{"id":10899,"date":"2025-03-19T22:09:20","date_gmt":"2025-03-19T22:09:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10899"},"modified":"2025-03-19T22:09:20","modified_gmt":"2025-03-19T22:09:20","slug":"x-force-9-annotations-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10899","title":{"rendered":"X-Force #9 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>X-FORCE vol 7 #9<\/strong>
\n“X-Manhunt, part 6: The Shapley Value”<\/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

This is the penultimate chapter of the “X-Manhunt” crossover. It’s also the penultimate issue of the series, so X-Force can’t break off in mid-storyline to participate; hence, the crossover A-plot actually consists of Sage (not technically on the team right now) helping out Professor X, while X-Force spend the whole issue continuing the fight that started last issue. Forge, Askani, Captain Britain<\/strong> and Tank\u00a0<\/strong>get to contribute to this vital exercise.<\/p>\n

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

Sage.<\/strong> Her real name is Terisia Kari\u0161ik, as used at the end of the previous issue, which would imply that she’s Bosnian. (She’s been presented as Balkan in the past, but this is more specific.) She claims that she deleted her telepathy in “my last system update”, along with her alcoholism and “some other traits”. This presumably explains her mental recovery between the flashback and main story in issue #1. Professor X doesn’t seem particularly surprised by this notion, and it may be intended to explain the inconsistent portrayal of her psychic powers over the years.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

She brushes off the fighting between the X-Men and X-Factor in the previous chapter, and she doesn’t seem to notice anything wrong with Professor X until Wraith points it out to her. She doesn’t make clear whether she believes him about there being a problem. She does claim, in unusually emotive terms, that Professor X was her first and best friend, and that she would do anything to help him; this ties with her back story where Professor X brings her to America in X-Treme X-Men<\/em> #44. Perhaps she doesn’t feel any influence because she’s already inclined to help.<\/p>\n

She’s initially puzzled that Professor X would use resurrection for a non-mutant, but understands that he wanted to do something for himself. (She seems to have forgotten that resurrection was made available to some non-mutants via the Phoenix Foundation following A.X.E.: Judgment Day<\/em> #6.) At any rate, nothing that she hears dissuades her from her full-bore support for Professor X, even though she seems to think she’s helping him and Lilandra to escape Earth and “find some peace at last”, rather than helping Xandra.<\/p>\n

At some point she used the name “Arabella”, which is what the Mad Thinker AI knows her by. She claims that at some point she defeated the Mad Thinker who told her to “take what you want”, and cashes this in to claim one of his AI-operated Toybox bases. The AI doesn’t accept this claim, and she winds up overwriting it, but she does seem to have genuinely thought that her claim might be accepted. She knows the code to overwrite it, rather than engaging in any particular hacking – possibly this is what she actually took from the real Thinker. As far as I can tell, all of this is new.<\/p>\n

GUEST CAST<\/strong><\/p>\n

Professor X.<\/strong> Since his escape, he’s been trying to retrieve the final Cerebro unit and the final Krakoan egg, in order to resurrect Lilandra Neramani, and then head off with her to the stars to help Xandra. Quite how this detour assists Xandra is not entirely clear, but then he may not be thinking entirely straight. As already noted, Sage seems to read this whole thing as being about finding peace for himself, and there’s at least a possibility that the entire Xandra thing is some kind of hallucination. When Sage asks for an explanation, he doesn’t mention Xandra at all, but claims that the Lilandra egg is the one thing he did for himself in a life of sacrifice to his people. (Except for that time when he went to live in outer space with Lilandra for a few years, but I guess that fits his point.)<\/p>\n

He assumes that Sage thought he was dead. This doesn’t make much sense, since he didn’t fake his death before going to jail, and he must know that nobody in NYX\u00a0<\/em>was surprised to see him. Corina Ellis told Siryn that he was dead in Uncanny X-Men<\/em> #2, but she didn’t suggest that it was public knowledge.<\/p>\n

Wraith senses Xavier influencing his mind; Sage apparently doesn’t.<\/p>\n

Lilandra Neramani.<\/strong> Resurrected after her death in War of Kings<\/em> #4 (2009). She doesn’t get a chance to do much more than look confused and kiss her husband.<\/p>\n

What does Lilandra’s resurrection do to the succession to the Shi’ar throne? Is the idea here to relieve Xandra of the responsibilities of running the empire by putting Lilandra back on the throne?<\/p>\n

John Wraith.<\/strong> The teleporter that Sage could most easily get in touch with, it seems. Wraith is a character from Larry Hama’s Wolverine<\/em> run in the 1990s. He was a member of the Team X group (along with Wolverine, Sabretooth and Maverick) and seemingly one of the nicer ones. He went on to become a priest, hence Sage referring to him as “pastor”. He was killed by a demon in\u00a0Wolverine<\/em> #1 (2010) – the “Wolverine Goes to Hell” arc – and presumably resurrected during the Krakoan era.<\/p>\n

He can detect Xavier’s influence on his mind and correctly interprets it as a sign that something’s wrong – he’s not a telepath, so presumably this is just training and experience.<\/p>\n

According to Wraith, he owes Sage a favour because she rescued him from a “torture table” where he was being “experimented on” after being left for dead. I don’t think this refers to an established story.<\/p>\n

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

La Diabla.<\/strong> She insists that she and her group are actually trying to cure the broken world, and call them “the solution” – or maybe “the Solution”, as a group name.<\/p>\n

Colossus.<\/strong> He can turn his right hand into some sort of sawblade, if there was any real doubt that this isn’t our Colossus.<\/p>\n

Rampage.<\/strong> This is the name used on the recap page to refer to the giant angry monster aligned with them – the transformed Howard Avery, previously known as “the Brute That Walks”. According to Askani, “its mind is just pure rage.”<\/p>\n

A Mad Thinker AI.<\/strong> This is one of the Mad Thinker’s AI-controlled Toybox bases from Solo<\/em> vol 2 #1, written by Geoffrey Thorne with Gerry Duggan. I don’t think they’ve appeared anywhere else.<\/p>\n

FOOTNOTES<\/strong><\/p>\n

Title: “The Shapley Value”. The Shapley Value is a concept from game theory. Basically it’s a way of dividing the gains or losses from a collaborative enterprise among the participants according to their contributions. Quite what it has to do with this story isn’t immediately obvious.<\/p>\n

Page 1 panel 5: This is the same list of teleporters that appeared right at the end of the previous issue. Lila Cheney, Manifold and Vanisher should all be familiar to X-Men readers, and Kestrel is John Wraith (see above). Solo is mainly a Spider-Man character. Aside from cameos, his last significant appearance was a 2017 miniseries co-written by Geoffrey Thorne.<\/p>\n

Page 5 panel 1: Deuteronomy 15:1-2 does indeed say this, at least in some translations (other use “remission”). All translations seem to agree that this only applied within the Jewish community. Broadly, Wraith seems to be implying that Sage ought to be releasing him from any debt that he owes her.<\/p>\n

Page 6 panel 1: Colonia Doctores is a real neighbourhood in Mexico City.<\/p>\n

Page 7 panel 2: “But, here, in Dreamland’s centre \/ No spoiler’s hand may enter” is a couplet from Lewis Carroll’s poem “Dreamland”. It switches to a symbol font halfway through.<\/p>\n

Page 10 panel 3: “\u0423 \u041d\u0410\u0421 \u0415\u0421\u0422\u042c \u0421\u0412\u041e\u0419 \u0422\u0410\u041d\u0415\u0426” = “We have our own dance.”<\/p>\n

Page 12 panel 1: “The damned Summers brothers, two full X-squads going at each other.” X-Factor<\/em> #8.<\/p>\n

Page 13 panel 3: “You told us resurrection was just for mutants.” For most of Krakoa, yes. However, there was a programme to make resurrection available to a small number of humans as a goodwill gesture following the AXE<\/em> crossover, though nothing really came of it.<\/p>\n

Page 14 panel 4: “Ecclesiastes 3:1” = “To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven.”<\/p>\n

Page 15 panel 2: “We don’t need the Five. We don’t need the Phoenix.” In other words, this particular egg is already at a stage where all that remains is for it to hatch and for Professor X to restore Lilandra’s memories. The symbol at the end is the Krakoan letter for X.<\/p>\n

Page 16 panel 4: Chandilar is the Shi’ar home planet.<\/p>\n

Page 18 panel 5: “Mutantes! Tontos!” = “Mutants! Fools!”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

X-FORCE vol 7 #9 “X-Manhunt, part 6: The Shapley Value” Writer: Geoffrey Thorne Artist: Marcus To Colour artist: Erick Arciniega Letterer: Joe Caramagna Editor: Mark Basso X-FORCE This is the penultimate chapter of the “X-Manhunt” crossover. It’s also the penultimate issue of the series, so X-Force can’t break off in mid-storyline to participate; hence, the […]<\/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-10899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10899","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=10899"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10899\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10901,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10899\/revisions\/10901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}