{"id":10586,"date":"2024-12-08T11:31:31","date_gmt":"2024-12-08T11:31:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10586"},"modified":"2024-12-08T11:31:31","modified_gmt":"2024-12-08T11:31:31","slug":"x-force-6-annotations-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10586","title":{"rendered":"X-Force #6 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 #6<\/strong>
\n“The Devil is a Liar”<\/strong>
\nWriter: Geoffrey Thorne<\/strong>
\nArtist: Jim Towe<\/strong>
\nColour artist: Erick Arciniega<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Joe Caramagna<\/strong>
\nEditor: Mark Basso<\/strong><\/p>\n

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

It’s been nearly a month since issue #5. With Surge dead and Sage having quit, X-Force has continued as a team of Forge, Tank, Captain Britain and Askani, and have been continuing to deal with more seemingly random threats.<\/p>\n

Forge<\/strong> is dwelling on the loss of Surge and Sage by retreating into a virtual reality environment where he’s being “advised” by avatars of Storm and Mystique, apparently representing the “angel and devil on the shoulder” trope. Essentially Forge is trusting to ChatGPT for guidance, which is bound to work out well. Ultimately, though, he claims to be reconciled to his relationship with Storm being in the past.<\/p>\n

“Storm” makes Sage’s argument from last issue that Forge is paying insufficient attention to the members of X-Force as people, while Mystique makes the argument that Forge himself has been advancing throughout the series about the overriding importance of carrying out the “mission” and trusting to his powers to guide them as to what needs done.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Forge himself is clearly no longer convinced by this argument, not least because Surge wasn’t a part of his original design – she joined the team after they stumbled into her in issue #1. However, in the bonus page of issue #1 (or just the last page of issue #1, if you’re using Marvel Unlimited), Forge claimed that the Analog wanted Surge involved. He seems to have finally realised that he’s placing too much faith in his powers without knowing where the Analog is actually getting its direction from; the same bonus page showed a mystery monitoring the team and claiming that Forge was her “machine”, and we’ll see who she is later.<\/p>\n

“Mystique” argues that Forge is a soldier who “volunteered for war” and has “never stepped away”; this relates to Forge’s 1980s back story in rejecting his training as a mystic and shaman, and instead joining the army and subsequently becoming a weapons designer for the US government.<\/p>\n

Forge’s “place in Texas” is identified as the Aerie, which was his penthouse suite in Eagle Plaza back in the 1980s. The fridge contains nothing but dietary supplements.<\/p>\n

The other three members of X-Force don’t do much in the present day sections of the story. Tank <\/strong>is silently piloting the jet. Captain Britain <\/strong>and Askani <\/strong>are occupied in silent psychic communion.<\/p>\n

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

Sage<\/strong> shows up in Forge’s VR after hacking into his systems at his home in Texas. She appears in the VR environment in an X-Force uniform, but she isn’t wearing one in the real world.<\/p>\n

Sage has worked out that someone is behind the “fractures” that X-Force have been dealing with. The suggestion is that Sage wasn’t able to do this while she was racing from event to event with the team, but quitting has given her the time to figure it out.<\/p>\n

She considers Mystique to be a rather mundane character when Destiny isn’t involved.<\/p>\n

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

La Diabla<\/strong> (Dr Corazon Estrada) is the villain who engineered the “fractures” that X-Force have been dealing with throughout the series. She’s new, but she’s obviously a distaff version of the Fantastic Four villain Diablo, whose real name is Estaban Coraz\u00f3n de Ablo. According to Sage, she’s a genius whose work bridges science and magic (i.e., the part of Forge’s heritage that he’s generally rejected in favour of relying on his powers). She faked her death years ago and has recently re-appeared for reasons that she declines to explain beyond a cryptic comment that “I met a boy.”<\/p>\n

She’s able to turn Forge’s purely conventional VR environment into something that can actually attack him. Sage is able to overcome that effect by treating it as purely corrupted code; interestingly, Forge apparently can’t.<\/p>\n

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

Page 4 panel 1:<\/strong> “X days later.” It seems odd to stick with the “X days later” schtick when the same panel tells us that the previous issue was “nearly a month” ago.<\/p>\n

Page 4 panel 2: Lemuria<\/strong> is basically a rival kingdom to Atlantis, imported into Marvel continuity via Cthulhu mythos back in the sixties.<\/p>\n

Page 4 panel 3: “The Numidians owe you more than they can ever pay back.” <\/strong>The art seems to show X-Force fighting giant attacking insects in a relatively normal modern city. However, there isn’t an established country called “Numidia” in the Marvel Universe. There was<\/em> a historic kingdom called Numidia in northern Africa, prior to its annexation into the Roman Empire in 25 BCE.<\/p>\n

Page 8 panel 4: “Soldiers die a lot.” <\/strong>“Mystique” imitates three characters in order to illustrate her point. The first is Rockslide, who effectively died during “X of Swords” when he couldn’t be resurrected with his original mind. The second is Nightcrawler, for reasons which are less than clear – he did die for a time, but you could say that about an awful lot of characters. The third is Hope Summers, who essentially died (or became Phoenix) at the end of Rise of the Powers of X<\/em>, and also doubles as a soldier character who would probably endorse “Mystique”‘s argument.<\/p>\n

Page 11 panel 4: “You’re always thinking.”<\/strong> Calling back to Sage’s opening narration from previous issues.<\/p>\n

Page 12 panel 2: <\/strong>This is a flashback to a couple of days before issue #1, where X-Force dealt with a monster that escaped from the Fujikawa Research Group; Dr Estrada is setting up the incident.<\/p>\n

Page 12 panel 3: “a treatise bridging the works of Artephius and Schr\u00f6dinger.”<\/strong> Erwin Schr\u00f6dinger (1887-1961) was a quantum physicist whom you’ve almost certainly heard of. Artephius was the supposed author of a number of alchemical texts said to have been written in the 12th century, though whether he maps on to any single historicla figure is doubtful.<\/p>\n

Page 12 panel 5: <\/strong>A similar flashback to Estrada setting up the Wakandan incident from issue #2.<\/p>\n

Page 13 panel 1: <\/strong>Nuklo attacks Cambodia in issue #3, and the Hart Home nexus was issue #4.<\/p>\n

Page 18 panel 4: “El veneno est\u00e1 en todo, y nada est\u00e1 sin veneno.”<\/strong> “The poison is in everything, and nothing is without poison.” This is a version of Paracelsus’ maxim “All things are poison and nothing is without poison; the dosage alone makes it so a thing is not a poison.” Paracelsus’ point was that all “poisons” are harmless in sufficiently small doses, and conversely everything is harmful in large enough doses.<\/p>\n

Page 20 panel 3: “Te pasas! Ahora vete!” <\/strong>“You pass! Now go!”<\/p>\n

Page 21 panel 2: “querido”.<\/strong> “Darling”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. X-FORCE vol 7 #6 “The Devil is a Liar” Writer: Geoffrey Thorne Artist: Jim Towe Colour artist: Erick Arciniega Letterer: Joe Caramagna Editor: Mark Basso X-FORCE: It’s been nearly a month since issue #5. With Surge dead and Sage having quit, […]<\/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-10586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10586","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=10586"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10586\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10588,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10586\/revisions\/10588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}