{"id":10944,"date":"2025-04-02T22:08:12","date_gmt":"2025-04-02T21:08:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10944"},"modified":"2025-04-02T22:08:12","modified_gmt":"2025-04-02T21:08:12","slug":"x-men-14-annotations-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10944","title":{"rendered":"X-Men #14 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>X-MEN vol 7 #14<\/strong>
\n“Search and Rescue”<\/strong>
\nWriter: Jed MacKay<\/strong>
\nPenciller: Ryan Stegman<\/strong>
\nInkers: Ryan Stegman & JP Mayer<\/strong>
\nColourist: Marte Gracia<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Clayton Cowles<\/strong>
\nEditor: Tom Brevoort<\/strong><\/p>\n

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

Cyclops.<\/strong> As in issue #1, he’s keen to have good relations with the town, and seems to trust Chief Robbins anyway – he offers the X-Men’s help to her before she’s explained what the issue is. He asks her to call him Scott.<\/p>\n

Kid Omega.<\/strong> He doesn’t seem terribly worked up about Piper going missing, though he takes the task of searching for her seriously enough. He’s more concerned about Idie’s reaction and tries to make supportive noises about how it’ll all be fine, though he acknowledges that he isn’t good at this. Then he gets shot out of the sky and presumably spends the rest of the issue unconscious.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Temper.<\/strong> This issue is a sequel to issues #6-7, where Temper insisted on helping out local girl Piper Cobb. In that issue, Piper believed that she was a mutant and secretly asked for help given her otherwise loving mother’s anti-mutant attitudes. Tests showed that Piper wasn’t a mutant after all, and Temper took her back to her mother, given that there was no real reason to do otherwise.<\/p>\n

On learning that Piper has gone missing, Temper decides that the X-Men as a whole have let her down by “sen[ding] her back to her crazy, mutant-hater mother” – a decision she agreed with at the time, but she clearly regrets now. She still accepts that Piper is a regular human, though. When the Marauder is shot down, she prioritises completing the rescue of Piper (completely reasonably, because she has an exact location and her teammates are looking out for Quentin – but see below).<\/p>\n

Psylocke.<\/strong> She seems to be taking on a deputy leader role (consistent with how she acted when Cyclops was out of the picture during “X-Manhunt”). Scott looks to her for advice on how to deal with Idie, and seems to accept her guidance.<\/p>\n

Magik.<\/strong> She’s outraged that Idie wants to rescue Piper rather than search for Quentin, even though Idie has explained that she has the exact location. For Magik, Quentin takes priority simply because he’s a teammate. She only has second thoughts about this when Juggernaut<\/strong> points out that Quentin might be dead and there’s no need to force Idie to hunt for her ex-boyfriend’s body. He seems somewhat more empathetic to Idie’s position but he views it in terms of extenuating circumstances – it doesn’t seem to occur to either of them that rescuing the child might be a reasonable priority for a superhero team.<\/p>\n

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

Paula Robbins.<\/strong> She comes to Cyclops to ask for help in searching for Piper. She addresses him by his codename and broadly treats him in a respectful and professional way; he’s trying to be more friendly than that.<\/p>\n

Piper Cobb.<\/strong> Parts of her body have undergone reptilian transformations, as we saw at the end of issue #7. This is apparently because she’s possessed by a mutant twin who she consumed in the womb, and who now hopes to use the body of the dead Acanti (from issue #12) to construct a permanent body for itself. This back story seems suspiciously similar to Professor X and Cassandra Nova, which is unlikely to be a coincidence given that Cassandra is one of the main villains of the run.<\/p>\n

Piper did mention in issues #6-7 that she was continually hungry, which is presumably because she’s eating for two. She also said that this had only come on recently, but that might be something to do with the consumed mutant twin emerging from latency at puberty, I guess?<\/p>\n

Jen Starkey.<\/strong> As the only flyer in the cast, she’s sent out on her first actual mission to fly around and hunt for Piper. She has instinctive knowledge of how to use her avian body.<\/p>\n

The Beast.<\/strong> Shows up briefly to tell us how Jen’s powers work.<\/p>\n

Ben Liu.<\/strong> As in previous issues, he’s very keen to use his powers to help the X-Men. He still seems to assume that his powers are simply to summon up UFOs, but figures that they might be able to help with the aerial search.<\/p>\n

Ben considers that he was always an outsider, as a gay Chinese American, albeit one that protected himself in his previous life by acquiring wealth. He seems to have fully embraced being a mutant, even one created by 3K, as something which is consistent with his outsider self-image, and provides a defensive power of another sort – if only he could figure out how to control it.<\/p>\n

Magneto. <\/strong>Given Ben’s power and enthusiasm, Magneto is keen to harness him for mutantkind. He claims that he has “been trying, with limited success, to take you under my wing”. I’m not sure we’ve seen much of that on panel. Their on-panel interactions seem to be issue #6 (where Magneto made a speech about how created mutants were equally valid and welcome), issue #10 (where Magneto tried to send Ben and Jen away from the fight with O*N*E) and last issue (which was a cameo).
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Xorn<\/strong> and Glob Herman<\/strong> have cameos.<\/p>\n

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

3K.\u00a0<\/strong>They’re carrying out some sort of “test” near Merle, which involves a “subject”. This is interesting, because the obvious implication is that the subject is Piper. But if it’s her, then either they’re branching out beyond created mutants, or the back story we’re given for Piper in this same issue isn’t true.<\/p>\n

They refer to their meeting place as the Great Table. It is indeed absurdly large.<\/p>\n

Cassandra Nova.<\/strong> 3K refer to her as the Zealot – a title rather than a codename, it seems. She openly looks down on her teammate the Means because he’s a mere weapon and not “even a mutant”. The Means is…<\/p>\n

Wyre.<\/strong> He claims that 3K “needed someone who knew how to kill mutants bad enough you offered a seat at the Great Table”, and adds that “the Legacy Virus has got nothin’ on me.” He doesn’t explain why he<\/em> wanted to be a member.<\/p>\n

This appears to be the same Wyre who was a regular character in Simon Furman’s Alpha Flight<\/em> run between 1992 and 1994, and never appeared anywhere else. That character looked similar and also had tendrils emerging from his body – though they’re now red and seem to come from a single point of origin on his chest. On the other hand, the Alpha Flight<\/em> Wyre’s back story involved him being given powers by the Secret Empire and made into a killer until he eventually snapped and turned on them. His career as a Secret Empire assassin ties into the back story of Wild Child, which seems to be as close as he gets to a history of killing mutants. He eventually winds up hanging around with Alpha Flight as an ally without ever officially joining the team; his role in their book doesn’t obviously connect with him wanting to be a member of 3K.<\/p>\n

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

Page 1 panel 3: “I know things are difficult with you and the federal government right now.” Paula is presumably referring in particular to the stand-offs with O*N*E from issues #3 and #10.<\/p>\n

Page 5 panel 2: “She [Piper] asked us for help. And we didn’t give her any. Sent her back to her crazy, mutant-hater mother.” Issue #6, though this isn’t entirely fair (see above).<\/p>\n

Page 5 panel 4: “Corsair’s jetbike.” From issue #11.<\/p>\n

Page 7 panel 4: “Youlaid siege to a city without even fully comprehending what you were doing, Ben.” Issue #2.<\/p>\n

Page 9 panel 2: The Legacy Virus was a mutant-killing virus from a long-running 1990s storyline.<\/p>\n

Page 9 panel 3: “No one has more mutant blood on their hands than I do, Means.” Cassandra is referring to the destruction of Genosha by her Wild Sentinels in New<\/em> X-Men<\/em> #115.<\/p>\n

Page 12 panel 4: “I’m bad at comforting people. It’s one of the reasons we broke up, remember?” Um… not really? Their break-up was in Wolverine and the X-Men<\/em> vol 2 #6 when Quentin quit the school.<\/p>\n

Page 19: “The dead Acanti.” From issues #11-12.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

X-MEN vol 7 #14 “Search and Rescue” Writer: Jed MacKay Penciller: Ryan Stegman Inkers: Ryan Stegman & JP Mayer Colourist: Marte Gracia Letterer: Clayton Cowles Editor: Tom Brevoort THE X-MEN Cyclops. As in issue #1, he’s keen to have good relations with the town, and seems to trust Chief Robbins anyway – he offers 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,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10944","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=10944"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10944\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10947,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10944\/revisions\/10947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}