{"id":12430,"date":"2026-10-15T23:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-10-15T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=12430"},"modified":"2026-10-15T23:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-10-15T22:00:00","slug":"x-men-39-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=12430","title":{"rendered":"X-Men #39 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>X-MEN vol 7 #39<\/strong>
\n“Siege”<\/strong>
\nWriter: Jed MacKay<\/strong>
\nPenciller: Netho Diaz<\/strong>
\nInker: Sean Parsons<\/strong>
\nColourist: Arthur Hesli<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Clayton Cowles<\/strong>
\nEditor: Tom Brevoort<\/strong><\/p>\n

COVER. <\/strong>John Greycrow defends Glob Herman from Z*E*R*O.<\/p>\n

PAGE 1.\u00a0<\/strong>Abbie Bennett briefs Z*E*R*O.<\/em><\/p>\n

Z*E*R*O.<\/strong> This group previously appeared in issue #19, as a splinter group of exceedingly anti-mutant O*N*E agents who consider the main organisation insufficiently radical. They attempted to kill Revelation, with predictable lack of success. Strictly speaking, it was Bei who killed the Z*E*R*O agents, not Revelation himself. Abbie Bennett is a new character, and I don’t think her husband was actually named in the original story.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

PAGES 2-4.\u00a0<\/strong>Xorn and Greycrow at the Factory.<\/em><\/p>\n

The X-Men are absent in Philadelphia appearing in\u00a0DNX<\/em>. As with other X-Men\u00a0<\/em>tie-in issues, this is a character spotlight, focussing this time on Greycrow.<\/p>\n

Greycrow<\/strong> has been hanging around on the fringes of the X-Men since the start of the series (and also in the\u00a0Psylocke<\/em> solo title), mostly assisting Psylocke but keeping his distance from the X-Men proper. Obviously that ties in with his general feelings of self-loathing and unworthiness from his time as one of the Marauders. In the “Danger Room” arc (issues #26-30), he and Xorn were effectively acting as members of the X-Men in an extended sense.<\/p>\n

It’s not entirely clear why he’s so keen to be fighting by Psylocke’s side on this occasion when she’s off on missions quite a lot of the time. Maybe he\u00a0does<\/em> feel like this all the time and we just haven’t seen much of it. Or maybe it’s tied in with being specifically asked to help out as a guard.<\/p>\n

Greycrow’s claim that he’s “been in more fights than you [Xorn] have years on this Earth” is… not actually that impressive?<\/p>\n

The “salvaged Shi’ar starship drive<\/strong>” which the X-Men have as a power supply might be from the ship that Corsair crashed in issue #11.<\/p>\n

PAGES 5-6.<\/strong>\u00a0Z*E*R*O in the power plant.<\/em><\/p>\n

S.W.O.R.D.<\/strong> The files that Z*E*R*O have got their hands on presumably come from the original, pre-Krakoan version of the organisation, when it was basically S.H.I.E.L.D. for extraterrestrial threats; it seems reasonable that O*N*E would have access to some of their records.<\/p>\n

The Z*E*R*O members are weirdly determined to go and kill mutants personally even though they ought to be wiped out by the upcoming explosion, but then they’re a bunch of crazed extremists.<\/p>\n

PAGES 7-13.\u00a0<\/strong>Greycrow fights through the Factory.<\/em><\/p>\n

Greycrow<\/strong> says that he can’t use his mutant powers to interface with alien technology. This is a bit weird. Greycrow’s powers have always been rather hazily defined, but they’re something to do with manipulating and shaping technology to create improvised devices. It’s not immediately obvious why his powers should exclude alien technology. But perhaps they only really work effectively when coupled with him having some idea of what he’s doing, and this stuff is too far removed from what he knows. Another way of approaching this might have been to say simply that Greycrow isn’t Forge: he needs to know what he’s trying to achieve, and he doesn’t understand this technology well enough to know what that is.<\/p>\n

Xorn assumes that the Z*E*R*O members will not have realised the risk to the local human population, but Greycrow seems to be correct in thinking that they simply don’t care. Some of this seems to be persuading him that the X-Men have a need for someone like him after all. He extends a single claw from the back of his hand before setting out, which is obviously positioning him here as a Wolverine figure. He’s also essentially putting himself forward for a traditional Wolverine role of the guy who does the black ops stuff so that the other X-Men don’t have to – though that’s maybe a less clear divide in a team that includes Magik, Kid Omega and Juggernaut. More specifically, he seems to see this as a role where he can shield Psylocke\u00a0in particular<\/em> and create the space for her to redeem herself.<\/p>\n

Glob Herman.<\/strong> He’s still unconscious and on life support after being shot in issue #26. (Don’t ask when his current appearances in\u00a0Infernal Hulk<\/em> take place.) Greycrow reasonably assumes that all the dead Z*E*R*O agents lying around Glob were killed by Xorn, but we’ll come back to that.<\/p>\n

PAGES 14-15.\u00a0<\/strong>Greycrow and Xorn again.<\/em><\/p>\n

Greycrow now seems willing to join the X-Men. His immediate concern, though, is\u00a0to dispose of the bodies of the dead Z*E*R*O agents by incinerating them. He seems to regard them as a purely practical problem. To be fair, even Xorn seems to regard the pile of corpses as regrettable only in the sense that there’s nobody left to interrogate.<\/p>\n

PAGES 16-20.\u00a0<\/strong>Flashback: Glob kills the Z*E*R*O agents.<\/em><\/p>\n

A single panel on the first page of this scene seems to show that Abbie Bennett actually survived and escaped, unnoticed by Greycrow or X*O*R*N.<\/p>\n

Abbie says that Glob was “shot by an unknown attacker”. Presumably it isn’t widespread knowledge within O*N*E that Frank Bohannan hired Beyond to carry out that attack.<\/p>\n

Glob suddenly comes to life, slaughters everybody, and lies down to go to sleep again. This doesn’t seem to be the real Glob in the body, though – he says these people are the first human beings he’s seen in “years”, and he clearly hasn’t been in a coma for that long.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

X-MEN vol 7 #39 “Siege” Writer: Jed MacKay Penciller: Netho Diaz Inker: Sean Parsons Colourist: Arthur Hesli Letterer: Clayton Cowles Editor: Tom Brevoort COVER. John Greycrow defends Glob Herman from Z*E*R*O. PAGE 1.\u00a0Abbie Bennett briefs Z*E*R*O. Z*E*R*O. This group previously appeared in issue #19, as a splinter group of exceedingly anti-mutant O*N*E agents who consider […]<\/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-12430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12430","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=12430"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12430\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12432,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12430\/revisions\/12432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}