{"id":10408,"date":"2024-09-28T17:52:23","date_gmt":"2024-09-28T16:52:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10408"},"modified":"2024-09-28T17:52:23","modified_gmt":"2024-09-28T16:52:23","slug":"nyx-3-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10408","title":{"rendered":"NYX #3 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

\"\"<\/a>NYX vol 2 #3<\/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 CORE CAST:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Anole<\/strong> is this issue’s spotlight character. He was indeed fired from his bar job after the fight in issue #1, which was strongly implied at the time, but could just have been the bouncer exceeding his authority. His human roommates are letting him stay rent free for the moment. He heads off alone to investigate the new Morlocks, and gets invited to join; the point seems to be that he’s not just a mutant, but a visible mutant (unlike everyone else in the core cast). He objects to the suggestion that he’s an “X-Man” rather than a Morlock, insisting that all he wants to do be left alone to live a normal life, but ultimately seems willing to retain a link with the Morlocks. Still, he believes that visible mutants like him need to be out there in public to set an example; the Morlocks agree to follow his lead and “walk our brother home”.<\/p>\n

Ms Marvel<\/strong> takes the lead in rounding everone up for a vigil for Shay, the mutant killed the previous night. (Shay hasn’t appeared before, but we do get a photograph of him on page 4.) Aside from Kamala just being generally nice, it’s striking that she’s the one who seems most keen to promote a show of mutant solidarity despite being a relative outsider to the mutant community. Perhaps she’s also just less jaded about this sort of thing.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Sophie Cuckoo<\/strong> shows up for the vigil, after being “bugged” by Kamala. She seems more visibly moved by the experience than the rest, and she’s the first one to step up to drive away the Truthseekers instead of tolerating their presence. She does agree with Kamala that the defeated Purifiers shouldn’t be killed, but for pragmatic rather than moral reasons.<\/p>\n

Sophie is secretly working for Empath, and her remit is to encourage Kamala to get involved and take some sort of stand which (according to Empath) will be disastrous. Given Sophie’s comment to herself before she meets Empath (“Okay, once more unto the breach”), it’s strongly implied that she’s not on board with him at all. Still, as far as we know she hasn’t shared any of this with the rest of the cast.<\/p>\n

David Alleyne<\/strong> shows up for the vigil and doesn’t do a great deal else in this issue. Page 19 panel 3 suggests that he’s been doing graffiti art off panel, some of which we’ve presumably seen in previous issues.<\/p>\n

Wolverine (Laura) shows up for the vigil. She’s the only member of the core cast that Kamala doesn’t mention pestering to show up. The previous issue ended with Laura deciding that she needed to become part of the mutant community in order to fight Mojo, a plotline which isn’t otherwise directly picked up in this issue, but that might explain why she’s showed up for this on her own.<\/p>\n

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

Caliban<\/strong> shows up at the vigil as the new leader of the Morlocks.<\/strong> While everyone else shows up in civilian clothes, the Morlock contingent are in costumes. They’re also adorned with leaves in an obvious echo of Krakoan trappings, something that’s maintained in their underground base. This is the continuity version of mutant separatism, although clearly less inclined to hide away entirely than the original Morlocks were. They’re also entirely made up of visible mutants, unlike most of the main cast. The Krakoan letter on Anole and Sobunar’s robes at the end of the issue is just an M.<\/p>\n

Caliban himself seems to have changed from the somewhat childlike and naive version we saw during Krakoa – he carries himself as a dignified leader. Presumably his authority derives in part from being a prominent member of the original Morlocks, but Anole is understandably confused to see Caliban in this role.<\/p>\n

Most of the Morlocks we see are generics, but Caliban is flanked by Sobunar<\/strong>. This guy was a member of the Great Ring of Arakko, where he was allied (admittedly somewhat reluctantly) with Genesis during the civil war in X-Men Red<\/em>. The unnamed blue girl who accompanies Caliban to the vision and is the first to shout “Mutant!” is Loolo<\/strong>, another Arakko character from X-Men Red<\/em>. Clearly, there’s an Arrako contingent in this new Morlock community, and we’re not told why that is. Sobunar’s presence here is particularly curious given his previous role on Arakko.<\/p>\n

A bunch of other unnamed Morlocks appear repeatedly during the issue and, who knows, might turn out to be recurring characters. Maggott<\/strong> is part of the group on page 18.<\/p>\n

David’s boyfriend Dante<\/strong> accompanies him to the vigil but only gets one line of dialogue. He apparently doesn’t know about David’s art sideline.<\/p>\n

Aamir Khan<\/strong>, Kamala’s brother, shows up to fret about her being at the vigil.<\/p>\n

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

The Truthseekers<\/strong> – the hate group from issue #1 – are back at the foreground, protesting at the vigil. The obvious implication is that some of them killed Shay in the first place. Kamala’s cousin Bilal <\/strong>is a member; he’s a new character. His presence suggests that the Truthseekers at least include a genuine grass roots element; Kamala says he used to be her favourite cousin.<\/p>\n

However, the Truthseekers also have a paramilitary wing who identify themselves as the Purifiers<\/strong>. They wear weird masks combining a stylised face with a Statute of Liberty design. Historically, the Purifiers have been a group of anti-mutant religious extremists associated with Reverend William Stryker, but it’s not clear whether this is the same group or just reusing the name.<\/p>\n

Local<\/strong> and some of “Mr Friend”‘s other followers are at the vigil, but our attention isn’t particularly drawn to them.<\/p>\n

Empath<\/strong> is working with all of the Stepford Cuckoos and has some sort of plan that involves provoking Kamala into ill-advised acts of heroism.<\/p>\n

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

Page 4 panel 1: “Key Turn”.<\/strong> The bar where Anole was working in issue #1. The sign in that issue just read “KT” but it did have a key motif.<\/p>\n

Page 4 panel 3: The Midnight M.<\/strong> The hand signal used by mutants to identify themselves to one another, which sounds like it won’t be particularly useful if it’s becoming more widely known. It showed up last issue as well.<\/p>\n

Page 4 panel 7: “Like we were during the Hellfire Gala.” <\/strong>In X-Men: Hellfire Gala 2023<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Page 5 panel 3: “Sophie and Professor Alleyne won’t stop sniping at each other over Krakoan stuff.”<\/strong> As they did in issue #1.<\/p>\n

Page 5 panel 4: “I think that’s basically everyone, assuming that jerk the Krakoan doesn’t show.”<\/strong> There are surely more mutants in New York than this, or otherwise the Mojo plot from the previous issue wouldn’t work.<\/p>\n

Page 6 panel 1: “We didn’t have funerals on Krakoa.”<\/strong> Because everyone was resurrected.<\/p>\n

Pages 6-7: <\/strong>The cries of “mutant” seem like callbacks to some of the ceremonial stuff from Krakoa.<\/p>\n

Page 7 panel 3: “I kinda trained for this since I was 8.”<\/strong> I’m not sure what the significance of the age is. He was certainly older than that when he came to the X-Men’s school in New Mutants <\/em>in 2002, and if the point is meant to be that he’s been a visible mutant for a long time, then he’d normally be born that way or change appearance at puberty.<\/p>\n

Page 7 panel 5: “Assuming you didn’t make your order with Blob.”<\/strong> The other main barman character in the Krakoan era.<\/p>\n

Page 7 panel 6:<\/strong> The Krakoan reads GOD, obviously.<\/p>\n

Page 8 panel 1: <\/strong>The sign on the food truck reads FOOD TRUCK. This is the quality insight you come here for.<\/p>\n

Page 10 panel 5: “My favourite sister dated Quentin Quire.”<\/strong> Phoebe, throughout the Krakoan run of X-Force<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Page 12 panel 2: “We offer [acceptance] freely, as Storm taught.” “As Callisto did, when first we called these tunnels home.” <\/strong>Callisto and Storm were both leaders of the Morlocks back in the 1980s, but Loolo is probably referring more to Storm’s role as a leader on Arakko in X-Men Red<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Page 12 panel 3: “Tod Browning reference.”<\/strong> Tod Browning (1880-1962) was the director of Freaks<\/em> (1932), which is where the “one of us” line comes from.<\/p>\n

Page 13 panel 2: The Locus Vile <\/strong>are villains from Arakko who fought the Krakoan-era version of the Hellions. Anole had nothing to do with them and they’re a strange choice for him to reference; perhaps he just recognises some of these characters as coming from Arakko and he’s going for whatever Arakkii references he knows.<\/p>\n

Page 16 panel 5: “One a Hellion, always a Hellion.”<\/strong> Continuity error. Anole was never in the Hellions – he was in Northstar’s Alpha Squadron class of background characters, and later in the New X-Men team.<\/p>\n

Page 19 panel 3: Prince Street <\/strong>is an American pizza chain, apparently.<\/p>\n

Page 19 panel 5: <\/strong>Kamala is apparently reflecting on what her idol Captain Marvel would do about the problems of New York’s mutants. Kamala is the only character in the main cast to regard the Marvel Universe’s straightforward superheroes as a primary inspiration, as we’re reminded here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. NYX vol 2 #3 Writers: Jackson Lanzing & Collin Kelly Artist: Francesco Mortarino Colour artist: Ra\u00fal Angulo Letterer: Joe Sabino Editor: Annalise Bissa THE CORE CAST: Anole is this issue’s spotlight character. He was indeed fired from his bar job after […]<\/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-10408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10408","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=10408"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10408\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10410,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10408\/revisions\/10410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}