Xandra’s attitude of confronting the Shi’ar past and atoning for it is consistent with her reaction in Marauders.
PAGES 11-13. Cable briefs his team.
Cable recaps how he and Wiz Kid discovered Abigail’s schemes in the epilogue of the previous issue. Abigail’s alliance with Stellaris was established in S.W.O.R.D. #9-10. A data page in S.W.O.R.D. #11 reveals that Stellaris is originally from Earth, but Cable doesn’t know that.
Abigail got her techno-organic sample from Cable after he died fighting the Progenitors in issue #2.
PAGES 14-15. Cable’s group approach the World Farm.
The World Farm, the home of the Progenitors, was previously seen in Al Ewing’s Inhumans series Royals (2017). The Progenitors in that story were much more powerful than the ones seen in issue #2, hence Cable’s surprise that they were apparently genuine.
“Me too – before I had a few decades to think about it.” Cable is referring to the fact that he was a teenager when working with Brand at the start of S.W.O.R.D., and has now returned much later in his life.
PAGES 16-19. Cable’s group explore the World Farm.
An Einstein-Rosen bridge is a kind of wormhole.
The aliens are the ones we saw resurrecting Vulcan in X-Men #10, recapped in issue #2. Basically, Cable and co are learning what the readers already knew.
The Fault is the location to which Vulcan was banished at the end of the War of Kings crossover (along with Black Bolt, who also made it out pretty quickly).
PAGES 20-21. Vulcan makes his return.
Vulcan’s resurrection after his death in issue #3 has apparently broken his conditioning. Presumably the aliens just didn’t anticipate that. At any rate, Power Skrull is keen for a war despite it being very unlikely that his emperor wants anything to do with it, and Vulcan – who considers that he never lost the Shi’ar throne – is more than happy to be oblige. Naturally, they’re all just being manipulated into a war by…
PAGE 22. Data page: Abigail Brand explains her plan.
This is basically Abigail tying together the events that we’ve seen over the last few years and explaining how her plans fit into it.
- Abigail’s relationship with the Beast dates back to Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men.
- The Vescori are the aliens who were on the old SWORD station in “X of Swords”, and wound up in Otherworld.
- Abigail quit Alpha Flight at the end of Empyre. Her replacement was Henry Gyrich, who evidently wasn’t predictable enough for her, because she killed him in S.W.O.R.D. #11.
- The “mutant circuit” here is the Six, who obtained mysterium as a boost to the galactic economy in S.W.O.R.D. #1.
- The Snarkwar was a fight for the throne of the Snark Empire, going on in the background in early issues of S.W.O.R.D..
- Knull is the main villain of the King in Black crossover.
PAGE 23. Abigail is pleased.
Very pleased.
PAGE 24. Trailers.
“Presumably the aliens just didn’t anticipate that. ”
I think you’re misinterpreting- the idea seems to be that Brand was behind the aliens that resurrected Vulcan and her plan all along was for Vulcan’s conditioning to fail when he was resurrected.
To be honest, I’m not sure if Brand’s plan fully holds up – some of this feels like Ewing connecting a bunch of disparate threads and then saying it was the plan all along – but I’m enjoying the story so I’ll go along with it.
On another note, given the multiple references to Stellaris’s cloning abilities in this issue, I think the theory that he is an Essex clone is half way to being confirmed.
The Diamonds: Mister Sinister (mutant-aligned)
The Clubs: Doctor Stasis (human-aligned)
The Spades: Orbis Stellaris (space-aligned)
This leaves the Essex of Hearts. Could it possibly be an unwitting Gambit? There is a Rogue & Gambit miniseries coming out next year around the time that SoS launches.
If I had my druthers*, we’d have 2 Al Ewing X-books: X-Men Red dealing with Arakko and SWORD, dealing with space politics. This issue felt like a new issue of the latter, and made me realize how much I’ve missed it. Hell, give Ewing a book called “Marvel Cosmic” & let him do his thing.
* after I was done with the chimpanzee. Call it pointless…
This is my favourite issue of X-Men Red so far. Lots of threads coming together. I also find it interesting that stuff that bothered me in early issues tends to end up being deliberate and part of the story. I thought the Arraki sucked and had useless powers, and hey, they do! They are a failed society! Storm takes on yet more titles and mantles of power and then bails on them when it’s important, to tragic effect: yep, that’s a thing she does.
I think the cast is overstuffed and so characters like Thunderbird don’t have much reason to be in the story but it honestly feels like Ewing actually had this mega-plot planned out for a few years, and kudos to that.
I didn’t think Storm being Regent has anything to do with her seat in the Arakko council.
She’s just the person they unilaterally decided was the boss of the solar system, on top of anything else.
“Mission to the Unknown” was a (now missing) episode of Doctor Who that centered around a meeting of alien delegates discussing an invasion of Earth. I can’t tell 100% based on your annotations and I haven’t seen the issue… but I’m pretty sure it’s a deliberate reference.
I was just shocked to learn Blackhack O’Hare precedes Bucky O’Hare being published by at least a year or two, but Bucky was actually part of the DC Implosion and didn’t see print in the late 70s. Bucky was also created by the seemingly unlikely duo of Karry Hama and Michael Golden.
199 episodes and still no edit button.
Larry Hama.
Al Ewing almost certainly has all sorts of long-term plans going on. I’d guess he has extensive files somewhere. He regularly revisits old plot points from unrelated comics that he wrote, sometimes years ago. He plants seeds but draws no attention to it at the time.
The difference between his writing and Jonathan Hickman’s is that he shows rather than telling, in an organic way that builds on existing stories rather than massive retcons. But I bet they keep similar files.
I definitely read this as Vulcan purposefully being placed on Krakoa so that he could be triggered as a WMD at Brand’s discretion. I feel like she’s got a precog or something similar working for her.
@Si
I wouldn’t be so sure of that. Ewing’s talked in interviews about how a lot of it is improvisational, where he just does something because it works in the moment and only afterwards find ways to build off of it.
For example, he wrote the tie-in comic to the Contest of Champions mobile game, which used some kind of in game currency/token called Iso-8. So he justified the number 8 by stating the current Marvel universe is the eighth universe. And all the Eighth Cosmos stuff he’s been doing in Hulk and Defenders is riffing off of that.
Her plan worked pretty well for me since the document was phrased as something that she’d been working on over time. Each section was written at a specific time of her looking forward to the next step. So sure, some of it is maybe a little much, but the base of it feels solid to me.
Bringing back Vulcan: At that point she’s just grabbing a good asset and entangling him into Krakoa without a specific plan.
Terraforming Mars: Starts off in phase 2 as a general ‘they’re doing to terraform something’, then by phase 3 is a definite ‘they will terraform Mars’. Terraforming a planet for Arakko isn’t that out there with the power levels people are throwing around. The main point arguing against it was just Marvel being willing to go there. 🙂
The galactic economic problems were just generally telegraphed in all of Ewing’s books, so it didn’t take any special abilities to predict.
Someone attacking Arakko: Yeah, that seems fairly predictable in the MU.
And then everything else around Vulcan and the release of the Shapeless Ridge data and probably Mars as a diplomatic port had her direct hand in it. Getting the timing exactly right is hard, but having the exact timing is a comic book plot standard. Besides, the timing probably isn’t actually as convenient as she wants, with Storm’s location a mystery.
Separate bit — I like that Shapeless Ridge was a treatment area for Skrulls that couldn’t shapeshift. When the name came up in Empyre I got the image of a place so bound to the Skrulls that the very land could change and flow. Instead it’s the exact opposite.
“Ewing’s talked in interviews about how a lot of it is improvisational, where he just does something because it works in the moment and only afterwards find ways to build off of it.”
The difference between Ewing and other writers is that he has a knack for making this stuff work out and feel organically linked together when he finally draws threads together. And if he doesn’t, those little bits don’t feel quite so obtrusive.
Take someone like Claremont, who threw out story seeds with wild abandon and -maybe- remembered to come back and see what came of it, or some of the other X-writers of the 90s who really left a lot of danglers that didn’t always pay off…
Ewing makes it seem like he had a plan all along. Not always the best plan, but a plan. And this is why Marvel needs to keep him.
Hey Paul,
Are you covering Deadpool? They seem to be treating this volume as an xbook/krakoa book
No, there’s not enough hours in the day to cover peripheral X-books.
Blackjack O’Hare’s comment that the universe is “bigger than it used to be, even” is a reference to the recent Dan Slott FF “Reckoning War” storyline in which the size of the accessible universe was expanded by a factor of (I think) ten.