{"id":10244,"date":"2024-07-24T22:13:46","date_gmt":"2024-07-24T21:13:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10244"},"modified":"2024-07-24T22:13:46","modified_gmt":"2024-07-24T21:13:46","slug":"nyx-1-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10244","title":{"rendered":"NYX #1 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

\"\"<\/a>NYX vol 2 #1<\/strong>
\nWriters: Jackson Lanzing & Collin Kelly<\/strong>
\nArtist: Francesco Mortarino<\/strong>
\nColour artist: Ra\u00fal Angulo<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Joe Sabino<\/strong>
\nEditor: Annalise Bissa<\/strong><\/p>\n

The original NYX<\/em> was a 7-issue series from 2003\/4 about teenage mutant runaways in New York, best remembered for featuring the comic debut of X-23. This book is also set in New York, and also has Laura in the cast, but otherwise has nothing to do with the original NYX<\/em>. Instead, this seems to be the street level book, about the mutants whose response to the fall of Krakoa was to move back to the big city and try to make a life there.<\/p>\n

THE MAIN CAST:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ms Marvel. <\/strong>Despite the title of the book, Kamala Khan still lives in Jersey City with her family, though she gives us an opening monologue about how she’s always been dazzled by New York across the river. She’s signed up for an “after-school school” at Empire State University where David Alleyne is teaching a course entitled “Examinations of Post-Krakoan Diaspora”. She uses her powers quite openly to swing or stride around the city at speed, and nobody seems to have any problem with that. Despite her openly associating with the X-Men during the “Fall of X” period, the general public (and even the anti-mutant bigots) seem to assume that she’s a non-mutant. She’s back to wearing her normal costume, rather than her X-Men uniform, and generally behaves as a solo superhero.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Kamala still wants to maintain her secret identity and live a normal life, which Sophie views as tragic and Laura views as cowardly. She’s still keen to befriend other mutants, though, and willing to go out for the night with Sophie in that spirit.<\/p>\n

Both Sophie and the Krakoan (of whom more later) draw our attention to the fact that Kamala never got to live on Krakoa and has no direct experience of it. Her status as a character who commutes to be in the New York book seems to mirror that here; she remains firmly on the fringes of mutantkind. According to Sophie, other mutants associate Kamala with the fall of Krakoa, at least in the sense that they can’t readily separate her from it in their minds.<\/p>\n

Kamala is somehow able to tell Sophie apart from the other four Cuckoos – she attributes this to being a “big fan”, but that doesn’t really explain how she can tell.<\/p>\n

Sophie Cuckoo.<\/strong> Sophie has also signed up for David’s class, although she’s immediately disruptive and challenges his opening speech. She claims to have signed up to keep David honest, and tells Kamala that she can get away with this because she knew him back at Westchester. On the face of it, this is a continuity error: Sophie died in the “Riot at Xaviers” arc in New X-Men<\/em> #137, over six months before David debuted in New Mutants<\/em> #4. That said, she probably got to know David on Krakoa.<\/p>\n

Or is it an error? The writers are clearly aware of “Riot at Xaviers”, because Sophie mentions it on page 12. In their earliest appearances, Sophie was the nicest of the Cuckoos, and the one who died heroically dealing with Kid Omega’s riot. She wasn’t properly resurrected until the Krakoan age (ignoring a couple of stories about abortive attempts), at which point she became something of a background character while the spotlight was on Phoebe.<\/p>\n

Sophie never explains why she’s away from the other Cuckoos, and Kamala doesn’t ask, but we find out at the end of the issue that the other four Cuckoos have hooked up with Empath. This might explain why Sophie seems keen to build bridges with other mutants that she can make contact with, and is very enthusiastic about befriending Kamala, someone with whom she has nothing in common whatsoever.<\/p>\n

Sophie interprets Kamala’s secret identity trope as tragic closeting, and seems oblivious to the reasons why Kamala might want to hold on to a normal life (or views it as false consciousness, perhaps). But she is quite impressed by Kamala, apologises for being pushy, and seems to be sincere.<\/p>\n

Prodigy.<\/strong> Professor David Alleyne is now the youngest professor in the history of Empire State University, teaching a class about the Krakoan diaspora from personal experience. His opening address to the class emphasises the part about mutants protecting a world that hates and fears them, and frames Professor X’s dream as simply being that mutants tolerate this situation. This isn’t really a fair reflection of Xavier’s dream<\/em> as opposed to the practical result of his methods. At any rate, he seems to be teaching a basically conventional class about the social aspects of the Krakoan population’s reintegration into human society.\u00a0 Sophie is unimpressed by this: she sees him as too willing to accept that a separate mutant nation is finished, and accuses him of legitimising humans by assimilating into their institutions.<\/p>\n

Note that, for all that he presents himself as the representative of Krakoan culture, David is using his human name. He lives with his boyfriend Dante.<\/p>\n

Anole<\/strong> works behind the bar in a club called KT, picking up on his role as a barman in the Green Lagoon. The art shows him has a young adult rather than a teenager. As I understand it, New York law does allow 18 year olds to serve alcohol even though they can’t legally buy it. The bouncer throws Sophie and Kamala out of the club at the end of the scene on a just-invented “no mutants” rule, but it’s unclear whether that has any impact on Anole.<\/p>\n

Wolverine<\/strong> (Laura) attacks Ms Marvel to stop her from tracking down the Truthseekers. On the face of it, this is a very weird scene – these two characters have worked together in the X-Men during the “Fall of X” period, and Laura just tries to send Kamala away on the grounds that she’s out of her depth. If we’re taking her at face value, Laura objects to Kamala trying to live a normal life instead of devoting all of her time to superhero work, and sees it as evidence that she’s an underqualified dilettante. Perhaps Laura is also just resentful of someone who actually\u00a0has<\/em> a normal life. We only see her in costume and doing hero stuff, and there’s no suggestion that she’s doing anything to build a life.<\/p>\n

Since Laura expressly destroys the phone that Kamala is trying to use to track the Truthseekers, it’s possible that she’s deliberately trying to steer Kamala away from her investigation. Maybe Laura knows more about what it’s going to discover. Kamala takes it at face value and thinks Laura has a “weird protector complex about me”.<\/p>\n

Laura and Sophie both have the same quite distinctive belt buckle on their costumes.<\/p>\n

THE SUPPORTING CAST:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bruno Carrelli<\/strong>, Kamala’s usual best friend and sometime love interest, is spending the semester studying in Amsterdam, so we won’t be seeing much of him. Kamala leaves him an extended and somewhat rambling phone message (i.e., infodump) over the course of four pages, and says that she misses him.<\/p>\n

Aamir Khan<\/strong>, Kamala’s brother, has apparently started a new job. He’s worried about his sister in the big city (which is in character for him) and troubled about all those dangerous mutants who are now back in regular society (which is less so).<\/p>\n

Dante<\/strong>, David’s boyfriend, sits in the background for a page and gets no dialogue. David describes him as “patient”.<\/p>\n

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

The Truthseekers<\/strong> are a bunch of grass roots anti-mutant activists who claim to be investigating a series of property damage incidents that they blame on mutants. What this means in practice is that they wander around filming things on their phones and threatening obvious mutants like Anole. Nonetheless, on a physical level, they seem like no more than a mugger-level threat. They’re actually right about a mutant being behind the incidents, but it’s not clear whether that’s pure coincidence, or whether they actually have some knowledge of what’s going on, or even whether they’re complicit in some sort of false flag operation with the Krakoan.<\/p>\n

The Krakoan<\/strong> is the mutant responsible for these terrorist attacks – he wears a fairly traditional mutant-style costume, with a tattered red cloak and what seems to be a variant Cerebro helmet (though his eyes are visible). He has a Krakoan-style X-logo. Generally, he claims to be keeping alive the spirit of Krakoa, and berates Ms Marvel as someone who was never part of that community. At least some of what he says to Ms Marvel is clearly wrong – he says that “only I remain” when we find out later that he’s got a whole team – so a lot of this seems to be for public consumption. He takes off the helmet when he’s in private with his teammate.<\/p>\n

The Krakoan turns out to be Julian Keller, formerly Hellion, who did essentially nothing while he was actually on Krakoa, at least so far as we saw on panel. Julian is a member of…<\/p>\n

The (self-proclaimed) Quiet Council.<\/strong> This group consists of Empath, Hellion and the other four Stepford Cuckoos. They’re mutant supremacists who apparently want to level Manhattan and turn it into a new Krakoa, depending on how literally you take Empath’s speech. Empath seems to be in charge and it’s possible that the others are meant to be under his influence, though you’d have thought the Cuckoos would be able to resist. This agenda certainly isn’t in character for all of the Cuckoos, or for Hellion. What does link these characters is that they’re all former students of Emma Frost.<\/p>\n

Empath has a rather neat new costume – a suit in his traditional Hellion colours, complete with the diagonal pattern on his waistcoat.<\/p>\n

CAMEOS:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Minor Krakoan-era background character Fauna<\/strong> appears on the bonus page, being introduced to someone called Mr Friend<\/strong>, who looks appropriately sinister.<\/p>\n

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

Page 1.<\/strong> The nine highly stylised panels on this page mostly feature images of the cast going about their business, but not all:<\/p>\n