{"id":11154,"date":"2025-06-18T23:56:39","date_gmt":"2025-06-18T22:56:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=11154"},"modified":"2025-06-18T23:56:49","modified_gmt":"2025-06-18T22:56:49","slug":"x-men-18-annotations-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=11154","title":{"rendered":"X-Men #18 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>X-MEN vol 7 #18<\/strong>
\n“Invitation”<\/strong>
\nWriter: Jed MacKay<\/strong>
\nArtist: Emilio Laiso<\/strong>
\nColourist: Fer Sifuentes-Sujo<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Clayton Cowles<\/strong>
\nEditor: Tom Brevoort<\/strong><\/p>\n

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

Cyclops.<\/strong> His prediction last issue that the 3K X-Men would fall apart once their leader was taken out proves to be correct. He claims to recognise this sort of internal tension from his years leading Wolverine (presumably referring mainly to the 70s and early 80s stories, which is really when Wolverine was troublesome as a team member).<\/p>\n

Magik, Juggernaut, Psylocke<\/strong> and Temper<\/strong> help wrap up the 3K X-Men but don’t get much more to do.<\/p>\n

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

The Beast.\u00a0<\/strong>Wyre has come to offer him membership in 3K. This Beast, of course, is a copy of the Krakoan Beast who was restored from a much earlier back-up, and therefore doesn’t remember any of the previous Beast’s activities in\u00a0X-Force<\/em> and\u00a0Wolverine<\/em> during Krakoa. But a key part of his character is now the fear of ending up like that again. Wyre’s pitch to the Beast is that he clearly\u00a0is<\/em> a monster and should embrace it and join 3K. Presumably this is at least in part mind games, since if they’re even vaguely aware of the Beast’s status quo – and Wyre’s dialogue suggests that he is – then they must know that he’s unlikely to buy into this idea right away. However, he doesn’t throw away their business card just yet…<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Beast is willing to go with Wyre in order to stop him killing Jennifer Starkey, but that’s on the basis that he thinks he’s being kidnapped; Wyre refuses to take him on that basis.<\/p>\n

Magneto.\u00a0<\/strong>His improvised Sentinel mech is nearly defeat by the twin monster.<\/p>\n

Ben Liu.\u00a0<\/strong>His attitude to the twin and her mother is fairly aggressive. He more or less shoves Rose in front of the monster, berates her for having “listened to too many podcasts” (presumably meaning her anti-mutant radicalisation) and tells the monster to stop whining and grow up. Somewhere in there, he talks about how the X-Men saved him and can help the twin too, but boy, he’s an angry guy. At best, it’s a tough love approach. Of course, Ben’s been getting increasingly frustrated about not being allowed into the field throughout this series. But he does avoid making any attempt to use his powers here.<\/p>\n

Rose Ellen Cobb. <\/strong>Despite her anti-mutant campaigning, she’s immediately willing to apologise to the twin and gives her a name. She implies that she became radicalised against mutants as a result of the “mutant plague” story which was spread using footage from issue #2 – Ben’s first appearance. (Ben looks slightly more sympathetic towards her on hearing that – she doesn’t know it has anything to do with him.)<\/p>\n

Ben suggests that killing Rose would make her a symbol for the Gene Nation and the Sapien League. The Sapien League were a short-lived anti-mutant militia who appeared in the post-\u00a0House of M<\/em> period. They were last seen in\u00a0Avengers Annual<\/em> #1 (2021) which, as it happens, was a Jed MacKay story. Gene Nation are a strange reference: they were Marrow’s\u00a0pro<\/em>-mutant terrorist group, last seen in\u00a0Weapon X<\/em> #21 (2004).<\/p>\n

Rather histrionically, he also says that it would be a propaganda coup for anti-mutant forces that was “the biggest favour since Bolivar Trask” (the scientist who created the first Sentinels).<\/p>\n

Jennifer Starkey.<\/strong> She makes a brave effort to save Beast from Wyre – Beast himself seems too rattled to fight back at all – but naturally gets nowhere.<\/p>\n

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

The 3K X-Men. <\/strong>With their leader\u00a0Schwartzchild\u00a0<\/strong>unconscious, they do indeed fall apart. Cassandra described them last issue as ex-SHIELD, but in fact it’s more complex than that. According to Psylocke, they’re actually former Orchis members – which is weird, since in issue #16 they were being fed propaganda about how the X-Men were “sapiens-loving running dogs”. So if these guys are ex-Orchis, they’ve made some remarkable changes in worldview. Of course, they may just be aligning themselves with whatever it suits them to believe right now.<\/p>\n

As Psylocke reminds us,\u00a0House of X<\/em> established that Orchis drew its membership from factions within both AIM and SHIELD, and this is why the 3K X-Men struggle to work together. While everyone seems to respect Schwartzchild, his second in command Timebomb<\/strong> is a former AIM member. Ex-SHIELD agent Galatea<\/strong> rejects her leadership, as does\u00a0Psychovore<\/strong>. Galatea’s objection doesn’t seem to be moral – she just thinks that Timebomb looks down on her. Which is true, since Timebomb openly regards Galatea as a moron.<\/p>\n

In the other camp,\u00a0Constellation<\/strong> is loyal to Timebomb – he’s apparently British and used to be a member of STRIKE, the UK SHIELD spin-off that Betsy Braddock was once associated with. As for Juice<\/strong>, he simply makes ineffectual efforts to get his teammates back on the same page.<\/p>\n

Galatea and Timebomb both refer to this mission as a “test”.<\/p>\n

Wyre.\u00a0<\/strong>His role isn’t to attack or abduct the Beast, but simply to headhunt him for Orchis. He dismisses his time with Alpha Flight as a “crisis of faith”, and claims that in all other respects he’s always recognised himself as a monster. This is an odd take on the character, since what Wyre is describing here as an anomaly actually accounts for most of his published appearances – is there more going on here than meets the eye?<\/p>\n

At any rate, he claims that offering Beast membership in 3K is a privilege, not a threat. He won’t take Beast unless he really wants to go.<\/p>\n

On leaving, Wyre declares that the objectives of his “testing” have been completed. It’s not clear whether he knows what happened to his X-Men after he separated from them, but it seems as if from Wyre’s point of view, the point of all this was mostly to make themselves known to the real X-Men.<\/p>\n

Astra.\u00a0<\/strong>She’ll be responsible for teleporting the 3K characters away, but we don’t see her.<\/p>\n

Robin Cobb.<\/strong> The twin is given a name by her mother, apparently the one that had always been intended for her. Consistent with the last couple of issues, this is very important to her and leads to her taking a more normal human form. She’s largely minded to reconcile with her mother, but (with some prompting from Cassandra Nova<\/strong>) can’t forgive her sister for usurping her. Ultimately, she leaves with Cassandra, apparently willingly<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

X-MEN vol 7 #18 “Invitation” Writer: Jed MacKay Artist: Emilio Laiso Colourist: Fer Sifuentes-Sujo Letterer: Clayton Cowles Editor: Tom Brevoort THE X-MEN Cyclops. His prediction last issue that the 3K X-Men would fall apart once their leader was taken out proves to be correct. He claims to recognise this sort of internal tension from his […]<\/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-11154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11154","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=11154"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11154\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11156,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11154\/revisions\/11156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}