{"id":10258,"date":"2024-07-31T22:03:48","date_gmt":"2024-07-31T21:03:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10258"},"modified":"2024-07-31T22:03:48","modified_gmt":"2024-07-31T21:03:48","slug":"x-men-heir-of-apocalypse-4-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10258","title":{"rendered":"X-Men: Heir of Apocalypse #4 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

\"\"<\/a>X-MEN: HEIR OF APOCALYPSE #4<\/strong>
\nWriter: Steve Foxe<\/strong>
\nPenciller: Netho Diaz<\/strong>
\nInker: Sean Parsons<\/strong>
\nColour artist: Alex Sinclair<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Clayton Cowles<\/strong>
\nEditor: Annalise Bissa<\/strong><\/p>\n

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

Well, he selects an heir. Or at any rate, he refers to it as “my decision”. But it’s not clear how much choice he actually has in the matter, beyond selecting the contestants in the first place. The function of the contest seems to be to whittle the field down to four. But before Apocalypse goes off to speak to the final four one at a time, he also says that “my heir must accept their role”. On one view, only one of the contestants actually does<\/em> accept the role (or perhaps Apocalypse is exercising some judgment about what amounts to acceptance). Note that in their dream scenes, Apocalypse appears to the three “losers” in his pre-Krakoa villain design, while only the winner sees him as Krakoan Apocalypse – which is how he still appears in the real world.<\/p>\n

Once again, Apocalypse says that his heir will continue his work, but also that he expects them to oppose him. It’s not clear how this squares in Apocalypse’s mind; perhaps he wants someone who thinks for themselves, but has such confidence in his agenda (or in the effects of the power-up he’s going to give them) that he’s sure they’ll wind up on his track in the long run.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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

The final four are Cable, Forge, Mirage <\/strong>and Cypher<\/strong>. All four are symbolically “killed” by the giant statues of the Horsemen (from the cliffhanger of issue #3), which moves them on to their respective dream scenes with Apocalypse. The scene tries to tie each character to a different Horseman, with mixed success.<\/p>\n

Cable, reasonably enough, represents War. Apocalypse suggests that he has shaped Cable’s life as much as his parents did (which is probably fair), and posits that Cable might be poised to take over from him as a mentor figure with the next generation, just as he did when he took over the New Mutants. Cable makes clear that he is only here to try and avert whatever Apocalypse has planned. Presumably this is why he gets rejected.<\/p>\n

Forge represents Famine, on the exceeding tenuous grounds that “You are an ideasmith in a world that suffers from a famine of new ideas.” If you say so. We’re reminded of Forge’s pitch for sustainable cities at the last Hellfire Gala, but Apocalypse also accuses Forge of creating inventions (such as the neutralizer) without any real consideration of what might be done with them. The basic idea is that Forge lacks vision; he creates things without any real understanding of the wider implications. This might tie in somewhat to his depiction in the new X-Force<\/em> series, where he seems to be pretty much trusting in his inventions to point him in the right direction without much deeper understanding.<\/p>\n

Mirage represents Pestilence, on the grounds that she’s a stagnant character caught in developmental limbo. While the pestilence angle is a bit of a reach, the basic idea is valid: Mirage is a character who was created as a leader of the next generation of X-Men, yet never actually evolved into that role (even though teammates like Cannonball and Sunspot did). She didn’t become an X-Man and she got supplanted by later trainee characters decades ago. The character has gone basically nowhere in the last 25 years – certainly nowhere that stuck. Mirage rejects this view of herself, and is confident that her role in training successor generations has been a worthwile life.<\/p>\n

Cypher represents Death, with his scene playing up that his emotional connection to Krakoa was greater than any other mutant – we’re reminded that he was bonding alone with Krakoa for months before the rest of the mutants even showed up. The loss of Krakoa is an even greater trauma for him than it was for everyone else, and he’s not willing to move on. As a result, he’s the one character who embraces Apocalypse’s analysis of him as someone who wants to bring Krakoa back from the dead.<\/p>\n

Cypher duly gets a power-up into a sort of golden Apocalypse figure, now calling himself Revelation<\/strong>. What this actually means in practice. The two characters most closely associated with him – his wife Bei the Blood Moon<\/strong> and his soulmate Warlock<\/strong> – are presented to him as his “first disciples.” Bei is 100% on board with all this. Warlock seems a little bit less certain. Revelation tells us that he won’t be using force to shepherd mutantkind, and he’ll be listening to the next generation of mutant leader, but he’ll also “reveal to them the error of their ways.” Evidently he regrets taking such a passive role in mutant affairs on Krakoa.<\/p>\n

As for the rest of the contestants, Rictor<\/strong> is depressed to find that following in Apocalypse’s footsteps wasn’t his destiny after all, and says that he can’t even face Apocalypse. He never gets the chance anyway – Apocalypse doesn’t come back to speak to the losers, though he does leave them a teleporter to get back to Earth. Wolverine<\/strong> (Laura) explains that she signed up simply in order to make sure that nobody too awful won. Emma Frost<\/strong> and M <\/strong>are… also there.<\/p>\n

The rest of the contestants didn’t bother hanging around after being woken up, and they all went home off panel. We’re told that Armageddon Girl and Gorgon left immediately; Exodus was “cordial” but didn’t want to hang around; and Mr Sinister was driven away after he was caught trying to tinker with the machines.<\/p>\n

GUEST APPEARANCE:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Archangel<\/strong> is still hovering around on the fringes of the plot. He releases the losing contestants from their suspended animation while Apocalypse is off making his decision.<\/p>\n

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

Page 7 panel 2: “When Krakoa returned to our time, I found myself opposed by those who had grown up without my guidance.”<\/strong> Apocalypse is referencing X-Men<\/em> #35 (or Uncanny X-Men<\/em> #700, if you prefer).<\/p>\n

Page 7 panel 3: “Much like the children you [Cable] once mentored who had rejected both Xavier and Magneto.”<\/strong> The New Mutants, who adopted Cable as a mentor after rejecting Magneto. It’s a little debatable to say that they’d already rejected Professor X at that point (he just wasn’t around), but by the time that the New Mutants evolved into the more paramilitary X-Force, they’d certainly split from Xavier’s vision of what the X-Men ought to be.<\/p>\n

Page 11 panel 2: “Your [Forge’s] living ‘city of tomorrow.'”<\/strong> This was Forge’s gift to humanity at the final Hellfire Gala, unveiled a few pages before the Orchis attack in X-Men: Hellfire Gala<\/em> (2023).<\/p>\n

Page 12 panel 3: “The neutralizer gun. Technology you developed to depower mutants.”<\/strong> Forge created the neutralizer gun (circa Uncanny X-Men<\/em> #184) to deal with the Dire Wraiths, not specifically in order to depower mutants. It just happened to do that too.<\/p>\n

Page 13: <\/strong>The art shows the baseball diamond at the X-Men Mansion (unused for once, but a standard location for downtime scenes). The X-Men in the final panel are Storm, Colossus, Nightcrawler and a very early Kitty Pryde, in a costume she’d already dropped before the New Mutants were formed. She does briefly wear a standard Xavier School uniform circa X-Men<\/em> #168, but not with the mask.<\/p>\n

Page 14 panel 1: <\/strong>The original New Mutants – from left to right, Sunspot, Mirage, Karma, Wolfsbane and Cannonball.<\/p>\n

Page 14 panel 2: <\/strong>The art shows Generation X, the next iteration of a teenage X-team: M, Jubilee, Chamber and Skin are shown.<\/p>\n

Page 14 panel 3: <\/strong>This panel shows 21st century students from various runs: Anole (an Academy X <\/em>character), Transonic (Generation Hope<\/em>), Glob Herman (Grant Morrison’s New X-Men<\/em>) and the second Sprite (Wolverine and the X-Men<\/em>).<\/p>\n

Page 15 panel 2: “Selene fought me and my friends and got her ass kicked. So did you other fellow Eternals.”<\/strong> Mirage is referring to the lengthy closing storyline from the X-Men Unlimited Infinity Comic<\/em>, which ran alongside Fall of the House of X<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Page 16 panel 2: “And you [Cypher] are one of the only mutants who defied the wishes of the Quiet Council.”<\/strong> Apocalypse is probably referring to Cypher helping Nature Girl to escape the Pit in X-Men Unlimited Infinity Comic <\/em>#12, and to the way he tried to ameliorate conditions in the Pit in the first Sabretooth<\/em> miniseries.<\/p>\n

Page 16 panel 3: <\/strong>The art shows Cypher taking his traditional position in the Quiet COuncil chamber, reclining on Krakoa’s branch and watching from the background.<\/p>\n

Page 18 panel 2: “I was one of the first mutants to walk on Krakoa. For almost a year, I lived alone on the island…”<\/strong> In a flashback in Powers of X<\/em> #4, Professor X introduces Cypher to Krakoa and asks him to start work on the Krakoan project; Cypher says it will take “months, maybe a year if I’m terrible at this”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. X-MEN: HEIR OF APOCALYPSE #4 Writer: Steve Foxe Penciller: Netho Diaz Inker: Sean Parsons Colour artist: Alex Sinclair Letterer: Clayton Cowles Editor: Annalise Bissa APOCALYPSE: Well, he selects an heir. Or at any rate, he refers to it as “my decision”. […]<\/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-10258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10258","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=10258"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10258\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10261,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10258\/revisions\/10261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}