X-Men #31 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN vol 6 #31
“The Passenger”
Writer: Gerry Duggan
Artist: Phil Noto
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. The X-Men fight Nimrod.
PAGE 2. Synch and Talon talk.
Talon was killed last issue while fighting the High Evolutionary, and Synch is acting as a host for her mind. As the issue goes on to spell out, Synch can only do this by using her powers to copy the absent Jean Grey – and, apparently, he has to keep doing it. As we’ve established in earlier issues, Synch ages when he uses his powers to copy absent mutants. We’re told later on that he was getting round this problem by copying Talon’s healing factor, but now that she’s dead, he can’t do that any more – so the effort of keeping her alive in his mind is going to kill him unless she can be decanted to somewhere else rather quickly. All of this was actually set up quite well in earlier issues of the series, making it all the stranger that Talon’s death was covered in such a rushed way.
“We’re about to launch an invasion of Earth…” In Fall of the House of X.
PAGE 3. Nightcrawler and Shadowkat tend to Synch.
When we left him last issue, Synch was in reasonably good shape, aside from having Talon in his head. Presumably it’s the stress of continually mimicking Jean’s powers that are the main issue here. Shadowkat seems to suggest that he copied Talon’s powers in his sleep, and got infected when he popped her claws, though if that’s the idea the art doesn’t really sell it – not only is there no blood, but his gloves are completely undamaged.
PAGES 4-5. Spider-Man and Ms Marvel supervise the High Evolutionary’s bio-bomb.
This is the device that Synch retrieved from the Evolutionary last issue, to distribute the cure that will prevent Orchis from using the “back door” they inserted into Krakoan medicines and controlling innocent patients. The fact that flying this one device around is capable of rewriting the bodies of tens of millions feels awfully simplistic, but we’ve got to tie off this loose end somehow.
You’d also have thought there were more secure places from which they could control this thing, rather than the rooftop of the Oscorp building – aren’t they friends with the Avengers? – but then there wouldn’t be a story, I guess.
Spider-Man and Norman Osborn developed this cure off panel, as revealed last issue. Ms Marvel was hanging around as a supporting character in Amazing Spider-Man prior to being reassigned to the X-books – she was an intern as Oscorp – hence her being the one to stay with Spider-Man here.
PAGE 6. Recap and credits.
PAGE 7. Synch and Talon continue to talk.
Obviously, the park is now on fire, and the panel borders are deteriorating.
PAGE 8. Shadowkat tries to wake Synch.
The basic angle here is that Synch has to heroically accept Talon’s death in order to lend his weight to the fight against Nimrod.
“We need a … cradle.” The cradles were the stores of back-up memories used by Cerebro. Synch’s suggesting that he could download Talon into one of those.
PAGES 9-13. The X-Men fight Nimrod.
“While you slept in your paradise, we scripted your end, mutant.” Nimrod is alluding to Professor X’s speech in House of X #1: “Humans of the planet Earth. While you slept, the world changed.”
“Your ability to disrupt technology worked on the lesser Nimrod, Kitty.” In Uncanny X-Men #209, with the Nimrod from “Days of Futures Past”. We never did really establish what the significance was of Powers of X referring to some Nimrods from other timelines as “Nimrod the lesser” and other as “Nimrod the greater”.
PAGES 14-17. Wilson Fisk and Typhoid Mary are reunited.
Over in Realm of X, Typhoid was among the mutants temporarily exiled to Vanaheim, where she was at the very least flirting vigorously with a local by the name of Vonos. She attributes that here to one of her other personalities. Fisk’s main motivation for helping the X-Men in Fall of X has been his desire to get Typhoid back. An obvious end point of this plot thread would have been for him to turn on the mutants after finding out about Typhoid and Vonos, but apparently we’re not going there
PAGES 18-19. Talon persuades Synch to let her go.
PAGES 20-21. Synch joins the fight against Nimrod.
Apparently this keeps him occupied long enough for the Evolutionary’s machine to finish its job, though there’s nothing visual to convey that, so Spider-Man has to just say it. (How does he know? The machine’s on the rooftop and he’s on the street. If he already knew before reaching the street then Synch showed up too late to make a difference to the machine doing its job, so…)
“For a moment Synch became a god…” He’s copying Storm’s powers. He seems to be copying Magik when he teleports everyone else away, though that’s not normally how her stepping discs are depicted.
PAGE 22. The X-Men regroup.
Polaris was seen recruiting the Brood to help, over in Fall of the House of X #1.
PAGE 23. Trailers. The Krakoan reads MAGIK.
The “popped his claws and trashed his bunk” thing seems to be an attempt to paper over the conflict between last issue and the previous issue, where Kamala, Kate and Logan returned to NYC to find their HQ destroyed and gallons of blood everywhere. For that to make sense, Kamala and Kate have to sign up for the Latveria mission before Synch and Talon depart for Counter-Earth, but not leave for that mission until after Synch has already returned. And it still doesn’t make a lot of sense—how would Synch be able to pop his claws but not access a healing factor?
I took “Nimrod the Lesser” to be a joke, as if Nimrod was showing false modesty. After all, Nimrod was just a servant of the humans, right? The society was referred to as the “Man-Machine Supremacy”, but mankind was certainly no longer supreme, which I took to be another ironic joke.
“The lesser” & “The Greater” seem to just be Nimrods being too vain to refer to themselves as Mark I, Mark II, the way that their Sentinel forerunners do.
The sequence of events seems to suggest that Synch downloaded Talon’s mind into Nimrod with that lightning strike. Nimrod became the cradle Synch was searching for.
I’m sorry but even after reading comics for 30+ years I am never taking a bad guy with the name Nimrod seriously.
Why? It’s a Biblical reference. Nimrod was a king and mighty hunter. It was rumoured he was the king who ordered the construction of the Tower of Babel.
I’d guess this is the reason:
https://unrememberedhistory.com/2017/01/09/the-nimrod-effect-how-a-cartoon-bunny-changed-the-meaning-of-a-word-forever/
As for this issue – I usually like Noto’s art, but the action scenes here where very static.
And the rest is… it’t not bad, it’s just… everything seems rushed.
So… this is going out with a whimper, huh?
The action scenes were static and just.. Nimrod did not look at all imposing to me. Especially the panels where he’s holding Spidey above his head, and waggling his finger at Kate while talking about being the greater. His proportions seem a little off, his body detailing looks a little too similar, and I think the coloring isn’t helping. I feel like at times his body looks more like a costume than metal or plastic.
The one place the art really worked with me was with Fisk and Mary. It was still a little flat, but the flips gave a lot of personality to her.
Otherwise.. well, it gamely worked at tying up a plot thread and did indeed do that.
I found this issue to be entertaining enough. It wasn’t amazing, but I thought the Synch & Talon scenes landed. Noto’s art was better in those parts, as the battle scenes looked a little stiff. I was annoyed by how decompressed the comic was- the Kingpin/Typhoid reunion was particularly egregious.
My No-Prize for this issue is that Spider-Man had a device on him that let him know when the de-poisoning process was finished.
Count me in as someone who also thinks “Nimrod” has always been a bad choice of name. On the other hand, the best choice for a hunter character’s codename, “Orion,” is taken.
I guess Claremont could have chosen Herne as an alternative name.
To me Nimrod is (was) an RAF jet, and therefore cool.
I feel like there was a data page that suggested that Synch was now able to copy powers based on “muscle memory“ after the vault mission
But even if i’m misremembering that, couldn’t he have just synched younger Laura’s (or Logan’s) healing factor so the effort he expanded keeping Talon in his mind wouldn’t kill human?
Phil Noto’s art just never lands with me. Art is pretty subjective, so I can’t say it’s bad, and I’m glad other folks enjoy it, but I would have preferred if they’d stuck with Cassara.
I feel like there are some pacing issues with this storyline.
First, we have Talon killed abruptly and offscreen by the High Evolutionary in a manner which frankly seems laughably implausible.
Then we have Spider-Man, Norman Osborn, and Tony Stark as primary developers for a cure to the human/mutant drug kill switch override, again developed entirely offscreen, and then deployed by Kamala and Spider-Man…
It seems like Duggan is quickly wrapping up certain threads before the end of FoX/RoX… “Oh yeah, gotta deal with the killswitch. Okay, um… a cure was developed and now they’re going to magically distribute it. Remember how conveniently the Legacy Virus was cured by injecting a single person? Same idea. Stop thinking. Look, editorial says this thread’s gotta go and since Beast and Moira are evil, we literally don’t have any more mutant smart guys to work on this…”
Not only does Duggan’s plot require issue 30 to take place before issue 28, as Douglas pointed out, but this issue’s placement is awkward also. Nimrod mentions the failed attempt to free Cyclops in Fall of the House of X 1.And at the end Synch orders Kate to contact Lorna. But in Fall of House of X 1, the X-Men are returning home over London, Kate gets out, uses the gates to contact Emma & Tony and then Juggernaut. Then we see Kamala and other heroes fighting a Stark Sentinel in New York City while Kate runs by her and then Kate goes to contact Lorna. So basically we have to assume that after contacting Tony, Emma and Juggernaut, Kate returned to New York to check on Synch and found that Kurt and Logan were already back from Europe. Then everyone gets teleported to the Adirondacks, Kamala and Kate return to New York City where Kamala fights a Sentinel and then Kate goes to Lorna. Duggan’s plots require Kate and Kamala to make some odd travel decisions.
So this issue seems to suggest that Gang War takes place after Fall of the House of X. We’ll see if that works with future issues.
@GN- no, Synch released Talon a couple pages before he attacked Nimrod. Plus, he told Kurt he’d mourn Talon later. I do think that Talon will wind up merged with Wolverine-Laura before this event is over, though.
This was certainly a story in which things happened.
Jonathan Hickman had this all brilliantly planned out exactly as it’s now appearing, anyone who disagrees wasn’t paying attention to all the subtle clues.
Is what I might have said
So Synch is having health issues because he can no longer synch with Laura’s healing factor. And yet Logan is *right there*.
Im in the camp of “Nimrod meaning someone with low intelligence.”
I think the issue lies in the fact that Synch can use one power at a time. So if he synchronized with Logan to use his regenerating factor, he would have to “turn off” telepathy and that way he would lose Talon’s mind forever.
Shadowkat says she thinks he has unsheathed his bone claws, but she is probably wrong and the damage done to the bunker he did with his bare hands.
I have to assume that Synch can’t or won’t risk dividing his focus by syncing with both Jean and Wolverine at once for fear of losing the grip on the mind-Talon that he is desperately trying to keep.
I have not even checked, but I assume that Gang War and Fall of X have different editors. Both are extended events that by rights ought to cause ripples over each other, since much of the action happens in NYC and Spider-Man and Kingpin are fairly central to both. By rights anyone who happens to be somewhere in or next to Manhattan ought to take notice of all the fighting during Gang War, and Spider-Man at least would be very busy for the duration.
But Onslaught this is not. There is no indication of any intent to make the plotlines converge in any meaningful way. I assume that the events are expected to happen at different times, presumably with Fall being resolved to some degree before Gang War happens. That is probably for the best, given the goals and natures of the events.
IIRC Powers of X correctly, Nimrod the Lesser and Nimrod the Greater were from wildly different time periods of the future _in that history_, with the implication that Nimrod would evolve over time. I think Paul even commented on that back in the day.
Then again, Nimrod has been jumping in time towards the past since literally his first appearance, so it is not a big stretch that both Nimrods might turn out in the present.
Perhaps “Nimrod the lesser” also refers to the earlier Nimrod’s gradual acceptance of nuance. It went from “kill all mutants” to “identify and kill only the evil mutants” and finally to trying to force the “kill all mutants” Master Mold to self-destruct.
(Then Bastion happened and all that character and thematic development went away.)
Nimrod the greater might originally have been meant as a reflection of having not only greater powers, but also both a greater sense of mission and a greater sense of the scope of that mission.
Luis-Yes, they were from different time periods. Nimrod the lesser was from 100 years in the future, while Nimrod the greater was from 1,000 years in the future. They were different lives of Moira though. We don’t know what occurred in Moira’s sixth life before 1,000 years in the future.
The implication was that post-humanity had learned to control technology in Life Six, and that Nimrod the greater was totally subservient to post-humanity. Although, the surprise reveal at the end was that “machines always win”.
Omar-Nimrod the lesser is from Moira’s Life Nine, where there was a full scale war between humans and mutants, leading to Nimrod taking control of the planet.
The Nimrod sent back in time during the Claremont/Romita Jr. run isn’t the same Nimrod as either Nimrod the lesser or Nimrod the greater. It is referred to as the “Hero Matrix Nimrod” by Omega Sentinel.
Remember the story where the Krakoan attempt to prevent Nimrod from becoming a threat instead destroys most of his human personality, making him more robotic and more of a threat?
So it’s an odd choice that they’re now writing Nimrod as a goofy, human-acting dumbass.
[…] #31. (Annotations here.) In which the thing about Orchis doctoring Krakoan medicines kind of gets handwaved away, while the […]
@Dave
Since Claremont is a huge aviation geek, your comment makes me suspect that played a role in choosing the Nimrod name too.
Maybe Talon could have been saved by the Five along with the cast of Dead X-Men? Maybe the invisible floating X-Corps island could have been used to deploy the cure? It’s not just the timing of events that’s screwy; it’s like there’s no communication among the writers.
Also, just imagine how jarring it would be for Nimrod to be talking like this in a Hickman-written comic…
Hmm, I wonder if Nimrod portrayed as a “goofy human-acting dumbass” owes itself to Ultron in the Avengers movie. The two are much more similar than the comics Ultron.
@Chris V: The Nimrod in Claremont’s years was from the days of Future past timeline. It’s speculated that the Nimrod that appeared in the second new Mutants series was the one from Omega Sentinel’s time.
Nimrod the Lessor is a landlord, and Nimrod the Grater cuts up cheese.
It’s possible and doesn’t really affect Hickman’s intent either way. However, Hickman had been using the idea of only sending the consciousness of individual’s back in time where they overwrite the personalities of said individual in their past (ala Kate Pryde’s time travels from DoFP). It’s never stated that they sent the entire Nimrod robot back in time. If it was only the Nimrod intelligence which was sent back in time, they would have had to find a point where a Nimrod was active on Earth-616 to send their Nimrod’s intelligence back in time to overwrite, hence when the Nimrod from DoFP appeared in the past during the Claremont/Romita Jr. days.
The reason this seemed likely was the name given to this Nimrod by Omega Sentinel: “Hero Matrix”.
Also, it may have been Hickman’s attempt to explain the evolution in this Nimrod. They were forced to send the flawed “Hero Matrix Nimrod”, so this “flawed” programming may have been that which led to it being able to develop nuance.
Don’t forget that the original Nimrod arrived in the 616 timeline due to Dr. Strange casting a spell to make the Kulan Gath issues to have never happened! Thinking back about it, I didn’t realize that there were some similarities to the resolution of that and Days of Future Past, but I can see some now.
I am sure that someone could claim that the combination of magic and technology is something that Enigma would be capable of, and perhaps that’s the integrated into whole setup for the current Nimrod. I think it’s a happy accident, though, and unintended by either Duggan or Hickman.
It’s also my personal belief that the last year or two of Krakoa has been guided by the notes sketched out in 2 minutes on a cocktail napkin by Hickman on his last day and left in the X-offices. However, any resemblance as to what he intended versus what we have is accidental at best.
It was at one time strongly implied, if not stated outright, that the Uncanny X-Men #191 Nimrod did not travel back in time directly to the events of that time, but instead had a landed initially in an alternate timeline 16 years to the future of New X-Men #29 (published in 2006). It blackmailed Forge of that timeline into giving him time travel capability, but Forge sabotaged the device.
That Nimrod then turned up in New X-Men #20-31, meeting Reverend Stryker and then the “New X-Men” team that included Rockslide, X-23 and Mercury. Fighting that team it ended up fleeing further to the past, into X-Men #191 or a very similar scenario.
Sam-The current Nimrod isn’t the same Nimrod as the one from Uncanny X-Men #191 either. This Nimrod was created by Orchis with the help of Omega Sentinel’s knowledge of Nimrod technology from the Life 10A timeline. Bishop called this Nimrod “Nimrod 2.0”.
There are a lot of different versions of Nimrod now.
Also, it wasn’t Enigma involved in sending the “Hero Matrix Nimrod” back in time from Life 10A. It was the humans trying one last ditch effort (or so the humans believed it was their last chance) to stop the mutants who were winning the war against humanity.
I think the easiest way to handle this is:
Hickman: Nimrod the Greater
Gillen: Nimrod the Lesser
Duggan: Numrod the Least
Can I just say how much I dislike the presence of the wider Marvel Universe in Fall of X. I understand why, storywise. But it means I’m getting panel time of Iron Man or Wilson Fisk rather than say, Nightcrawler. Or Siryn or WizKid or whoever. The joy of Krakoa has been the prominence for C Listers. Let me know what they all doing.
I’d even go so far as to add Ms Marvel to this category. I really like her as a character. But I liked her doing her own street level thing, rather than being parachuted in at the end of this story having had no presence throughout Krakoa. The bleak tone also doesn’t fit Kamala who is meant to be hopeful. She doesn’t need to be in a grimdark plot!
I want to see Ms. Marvel’s reaction to the “kill them all, they’re fascists” theme going through the X-Men.
Ms Marvel (and Moon Girl!) were in an Inhumans miniseries where their team mates tortured a guy for information in the next room. Like full-on strapped to a chair enhanced interrogation techniques actual torture.
Nimrod is one of the Enigma Variations, so clearly the whole Krakoa era is an extended Edward Elgar reference. Solved it!
For those who weren’t bothered to read the link posted, Bugs Bunny called Elmer Fudd “Nimrod” as one would call a big, tall bruiser “Tiny” or a Zach Snyder film “subtle”. My non-informed child mind, not knowing it was a great hunter of Ancient History, just took it to mean “idiot”. Methinks we need a good HBO series or Netflix phenomena about the actual dude to undo the damage that a cartoon rabbit unleashed more than half a century ago.
As Nimrod the Above implied
No one understands the reference and no one looks stuff up.
My succesdor (or descendent?) Chris V reminds me that the significance of the original Nimrod as an INDIVIDUAL Sentinel and as the then-only unique Sentinel is now trashed by Nimrod now being reduced to a class of threat rather an a unique one. This displeases me.
Didn’t O.G. Nimrod actually gain human emotion through emulation after he initiated his disguise? I seem to recall him possessing enough heroic empathy to protect people from the non-mutant Juggernaut before his programming compelled him to fight a mutant coalition that included both the X-Men and Hellfire Club. Poor Leland.
The HBO Nimrod series should have a plot revolving around the fact that rabbits don’t even eat carrots. Kill two Bugs Bunny myths with one stone.
And Mel Blanc was allergic to carrots.
@Si
Er… well, rabbits do eat carrots. Wild rabbits eat them more as a treat than a staple food, but they do eat them when they’re available. In that context, Bugs can be seen as having a sweet tooth (in addition to his transcendent qualities).