{"id":4895,"date":"2019-12-04T23:55:06","date_gmt":"2019-12-04T23:55:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=4895"},"modified":"2019-12-04T23:55:06","modified_gmt":"2019-12-04T23:55:06","slug":"x-men-3-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=4895","title":{"rendered":"X-Men #3 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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

COVER \/ PAGE 1.<\/strong> Cyclops and Emma Frost riding what are presumably meant to be dinosaurs. Other than the fact that the story visits the Savage Land, this doesn’t have much to do with the content.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 2-3.<\/strong> Mysterious bad guys come through the gate to the Savage Land flower farms.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Savage Land.<\/strong> The Marvel Universe’s hidden jungle where dinosaurs still exist (not that we see any in this story). We established back in House of X <\/em>#1 that the X-Men had set up a location in the Savage Land, and evidently it’s where they’re growing all the farms for those pharmaceuticals they’re making. From the X-Men’s point of view, it’s presumably place where they can grow the all-important flowers and be relatively confident of being undisturbed. The “harvest centre” has mutants picking the flowers by hand – the first time we’ve seen Krakoans actually working, I think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

The two X-Men supervising the gate are Pixie<\/strong> and Anole<\/strong>, both higher-profile student characters – but for the purposes of their role in this story, any old second-tier X-Men would do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bad guys are the debuting Hordeculture<\/strong>, but more of them later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 4-5.<\/strong> Recap page and credits. Nothing much to see here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 6-8.<\/strong> The Quiet Council meet to discuss disturbances on Krakoa.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Quiet Council. <\/strong>The two empty seats around the Council table belong to Professor X (who’s still dead, following X-Force<\/em> #1) and Kate Pryde (who can’t travel to Krakoa through the gates – her Marauders teammate Storm can, and presumably did). Cypher would normally be here to interpret for Krakoa, but he’s off in space in New Mutants<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jean and Emma.<\/strong> This is the longest exchange they’ve had in the Hickman era, and indeed since Jean returned from the dead. In case you’re new to all this, Jean’s husband Cyclops had an affair with Emma in Grant Morrison’s New X-Men<\/em>, and they became a long-term couple after Jean died at the end of Morrison’s run. As we’ve seen elsewhere, Scott and Jean are now back together, though apparently in a menage-a-trois with Wolverine; Scott and Emma’s current relationship has been left a bit vague. Despite them trading barbs, this is actually a comparatively friendly exchange by their standards, and Hickman seems to be treating them as somewhat reconciled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 9.<\/strong> A data page about Krakoa. The main point is that Krakoa is deeply distressed by the interference with its Savage Land gate, but without Cypher around, the X-Men can’t ask it to explain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Krakoan wildlife.<\/strong> We’re told that the animals of Krakoa have become suddenly more aggressive, and that until today there had been a month without any reported incidents. In fact, we saw a hostile Krakoan animal in X-Force <\/em>#1 – so either a month has passed since then (and Xavier’s still dead), or Wolverine and Beast didn’t report it. The latter is plausible, since Beast seemed to be trying to make excuses for why it was happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Black Tom Cassidy<\/strong> is connected to Krakoa’s security systems, as seen in X-Force<\/em> – though he can’t communicate with the island more generally. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychic feeding.<\/strong> We’re told, for the first time, that Krakoa is feeding on the psychic energy of its mutant inhabitants. This refers back to Krakoa’s first appearance in Giant-Size X-Men<\/em> #1 (1975), where it did indeed imprison the X-Men and feed on their “mutant energies” (whatever that means). The claim here is that it’s very different when there’s a whole population of mutants living on the island, because Krakoa can take a tiny amount of energy from each mutant and everything’s great.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the X-Men have still got “aggressive protocols” in place to keep an eye on this – which seems to depend primarily on getting Selene<\/strong> and Emplate<\/strong> to keep an eye on Krakoa. Since they’re both psychic vampires and all-round villains, this doesn’t seem like the most robust solution. And the very fact that Krakoa is drawing on people’s psychic energy might reinforce the implication that all is not 100% right with the thought processes of the Krakoan residents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 10-11.<\/strong> In which we meet the Hordeculture members.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

While House of X <\/em>and Powers of X <\/em>were built around existing X-Men concepts in new orders, X-Men <\/em>itself seems to be introducing more new characters, including… well, these oddities. Hordeculture is a group of four elderly women who are initially played as comic relief geriatrics. I’m somewhat reminded of Kade Killgore and his pre-teen Hellfire Club from Wolverine & The X-Men<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That said… once you get past the old-people jokes, which do wear thin, Hordeculture are actually pretty conventional Silver Age style supervillains. As we’ll see later, they’re mad scientists who have a long-term plan to wipe out most of the human race by infiltrating the food supply. The new plants from Krakoa have knocked their plans off course and they’ve come to investigate. And while they see Krakoa as a bit of a mystery to be investigated, the fact that they were able to seize control of a key gate shows that they already understand Krakoa much better than the X-Men do. The X-Men have embraced Krakoa in an attempt to outflank human technology, but they’ve actually just wound up dealing with a different type of scientist. (Times have probably never been better for plant-themed supervillains. Plantman’s phone must be ringing non-stop.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their costumes have plague doctor echoes, though it’s not entirely clear why.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 12-13.<\/strong> Cyclops, Emma and Sebastian Shaw stop off in the Outback on their way to the Savage Land.<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Again, we’re reminded of the practical problems caused by Cypher’s absence. More important, though, is that since they can’t go direct to the Savage Land, they’re picking up Gateway<\/strong>, the teleporter from the X-Men’s Australia era who was already shown to be allied with Emma Frost in Marauders <\/em>#2. An obvious question is he doesn’t come to Krakoa to get them, and why he didn’t bring Kate to the island for the Quiet Council meeting. Perhaps he can’t, for some reason?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 14-23.<\/strong> Cyclops, Emma and Sebastian confront Hordeculture.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There’s a weirdly inconsistent tone in this scene, which can’t quite seem to make up its mind whether the Hordeculture women are comedy foul-mouthed old women, or serious villains who are putting on an act for their own amusement – notably, it drops the jokes entirely when it gets to their origin flashback, for no apparent reason. I think we have to take it that any characters who can hold their own with Scott in a fight must be joking when they claim it’s all due to their water aerobics courses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shaw’s approach to them is, at root, actually quite sensible. He assumes they just want free drugs; he offers to give them what they want in exchange for an explanation of how they hacked the system. He puts it across rather obnoxiously… but basically he’s trying to solve the problem by making a deal, which is what Xavier brought him on board to do. Ultimately, though, Hordeculture run rings around everyone and then depart, proclaiming that they will figure out Krakoa and either co-opt it for their own plans, or destroy it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Included in this is a flashback narrated by Augusta, who seems to be the sanest of the group, in which she claims that the group were radicalised by the experience of working on creating “seedless slave plants that could no longer reproduce.” That sounds like a reference to the urban myth that GM seeds are sterile in order to force farmers to buy new seeds each year. (In fact, that technology was never brought to market.<\/a>) However, Augusta’s flashback also includes a really weird panel which seems to show a man’s body buried under a flower bed in a laboratory, in which case she may be talking about something much more extreme and Marvel-Universe-specific.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 24<\/strong>. Emma and Shaw report back to the Quiet Council.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-explanatory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 25.<\/strong> A data page on Hordeculture, largely spelling out what was already in the issue. It’s suggested here that Hordeculture have also genetically modifying themselves, explaining their resistance to telepathy – which would add them to the list of post-human villains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bromes, Vetiver, Leymus & Scutch. <\/strong>Their names have no obvious continuity significance – the unusual surnames are all types of grass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sedona, Arizona.<\/strong> The current location of Hordeculture’s mobile base is a town of around 10,000 people, but if there’s any significance to the choice, it’s not obvious to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 26-27<\/strong>. Trailers. Five books on December 18? Really? The Krakoan reads NEXT: A SEAT AT THE TABLE<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As always, page numbers are from the digital edition, and this post contains spoilers. COVER \/ PAGE 1. Cyclops and Emma Frost riding what are presumably meant to be dinosaurs. Other than the fact that the story visits the Savage Land, this doesn’t have much to do with the content. PAGES 2-3. Mysterious bad guys […]<\/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-4895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4895","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=4895"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4895\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4897,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4895\/revisions\/4897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}