{"id":11033,"date":"2025-04-30T21:58:23","date_gmt":"2025-04-30T20:58:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=11033"},"modified":"2025-04-30T21:58:23","modified_gmt":"2025-04-30T20:58:23","slug":"nyx-10-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=11033","title":{"rendered":"NYX #10 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>NYX vol 2 #10<\/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

This is the final issue of NYX<\/em>. The Laura Kinney: Wolverine<\/em> ongoing series continues, and Ms Marvel’s storyline will be picked up in the upcoming Giant-Size X-Men<\/em> one-shots.<\/p>\n

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

Ms Marvel.\u00a0<\/strong>She’s preoccupied about cousin Bilal hunting down Ms Marvel and trying to find out her true identity, back in issue #7. As the only cast member with a dual identity, she offers a traditional superhero argument for keeping a secret identity, i.e. to prevent her family being used against her. But David seems to read her as being at least as concerned about what her family will think, and he seems to be right. He also argues that she’s been too concerned about protecting her family, and not enough about the impact on herself of living a dual life.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, she reveals her true identity to Bilal (see below). Later, she tells her family that she’s heard that Ms Marvel is taking a break for a while because she “doesn’t want to live as a mutant”, though she seems to be fishing for them to agree with her that this would be “sad”. In fact, they don’t seem to have very strong feelings on it at all, beyond her father Yusuf musing that Ms Marvel’s parents would probably be relieved if she quit.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Sophie Cuckoo.\u00a0<\/strong>Her psychic powers have now mostly returned after issue #5, although there’s still a degree of static. Still, she can pull off a mass-audience “power of love” ending, channelling mutant culture at Mojo.<\/p>\n

She isn’t hugely sympathetic to Kamala’s worries about her secret identity, and thinks that secret identities just flag up to your enemies that your private life is a weak spot. But she acknowledges that she doesn’t really have a family in the way that Kamala does, so doesn’t really identify with the issue. As established in X-Men: Phoenix – Warsong<\/em>, Sophie and the other Stepford Cuckoos are all clones of Emma Frost, and Sophie says that Emma only refers to them as her children ironically. (She doesn’t spell out precisely how the Cuckoos feel about Emma, beyond recognising that she doesn’t act<\/em> as their mother.)<\/p>\n

Prodigy.<\/strong> He says that his parents and sister have always known everything about him and been supportive. That comes from his debut in New Mutants<\/em> #4 (2003) – if you’re wondering, his parents are called Dorothy and Christopher, and his sister’s name is Kim.<\/p>\n

Wolverine.<\/strong> She rounds up the regulars to fight Mojo. Despite the threat being to the entire city, she seems to care entirely about the fact that Mojo has kidnapped Kiden Nixon. This feels like it was going to be a romance angle, or at least an obsessive friendship, but reads a little oddly given that Kiden hasn’t merited a mension in Laura’s solo series to date.<\/p>\n

Kiden Nixon.<\/strong> Mojo has her for most of the issue.<\/p>\n

Hellion.<\/strong> Treated as a core cast member in this story, for what it’s worth – he gets his head shot on the recap page. Presumably, this is what would have happened following his rescue in issue #8, if the book hadn’t ended.<\/p>\n

Anole<\/strong> and Synch<\/strong> both also show up for the fight.<\/p>\n

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

Local. <\/strong>He still refers to Laura as “Scratch”, the name she gave to him in issue #2; he now regrets not turning on Mojo back when he first appeared.<\/p>\n

Mojo is using his powers for his grand scheme (see below). He can use his powers in conjunction with Sophie to help channel the power of the city at Mojo. It’s not clear whether this is because she’s channelling something city-like, or simply because he’s so embedded within the structure of what Mojo is doing. )<\/p>\n

After Mojo’s defeat, Local is missing and apparently has become one with the city. His closing narration seems consistent with this, though there’s wiggle room.<\/p>\n

Sobunar. <\/strong>He has a mobile phone and, somehow, he has mobile reception in the Morlock tunnels. (Maybe one of the Morlocks has helpful powers in this regard.) He’s perfectly happy to round up Morlocks to help against Mojo<\/p>\n

The Stepford Cuckoos.<\/strong>\u00a0They show up to fight Mojo. Esme seems equivocal, but the others apparently prefer the view that Mojo taking over their city would be, on balance, a bad thing.<\/p>\n

Dante<\/strong> has a non-speaking cameo. Yusuf, Muneeba<\/strong> and Aamir Khan<\/strong> are there at the end, but we’ve covered what they contribute.<\/p>\n

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

Mojo. <\/strong>Last issue, he stole the last Krakoan seed and left Anole and Ms Marvel with a fake. He explained in the epilogue that his power was to use the seed, combined with Local’s connection to the city, to “mak[e] an infinite me”. This turns out to involve growing Krakoan fauna all over the city and, somehow, using it to spread his influence by absorbing people.<\/p>\n

Wolverine reminds us that Mojo “functions on belief”. This was the idea set up in issue #2, where Wolverine was unable to beat Mojo due to the power base of followers who were invested in him. Quite why people who are simply being absorbed into Mojo become believers is a little unclear, but presumably mind-control is involved, and mind-controlled belief counts for this purpose – after all, it’s still belief while it exists.<\/p>\n

The mechanics of the whole Krakoan scheme are a little vague, to be honest. Mojo seems to have physically integrated into the Krakoan plantlife, rather than just using it as a tool, though it’s not clear what that has to do with anyone’s power set. Presumably the original idea was that by using the imagery of Krakoa in this very literal way, Mojo was able to divert mutants’ belief in Krakoa towards himself, but there isn’t really space to develop that theme<\/p>\n

Consistent with the belief theme, though, Mojo can be defeated by a “power of love” routine of Sophie channelling mutants’ belief in their authentic culture.<\/p>\n

Wolverine refers to some of Mojo’s followers as “the balaclavas” – those would be the guys in yellow balaclavas who hang around with Local, most obviously seen in issue #2.<\/p>\n

Cousin Bilal. <\/strong>He’s genuinely surprised to find that Ms Marvel is his sister. This seems to dissuade him from trying to harm her, or exposing her true identity, but he advises her to keep her secret identity because it would break her parents’ hearts. She seems to take this seriously, at least in terms of it being how her parents would react.<\/p>\n

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

Doop. <\/strong>He answers the call to fight Mojo – not as random as it seems, because he also showed up for a rally in issue #5. Don’t get excited about his one line of dialogue, which is in a version of his standard font, but just reads “DOOP GIBBERISH”.<\/p>\n

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