{"id":10075,"date":"2024-05-10T18:55:29","date_gmt":"2024-05-10T17:55:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10075"},"modified":"2024-05-10T18:55:29","modified_gmt":"2024-05-10T17:55:29","slug":"free-comic-book-day-2024-blood-hunt-x-men-1-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10075","title":{"rendered":"Free Comic Book Day 2024: Blood Hunt \/ X-Men #1 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers and page numbers go by the digital edition.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>FREE COMIC BOOK DAY 2024: BLOOD HUNT \/ X-MEN #1<\/strong>
\n“The Fire Still Burns”<\/strong>
\nWriter: Gail Simone<\/strong>
\nArtist: David Marquez<\/strong>
\nColour artist: Edgar Delgado<\/strong>
\nEditor: Tom Brevoort<\/strong><\/p>\n

Welcome to the post-Krakoan era. This issue has a 10-page X-Men story, which is the first output of the new editorial office, and a prologue to Gail Simone and David Marquez’s Uncanny X-Men<\/em> run. The other half of the issue is a prologue to the Blood Hunt<\/em> crossover, but that’s beyond our remit here.<\/p>\n

I haven’t decided yet how we’re going to do this post-Krakoa. The original idea of doing annotations was tied to the fact that the line was heavily interlinked, and it looks like the post-Krakoa line will be dialling that back. And not all books necessarily lend themselves to the annotation approach anyway – I probably wouldn’t be doing it with\u00a0Wolverine <\/em>if we hadn’t already come this far. Right now, I’m planning to do something along the lines of the annotations posts for the three core X-Men titles, and at least the first issues of the other ongoings, and then decide what seems to make sense.<\/p>\n

Aside from that, the scene-breakdown format isn’t always the best way of talking about story points, so I’m thinking of tweaking that. Let’s test a different approach…<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

THE STATE OF MUTANTKIND<\/strong><\/p>\n

Not a regular section, since I don’t expect it to change that often, but it’s obviously on point here.<\/p>\n

We’re post-Krakoa, and for obvious reasons, the story doesn’t want to be too explicit about what happened the end of Fall of the House of X<\/em>. Mutants no longer have a homeland. The former X-Men Mansion is occupied by an unnamed, apparently official group who seem to be running a mutant prison – more of them below. They’re clearly the villains but they don’t seem as aggressive as Orchis.<\/p>\n

Mutants are common enough for Jubilee to find Uva, a mutant with obvious zebra stripes, working in a random diner. Mutants have an “M” hand signal to identify one another, and Uva already knows about it (so she can’t be that<\/em> isolated from other mutants – if the signal was public knowledge, it would be useless). Jubilee apparently thinks that it would be realistic for Uva to live openly as a mutant. On the other hand, Jubilee seems concerned that Uva should know that she isn’t alone, and that “there are more of us than people know”. Her narration suggests that this isn’t “Fall of X”, but that there’s a lot of social pressure to keep a low profile.<\/p>\n

THE X-MEN<\/strong><\/p>\n

Jubilee<\/strong> has dropped by the X-Men Mansion on her motorbike to see what’s going on, and goes on to have an altercation with some local thugs. She isn’t a member of the X-Men at the moment, and isn’t even clear whether the team currently exists. But at the end of the story, she calls Wolverine and accepts an offer previously made by Rogue (presumably to join the\u00a0Uncanny X-Men\u00a0<\/em>team). She also says “Mission’s ongoing, turns out”, which may suggest that she was sent to the Mansion to scout it.<\/p>\n

She’s still getting over the loss of Krakoa. She’s bitter about how quickly the Mansion has been co-opted (and the level of governmental motivation which that implies). She wants to connect with Uva and isn’t particularly impressed at Uva preferring to stay with her family. She sees Uva as a victim of a mother who won’t stand up for her, which is a valid reading of the situation, but not the only possible one – it doesn’t seem to occur to Jubilee that Uva’s mother is willing to have a very obvious mutant working in her diner in public view, and might just be trying to deflect the attention of a bunch of obvious thugs. It’s not as if the “skin condition” explanation seems to fool anyone for a second. At the very least, Jubilee seems to jump to the conclusion that the mother’s motivation is shame rather than protection. Perhaps Jubilee’s not in a particularly sympathetic mood towards ordinary humans right now.<\/p>\n

In time honoured X-Men style, Jubilee will only put up with being discreet for so long before she snaps and beats up the thugs who are hassling Uva. She seems to have upped her powers a bit, and destroys their car with a burning X symbol.<\/p>\n

THE VILLAINS<\/strong><\/p>\n

An unnamed organisation<\/strong> has co-opted the X-Men Mansion and built a wall around it. We’re not told why they’ve chosen to seize the building, which has been lying derelict for most of the Krakoan era. There are a lot of armed guards, but they have no visible insignia. All signs of Krakoan foliage are gone. Oddly, the Mansion interior seems to be in classic X-Men mode: the Blackbird is in the hangar, and Professor X’s study has its traditional appearance. To be fair, the room was still fully furnished when we saw it in Giant-Size X-Men: Nightcrawler<\/em>, albeit overgrown. Anyway, the newcomers are stripping it all out.<\/p>\n

Dr Corina Ellis<\/strong> is in charge. She’s a new character, and despite her title and white coat, she seems to be running a prison more than a medical or scientific institution. She calls the mutants “inmates”, seems generally disdainful towards them (and mutants in general), and generally does moustache-twirling stuff.<\/p>\n

Her mutant aide, Phillip<\/strong>, is another new character. He’s weak and emaciated, and walks with crutches; this could be through mistreatment, but it seems like a genuine illness. Corina used to call him “Scurvy” and he used to be an “inmate”, but since the facility has only just opened, either he must have been an “inmate” somewhere else, or he got shifted to this role almost immediately. His powers aren’t spelled out, but he “couldn’t read” Jubilee when she was outside the building, and says “it was like she wasn’t there at all”. His powers have some unspecified role in dealing with the inmates.<\/p>\n

Somebody referred to as “Inmate X”<\/strong> is being held in the basement under extremely high security, and for some reason Dr Ellis feels particularly compelled to gloat about it.<\/p>\n

Todd and his gang<\/strong> are just your generic local thugs. They’re anti-mutant but more as part of an all-round bullying package than as a predominant motivation – they try to run Jubilee off the road before they know anything about her at all.<\/p>\n

CAMEO APPEARANCES<\/strong><\/p>\n

The only two “inmates” we see on panel are the Blob<\/strong> (on a drip and in a stupor) and Siryn <\/strong>(in a strait jacket with a green mask – it says “CASSIDY” on the jacket, though it’s not obvious).<\/p>\n

SPECIFICS<\/strong><\/p>\n

Page 17 panels 1-2: “When I was a child, I spake as a child…”<\/strong> This is 1 Corinthians 13:11. Equating the fall of Krakoa with putting away childish things, however sardonically, feels like it’s poking the Krakoa fans with a stick, but okay.<\/p>\n

Page 18 panel 1: “We had a dragon. More than one, actually. I’m not going to think about that.”<\/strong> One is Lockheed. The other is Shogo, Jubilee’s adopted infant son, who stayed in Otherworld after Knights of X<\/em> #5.<\/p>\n

Page 18 panel 3: “Ororo once told me it took eight months to get a permit for the Blackbird hangar and three years to build it.”<\/strong> Presumably that’s Charles Xavier building a hangar way, way back before the X-Men were a thing, rather than something that Storm was personally involved in.<\/p>\n

Page 22 panel 6: “The Midnight Bark.”<\/strong> I believe that’s the secret communication network among dogs in 101 Dalmatians<\/em>, unless there’s some other reference I’m missing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers and page numbers go by the digital edition. FREE COMIC BOOK DAY 2024: BLOOD HUNT \/ X-MEN #1 “The Fire Still Burns” Writer: Gail Simone Artist: David Marquez Colour artist: Edgar Delgado Editor: Tom Brevoort Welcome to the post-Krakoan era. This issue has a 10-page X-Men story, which is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10075"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10075\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10080,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10075\/revisions\/10080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}