Marauders #9 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
MARAUDERS vol 2 #9
“Here Comes Yesterday, part 3”
Writer: Steve Orlando
Artist: Eleonora Carlini
Colourist: Matt Milla
Letterer & production: Ariana Maher
Design: Tom Muller
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. Kate and Bishop fight the possessed Fang.
PAGE 2. Stan Lee tribute page.
PAGE 3. Nightfount is updated on progress.
Nightfount. Nightfount was seen briefly in the previous issue, but this is the first time we’ve seen him at any length. He was described last time as “Threshold’s defector” who “leads the Unbreathing against us, razes our cities, intent on reigniting the Oxygen Wars”.
We’ll find out later in the issue who Nightfount actually is, but the design of his helmet is a big clue, as is the fact that he already knows about Arkea and Sublime by name, even though the duo only learn those names from reading the Marauders’ minds later in the issue.
PAGE 4. Recap and credits.
“We all live in the sublime. Where else can we live?” This is a quote from “The Deeper Life” by Maurice Maeterlinkc (1862-1949) from his 1896 essay collection Treasure of the Humble. It’s usually followed with the next sentence: “That is the only place of life.”
PAGES 5-6. The Marauders fight Fang.
Pretty straightforward.
PAGE 7. Somnus distracts Akihiro.
Fang’s body is going to have to be killed, and Somnus is entering his mind in order to make sure he doesn’t realise what’s happening. It’s not clear how Somnus is able to use his powers to do this, given that they’re linked to sleep – perhaps, because his consciousness is being suppressed by Sublime, Fang counts as being asleep.
Sendai is the city in Japan where Daken grew up. The idea is presumably meant to be that Somnus is taking him to his childhood home in the moments before he dies, but the art doesn’t get that over, opting instead for a lot of lamps and a hazy fog. To be fair, it does a better job on the emotion.
PAGES 8-12. The Unbreathing join the fight and the Marauders retreat.
Crave gets killed (though presumably he could be resurrected back on Krakoa, as Fang doubtless will be).
This issue has horrific problems with storytelling clarity, mostly due to the decision to stick the cast in identical uniforms that partially obscure their faces. The names written on the sides of the legs were presumably meant to help with this, but they only go so far.
PAGE 13. Data page. Another of Grove’s resistance logs. The number indicates that this fits between the two data pages in the previous issue. Basically, the remaining Thresholders have set up a hidden base protected by illusions.
PAGES 14-15. The Marauders meet Grove.
Apparently Kate Pryde has just vanished somewhere – the idea seems to be that she got separated during the last fight and wasn’t with the other Marauders when they escaped, but again, this is not an easy issue to follow visually.
“I’m not new to losing friends…” Somnus’s back story has him spending his first life as a closeted gay man before being resurrected on Krakoa thanks to Daken’s intervention; he’s quite probably referring to friends who died of AIDS, though of course he could also be referring to human friends and family.
“What is a double helix but the original ‘X’ in revelry?” This apparently makes perfect sense to Somnus, which is nice, because it’s baffling to me.
PAGE 16. The Marauders are shown the Seed.
The Seed is the same puzzle box that Kate was given in Annual #1; it contained a map of Krakoa, with Kate’s handwriting, reading “the first blood spilled”. Obviously, the implication is that Kate is going to wind up putting that map in the box during this storyline. Tempo refers to Emma Frost “finding” it on Krakoa. It’s not mentioned here, but the puzzle box is made of mysterium, which was only brought to the galaxy by in S.W.O.R.D. #1. Theia tells us that the Thresholders all came from the puzzle box. The strong implication – as hinted at in earlier issues too – is that somebody came back in time to start this civilisation, and apparently engaged in a bit of terraforming along the way, driving out the Unbreathing. In other words, this is not genuinely the genesis of the mutant race, though it is the earliest point in time at which mutants existed on Earth.
PAGE 17. Data page – excerpts from minutes of the Threshold Parliament as they debate whether (and how) to continue their battle against the Unbreathing, and complacently assume that everything will be just fine with Arkea and Sublime.
PAGES 18-21. The Marauders are briefed on the threat to the Thresholders’ birthing sea.
Psylocke takes command here because she’s a War Captain, but she also has a particular interest in the protection of children given the loss of her own child as covered in Fallen Angels and Hellions.
PAGES 22-25. Nightfount unmasks to Amass.
Nightfount turns out to be Stryfe, who we last saw in the Cable solo series – but time travel being what it is, this could be Stryfe at any point in his timeline. He’s wearing an aquatic version of his traditional armour, but the suggestion may be that this is the original and that the more familiar Liefeld design is a stylised version of it from once he stopped… well, wearing a crab on his face.
Since we’re told that he betrayed Threshold, the implication may be that he was one of its founders, but of course it’s also possible that there’s a genuine Nightfount and Stryfe took his place. Note also, though, that Amass instantly recognises Stryfe once he removes his helmet – apparently Stryfe is a known villain to the Thresholders.
PAGE 26. Trailers.
I’m fairly confident that this ‘Helix Home’ resistance base is going to end up becoming the mutant island Okkara. Amass will probably consume a boost fruit and bind all of the remaining Threshold survivors to the HH landmass to keep them save from Sublime/Arkea. Grove, the leader of Threshold, will become the central mind of Okkara.
Okkara then becomes dormant until Apocalypse and Genesis find it during Ancient Egypt, ~5000 BC. (Though there could be any number of adventures with Okkara in the million plus years in between, if a writer wanted to.)
In order to save the Thresholders, Kate will return to present day, free their minds from the Krakoan hive mind, and put them back into fresh husk bodies created by the Five.
I like the ideas of this arc (I’m a sucker for pre-destination stuff) but it feels a bit wonky and the art certainly doesn’t help. I don’t think the artist is necessarily bad, but they feel more suited for works that aren’t so…complicated, I suppose
The implication is that Amass, off-panel, has used their powers to merge with Kate, which is why they’re talking to themselves (which the story draws attention to) and they know Stryfe by that name. It’s also why, from the Marauders’ point of view, she seems to have mysteriously vanished.
Also, Nightfont is a sort of antonym for Dayspring.
The decision to put them into identical suits is really baffling. I mean, the “rules” of time travel are elastic enough that this is only a safety issue because the creators decided to make it one. The problem could have been hand-waved, or even just never raised in the first place.
My only thought is that it was a (misfired) attempt to *increase* clarity, at least in terms of factions, by clearly distinguishing the Marauders from the guest cast.
I concur with GN that “Grove” is going to end up being Krakoa in some meaningful sense, though I am less certain about the specifics.
Well, the infection theme of the plot requires them to be in protective suits of some sort. But they don’t have to be identical.
Actually, Ancient Egypt (and Apocalypse’s youth) was around ~3000BC. I got that wrong.
The nigh-identical costumes really was a baffling decision. Surely putting them in containment suit versions of their usual uniforms would have been better?
About the art — I have some of the same problems with it as I do with the art on Moon Knight. The figures lack depth, everything is heavily shaded with blacks, and backgrounds are often just black action lines or blocks and random colors that don’t stand apart from what’s supposed to be foregrounded. But I see a lot of raves about the art in Moon Knight (which is, I think, a bit better than what’s here), so maybe my tired old eyes just can’t adjust to this dynamic new style. Is it just me?
@Karl_H: It’s definitely not just you. I’m a fan of overly stylized art (Bachalo immediately comes to mind), myself, but this doesn’t quite stick. It always feels like the colour artists are doing a lot of work to make up for very sketchy, dynamic, mobile visual storytelling that misses a lot of opportunities for characterization. There’s hardly a sense if space in these issues, and in this one the repeated use of abstract lines (in lieu of a background) to convey momentum was annoyingly obvious.
That being said, I wonder if some of this stems from stronger manga emphasis in the art. Still, not an excuse for the persistent disconnect between narrative and design…
On a separate note, and given Steve Orlando’s strange fascination with even the duller bits of continuity: at a point, I found myself wondering if the whole Arkea/Sublime versus Stryfe ordeal could relate back to the Legacy Virus…
A bit of a stretch, probably.