{"id":5021,"date":"2020-01-14T21:55:27","date_gmt":"2020-01-14T21:55:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=5021"},"modified":"2020-01-14T21:55:27","modified_gmt":"2020-01-14T21:55:27","slug":"x-force-5-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=5021","title":{"rendered":"X-Force #5 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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

COVER \/ PAGE 1.<\/strong> Forge stands with an arsenal of organic tech. By the way, note that while Krakoa’s general aesthetic is plants, these things look to be meat and bone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 2-3.<\/strong> Over their radio link, Domino tells Wolverine that she’s coming for him. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The top half of him, anyway. This is all self-explanatory – “You came for me in Korea” refers back to earlier issues of this storyline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 4-5.<\/strong> Recap and credits. This is “Necessary Force” by Benjamin Percy and Joshua Cassara.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 6-7.<\/strong> Needing another way to the fight, Domino gets Black Tom to ask Gateway.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the limitation of the gates: somebody needs to plant one at the other end in the first place, and (we now know) they can be destroyed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Gateway. <\/strong>It’s the first time we’ve seen the X-Men’s back-up teleporter Gateway in this series, but he’s previously appeared in X-Men<\/em> and Marauders<\/em>. This is the first time he’s been shown as living on Krakoa, I think – perhaps he’s just visiting, though he’s always been a solitary character, so you’d have thought the appeal of a mutant nation would be pretty limited to him. Even here he seems inclined to sit alone on the top of a mountain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Black Tom Cassidy<\/strong>. It’s not entirely clear if this is Tom himself that we see on panel, or a kind of projection he’s sending through Krakoa. It feeds into the following data page, which tells us that Tom’s sense of identity is being undermined through his connection with Krakoa. On the one hand, he clearly identifies himself here as Black Tom; on the other, he also refers to himself in the third person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For reasons which aren’t altogether clear (beyond the fact that it leads into the data pages), Domino specifically asks for Black Tom to contact Gateway, rather than using one of Krakoa’s many telepaths. Given that Gateway is on the island and a known ally of the X-Men, it doesn’t seem all that much of a hunch for Domino to suggest asking him for help. It’s literally his job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 8.<\/strong> A data page, “The Uncertainty of Black Tom Cassidy.” This is essentially a prose piece about Tom’s “chief security advisor” role leading him to start losing his identity into the island. Our attention is drawn to the fact that he has the ability to control parts of the landscape, speak through the wind and the insects, and (to some extent) travel around Krakoa by being absorbed into the island itself. What’s conspicuously missing from any of this discussion is the personality of Krakoa itself, which Tom is apparently still unable to communicate with – but we know from Cypher’s experiences that Krakoa is there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“His old pal Cain Marko”.<\/strong> Black Tom and the Juggernaut were partners for many, many years, usually with Tom as the brains of the operation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As in the previous scene, Tom seems to slip in and out of talking about himself in the third person. Relatively unexplored so far is what Tom’s motivations are for taking this role, bearing in mind that although he’s a mutant, he’s never been all that engaged in mutant politics. It comes across here as more of a sacrifice of identity than an opportunity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 9.<\/strong> Forge joins Domino.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Domino.<\/strong> She mentions that her luck power has been “watered down” lately. That probably explains how she managed to get stuck in such a disastrous trap in the opening of issue #1. But the cause of it is doubtless something we’ll come back to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Forge. <\/strong>Forge’s suit of organic armour appears to be insectoid rather than plantlike.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 10-21.<\/strong> Big fight. Wolverine is reunited with his legs.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wolverine<\/strong> is, implausibly, still fighting (and jumping at people) without a lower half. You’d have thought even he would bleed out and lose consciousness pretty quickly from this, but hey, the Ultimate Universe did something similar in Ultimate Wolverine vs Hulk<\/em>, so why not?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The law of the Quiet Council.”<\/strong> Beast is referring to the law against murdering humans. It’s debatable whether that would cover this situation anyway, given the element of self-defence, but regardless, Beast makes clear that official X-Force missions are exempt. In other words, X-Force have a license to kill. That said, Beast still pushes everyone to comply the law for both practical and moral reasons. The practical reason is that they need to capture people for interrogation, since none of Xavier’s attackers survived; recall that somebody killed the last one when he was in Krakoa’s hospital, and we still don’t know who that was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The words of Napoleon Bonaparte…”<\/strong> This is a quote often attributed to Napoleon but there doesn’t seem to be any actual source for it identified anywhere. Usually the words “spirit” and “sword” are the other way round in the first sentence, but that doesn’t really affect the meaning. Some versions have “mind” instead of “spirit” (both of which would be possible translations of the French word \u00e9sprit<\/em>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Domino<\/strong>, who is usually quite a happy go lucky character, is saying things like “I want you to swallow my pain” and coming up with justifications for murdering the prisoners despite Beast’s reasoning. It’s an understandable reaction given that she was essentially tortured in the earlier issues, and she does have some<\/em> basis for arguing that Xeno’s soldiers don’t appear to be real people. But this one is very emphatic that he is<\/em> a real person, and also insists that he has no knowledge of anything to do with Domino’s torture. He’s presumably pretty low down the pecking order, so this is plausible enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 22.<\/strong> Back on Krakoa, Wolverine and Domino enjoy the sunset.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wolverine is drinking whisky to get over the experience, and Kid Omega is naturally being quickly revived.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 23-24.<\/strong> Beast interrogates prisoner Bill.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Note that Bill is actually brought to Krakoa, despite being a human. At any rate, Bill insists that he is just a mercenary and Beast takes some persuading about that. It’s not obvious why, since it’s Bill’s employers that would need to be political. At any rate, Bill makes the reasonable point that if the mutants are going to position themselves at the top of the economic tree, they can expect some hostile attention from people with motivations beyond simple bigotry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bill confirms that his group were working with the peacock-tattoo guy from XENO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 25.<\/strong> A data page on “the MERCs.” Essentially, we’re told that Bill was part of MERC, a top-secret paramilitary unit formed by bored soldiers who have nothing to do now that Krakoa’s emergence has led to a global decline in war. Two reasons are given for that decline: the humans are feeling more of a sense of unity (presumably in comparison with the mutants), and\/or people are disengaging from existing wars in order to ready themselves for the anticipated showdown over Krakoa. Both could be true, and both broadly mirror the XENO origin story of decommissioned anti-mutant organisations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are some issues here about consistency with the rest of the line. X-Men<\/em> is telling us that Krakoa has only been around for a month or so, and even if you buy the idea that the military has less to do, have they really<\/em> got that bored so quickly that they had time to go off and start MERC? Admittedly, a similar point could be made about XENO. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oh, and hyphens are rendered as dashes throughout the text (“de-escalation”, “top-secret”, “high-dollar”, “large-scale”), which is a pretty basic proof-reading error.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 26-27.<\/strong> Trailers and adverts. The Krakoan reads NEXT: LO A BEAST IS BORN. That was the name of the Beast story in Amazing Adventures<\/em> #12 (the first issue of his short-lived 1970s solo run).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. COVER \/ PAGE 1. Forge stands with an arsenal of organic tech. By the way, note that while Krakoa’s general aesthetic is plants, these things look to be meat and bone. PAGES 2-3. Over their radio link, Domino tells Wolverine that […]<\/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-5021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5021","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=5021"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5021\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5026,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5021\/revisions\/5026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}