{"id":11512,"date":"2025-11-05T22:52:48","date_gmt":"2025-11-05T22:52:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=11512"},"modified":"2025-11-05T22:52:48","modified_gmt":"2025-11-05T22:52:48","slug":"amazing-x-men-2-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=11512","title":{"rendered":"Amazing X-Men #2 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>AMAZING X-MEN #2<\/strong>
\n“A Duel of Truths”<\/strong>
\nWriter: Jed MacKay<\/strong>
\nArtist: Mahmud Asrar<\/strong>
\nColourist: Matthew Wilson<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Clayton Cowles<\/strong>
\nEditor: Tom Brevoort<\/strong><\/p>\n

COVER:<\/strong> The Darkchild, with the X-Men as prisoners.<\/p>\n

PAGES 1-7.\u00a0<\/strong>Cyclops accepts the Darkchild’s challenge.<\/em><\/p>\n

We’re picking up directly from the end of issue #1, where the X-Men teleported into Providence apparently as a result of a teleporter accident. In\u00a0X-Men: <\/em>Age of Revelation<\/em> #0, we were told that Magik died when the X-Men broke Fabian Cortez out of jail, but “the Darkchild did not”; and that Juggernaut quit the team soon after. The AoR X-Men basically confirm that account here (and throw in that this happened just one year into the future, relative to the mainstream titles). Apparently, Illyana\u00a0literally died in this attack but was magically revived in some way, with just the Darkchild persona remaining. We’ll come to how that squares with the recent\u00a0Magik<\/em> series.<\/p>\n

Juggernaut has been demonically transformed to some extent, which Darkchild ascribes to his role as “my demon knight”. He’s very protective of Illyana and gets frantically upset at the suggestion that she might be dead, something that doesn’t seem to bother Darkchild herself at all. It’s unclear whether he simply refuses to believe the story or whether he’s convinced that she fully returned from the dead. There’s a definite implication here of Cain being, at the very least, puppyishly loyal to Illyana, which we haven’t really seen in the present day.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In the previous issue, Illyana described Providence as “a colonial holding of Limbo”; she explains here that she keeps the human population in a state of sustainably mundane misery, which can be harnessed for Limbo’s purposes. Either for her own amusement or for magical reasons, she wants the humans to choose to remain with her; therefore, life in Providence has to remain preferable to the alternative of being kicked out into the Revelation Territories. Fortunately for Darkchild, this is a low bar.<\/p>\n

An interesting point here is that Darkchild’s magic is unambiguously able to hold the X-virus at bay. That raises the question of why Earth’s other magicians haven’t been able to stop its spread. Come to think of it, we haven’t really seen much of them, despite the event going out of its way to update us on the likes of the Avengers. Hmm.<\/p>\n

Darkchild refers to mutants as “witchbreed”, a term occasionally seen in the mainstream Marvel Universe (though it originated back in\u00a01602<\/em>).<\/p>\n

Animalia\u00a0<\/strong>displays a much wider range of animal forms than we’ve seen from her in the present day.<\/p>\n

Psylocke<\/strong>‘s presence here is noted as an oddity but not explained. She was in the cliffhanger of the previous issue as well. In\u00a0X-Men: Age of Revelation Overture<\/em>, Revelation sent her to kill Bei, who told her something we didn’t get to hear; we find out later in the issue that it’s something about a plan to destroy the world. That still doesn’t explain what she’s doing in Providence; was she just trying to take refuge in Limbo?<\/p>\n

Cyclops\u00a0<\/strong>is remarkably unbothered about the stakes of choosing one of his colleagues to remain in Limbo – he’s either absolutely confident that he can win (despite not knowing the rules yet), or simply desperate for a way to Philadelphia.<\/p>\n

PAGES 8-17.\u00a0<\/strong>Cyclops and Darkchild’s duel.<\/em><\/p>\n

Look, it’s an issue with basically two scenes, okay?<\/p>\n

Darkchild’s contest involves them attempting to wound one another emotionally with uncomfortable truths. She clearly has some sort of insight into Scott and the X-Men, which she no doubt believes gives her the advantage. (Is Psylocke maybe being forced to help here?) But other than that, she does seem to be playing fair – the magic that translates her barbs into physical attacks works just as well for Scott.<\/p>\n

“These X-Men think you’re a joke.”<\/strong> Cyclops was told in\u00a0Overture<\/em> that he had been brought to the future because the X-Men needed their greatest leader to take on Revelation, and their Cyclops had been turned into a Babel. The actual behaviour of the other X-Men towards Scott in the previous issue didn’t suggest that they were that impressed by him at all, though, and this story confirms they were lying; the actual point of this is whole mission, as far as they’re concerned, is the “Days of Futures Past” bit where their Cyclops goes back in time to change history. From their point of view, this whole event is the B-story where the characters in the future babysit Scott for a bit, although ideally it would be nice to send him home and minimise the damage to the timeline.<\/p>\n

Both Cyclops and Beast have figured this out already; Cyclops is simply not willing to lie down and give up, even if his future self has. Beast’s position is more interesting. Animalia is clearly surprised that he’s figured out what’s happening, so he’s evidently not just an AoR Beast faking it. However, there have been some oddities in his dialogue – the previous issue suggested that he barely knew Animalia, when their relationship is already under way, and Beast has a line later in the issue that he’d “almost forgotten how good [Cyclops] was at this”, which doesn’t really make sense if he’s the Alaskan X-Men’s Beast. Is he a Beast from a different point in the timeline? Or possibly a different version of the Beast?<\/p>\n

“Your failure of leadership allowed Revelation to take power…”<\/strong> On the face of it, thit is a bit harsh, since Xorn’s version of events in\u00a0Age of<\/em> Revelation<\/em> #0 had Revelation using his powers to influence Cyclops. It’s possible that Darkchild’s statements only need to be “true” in Scott’s estimation.<\/p>\n

“You abandoned your wife and child without a second thought.”\u00a0<\/strong>This is X-Factor\u00a0<\/em>vol 1 #1, where Scott pretty much dumps Madelyne as soon as he learns that Jean is back. It’s a clumsy exercise in reuniting the original X-Men which was widely considered damaging to the character. Scott accepts this as a completely valid criticism.<\/p>\n

“The Darkchild exists to protect Illyana Rasputin.”\u00a0<\/strong>This is a key point of the first arc in\u00a0Magik<\/em>, which frames the Darkchild as a personality created by Illyana as a defence mechanism during her traumatic childhood in Limbo, and involves Illyana coming to terms with it as an aspect of her. Obviously, that sits rather awkwardly with the idea that the Darkchild has survived without Illyana, but this scene squares that off by essentially telling us that this\u00a0is<\/em> a shadow of Illyana, a surviving fragment of her personality after the real Illyana has died.<\/p>\n

PAGES 18-20.<\/strong>\u00a0Cyclops gets the X-Men on side.<\/em><\/p>\n

Naturally, the X-Men are persuaded by Cyclops’ inspirational speech. Psylocke is also persuaded to come along.<\/p>\n

“Do you think I don’t know that it was you who killed Topaz, Glob?”<\/strong> In X-Men: Age of Revelation – Overture<\/em>.<\/p>\n

“I learned something that Revelation would – and has – killed to keep a secret.”\u00a0<\/strong>Presumably, this is what she was told by Bei in Overture<\/em> (and Bei is the person who Revelation killed to keep the secret, in the same issue).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

AMAZING X-MEN #2 “A Duel of Truths” Writer: Jed MacKay Artist: Mahmud Asrar Colourist: Matthew Wilson Letterer: Clayton Cowles Editor: Tom Brevoort COVER: The Darkchild, with the X-Men as prisoners. PAGES 1-7.\u00a0Cyclops accepts the Darkchild’s challenge. We’re picking up directly from the end of issue #1, where the X-Men teleported into Providence apparently as a […]<\/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-11512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11512","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=11512"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11512\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11514,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11512\/revisions\/11514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}