X-Men #26 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN vol 6 #26
“Whack-a-Mole”
Writer: Gerry Duggan
Artists: Jim Towe & Javier Pina
Colourist: Marte Gracia
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. The left half of an image of Emma Frost marrying Tony Stark. The other half is on the cover of Invincible Iron Man #10. The solicitation for this issue reads: “WE’RE NOT LOSING AN X-MAN… WE’RE GAINING AN AVENGER!” The moment we swore would never happen-heck, the moment EMMA FROST swore would never happen-is here at last! As the Frost/Stark knot is tied in INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #10, Emma’s mutant family reacts to this surprise news!
The issue as published bears no resemblance to that solicitation whatsoever – the marriage only comes up in the penultimate panel.
The cover art features various characters who aren’t available to attend a wedding due to “Fall of X”, but that’s obviously to avoid spoilers in the solicitations.
PAGES 2-3. John Romita tribute.
PAGE 4. Data page: a quote from Ben Urich about the Kingpin, taken from one of his articles. Urich was investigating the Kingpin in Daredevil back in the Frank Miller run.
PAGE 5. A flashback montage.
Panel 1 shows the Kingpin and Typhoid Mary as they arrived on Krakoa at the end of issue #20.
Panels 2 and 3 show the Kingpin yelling to Mary as Orchis attack, and Karima Shapandar decking the Kingpin, both on page 33 of X-Men: Hellfire Gala 2023 #1. In this version, Typhoid is being bundled to safety by Magik; the two of them appear together in Realm of X. Curse, also from that storyline, can be seen to their right. If Professor X, on the left, is meant to be marching everyone through the gates, then that’s artistic licence; it doesn’t happen until later on, after the fighting is over.
Panels 4-5 show the Kingpin warning the Irish Ambassador that Orchis are going to kill everyone. This is an original scene, which presumably takes place while the mutants are being marched through the gates. In the original issue, the Kingpin escapes with the surviving X-Men on page 60, and the Irish ambassador shows up on page 66 to get killed along with the other human guests.
PAGES 6-7. Flashback: Emma Frost and the Kingpin.
This must be soon after the X-Men’s escape. Emma used to work for the Kingpin in the early days of her career, as covered in the Devil’s Reign: X-Men miniseries, and that she resents being reduced to that role again. For the Kingpin, this is probably a mixture of satisfaction at restoring his position of control over her, and simply taking advantage of the opportunity to gain leverage.
“X weeks ago.” X-Men Red, in particular, makes clear that the “X” in these repeated captions is meant to be a Roman numeral 10.
PAGE 8. Recap and credits.
PAGES 9-10. Emma Frost warns Tony Stark that Shadowkat is going to kill Firestar.
The Kingpin’s role as the new White King was previously established in Immortal X-Men #14. The suggestion here seems to be that Emma had the Hellfire Club’s assets transferred to the Kingpin as the only available human ally in the immediate aftermath of the Gala.
Iron Man’s defeat by Orchis (specifically Feilong) and his loss of control of elements of the Iron Man technology, have been covered in recent issues of his own book.
Firestar became a mole within Orchis during X-Men: Hellfire Gala 2023, as she explains later in the issue, when Jean Grey altered people’s memories to make them think that she’d been there all along. She wasn’t given any advice on how to contact the survivors, but evidently she’s managed to make contact with Iron Man during this period, and Emma has unsurprisingly figured it out for herself. She’s a fairly obvious candidate for an infiltrator, being a girl scout mutant hero, after all, even if she doesn’t have particularly close ties to the X-Men.
PAGES 11-12. Kamala Khan interrupts a mugging.
This seems to be just a general scene of things being bad. Kamala infiltrating the Orchis-funded university programme is the plot of Ms Marvel: The New Mutant.
PAGES 13-21. Shadowkat confronts Firestar, and believes her story.
Shadowkat was setting off to kill Firestar at the end of the previous issue. Frankly, this seems an insanely stupid idea if it’s really that important to keep quiet about her ability to use the Krakoan gates – even if she kills all the eye witnesses, doesn’t this space station have security cameras? Are they supposed to think she got onto the station some other way?
PAGE 22. Data page: a letter from Firestar to her father, in character as an Orchis stooge. The last we heard of Bart Jones, I think, was in issue #13 when his letter to Emma Frost appeared on a data page.
Butter Rum was Angelica’s horse in Firestar #2 (1985); Emma tricked Angelica into thinking that her powers had killed the horse, when in fact Emma killed him herself. Angelica knows this perfectly well. More to the point, Bart is also well aware of Emma’s past mistreatment of Emma – he refers to it in general terms in his letter in issue #13 – so this may well be Angelica slipping in a reference that Bart will know is false. She also strongly encourages her father to make contact personally with Tony Stark, under the pretext of returning her Avengers ID card.
Captain Krakoa is the main plotline in Uncanny Avengers. He’s an Orchis impostor.
PAGE 23. Shadowkat and Emma.
Emma seems to have been under the impression that Kate was hunting for leads on Cyclops (who is a prisoner of Orchis, as seen last issue), or at least that she might take the chance to learn something about it while on the Orchis station. It doesn’t seem to be anywhere near the top of Kate’s priorities.
PAGES 24-26. Tony stops Emma from attacking Feilong.
Basically, Tony has to restrain Emma from losing her temper and blowing her cover, and winds up having to cover for their argument by pretending he was proposing to her. The idea is that she was taking off the ring that shields her from Sentinel scans, and Tony is having to explain why he’s handing a ring back to her. I’m not sure the art gets that across as clearly as you’d want.
PAGE 27. Trailers. The Krakoan reads ALL EYES ON THE X-MEN.
Man, I don’t usually get mad when I read a comic, even a bad comic, but this friggin’ issue…
-First, the good: I like seeing Fisk’s machinations, and his interactions with Emma. I’d rather read about this plot than anything else in Duggan’s run. Also, the art was mostly fine, especially the coloring.
– Ok, I’m not reading Iron Man, so maybe this has been answered, but: How does Stark know Firestar is a mole? That sapped the tension out of Shadowkat’s assassination attempt before it even started. Once again, Duggan undermined a good plot point with a cheap conclusion.
– Shadowkat attacks the Orchis base and violently kills people. I thought her murder spree after the Gala made sense, but this was laughable. Then, she finds Firestar… who TELLS HER SHE’S A MOLE. Hope there wasn’t any surveillance equipment that could pick up on the conversation! Also, the cliffhanger of Kate going to attack Angelica is solved in the lamest way possible. Once again, Duggan undermined a good plot point with a cheap conclusion.
– Stark proposes to Emma in a manner that reminded me of a bad romantic comedy. Tony marrying Emma as a cover for something could have worked, but to propose to her because the bad guy saw him on his knees after they fought and he needed to trick him? Soooo stupid!
I gave Duggan the benefit of the doubt after the Gala & issue 25, but this comic insulted my intelligence. What’s worse, I’ll probably be back for next issue because this is the main X-book at the moment. Ugh.
It’s nice to see that Emma has enough brains to realize that Angelica is probably infiltrating Orchis. It’s also nice that Emma, Kate and Tony know Firestar is on their side and have a way to contact Firestar. I was worried that plot would drag on too long.
I think the idea is that Firestar sent the letter BEFORE the start of the issue. She had her father deliver the Avengers ID card, which have been used for communication purposes before, to Tony Stark and the ID card is how she’s been keeping in contact with Tony.
The scene where Tony has to propose to Emma to avoid making Feilong suspicious seemed too sitcom-ish.
Also, that scene with Angelica holding a gun to use against Kate seemed ridiculous. Is it supposed to be some sort of anti-Kate gun?
@Mike Loughlin- I wonder if the idea is that Emma taught Firestar how to use her microwaves to interfere with surveillance equipment.
Kitty does have a bad history with bullets, esp giant ones.
As I understand it, Kate didn’t use the gates to get there. She rode the outside of a shuttle, so the gate secret was not at risk
@Michael: if there was a line that said Firestar was using her powers to screw with surveillance equipment, I would be more forgiving of the scene. I’d still think the confrontation was poorly handled, but at least there would be a better justification for how it went down.
Yeah this was BAD. I wholeheartedly agree the Firestar/Shadowkat confrontation was extremely underwhelming. I feel like Duggan thought up the “such a Jean thing” line and crafted the whole plot around it. Another example of ‘subverting expectations’ gone wrong.
That said, I am kinda amused that it looks like the whole wedding is just a giant troll job by Marvel, and that instead of a “real” wedding between Tony and Emma (with all the important mutants and Avengers in attendance according to the covers!) we’re gonna get Tony and “Hazel” in a sham wedding just because Feilong walked in on them at the wrong moment.
I can’t wait until the honeymoon story ripped straight from a Three’s Company plot. Tony and Emma will have to pretend to be on their honeymoon as Feilong drops by to check and make sure their marriage is legitimate.
“Fall of X” is quickly losing my interest now.
Kate very clearly reached the orbiting Orchis base by phasing inside an Orchis ship, not by gate. She even has thoughts right after that about how it is best not to reveal that she can use the gates.
Of course, she seems to return to Earth by a gate in Firestar’s room, so apparently they are hoping that there is no surveillance there (which, really, there should be).
There was a scene about 14 months ago in the 2022 Hellfire Gala one-shot where Tony attempts to recruit Firestar as a mole for the Avengers inside the X-Men. I am hoping and assuming that there was so far unrevealed follow up to that. Angelica’s letter seems to have some flag words mixed in, perhaps connected to those oddities about her Avengers ID card. BTW, can they really be that expensive?
It makes sense to me that Tony and Angelica could have met at some point between the two latest Hellfire Galas and reached a sort of agreement.
We know that Firestar is no betrayer, but she might have agreed to be a liaison of sorts, perhaps even with the full knowledge and approval of Scott and Jean. After all, she was the teammate of one of Earth’s most powerful telepaths, and that roster had a mission of a largely diplomatic nature. If Tony had any brains (and he did), he would offer to listen in good faith to anything that Firestar might have to say. That would serve both to reassure him and the Avengers as well as well as to reassure the X-Men that there was a first round of dialogue that they could use if need be.
I want to believe that Duggan is thinking along those lines, because that would explain a lot, including Jean’s spur of the moment decision about Firestar and Tony having previously unrevealed communication and apparently also agreed upon secret signs with Angelica. For once Duggan is taking advantage of well established characterization in having Emma immediately suspect that Tony may have secrets about Firestar. That was nice, as was Tony conceding the point immediately; he is smart enough to realize that there is no point in attempting to fool a telepath whose trust he needs and who has a known history of dealing with deception and intrigue.
On the minus side, I am troubled by seeing Xavier slaughter and mutilate people so casually after Shadowkat so recently finding her own bloodthirst. Also, when did he gain telekinesis and how did Shaw know of that?
Another thing that bothers me is that despite several recent title changes in what were otherwise continuing storylines (mostly in the Legion/Nightcrawler and Betsy Braddock books, but also during Sins of Sinister), this supposedly core book has switched from a team book to a much looser format – almost an anthology with no clear delimitation between stories – without any clear indication of mission change in either name, numbering or covers.
@Matt- Kate used the gates in front of Firestar to return home.
@Luis- he used telekinesis in Hickmann’s Inferno. Duggan threw in a line in X-Men 15 where Forge comments that Xavier’s telekinesis gets stronger with each resurrection, suggesting it’s a side effect of resurrection. As a member of the Quiet Council, Shaw would have access to this knowledge.
Xavier also had telekinesis in Powers of X #1 when he used his telekinetic powers to take the flashdrive recovered by Sabretooth and Mystique. It led to speculation this was proof that Xavier was an imposter. Apparently, Hickman believed that Xavier always had the power of telekinesis. I suppose a generous reading of that scene could be that Magneto used his powers, fooling everyone into thinking Xavier was using telekinesis…but, well, why? Then, Hickman had Xavier using telekinesis again in Inferno.
The discrepancy has since been explained away, as pointed out by Michael.
I don’t know why comics publishers think two established characters getting married is something readers want to see. Not only is it not compelling or interesting, but it’s not even reflective of real life, where fewer people are getting married these days.
@Josie
We do not know that Marvel expects people to want to see established characters marrying.
This issue certainly does not suggest that, at least to me. The last few panels all but mark the event as clickbait with no deeper meaning, to be forgotten about once Orchis is defeated for good.
Marvel probably expects casual readers to be curious about the covers, at least. Tony never married Pepper Potts, Whitney Frost (Madame Masque) or Bethany Cabe (his most consistent love interest IMO) – and it has been decades in real time since anyone seriously expected him to be married at all – 1972’s Iron Man #51 if I am not mistaken. Emma never seemed to even consider marriage to anyone. Readers who are aware of their established characters will wonder what is happening and that is of course something that Marvel wants.
But once the stories are read, at most we will wonder whether there are any lasting consequences after the cover is eventually blown.
I am hoping so; by my reading Tony is just in the right position to have deeper feelings than he fully admits, while Emma probably isn’t. Reestablishing Tony as a broken-hearted bridge person of sorts between mutants and non-mutants could be interesting, and would IMO come organically from events in recent years.
Most of Tony’s love interests have actually been his employees in some capacity or another. It would be refreshing to see Tony deal with a woman who has her own history of losses and entitlement yet is not likely to look up towards him any time soon.
Likewise, Emma hasn’t had very many interactions with non-mutants. Much like Storm has become a frequent guest star in Black Panther stories, Emma could conceivably transit between both circles from now on, widening her character possibilities and presenting several exciting plot seeds.
Someone should tell that to the many people that comes out of the woodwork demanding the return of the spider-marriage every time Marvel teases some marriage related story.
Didn’t Tony nearly get engaged to Patsy Walker a couple of years ago? I didn’t read the comic but I seem to recall it was a news item…
Yes, in the run before Duggan’s.
Tony proposed and was turned down. To sum it up!
She had her father deliver the Avengers ID card, which have been used for communication purposes before, to Tony Stark and the ID card is how she’s been keeping in contact with Tony.
This feels backwards to me. Avengers cards are generally shown communicating with other Avengers cards, and Tony already has one. I suppose they could connect to other comm systems, but surely the secure thing to do would be to keep the card, and use it to contact Tony on his?
@Michael: Emma doesn’t identify Kate to Tony as the assassin targeting Firestar, so Angelica would not have known a gun would not be useful against her assailant.
Angelica’s message to her father is likely coded, as she expects Orchis to review her communications. Orchis agents would not bat an eye at Butter Rum dying of cancer, but Tony and Emma would.
Similarly, the Avengers ID card is indeed a communicator, but either (a) Angelica’s father may not actually have it, as she already has a means of covertly contacting Stark, thus she simply needs a pretext for her father to meet with Tony; or (b) the card is more useful in the hands of the Avengers/X-Men resistance, as Orchis may be unable to hack it or is unaware of its function as a communicator.
@Chen- Angelica refers to “Kitty” as she’s holding the gone.
This was… well, the Kate/Firestar thing was disappointing and the rest was scattershot. I don’t think this book is served well by being… what is it exactly? This issue reads like those starter issues of crossovers or events that tells you where to follow the characters. Look, here’s Kamala! She has her own book! Look, here’s Iron Man! He has his own book, don’t you know? Emma’s there as well!
But what does that leave for the core cast of ‘X-Men’ to do? Well, I don’t know, since Synch and Talon are not here. So that leaves Shadowkat (the spelling is still funny to me), and here Duggan kills any suspense this plot might have otherwise had.
And it’s such a weird choice? ‘You’re a secret agent but everybody who knew that died’ is such a classic set-up, it’s brilliant in it’s simplicity, and what does our autheur do?
He solves the plot in about three pages.
Oh, and Tony already knew and Emma, apparently, suspected? Come on.
“We do not know that Marvel expects people to want to see established characters marrying.”
We do, because they keep doing it. Jessica and Luke, T’Challa and Storm, Kitty and Starlord, Gambit and Rogue, Northstar and Kyle, Thing and Alicia, Deadpool and Mrs. Deadpool, Crystal and Ronan, Cannonball and Smasher, how utterly (yawn) exciting.
Marriage is a significant life event, and it hasn’t been as milked as thoroughly as death has. (Although as seen with the upcoming ‘death of moon knight’ that isn’t stopping Marvel.)
Much like everything in comics, it used to be a bigger deal when things happened less often.
Look at the Reed/Sue FF annual in the 60s or the big treasury edition book for the Lightning Lad and Saturn Girl wedding in the 70s. Even the big Peter/MJ wedding. Didn’t they have a live version at Shea Stadium?
Okay c’mon Rouge and Gambit and Thing and Alicia were a thing for years. I agree that there’s a lot of baffling ones like T’Challa and Storm or Kitty Pryde and Star Lord but let’s not act like it’s all just out of no where all the time.
Also in fairness to the Crystal and Ronan one that one was an arranged marriage because the Inhumans are weird like that.
@Mark Coale,
Yeah, but those big ‘event’ weddings were big status quo changing things. From reading the actual book, this isn’t that.
It’s more like a 1960s DC comic. “The Wedding of the Year! Plastic Man and Wonder Woman Tie the Knot??!!”
Clearly, this is being marketed with a bit more of a straight face, and due to a more decompressed modern style of storytelling, this’ll likely last longer than a single issue, but it’s basically the same thing.
Or maybe Dugan has a trick up his sleeve and Tony & Emma’s marriage of convenience will lead to true love!
Yeah, we all saw badly it went when Crystal married a mutant (although Luna may disagree).
Hopefully the Tony/Emma marriage ends up better than that or when Johnny Storm married the Skrull (we thought was Alicia).
“Marriage is a significant life event”
For those involved. Not so much for the onlookers, and far less for readers.
“Okay c’mon Rouge and Gambit and Thing and Alicia were a thing for years.”
There’s a pun somewhere in “Thing and Alicia were a thing for years.” Anyway, the fact that characters may have been on-again-off-again couples doesn’t make their marriage a compelling story development. If anything, it’s the worst possible resolution because it eliminates whatever tension there was previously in the couple’s pairing.
While I wasn’t really a fan of the recent Hellions book, and while I didn’t like Havok’s weird obsession with bringing Madelyne back, it was INTRIGUING from a story perspective. Havok deliberately ignored any romantic possibilities with Polaris in favor of a potential relationship that is not only 100% toxic for him, but probably would have harmful consequences for everyone around him.
What could go wrong with a relationship with your brother’s dead wife who was a demon who looked like his previous girlfriend who committed suicide to save the universe?
Stick with the green haired woman who may or may not be a villains daughter.
Re: Xavier’s Telekinesis.
He demonstrated that way back in the silver age when he flew the X-Men’s plane by ‘thought impulses’.
Sure it was just Stan screwing up the dialogue, but still….
@Mark Coale: That sounds like the basis for a really trashy retelling of the life of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon.
And I kinda want to read that now.
No-Prize: CX always had TK (TP&TK are a classic Marvel power combo) but kept in on the down-low forever because it was his lastshot final-resort secret—hidden-weapon as both Nimrod and Orchis’ goons discovered. Also, he spent all of his energy both developing and controlling his TP in order to become Marvel-616’s no.1 psychic for the longest time yet not become evil like Elias Bogan or Amahl Farouk, who became the hosts for the Shadow King .
Gillen & Fraction established during the Utopia Era that TS&EF were secretly casual sexfriends/fuckbuddies in between serious relationships for the longest time
Jewel , Kyle Jinadu , Shiklah , Smasher were obviously meta-created to be their spouses’ spouses more than being characters in their own rights
Nobody can resist the Jean Bomb according to Rob Liefeld LOL
I’ll give you Kyle, Shiklah and Smasher, who are nothing characters with basically zero stories focusing on them alone (I think Hickman gave Smasher one issue… also wasn’t she originally and metatextually a granddaughter of Dan Dare? She definitely had the surname ‘Dare’ in the first printing), but Jessica Jones hasn’t been created to be Luke Cage’s wife.
If anything she was created because Marvel wouldn’t let Bendis write a MAX ongoing with Jessica Drew, for some reason.
@Jdsm24
Who are TS and EF?
@Krzysiek Ceran
Luke Cage was a significant part of Jessica Jones’ published story from the first few pages of “Alias”, in ways that at least arguably lead to their eventual marriage.
Which also hints of why Jessica Drew was vetoed for the series; however you may feel about their relationship, it would have impact on the starring Jessica that might make her not a good fit for other, more traditional stories.
@Luis-Tony Stark and Emma Frost
“it would have impact on the starring Jessica that might make her not a good fit for other, more traditional stories.”
This had zero impact on the use of Jessica Jones for the next two decades, or Jessica Drew for that matter.
I would argue that it is because they were made different characters, Josie.
I like Emma’s wedding dress on that cover, mostly because it’s pretty, but also because it’s based on her Quitely-designed New X-men costume but avoids giving her a weird diaper.
And whenever I see the Cuckoos drawn or photostatted or traced like that, it reminds me of how much more I like Igor Kordey’s version where they weren’t exactly the same age/height as each other. They were creepier that way.
I’d be curious to know, if it was ever made public, which things in Alias they would not have wanted to have a regular Marvel character been seen doing. Esp if its Other than the two obvious ones (sex, masturbation).
Well, two of the most significant differences between Jessica Drew and Jessica Jones are that Drew is an active and unmarried superhero, while Jones is neither.
I had look up when Jessica Drew had her baby, and I didn’t realize it was as late as 2015.
[…] #26. (Annotations here.) I have very mixed feelings about “Fall of X”. I’m on board with the bit where […]
In addition to those things, I think getting psychically raped by the Purple Man and generally over-drinking to cover feelings of inadequacy and shame were probably big no-nos for Marvel when Bendis suggested Jessica D. for Alias. But I’m just guessing.
Honestly, I’m not sure what Bendis eventually did with Jessica D. in Secret Invasion was better than what would have happened to her in Alias. But if Alias hadn’t been as popular as it was, I can see not wanting to tear down her character only to have her left in ruins when it was cancelled. Better to use a new character and discard her if things don’t work out.
I don’t think that Bendis would have used getting violated by the Purple Man as Jessica Drew’s trauma. Jessica already had the trauma of almost getting killed by Morgan Le Fey and saved by Strange and Pym only to lose her powers.
Marvel has always had certain fans , usually male , who just hate interracial pairings , especially BM X WF (just read the letters pages of Thunderbolts during Nicieza’s run when he had Abe Jenkins/OG Beetle do blackface ala Frank Castle & Rick Jones , while in prison) while dating Melissa Gold/OG SongBird , these same fanboys would have crucified Jessica Drew for being a “Blacked coalburner” with Luke Cage
I’m expecting that we are heading to some big reset of Kate, editorial will decide she’s under twenty again, there will be some big tearful “I just want to just be Kitty again!” nonsense but I do hope that before that happens there will be a chance for a story with her and Logan where he sees what she’s become and knows that Ogun or the usual outside influences have nothing to do with it and she’s chosen this path herself.
There is no way they’ll be able to get away with making her below 20 chronologically unless they say that her Krakoan resurrected clone body is physically below 20 , she’s already established as being of the same age as the rest of the New Mutants , who more or less are written as if they are in their mid to late ‘20’s or at least a decade younger than Scott Summers (the character who White himself admitted is used by X-Editorial as the point of comparison for everyone else’s ages , is considered by Hickman to be arguably at least in his mid-‘30’s chronologically at the start of the Krakoan Era)