X-Men Red #9 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN RED vol 2 #9
“Return of the King”
Writer: Al Ewing
Artist: Stefano Caselli
Colourist: Federico Blee
Letterer and Production: Ariana Maher
Design: Tom Muller
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1: Abigail Brand playing an increasingly convoluted chess-like game, with a broken Storm piece.
PAGE 2. Stan Lee tribute
PAGE 3. Data page: a memo from Professor X to the rest of the Quiet Council. Essentially, Abigail Brand has persuaded Xavier that after Magneto died in A.X.E.: Judgment Day, leaving clear directions not to resuscitate him, they need to resurrect Vulcan (following his death at the hands of Tarn in issue #3) in order to have access to his power. She’s also persuaded him that an excellent idea would be to give Vulcan a crash course in some sort of therapy as part of his resurrection, supposed in order to stabilise him.
Obviously this is all part of Brand’s plan for Vulcan to go crazy (as seen at the end of the previous issue), and Xavier walks straight into it. He comes across here as gullible but also overconfident in his own abilities, despite paying lip service to his limitations. Ewing also writes Xavier confidently proclaiming absolute moral rules that he would never break “under any circumstances” – only to immediately qualify them with “absolute necessity”, which could mean anything. Basically, Xavier’s fatal flaw in this reading is that he believes his own hype.
Harry Leland was resurrected, and appointed as Krakoan ambassador to the UN, in Marauders vol 1 #26.
PAGES 4-7. Flashback: Vulcan is resurrected.
In fairness to Xavier, Cyclops also supports his approach. Unusually, it’s Havok who gets to be the voice of reason here, perhaps because he’s the one least likely to have confidence in the X-Men’s decisions. He’s also entirely unconvinced that any of this is going to make a difference to Vulcan’s erratic behaviour; he might also have in mind that the X-Men never really sorted out the split-personality behaviour that led him to wind up in the Hellions for a while.
Kate Pryde‘s inability to be resurrected, because of the way her powers interacted with the eggs, was a long-running storyline in the first volume of Marauders.
Vulcan is able to jump-start his own resurrection. There’s a precedent for this; Legion did it in Way of X #2, completing his own resurrection without Xavier’s involvement.
Vulcan says that “the shell is broken”, referring to the surface-level personality that was imposed on him by the three aliens that were seen in X-Men #10 and in issue #2; last issue implies that they’re part of Brand’s scheme.
PAGE 8. Recap and credits.
PAGES 9-12. Vulcan confronts Deathbird.
“How’s my son?” Deathbird was revealed to be pregnant with Vulcan’s child in X-Men vol 4 #18 (2014), by which time Vulcan was already dead. That plot was dropped when Deathbird next appeared, but the child was confirmed to have been born in New Mutants #5. We don’t know much more about them than that. The “scientists and their endless experiments” that Deathbird mentions are probably a reference to X-Men vol 4 #18-20, where the Providian Order experimented on the unborn child to add Kree DNA.
Vulcan refers to starting a “second reign”, which amounts to a rare acknowledgement that he isn’t the emperor any more (even if he considers himself the rightful one). His mind is clearer than it was before.
“He came out of the Fault alive…” Vulcan fell into the Fault at the end of 2009’s War of Kings crossover; X-Men #10 (the Hickman one) established that he had emerged from it rather than simply being resurrected.
“He started a galactic war for kicks…” Nova is referring to War of Kings.
Gladiator being powered by self-confidence is a concept introduced in Fantastic Four #249.
PAGE 13. Abigail Brand and Mentallo watch the chaos.
As usual, Brand insists that she is acting for the greater good; it’s a similar angle to Beast over in X-Force (but with rather more complex schemes that actually work).
PAGE 14. The Progenitors detect Wiz Kid.
PAGES 15-17. Cable’s team fight Orbis Stellaris.
The three “heralds” that Orbis wakes are the creatures that altered Vulcan’s mind in the flashback in X-Men #10.
PAGES 18-20. Sunspot shows his hand.
Vulcan has a point that Deathbird is showing uncharacteristic loyalty to the Shi’ar throne right now; for most of her history her main activity has been trying to overthrow the Emperor, even when it’s a close relative, unless she was actually on the throne at the time. Does the kid have anything to do with that?
Brand seems to believe that there’s a moral imperative to acknowledge what she’s doing, but for all that, she never seems to show any actual regret about it. Rather, her sense of moral righteousness is bound up in believing that she’s acting for the greater good, and her (half-hearted) acknowledgement is part of that.
PAGE 21. Data page: Sunspot’s plan. This is a parody of the data page from the previous issue with Brand’s plan. Sunspot’s plan is much simpler and keeps getting distracted by him wondering about his own image – all of which is typical for Ewing’s Sunspot, who is simultaneously superficial and the smartest guy in the room. And certainly smarter than everyone else gives him credit for.
“The Total Selleck.” Way back in the early days of New Mutants, Sunspot was obsessed with Magnum PI, starring Tom Selleck.
PAGE 22. Vulcan retreats.
When Vulcan fought Sunspot in the Red Lagoon bar in issue #1, he apparently drained Sunspot’s power and said “You’re powered by solar energy, like me. but I don’t have to take mind from the sun when I can take it from you.” That’s the exchange he repeats here. He seems to be implying that either he was playing along in issue #1, or that he could pull the same trick and outpower Vulcan if he wanted – at least when he had advance warning. On the other hand, the final panel suggests that Sunspot is just bluffing and that Vulcan could indeed have depowered him as he did in issue #1.
PAGES 23-24. Vulcan confronts Storm.
Vulcan is supposedly looking for Xandra, but he’s drawn the the Autumn Palace – the home that Magneto built in issue #1 – where Storm is waiting for him. It’s not clear whether he’s been tricked into going there or whether Xandra is indeed present off panel.
PAGE 25. Trailers.
The bit on Sunspot’s data page where it crosses out “president” for “empress” refers back to Ewing’s U.S Avengers, where Sunspot disguised himself as Obama near the end of the run as part of one of his plans.
Can someone please explain to me why they can’t cure Vulcan’s insanity the same way they cured Domino’s issues in Percy’s X-Force? They were also unable to just reset Maddie’s personality to five seconds before S’ym tricked her. (Although, in fairness, that might be because magic is involved, just like with Kurt’s current problem. Then again, Sinister seemed SURPRISED when Kurt’s magical problem wasn’t cured by resurrection, like this was the first time something like that had happened.) The implication in Percy’s issues was that they just reset them to an earlier version of their personality- I could see why that wouldn’t work with Sabretooth or Omega Red, who have been violent killers since at least adolescence but Vulcan and Maddie were their friends, so if it worked for Domino it should work for them. It’s seems like Domino’s plot was forgotten about because the writers had other ideas.
Oh, correction to earlier post, it was Ewing’s New Avengers where it happened.
As for Havok being the voice of reason this time – he’s the one who watched Vulcan kill Corsair and the fought a galactic war against him, as interim leader of Starjammers and even the small Shi’ar resistance against Vulcan. Basically everything Nova mentions, Havok was a part of. He also spent an unspecified amount of time in a Shi’ar prison thanks to Vulcan.
Michael> Can someone please explain to me why they can’t cure Vulcan’s insanity the same way they cured Domino’s issues in Percy’s X-Force?
1) They don’t have backups that go back that far (remember how Ewing established that “Petra” & “Sway” were Vulcan’s delusions, the absolute earliest they could get a Vulcan from would have been while he was floating in space). The Waiting Room can only restore the most recent version.
2) In the event any character having a old backup is inconvenient and it *would* exist, assume Onslaught deleted it in Onslaught Revelation.
3) There are certain ethical questions involved in such a serious mindwipe without consent (remember, Colossus lied about Domino – they thought she *wanted* to be restored to a pre-trauma version. She didn’t), and Xavier is currently (mostly) ruling out such tampering per the opening data page anyway.
I quite liked the Sunspot reveal. In the previous pages I was wondering why Xandra was lounging so casually while her allies where getting trounced by Vulcan. It made perfect sense when it was revealed to be Sunspot.
Looking forward to Storm vs Vulcan. On paper his powers trumps Storm’s, but she is much smarter so hopefully Ewing delivers something clever.
@Jenny: All three plans Sunspot mentions in his data page – (1) staging a fake funeral for himself, (2) turning his base into giant robot, and (3) impersonating the President to trap the villain – are all things he did during Ewing’s New Avengers (Vol 4) run.
Of course, that run was an exaggerated Mission Impossible homage whereas X-Men Red is a more serious political fantasy book, so the schemes can’t get as zany here, but it was a nice callback.
It’s been a few years since I’ve read New Avengers, but it is starting to come back to me.
@Bengt: Storm easily won their last encounter, so if Ewing is going to match them up again, things have to go differently (besides Vulcan’s sanity) or else there would be no point. Given that X-Men Red 10 leads right into Sins of Sinister, I suspect that the twist will be that Storm narrowly wins the fight but Arakko takes significant damage as a result of their battle.
I can also see a (less likely) case where maybe there is a draw of some sort or they get interrupted by something else. I say this because I suspect that post-SoS, Vulcan might end up on the Great Ring. There’s quite a number of empty seats and not that many (named) Omega mutants to fill it with.
I’m not seeing Arakko getting heavily damage again right after the Uranos attack – Vulcan will be more problematic but I guess Storm has other tricks up her sleeve now. Ewing probably wants to clear his Brand plot and use Orbis Stellaris as his hook into Sins of Sinister.
Still loving this book dearly. Beto throwing Brand’s convoluted plans off with a simple move is a neat touch. Not sure how they’ll resolve Vulcan + Orbis Stellaris taking control of Manifold in a go but I’m still highly optimistic. Only frustrating thing is the neverending whitewashing of Beto but unfortunately this isn’t even new.
Oh and I hope the references in Beto’s datapage gets a bunch of x-men fans curious about Ewing’s New Avengers/U.S.A. cause that book was delightful.
I also loved Xavier’s memo. It would be so easy for a casual reader to miss the megalomania and hypocrisy 🙂
Ewing’s Roberto remains a delight. I think, however, that these annotations are incomplete without a visual image of Magnum P.I.’s magnificent mustache 🙂
Ewing does not go easy on Xavier and I love it tbh. I actually think he’s harsh enough on the guy that even the casual reader will pick on it – Xavier’s internal logic here is a perfect illustration of what Magneto meant when he asked Storm to take care of him.
If Vulcan takes out Storm, he gets her seat on the Arakki Council, and can also conquer the Shi’Ar. Earth becomes part of the Shi’Ar empire, and that will lead to even more galactic war. Unless Sunspot and his Allie’s are enough to stop him…
Ewing’s ability to write comics that take place on a cosmic scale while keeping the dialogue snappy and the big reveals potent is seriously impressive.
As much as I love Ewing’s books in general and this series in particular, something seemed off this issue. I can’t quite put my finger on what, though. Maybe it’s just that Vulcan is more of a weapon going off randomly than a character? And I know that’s his part in this story – he is a weapon primed by Brand, after all – but that still makes him somehow… insubstantial?
It feels like this lost a bit of drama from Marauders already killing and rezzing Xandra. Even before the Beto reveal, we know Vulcan can’t kill her – just inconvenience her. But that’s just part of an on-going issue.