{"id":10335,"date":"2024-08-28T21:19:53","date_gmt":"2024-08-28T20:19:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10335"},"modified":"2024-08-28T21:19:53","modified_gmt":"2024-08-28T20:19:53","slug":"x-men-3-annotations-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10335","title":{"rendered":"X-Men #3 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 #3<\/strong>
\n“Scott Summers vs. The United States of America”<\/strong>
\nWriter: Jed MacKay<\/strong>
\nPenciller: Ryan Stegman<\/strong>
\nInkers: JP Mayer & Livesay<\/strong>
\nColourist: Marte Gracia<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Clayton Cowles<\/strong>
\nEditor: Tom Brevoort<\/strong><\/p>\n

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

Cyclops<\/strong> tries unsuccessfully to persuade Rogue not to attack Graymalkin; we’ll see Rogue’s side of that conversation in Uncanny X-Men<\/em> vol 6 #2, which won’t be out for two weeks. Cyclops is clearly aware of the fact that Graymalkin has been turned into a prison over in Uncanny X-Men<\/em> and thinks that Rogue’s group are hopelessly outpowered by whoever’s in charge of it. Scott evidently had plans of his own to deal with this, and he’s going to have to accelerate them now.<\/p>\n

At some point between the end of Krakoa and issue #1, Scott sued the US government over his treatment by Orchis. For some reason, he accepted the Factory as a settlement. So yes, the X-Men are there legally. Scott acknowledges that there was an “implication” that the US government expected the X-Men to stay in Alaska, but seems clear that he never agreed to anything. His ultimate position is that the US government would much rather his group were acting as the X-Men than acting as the Brotherhood, and those are the only two choices he’s offering them. He argues that he’s doing the government a favour by keeping his roster under control, and flags how dodgy they are: most of them are former villains, and Magik’s half demon.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Cyclops is aware of X-Factor (obviously, because publicity is the group’s whole thing). He’s surprisingly dismissive about Havok as their leader – “my brother has never been able to operate on my level”. But he’s talking for the benefit of a hostile audience, Agent Blumqvist, and might just be playing up to expectations.<\/p>\n

The final page shows us that Scott is having some sort of periodic attacks of sickness, and he’s working hard to keep up his leader persona.<\/p>\n

The Beast <\/strong>is the first person Scott calls to discuss Rogue’s decision to move on Graymalkin, which is interesting.<\/p>\n

Magneto <\/strong>still seems to be confined to his floating chair. He attempts to bond with Temper, arguing that they’re both been tempered by experience. It doesn’t go well.<\/p>\n

Temper<\/strong>‘s new codename is explained in terms of things like tempered steel, which fits with her powers being based on temperature extremes. Obviously, the other sense of “Temper” is not a coincidence. She’s still bitter about being sent to the Pit in the Sabretooth<\/em> miniseries. Magneto correctly identifies that she and Nekra were sent to the Pit for killing people, and assumes that her objection to him must be simply hypocrisy. However, Temper seems more aggrieved by the whole fact of Krakoa being presented as a utopia; the premise of the Exiles group from Victor LaValle’s Sabretooth<\/em> stories was of course that they rejected it as a false paradise and went their own way.<\/p>\n

Temper is now surrounded by people who loved Krakoa, or (in the case of Beast) have bought into the hype. That annoys her intensely, but it also begs the question of why she’s even here. Then again, she seems to place great importance on mutants being able to find one another rather than being separated around the world, so maybe she’s just willing to put up with everyone else’s attitude to Krakoa.<\/p>\n

Temper refers to her origin story from Uncanny X-Men<\/em> #528, where she killed a bunch of paramilitaries who came after her. For a long time, this was presented as a traumatic event that left her convinced that she was a monster. She’s now outright asserting the parallels between this event and defending her home from O*N*E’s soldiers, and the contrast is clearly intentional.<\/p>\n

Kid Omega, Magik, Juggernaut\u00a0<\/strong>and\u00a0Psylocke<\/strong> help to stop the O*N*E intruders.<\/p>\n

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

Paula Robbins<\/strong> meets Scott for the first time. As in issue #1, she seems perfectly cordial and mostly interested in lowering tensions; Scott reciprocates.<\/p>\n

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

The O*N*E <\/strong>are back. This is the Office of National Emergency, the military agency that debuted in the Decimation era with bizarre ideas like posting Sentinels outside the X-Men Mansion to defend the surviving mutants. They stopped appearing in the X-books a while back, but they’ve still been around on the fringes of the Marvel Universe – their last appearance seems to have been in a USAgent<\/em> miniseries in 2021.<\/p>\n

The O*N*E are now led (or at least represented) by Agent Lundqvist<\/strong>, who’s new. He doesn’t like Cyclops, who “made me look bad in front of the entire country”, for reasons we’ve yet to discover. It might be to do with the incident hinted at in previous issues where the X-Men saved the town of Merle from something Sentinel-related. Lundqvist is trying to throw his weight around, and sends a bunch of Shrike soldiers into the Factory in a blatantly illegal mission to seize the last Cerebro unit. He seems clearly anti-mutant, and it’s not clear whether he’s acting on any particular instructions here or just abusing his authority to pursue a grudge.<\/p>\n

Lundqvist does alert Cyclops to something genuinely relevant: he was caught on camera in San Francisco acknowledging that Ben Liu’s mutant powers had emerged in adulthood. This has apparently caused panic in itself, leading to fears that something is infecting normal humans and turning them into mutants. There’s some implication in issues #1-2 that 3K are working on precisely that. Lundqvist just seems pleased that Cyclops will find it annoying.<\/p>\n

The Vanisher<\/strong> is working with O*N*E. We’re not told why, but one of the Shrike soldiers mentions that he’s getting something unspecified in exchange for helping out, so apparently it’s just not money. He seems to think that they’re out of their depth with the X-Men, and he’s probably right. We last saw Vanisher in the big crowd scenes at the end of the Krakoan era.<\/p>\n

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

Page<\/strong> 5.<\/strong> As already mentioned, we’ll see the other side of this conversation in Uncanny X-Men <\/em>vol 6 #2. The “four strays” Cyclops mentions will be the group who showed up right at the end of Uncanny <\/em>#1. Rogue, Gambit and Wolverine were all in that issue; Jubilee wasn’t, but we saw her deciding to join Rogue’s group in Free Comic Book Day: Blood Hunt \/ X-Men<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Page 6 panel 4: “Chief Robbins. I’m sorry I missed you the other day.”<\/strong> Issue #1. Scott was off on a mission when Robbins visited the Factory in that issue.<\/p>\n

Page 9 panel 6: “As much as it pains me to admit it, Cyclops was right.”<\/strong> Kid Omega is alluding to the “Magneto was right” slogan he used to use. Apparently, Cyclops was anticipating that O*N*E would break in (though not specifically their target).<\/p>\n

Page 10 panel 1: “I assume this is about San Francisco.”<\/strong> Issue #2.<\/p>\n

Page 11 panel 3: “Orchis killed score of my species…”<\/strong> All of this comes from the “Fall of X” storyline.<\/p>\n

Page 13 panel 1: “Do not speak Ben Liu’s name out loud.”<\/strong> Ben Liu is the mutant they rescued from San Francisco in the previous issue, after faking his death to avoid panic about his reality-warping powers. So far as we know, he’s still unconscious.<\/p>\n

Page 19 panel 2: “The world’s last Cerebro.”<\/strong> This is one of the big room Cerebro designs introduced in the Morrison\/Quitely era, rather than the miniaturised versions that were being used on Krakoa. The one in the X-Men Mansion was destroyed on the orders of Corina Ellis in Uncanny X-Men<\/em> #1, so perhaps Lundqvist is on the same page as her.<\/p>\n

Page 22 panel 4: “I killed men just like<\/strong> you…” <\/strong>This is Temper’s origin story from Uncanny X-Men<\/em> #528.<\/p>\n

Page 24 panel 3: “If it comes to it, I can always call my<\/strong> wife.”<\/strong> Phoenix is in space, but we’ve seen in her series that she’s in regular psychic contact with Scott.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. X-MEN vol 7 #3 “Scott Summers vs. The United States of America” Writer: Jed MacKay Penciller: Ryan Stegman Inkers: JP Mayer & Livesay Colourist: Marte Gracia Letterer: Clayton Cowles Editor: Tom Brevoort THE X-MEN: Cyclops tries unsuccessfully to persuade Rogue not […]<\/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":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10335","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=10335"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10335\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10338,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10335\/revisions\/10338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}