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

MARAUDERS vol 2 #8
“Here Comes Yesterday, part 2”
Writer: Steve Orlando
Artist: Eleonora Carlini
Colourist: Matt Milla
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Design: Tom Muller
Editor: Jordan D White

COVER / PAGE 1. A rather nice pin-up of Fang, Psylocke and Aurora by Peach Momoko. Nothing specifically to do with the story, but very pretty.

PAGE 2. Obituary for Tom Palmer.

PAGE 3. Flashback: The Threshold Three are sent into the future.

The unnamed character speaking here is Grove, who was named in the previous issue and identified as the leader of the uninfected Thresholders. The three characters that they’re sending into the future are Theia, Amass and Crave, the three Thresholders who were revived in the present day in the previous issue.

For the most part, Grove is recapping what we were told in the previous issue: Threshold was a thriving mostly-mutant society which came under attack from “the Unbreathing”, a pre-human race adapted to an oxygen-free atmosphere which somehow or other survived the Oxygenation Catastrophe and declared war on the air breathers. The Thresholders responded by creating smart bacterial weapons which got out of control, backfired, and eventually became Sublime and Arkea.

The version in the previous issue was rather vague about why the Unbreathing were attacking. There was some hand-waving stuff about them needing to defend themselves, but no real explanation of what the attack achieved in that regard. This scene establishes that they were led by a defector, Nightfount, who’s a new character. We’re also told that the Unbreathing were “intent on reigniting the Oxygen Wars”, which seems to hint that the Thresholders are the bad guys here – that they changed the whole atmosphere to make prehistoric Earth more congenial to them.

PAGE 4. Recap and credits. The strapline, “Secret Origin of a Species”, is obvious a reference to DC’s Secret Origins crossed with Darwin’s Origin of the Species.

PAGES 5-6. The Marauders make plans in the spa.

Well, got to liven up two pages of expository dialogue somehow, I guess.

There’s something quite odd about the art showing Aurora’s reaction in page 5 panel 4, which seems quite at odds with the dialogue.

Much of this is devoted to the question of whether going back in time to save Threshold would risk altering history. Kate’s attitude of oh-we’ll-sort-it-all-out is less than convincing, but Orlando has two other better arguments for it. One is the fact that Bishop is a time traveller from the future and has never been particularly bothered himself about preserving the timeline. The other is an argument that Tempo previously made in issue #4 – that, counter intuitively, it’s actually safer to alter history the further back you go, because it leaves more opportunity for the general arc of history to reconcile itself without causing a paradox.

Also, the traditional ending of a story like this would be something like “they save Threshold but it’s stuck in limbo until the present day which is why it’s never been heard of before”. Though I rather suspect Orlando is going to a big reverse where the Thresholders are the baddies and the Marauders wind up having to side with them anyway in order to preserve the basic conditions for life on earth.

Kate’s speech about recruiting this particular team for their “hearts and their “need to save lives and not be stopped” is… um… really? Daken, who’s a career killer? Tempo, who had to be dragged kicking and screaming from the bar? Kwannon, who’s another career killer? Somnus, the ordinary guy enjoying his second chance at life? These are the guys who stand out for their unstoppable drive for heroism? Really?

PAGES 7-8. Psylocke and Greycrow entertain Crave.

Crave’s power is basically that he can eat anything, which seems annoying even to Maggott, whose power is that he has two maggotts that can eat anything.

Kwannon is wearing the Psylocke costume from the second run of Uncanny X-Force, which was actually worn by Betsy – but it’s a perfectly nice costume, so why not?

The menu headers in Krakoan just read “Small Plates”, “Big Plates”, “Family Style”, “Desserts” and “Drinks”.

Crave claims that the alphabet (though not the actual language) is the same as the Thresholders used. Krakoan was supposed to have been designed by Cypher, but he could have picked up the alphabet from Krakoa somehow. He also talks about a “seed” that spawned Threshold – clearly there’s a connection with Krakoa there.

PAGES 9-10. Amass hangs out with Cassandra.

Amass. Granted that Amass is The Goth One, Cassandra is an odd choice of companion. If Amass fancies themselves as some sort of outcast then their merger power is clearly rather ironic. That said, Amass also comes across here as a disappointed optimist who isn’t just mourning the loss of Threshold’s reality but of the potential it never reached.

Amass too describes Krakoa as “almost familiar”, suggesting a connection with Threshold.

Cassandra Nova refers to Charles Xavier attempting to kill her in utero (in flashback in New X-Men #121), the destruction of her original body (circa New X-Men #126) and Jean Grey’s attempt to make her feel empathy (in X-Men Red #11), which was revealed in issue #1 merely to have turned her against humans rather than mutants.

PAGES 11-12. Tempo and Theia.

Dead Mutant Cove is the surfing cove from X-Force #25, which is why they’re talking about surfing.

Theia largely repeats what was said about Threshold humans in the previous issue. The claim that the oceans were extremely dangerous to Thresholders is new, and presumably something to do with the Unbreathing. It might also explain why, according to Amass in the previous scene, Threshold only extended to one continent.

We’re pretty obviously setting up a relationship between Theia and Tempo here.

PAGE 13. The Marauders get brooches.

Jumbo Carnation is a regular from volume 1 and needs no introduction. Stitch is a minor Alpha Flight character from the early 1990s; she can control small pieces of metal, which is why she’s “a virtuoso with micro-circuitry”. She was brought to Krakoa by Aurora in Marauders Annual #1.

PAGES 14-16. The Marauders and the Threshold Three visit Cooterman’s Creek and travel back in time.

Something’s a bit wrong here – Cooterman’s Creek is the (rarely used) name of the X-Men’s old Australian outback base from the late 1980s, the one they got from the Reavers, which is very much not on the coast.

At any rate, presumably this is meant to be the old 1980s base, which is apparently the site of Threshold. I’m not quite clear how the idea of it having a specific site fits with Amass telling us that it covered a continent.

Amass is something of a one-person version of the “mutant circuit” concept we’ve seen throughout the Krakoan era – or at least, has the potential to temporarily combine a set of mutant powers in a more efficient way. You’d have thought it would make sense to practice this a bit before attempting to travel back in time by two billion years, but this way is more dramatic.

PAGE 17. Data page. Grove’s resistance log. This version is rather more explicit that the Thresholders created Sublime and Arkea in an attempt to finally wipe out the Unbreathing, who had been driven into relatively peaceful exile already. Basically, the Thresholders were genocidal, their own weapons destroyed them, and they only had themselves to blame – though it’s fair to say that Grove indicates there were a range of views among the Thresholders, and it’s not clear yet how much the average citizen knew about any of this.

PAGES 18-24. The time travellers arrive in the past and fight Sublime and Arkea.

It doesn’t go well. The containment suits don’t seem to work at all.

PAGE 25. Data page. Another resistance log – from the record numbers, this seems to be earlier than the previous one. We’re helpfully told that Sublime and Arkea are potentially vulnerable to telepathic attack if their consciousness can be gathered in one place, so keep an eye out for that.

PAGE 26. Trailers.