{"id":4989,"date":"2020-01-02T23:12:27","date_gmt":"2020-01-02T23:12:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=4989"},"modified":"2020-01-02T23:29:35","modified_gmt":"2020-01-02T23:29:35","slug":"x-men-4-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=4989","title":{"rendered":"X-Men #4 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>PAGE 1-2 \/ COVER &amp; RECAP<\/strong>. Professor X, Magneto and Apocalypse, apparently walking out of a Davos meeting (attended by rather more people than we see in the story itself).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>PAGES 3-4.<\/strong> <em>Professor X, Magneto, Apocalypse, Cyclops and Gorgon arrive at Davos.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Davos.<\/strong> Davos is a ski resort in Switzerland, best known for hosting the annual World Economic Forum meeting (which is what people normally mean by &#8220;Davos&#8221;). The World Economic Forum itself <a href=\"https:\/\/www.weforum.org\/about\/our-members-and-partners\">actually consists of corporations<\/a>, but the annual meeting is routinely attended by politicians, celebrities and the like. This is, pretty obviously, a show of power by the mutants; they&#8217;re going through the motions of being normal global citizens, but at the end of the day, it&#8217;s Apocalypse in a suit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The timeline here is a little odd, since the journalist introducing this scene says that the meeting occurs only a month after the revelation of Krakoa. But that happened at the start of <em>House of X<\/em>, which itself is supposed to take a month. He must mean that Krakoa was unveiled in the previous <em>calendar<\/em> month (which would place <em>House of X<\/em> in December, since Davos is always in January).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>PAGE 5.<\/strong> Credits. This is &#8220;Global Economics&#8221; by Jonathan Hickman and Leinil Francis Yu. It seems a good time to remind ourselves that the small print on the credits pages of <em>X-Men<\/em> reads &#8220;Mutants of the world unite&#8221;, in reference to the <em>Communist Manifesto<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>PAGES 6-7.<\/strong> <em>Cyclops and Gorgon deal with the security, while the Autumn Council members are shown into their dinner meeting.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Gorgon.<\/strong> This is the most we&#8217;ve seen of Gorgon so far in the Hickman run, though his role as a captain of Krakoa has been mentioned before. We&#8217;ll get more about his attitude to Krakoa later. Gorgon&#8217;s main mutant power is to turn anyone who makes eye contact with him to stone (hence his amusement that the security guard <em>looks <\/em>at him and worries most about the blade). Like Cyclops, his glasses control that. Gorgon is also missing the guard&#8217;s point (perhaps on purpose), which was about the <em>impression<\/em> given by the swords, rather than the actual level of danger they pose. Or maybe he&#8217;s just not used to being somewhere where his reputation does not precede him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>PAGE 8.<\/strong> A data page with the dinner menu and a list of attendees. The menu is just a menu (though brioche tressee de metz is a bread, not a dessert). As for the other attendees&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>Hodari<\/strong>, the Wakandan attach\u00e9, is a minor character from Ta-Nehisi Coates&#8217; run on <em>Black Panther<\/em>. He&#8217;s a tribal elder and council member, and basically the sort of Wakandan government character you might expect to find in a place like this. As we see in the next scene, his basic attitude is that Krakoa may have a big impact, but lots of things do, and the system always adapts.<\/li><li><strong>Ma Mingyu<\/strong>, the Chinese &#8220;ambassador&#8221; (by which Hickman presumably just means representative), was the Chinese representative who met with Magneto in <em>House of X <\/em>#1.<\/li><li><strong>Reilly Marshall<\/strong>, the US ambassador, was also in <em>House of X <\/em>#1. In that issue, the Stepford Cuckoos could identify that he had affiliations with SHIELD and STRIKE, but he also had some other allegiance which they couldn&#8217;t read. Presumably that remains the case. As I&#8217;ve observed before, the US&#8217;s attitude to the emergence of Krakoa remains obscure.<\/li><li>The four &#8220;international guests&#8221; &#8211; Brazilian academic <strong>Federico Jo\u00e3o de C\u00e9zare<\/strong>, Italian businesswoman <strong>Daniela Gentile<\/strong>, Swiss businessman <strong>Ludovic von Bergen<\/strong> and Indian businesswoman <strong>Banhi Gahlot<\/strong> &#8211; all seem to be new characters. <\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>PAGES 9-19.<\/strong> <em>The Autumn Council explain their position over dinner, while Cyclops and Gorgon deal with Reilly Marshall&#8217;s hidden strike force.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Apocalypse.<\/strong> He insists that von Bergen calls him Apocalypse, even though in <em>Excalibur<\/em> he insists on being called something else (represented by a symbol). Apparently this is because &#8220;My other names are not fit for you to utter.&#8221; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He also claims responsibility for the end of the Bronze Age; in Marvel Universe terms, it&#8217;s certainly plausible that he could have had a part to play in that, since (as Magneto says) <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Late_Bronze_Age_collapse\">it&#8217;s all a bit of a blank<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Marshall&#8217;s strike team.<\/strong> And they do seem to be specifically Marshall&#8217;s &#8211; none of the others appear to know anything about this, and both Mingyu and Hodari roll their eyes at the American stupidity. Obviously there&#8217;s an unresolved question here of how far Marshall is representing US government interests or those of his unspecified hidden affiliation. The soldiers have some sort of psychic shielding, but it&#8217;s uncomfortable enough for Xavier to sense them when one of the soldiers has a scratch and briefly displaces the shield.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Magneto.<\/strong> Magneto gives us a lengthy speech about economics, which he presents as the Krakoan position &#8211; Xavier and Apocalypse don&#8217;t demur from this but don&#8217;t positively endorse it either. Broadly speaking, what Magneto offers is a fairly standard left-wing critique of capitalism coupled with an assertion that Krakoa will engage in it as a transitional phase, in which it will beat the capitalists at their own game and thereby bring about a new hegemony based on its own true social values.  <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Socialism_with_Chinese_characteristics\">This all might sound quite familiar to the Chinese representative.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Leaving aside his economic views, Magneto&#8217;s whole approach seems to assume that while humans have screwed up civilisation time and again, mutants are for some reason different. But they&#8217;re fundamentally still human beings with superpowers, so&#8230; why are mutants different? Isn&#8217;t this just another version of human society? The Italian businesswoman has a point in telling him that he&#8217;s posturing; and at the very least, there&#8217;s an irony in Magneto claiming that he&#8217;s changed because in the past he would have tried a show of strength. From the Krakoans&#8217; point of view, the whole purpose of this meeting <em>is<\/em> a show of strength.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Magneto&#8217;s factoid about lead mining in the medieval period may be exaggerated, but it&#8217;s true that there was a decline in lead mining with less efficient methods being used. His quote is indeed from &#8220;The Island&#8221; by Aldous Huxley, the utopian counterpart to his better-known dystopian novel &#8220;Brave New World&#8221;. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Wakanda.<\/strong> We are reminded again that the Wakandans, although not hostile to Krakoa, have refused to enter into the trade deal which Krakoa is offering. This should probably be seen as a warning sign that something is up, since Wakanda generally tends to be written as a bastion of wisdom and moral probity. If they&#8217;re not touching Krakoa, they&#8217;re probably suspicious of something. And since they&#8217;re the cleverest guys in the room, they probably have good reason. Talking of which&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Krakoan drugs.<\/strong> Two of the guests &#8211; von Bergen and Mingyu &#8211; query whether it&#8217;s really necessary to take Krakoan drugs quite so often as the Krakoans claim. By all appearances this is a genuine query &#8211; indeed, Magneto doesn&#8217;t suggest that it&#8217;s a bad faith question, but goes into what looks like a prepared response about a non-obvious reason. Again, this all seems a little bit suspect; is there some other reason why Xavier wants everyone taking this stuff?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That said&#8230; let&#8217;s acknowledge that however you look at it, the economic might of Krakoa requires some serious suspension of disbelief. The place has a grand total of three exports &#8211; its three &#8220;human drugs&#8221; &#8211; and while the antibiotics and the &#8220;diseases of the mind&#8221; pill presumably have instantly verifiable effects, how has anyone been able to test the one about extending lifespan for five years? None of these are essential products to maintain an existing quality of life. None of this stuff seems to have gone through any sort of conventional pre-sale approval process (which admittedly would take years and ruin the plot), and it&#8217;s being marketed by a hermit kingdom with the likes of Apocalypse on its ruling body. And all this, in a world where people are sceptical about vaccination&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>PAGE 20.<\/strong> Data page on the Krakoan captains &#8211; essentially, the individuals in charge of Krakoan defence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Cyclops is described as representing the X-Men, which is a little odd since we&#8217;ve not seen much sign of there <em>being<\/em> a stable X-Men team on Krakoa. What exactly constitutes the &#8220;X-Men&#8221; here, if it&#8217;s something distinct from the whole Krakoan institution?<\/li><li>Magik represents the Sextant, which has previously been used as an alternate name for the habitat where the various trainee groups (from various generations) live.<\/li><li>Bishop joined Hellfire Trading over in <em>Marauders<\/em>.<\/li><li>Gorgon is now acting as the bodyguard for Professor X, Apocalypse and Magneto in response to the assassination attempt in <em>X-Force<\/em> #1. Apparently there was no particular plan in going out without protection before that &#8211; they were just a bit naive.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>PAGE 21.<\/strong> <em>Gorgon lets the soldiers live.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Well, kind of. He mutilates them pretty badly, but he sticks to the letter of the &#8220;murder no man&#8221; law &#8211; not because it&#8217;s a moral code but because he seems to see it as sending an even more damning message of contempt to the human race. There&#8217;s something to that &#8211; on page 23 Magneto says that &#8220;We even made it a law&#8221; as if something a basic as outlawing murder was some sort of generous indulgence to the human race.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>PAGES 22-25.<\/strong> <em>Professor X and Magneto expose Marshall.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Note that Xavier assumes that Marshall (or his mystery allies) were responsible for the assassination attempt in <em>X-Force<\/em> #1, and he denies that. But Marshall is ostensibly representing the US government here. Is Xavier talking about his true affiliation, or is he accusing the US government of the attack? If the latter, he seems to be wrong &#8211; <em>X-Force <\/em>establishes that the attack was the work of XENO, and that XENO is made up of people from shadow agencies that were shut down. (Since we don&#8217;t know who Marshall is connected with, it&#8217;s perfectly possible that he genuinely had nothing to do with XENO&#8217;s attack.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Xavier removes his helmet for the first time since the Hickman run began (and we can see that there&#8217;s nothing odd about his appearance). Interestingly, he removes the mask in order to give a speech insisting that he does still believe in his dream, even though it might not look it &#8211; and puts it back on more or less as he goes back to making veiled threats on behalf of Krakoa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>PAGES 26-27.<\/strong> The trailers. The Krakoan reads NEXT: SERAFINA.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. PAGE 1-2 \/ COVER &amp; RECAP. Professor X, Magneto and Apocalypse, apparently walking out of a Davos meeting (attended by rather more people than we see in the story itself). PAGES 3-4. Professor X, Magneto, Apocalypse, Cyclops and Gorgon arrive at [&hellip;]<\/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-4989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4989","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=4989"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4989\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4994,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4989\/revisions\/4994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}