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

X-FORCE vol 6 #42
“The Ghost Calendars, part 3”
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Paul Davidson
Colour artist: GURU-eFX
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Mark Basso

COVER / PAGE 1: The Nimrod Beast stands over the defeated X-Force.

PAGES 2-3. The Stonehenge Beast clone is transformed into the Nimrod Beast.

This is the same Beast clone that we saw as the Nimrod Beast in issue #40, and that we saw being buried in this location in issue #41. As seen in that issue, he’s got the original Cerebro Sword. In his narration, he seems to regard himself as the original Beast rather than a duplicate, but it’s not clear whether this is Beast in a series of new bodies (through Krakoan-style resurrection or through more conventional Marvel Universe means), or a series of copies that believe themselves to be the original.

While in suspended animation, he’s been automatically upgraded to reflect developments outside. For some reason this has resulted in him becoming a Beast / Nimrod hybrid, though Nimrod himself plays no part in the story, and it’s not very clear what the combination adds to the fairly obvious point that Beast Is A Villain.

Nimrod Beast claims that all societies go through cycles of disaster and that Krakoa was always bound to fail. He alleges that this is why Professor X appointed him as X-Force’s director of intelligence – i.e., he thinks that Professor X shared Beast’s beliefs in this regard. This might be wishful thinking, since he goes on in the next data page to claim that his surveillance state is simply the logical development of Professor X using Cerebro to monitor every mutant on the plant – which it is, but Professor X wouldn’t have approved of using the technology for that purpose. And while Professor X did have reason to think that Krakoa would ultimately fail, based on what Moira had told him about her previous lives, that’s a rather different thing from the point Beast is making here.

PAGE 4. Data page: an extract from Nimrod Beast’s logbook. He believes that society is kept functional by the threat of surveillance; in the past, this role was served by religion and fear of God, and now it is served by literal universal surveillance such as Cerebro. (A similar line of thinking presumably led to him creating a pseudo-religion in the timeline shown in issue #40.)

He has therefore created an outright surveillance state, with “monitoring devices implanted in every eye” – the mere fact of surveillance is enough to keep everyone in line, which is for the greater good. In fact, the art shows everyone wearing similar devices as headsets, and they remove them at the end of the issue when Beast is defeated – perhaps they connect to some sort of implant.

The Cerebro Sword is described by Beast as a “mindful weapon”, though as usual, it’s entirely unclear what he actually means by that – this series is consistently vague about why exactly the Cerebro Sword is such a big deal, and seems to regard the answer as self-evident, which it absolutely isn’t. Possibly in this context the Sword is meant to be continuing its role of co-ordinating the Cerebro-inspired surveillance operation.

PAGES 5-7. X-Force arrive in Nimrod Beast’s time.

It’s a fairly standard sci-fi dystopia, though everyone’s a mutant (or perhaps an alien – a few of them look like Skrulls). According to Quentin, Beast killed almost all the humans with nanobots; there are some survivors out there, plus a handful of survivors on display in “the Sanctuary”. Quentin is clearly familiar with this timeline, and has apparently been jumping around fighting Beast at various points in history.

Beast’s holographic Sentinels exist mainly to loom around and remind everyone that they’re under surveillance. Note that for some reason they take Beast’s standard 2023 form, rather than his current Nimrod Beast form.

Sage wants to get straight to being practical about taking down Beast, and has to be steered by Quentin to spent a moment thinking about the plight of the humans.

PAGE 8. Recap and credits. Omega Red, who’s marked as “deceased”, died in last issue’s future timeline and presumably gets resurrected after X-Force return to the present day at the end of the issue.

PAGE 9. X-Force gawp at the humans.

Oddly, Domino claims that she “never thought I’d feel bad for humans” – perhaps she means specifically in the context of a mutant/human role reversal, since she’s got on just fine with plenty of non-mutant characters over the years. She rightly describes this surveillance state as “full-on 1984”, but note that she ascribes it to “the mutants” in general, and not just the Beast.

PAGES 10-11. Nimrod Beast and Deadpool.

Deadpool, in this timeline, is Nimrod Beast’s court jester – kept alive “to make a mockery of you as a failed totem of X-Force and of humanity.” He wears a court jester version of his normal costume, and gets called “Deadfool”. He tries to perform the normal jester function of entertaining the king while speaking truth to power, but the latter bit leads to threats of atomisation.

Deadpool goes on to kill Nimrod Beast at the end of the issue, rightly pointing out the folly of keeping a hostile assassin as a pet. The very fact that Beast keeps him around is curious; if Beast’s explanation is taken at face value then he really, really wants some sort of reminder that he was vindicated in his disagreements with X-Force.

At any rate, Nimrod Beast is bored, and delighted to learn that X-Force have shown up for him to fight. He continues to insist that he is doing the right thing and making the world a better place for mutants.

PAGES 12-15. X-Force fight Beast’s guards.

Or… I guess they’re guards? One of them seems to be wearing some sort of uniform but the rest might just be ordinary civilians pressed into combat. Sage doesn’t see them as true villains, given their lack of autonomy, and orders the team to try not to kill anyone; Domino and Wolverine seem to be trying to comply with that order by aiming to wound.

Colossus, for some reason, ignores the fight entirely and focusses on waking Quentin from his latest fit – Quentin is apparently brought to his sense by the sight of the Beast hologram.

PAGES 16-17. Nimrod Beast captures X-Force.

Well, that was quick.

PAGES 18-21. Nimrod Beast is defeated.

As foreshadowed in the last two issues, Quentin is merged with Cerebrax, which escapes from his body after his powers are inhibited by Beast. In a sequence which isn’t very well worked out on the page, and feels incredibly anticlimactic, Cerebrax escapes from Quentin’s body (with Beast seemingly looking right at him), and then somehow attacks Beast from behind and kills him in one panel. Deadpool then summarily kills Cerebrax with the Cerebro Sword, again in one panel – and again, it’s not clear whether the Cerebro Sword itself is contributing something here, or the job could have been done by any old piece of metal lying around.

By the way, Deadpool said in the previous issue that he would explain what was up with Quentin when X-Force met him in the past (i.e., earlier in his personal timeline and later in theirs). So far as I can see, he doesn’t.

PAGE 22. Data page. A brief dialogue between Domino and Colossus. Domino has picked up on the fact that Colossus is acting differently now that he’s outside Scrivener’s control. That’s odd, given that nobody in Immortal X-Men has picked up on it at all, but to be fair, Domino is dealing with him as a former lover, and it’s a different relationship that Scrivener may find it harder to fake.

Colossus tries to direct Domino to investigate his farm when they get back to Krakoa, apparently anticipating that he’ll be under Scrivener’s control again, and trying to do something about it. The obvious question here is why he doesn’t just tell her that he’s under control. After all, Immortal X-Men seemed pretty clear that Colossus was aware of being under control. But maybe that’s just how Scrivener chooses to write his inner monologue – or maybe Scrivener’s powers mean that the true position is only clear to Colossus when he’s actually under control. For the purposes of this arc, Colossus seems to be aware that something has changed, but unsure of precisely what was going on.

It’s also possible that Colossus is reluctant to tell people about Scrivener directly because he doesn’t think they’ll believe him and he thinks they’ll reject him – though honestly, the Immortal take on Colossus would probably accept that. In the previous issue, he discussed Beast’s behaviour with Domino and she made it very clear that she rejected the possibility of mind control and regarded him as a traitor. That’s probably intended to provide some of Colossus’ justification for not telling her, but it’s not really enough.

PAGES 23-24. X-Force return to the present and Scrivener promptly steers Colossus away from Domino.

Note that Colossus and Domino are in each other’s arms when they first appear back in the present; she looks decidedly hurt when he cuts off the conversation and walks off. But he doesn’t exactly take back his half-completed instruction to investigate him. Again, it’s possible that Scrivener – who is, after all, a reluctant servant of Mikhail Rasputin – would really quite like Domino to put an end to this, and is more than happy to leave some deniable plot holes that other characters can exploit.

PAGE 25. Trailers.