{"id":10401,"date":"2024-09-26T20:13:08","date_gmt":"2024-09-26T19:13:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10401"},"modified":"2024-09-26T20:13:08","modified_gmt":"2024-09-26T19:13:08","slug":"x-force-3-annotations-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10401","title":{"rendered":"X-Force #3 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

\"\"<\/a>X-FORCE vol 7 #3<\/strong>
\n“The Walking Man”<\/strong>
\nWriter: Geoffrey Thorne<\/strong>
\nArtist: Marcus To<\/strong>
\nColour artist: Erick Arciniega<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Joe Caramagna<\/strong>
\nEditor: Mark Basso<\/strong><\/p>\n

X-FORCE: <\/strong><\/p>\n

Forge<\/strong> is a little troubled by the fact that Nuklo is causing havoc in Phnom Penh when the Analog says they’re meant to be heading somewhere 100 miles north – but not to the point of shaking his confidence in following the directions from his powers. He’s reassured when the Analog tells him that Nuko is merely connected<\/em> to the “fracture” that they’re investigating.<\/p>\n

Sage<\/strong> is frustrated by the vagueness of what the Analog actually is; she’s reluctant to just trust to Forge’s mutation. Her narration takes a detour to lament the fact that Professor X gives his students a simplistic, “binary” view of the world only for them to find out that it’s more complicated than that. Although she suggests that this was a problem for his other students rather than for her, there’s a fairly obvious subtext that she’s really talking about herself; Xavier sent her to infiltrate the Hellfire Club as a long-term mole.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Captain Britain<\/strong> and Askani<\/strong> spend time meditating together (and presumably in psychic connection) while on the way to the next fracture point. Rachel is getting annoyed that Betsy keeps giving her orders when in action and seems overly protective of her. She has a point, but there’s also an element that, on being coupled with Betsy, Rachel necessarily became the (narratively) junior partner since she was the supporting character in Betsy’s book. In this series they ought to be equals and Betsy is still somewhat acting as if she’s the main character.<\/p>\n

Surge<\/strong>, we’re reminded, was not in the original team line-up that Forge’s powers told him was needed. This is correct, but in the issue #1 bonus page, Forge did say that the Analog had identified her as needed once she showed up, which is consistent with his powers having given him the correct starting<\/em> team. She refuses to stick to the Analog’s guidance and simply breaks off from the group to help the civilians – consistent with last issue, when she said she was joining the team in order to do good and get mutants some good publicity, and wasn’t particularly taken with Forge’s secrecy agenda. She does show up to fight Nuklo when absolutely pressed but really doesn’t like being lectured to by Forge (who is rather condescending about it).<\/p>\n

Tank <\/strong>hs two batons which he uses as weapons. For the first time, other characters discuss who he is: Rachel and Betsy both agree that his mind registers as static to them. They assume that he’s an artificial humanoid created by Forge, but they’re not sure.<\/p>\n

VILLAINS (?):<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nuklo<\/strong> gets a basic recap on pages 9-10. To flesh that out a bit: Nuklo debuted in Giant-Size Avengers<\/em> #1 (1974). He’s the son of retired superheroes the Whizzer and Miss America. According to that story, his parents came out of retirement to stop a nuclear power point exploding, and were massively irradiated. Miss America was pregnant at the time, and her son Robert was then born as a mutant with dangerously high levels of radiation. The boy was then placed in suspended animation so that his radiation levels could decrease. Decades later, the Avengers accidentally release the boy, who is now physically an adult but has the mind of a child. He goes on a rampage, somewhat similar to what we see here, until the Avengers stop him. (All of this was, at the time, tied to a storyline in which Whizzer and Miss America were going to be the parents of Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch – something that became a footnote in continuity after Magneto was retconned in as their father.)<\/p>\n

In Marvel Two-in-One<\/em> #54-57 Project Pegasus helped to get his radiation under control and started to educate him. In the late 1980s, he was working for the Avengers as a groundsman. As already noted, he then spent some time with the Penance Council, a mixture of Golden Age characters and their children. He doesn’t seem to have done much since then beyond randomly showing up as a prisoner in the Assault on Pleasant Hill<\/em> crossover.<\/p>\n

Previous stories show some confusion as to Nuklo’s mental level. The original idea seems to have been that Nuklo’s innate mental capacity was normal, and he simply lacked any life experience. Sometimes he’s treated as having become more normal with time. Sometimes he’s written as having a mild learning disability. In Vision and the Scarlet Witch<\/em> #2 (1982), he’s described as autistic. Take your pick. Basically, the character has been written so incoherently over the years that it’s practically impossible to get him wrong.<\/p>\n

This story is explicitly resetting him to his debut status, but also makes clear that this appears to have been imposed on him by someone.<\/p>\n

As Rachel says, Avengers Mansion is a “weird choice” for the “core” of Nuklo’s mental landscape, though he did work in their support staff for a while; he might perhaps see it as the most normal part of his life.<\/p>\n

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

Pages 7-8. “I was one of Charles’ first recruits. When he found me, I was living very rough.”<\/strong> This is Sage’s back story as established in X-Treme X-Men<\/em> #44, where she’s a survivor from a wartorn village and finds Charles Xavier just after he’s suffered the injury that left him unable to walk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. X-FORCE vol 7 #3 “The Walking Man” Writer: Geoffrey Thorne Artist: Marcus To Colour artist: Erick Arciniega Letterer: Joe Caramagna Editor: Mark Basso X-FORCE: Forge is a little troubled by the fact that Nuklo is causing havoc in Phnom Penh when […]<\/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-10401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10401","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=10401"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10401\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10403,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10401\/revisions\/10403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}