{"id":4887,"date":"2019-11-29T19:36:02","date_gmt":"2019-11-29T19:36:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=4887"},"modified":"2019-11-30T08:58:04","modified_gmt":"2019-11-30T08:58:04","slug":"fallen-angels-2-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=4887","title":{"rendered":"Fallen Angels #2 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As always, page numbers are from the digital edition, and this will contain spoilers.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

COVER \/ PAGE 1.<\/strong> Psylocke (Kwannon), X-23 and Cable next to a cage full of children who they’re presumably about to rescue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 2-5.<\/strong> Flashback. Pre-Psylocke Kwannon meets Yama, who’s on the run and wants her help, but she kills him and then fights two gunmen.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other two gunmen are presumably the people Yama was on the run from. The general thrust of the scene, though, is that Kwannon is deeply unimpressed with Yama, who is trying to get out of the game, something that she sees (at this stage in her life) as generally disreputable and disastrous behaviour. As for why she kills the others, that’s presumably covered in the second flashback in the issue, when she explains that she read Yama’s mind and was touched by his desire to protect his wife and unborn son.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The blade of Nyoirin. Matsu’o’s prize.”<\/strong> This must be fairly shortly before she gets body swapped with Psylocke. Nyoirin is the crimelord she was working for; Matsu’o Tsurayaba was her boyfriend. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

PAGES 6-7.<\/strong> Credits and recap. The title is “Shoto”, which is a kind of Japanese sword. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 8-9.<\/strong> X-23 asks Psylocke for help in harnessing and controlling her anger.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This feels like a bit of a throwback in terms of X-23’s character, though Bryan Hill does make a point of saying that she puts on an act. Still, dialogue like “There is an anger in me. A rage. I gave up any hope that someone could possibly understand it” won’t be for everyone. Anyway, Kwannon is indeed willing to help train X-23 but warns that “every master is a slave”, presumably because her idea of mastery – or at least the one she knows how to teach – involves an irrevocable commitment to a way of life. More of this later. It’s certainly very debatable whether Kwannon is in any position to be offering psychological mentoring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 10-13.<\/strong> Cable has found an Overclock slave labour village in S\u0101o Mateus, but Psylocke only wants to go after Apoth himself, not his facilities. Cable decides to go alone.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

S\u0101o Mateus.<\/strong> While the dialogue seems to suggest it’s a village, S\u0101o Mateus, Brazil, is a municipality with a population of over 128,000. Presumably Cable means it’s a village somewhere in the vicinity. It’s apparently run by tripod robots and masked gunmen. Cable is conspicuously vague about how he knows about the place, why he had a contact there, who that contact was, or how Cable found out that his contact was dead. Bear in mind that this version of Cable has only just come back from the far future and really shouldn’t have many contacts just yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Every time we leave Krakoa we risk turning it against us.”<\/strong> It’s not at all clear why Psylocke thinks this. Perhaps she figures that any missions connected with Apoth run the risk of exposing her alliance with Mr Sinister – but it seems weird that she talks about turning Krakoa itself against them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Carousel.<\/strong> Fallen Angels <\/em>likes coming back to the Carousel, probably because Krakoa fits the mood better at night when everything is lit by fire, but also because this happy-clappy stuff is precisely what makes the title characters feel left out there. Dazzler<\/strong> gets to be the voice of mainstream Krakoa this time. Kwannon’s response that “Joy doesn’t make everyone happy” isn’t as contradictory as it first seems, since Dazzler was talking about the joy of other people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 14-15.<\/strong> A data page about the Hand, who are presumably being presented as Kwannon’s previously-unspecified trainers. The Hand are a mystical ninja cult who were introduced in Daredevil <\/em> in 1981 and have become mainstays of the Marvel Universe; their main X-Men involvement comes via Wolverine, but Matsu’o Tsurayaba was also a member. Note, though, that when Kwannon first showed up, she wasn’t <\/em>working for the Hand – the whole point of her relationship with Matsu’o was that they were on opposite sides. In Fallen Angels<\/em>‘ terms, it was also a departure from simply acting as someone else’s weapon, which might suggest that Matsu’o’s role is going to be a turning point in her life that was starting to set her on a different path just before Psylocke showed up to derail everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The small print suggests that we’re dealing with the Madripoor sect of the Hand, which has splinter groups all over the place (i.e., it appears in loads of stories that don’t really fit together).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The thrust of the Hand philosophy as set out here is that assassins like Kwannon should see themselves as tools, not worry about what they’re being used for (in the guise of showing humility), recognise that the word is an unjust place, and generally be comfortable with doing what their told. It’s not a worldview likely to go down well with X-23, whose whole character is about being created as a weapon and transcending that upbringing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 16-19.<\/strong> Flashback. Pre-Psylocke Kwannon rescues a doctor from attackers and helps her escape Japan.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unhelpfully, the dialogue never actually specifies that this is Yama’s wife, but that seems to be the implication – at any rate, the two flashbacks make much more sense if read that way. The point seems to be that Kwannon has much more sympathy for Yama’s wife, who was not part of their subculture and is not deserting it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scene ends with some more flashbacks to Kwannon’s upbringing in the philosophy described above, returning to the butterfly symbol from the previous issue. Kwannon – at least in the past – sees the transformation into a butterfly as accompanying a loss of self.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 20.<\/strong> Psylocke and Mr Sinister talk about butterflies.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As before, Sinister wants to ask seemingly pointless questions in exchange for his assistance. Either he’s got some practical interest in this, or he’s just an emotional sadist. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This scene acknowledges that butterflies were already associated with Betsy Braddock before the body swap; Kwannon claims to have been upset by the fact that they had a common symbol and the implication that there was some sort of destiny linking them together. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 21.<\/strong> Psylocke joins Cable and X-23 in Cable’s safehouse.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

X-23 clearly went along with him anyway. At any rate, this is one of those scenes that is likely to cut across many people’s readings of both Cable and X-23 – does he really need to be taught about war when he grew up in one? And does she really need to be taught about rage? It’s a throwback approach to both characters, more in service of Kwannon’s arc than their own. Still, at least Kwannon acknowledges here that she needs to learn from them in order to be a mentor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 22-24.<\/strong> The Fallen Angels go to rescue the villagers and confront a giant robot.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pretty straightforward, though Cable does make a point of being surprised that he didn’t see the attack coming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 25-26.<\/strong> The trailer reads NEXT: COCOON.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As always, page numbers are from the digital edition, and this will contain spoilers. COVER \/ PAGE 1. Psylocke (Kwannon), X-23 and Cable next to a cage full of children who they’re presumably about to rescue. PAGES 2-5. Flashback. Pre-Psylocke Kwannon meets Yama, who’s on the run and wants her help, but she kills him […]<\/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-4887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4887","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=4887"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4887\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4890,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4887\/revisions\/4890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}