{"id":10288,"date":"2024-08-14T21:48:16","date_gmt":"2024-08-14T20:48:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10288"},"modified":"2024-08-14T21:48:16","modified_gmt":"2024-08-14T20:48:16","slug":"x-men-2-annotations-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10288","title":{"rendered":"X-Men #2 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

\"\"<\/a>X-MEN vol 7 #2<\/strong>
\n“Invasion”<\/strong>
\nWriter: Jed MacKay<\/strong>
\nPenciller: Ryan Stegman<\/strong>
\nInker: JP Mayer<\/strong>
\nColourists: Marte Gracia & Fer Sifuentes-Sujo<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Clayton Cowles<\/strong>
\nEditor: Tom Brevoort<\/strong><\/p>\n

This issue also includes a back-up strip: the eighth and final chapter of “Weapon X-Traction”, which is basically a Deadpool & Wolverine comedy strip. I’m not going to be covering that.<\/p>\n

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

The X-Men have access to a Cerebro, presumably from one of the satellite locations of Krakoa.<\/p>\n

Cyclops <\/strong>is very clear that even in the midst of an alien invasion, the X-Men’s primary concern is rescuing the new mutant that they’ve detected. He does insist that they’re still going to do the superhero stuff and help San Francisco, and acknowledges that the city has been good to mutants in the past (i.e., in the Utopia era), but he makes plain that it’s a secondary objective at best. His interest in relations with the humans seems to be largely instrumental: on a purely practical level, it’s good for the X-Men to be liked.<\/p>\n

When he realises that the aliens are a projection of his new mutant, Cyclops’ main concern is to cover it up so that the humans don’t find out. He goes to the length of faking the new mutant’s death. Of course, this is the sort of thing that might count as a legitimate worry about uncontrolled mutant powers, but Cyclops feels there’s a bigger picture. (He surely can’t be that <\/em>surprised to learn that there’s a connection between his new mutant signal and the alien invasion, but maybe he just figured that mutant powers often emerge for the first time under stress.)<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Kid Omega <\/strong>mocks Cyclops’ superhero speech to San Francisco as insincere… but he seems to be right. He insists on being called by his codename, mainly to annoy Cyclops. From the look of it, Cyclops is using him to stay behind and co-ordinate everything with his psi-powers – which would be beyond Psylocke’s ability – but he’s happy enough as long as he gets to shoot at stuff while piloting the Marauder.<\/p>\n

Magik <\/strong>can apparently teleport the entire Marauder thousands of miles thanks to something called the “X-Drive” that boosts her powers. Previously, this would have been done with the Krakoan gates, and it’s admittedly a larger object than she would routinely be teleporting with her stepping discs alone.<\/p>\n

Psylocke <\/strong>regards Magik as significantly weirder than her, which is fair enough, since for all Kwannon’s traumatic back story, she didn’t grow up in Hell. Although she doesn’t have the raw psychic power of Kid Omega, she’s confident that she’s stronger than him in terms of her ability to commune with weird minds.<\/p>\n

Temper<\/strong> and Juggernaut <\/strong>seem to be the most interested in just fighting the aliens, though admittedly that’s teh task they were given. Juggernaut is very happy to just be fired at the alien ship like a bullet.<\/p>\n

Magneto<\/strong> and the Beast<\/strong> only appear on the final page, in the Factory’s hospital; neither says anything. Magneto is still in his chair.<\/p>\n

SUPPORTING CHARACTERS:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ben Liu <\/strong>is a new character. He’s a homeless mutant living on the streets of San Francisco who claims to be a survivor of alien abduction. This being the Marvel Universe, he might be right, but he certainly presents as mentally ill. He seems to be some sort of reality warper, whose powers create the very alien invasion that he’s terrified of.<\/p>\n

His powers seem to have emerged in adulthood, for no apparent reason. This is very rare, since mutants normally have their powers either from birth or at least from puberty. However, it’s not completely unheard of to have latent mutants whose powers are triggered by some sort of event later in life – Polaris was in that category. So it’s possible that something happened before the story. But issue #1 also featured mutants who had seemingly gained their powers in adulthood, as members of the Fourth School. That story implied that they had been given powers by 3K, and the obvious suggestion is that something similar may have happened to Ben. Are 3K just trying to turn adult humans into mutants for some reason?<\/p>\n

The X-Men fake Ben’s death and take him back to the Factory, where he seems to be comatose.<\/p>\n

A social worker called Keith<\/strong> is trying to take care of Ben for most of the issue, but he doesn’t give the impression of being a recurring character.<\/p>\n

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

There are no villains in this story, just the aliens that Ben Liu creates. Of course, as just noted, there’s at least a hint that 3K <\/strong>have something to do with Ben’s mutant powers emerging in adulthood.<\/p>\n

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

Page 6 panel 4: “Remember the Iron Night – helping humans makes our lives easier.”<\/strong> We don’t know yet what the Iron Night is, but the solicitation for issue #7 suggests that it’s something to do with whatever unspecified thing the X-Men did to save the town of Merle (as mentioned last issue).<\/p>\n

Page 9 panel 1: “Get in the mass-driver, Juggernaut. Get in the mass-driver, or Temper will have to do it.”<\/strong> Kid Omega is shoe-horning in a reference to Neon Genesis Evangelion<\/em>; it doesn’t really fit, which is kind of Temper’s point.<\/p>\n

Page 11 panel 1: “There’s been contact with two different alien species that fit this physical description. The Brll’nah Zhhk and the Grey Family.” <\/strong>The aliens seem to be standard issue “greys” of the sort from UFO abduction conspiracies, which of course fits Ben Liu’s hallucinations. The two species Cyclops names are genuine Marvel Universe aliens similarly modelled on the greys. The Brll’nah Zhhk come from Peter Parker Spider-Man<\/em> #23-24 (2000), while the Grey Family are from Iron Man<\/em> #10-12 (2013).<\/p>\n

Page 19 panel 2: “Well, the Marauder is<\/em> a spaceship.” <\/strong>It is indeed; it’s the ship formerly known as the Mercury<\/em> and latterly the New Marauder<\/em> from Gerry Duggan’s Marauders <\/em>run. The New<\/em> has been dropped from the name somewhere along the line.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. X-MEN vol 7 #2 “Invasion” Writer: Jed MacKay Penciller: Ryan Stegman Inker: JP Mayer Colourists: Marte Gracia & Fer Sifuentes-Sujo Letterer: Clayton Cowles Editor: Tom Brevoort This issue also includes a back-up strip: the eighth and final chapter of “Weapon X-Traction”, […]<\/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,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10288","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=10288"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10288\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10291,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10288\/revisions\/10291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}