{"id":5049,"date":"2020-01-30T22:24:51","date_gmt":"2020-01-30T22:24:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=5049"},"modified":"2020-01-31T14:04:48","modified_gmt":"2020-01-31T14:04:48","slug":"marauders-6-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=5049","title":{"rendered":"Marauders #6 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. And yes, this is very late. It’s also the end of the first trade paperback, so I’ll do a review of the first six issues in the near future.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

COVER \/ PAGE 1.<\/strong> Kate Pryde and Bishop fight Hate-Monger and X-Cutioner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 2-3.<\/strong> Recap and credits. For the first time in the Krakoa era, the credits page is limited to just one page, presumably in order to squeeze everything in – the actual story is 23 pages long. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is “A Time To Reap” by Gerry Duggan, Matteo Lolli and Mario Del Pennino. The title couples with issue #5’s “A Time To Sow”. “A time to reap and a time to sow” is a loose paraphrase of Eccelsiastes. It’s the passage that was also used as a basis for the song “Turn! Turn! Turn!”<\/a>, though that song uses a different version of the reap\/sow lyric.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 4-6.<\/strong> Pyro and Kate fight Hate-Monger and X-Cutioner; X-Cutioner stabs Pyro.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

“I don’t think Krakoan laws apply to you.”<\/strong> Kate is telling Lockheed to kill the attackers, since he isn’t a mutant and doesn’t have to follow the rule against killing humans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kitty \/ Kate.<\/strong> We’re still being reminded of Kitty’s change to calling herself Kate as part of her personality shift at the start of the series. In this context of this book, it reads as if Hate-Monger is talking down to her by calling her Kitty, though logically it’s just as likely that he simply doesn’t know about the name change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hate-Monger.<\/strong> Whoever is wearing the costume, they seem to be virulently anti-mutant. It’s worth reiterating that the Hate-Monger hasn’t previously shown any particular interest in mutants (though doubtless he isn’t a fan), and also that it’s a little odd to see him directly attacking Pyro in hand to hand combat, which isn’t really his thing either. .<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 7-8. <\/strong>Injected into Pyro, tiny Yellowjacket reports back to Homines Verendi.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Evidently the plan is for the miniaturised Yellowjacket to enter Pyro’s body, Fantastic Voyage<\/em> style, and then tap into his senses to generate a feed that can be transmitted back to Homines Verendi. It’s not entirely clear how the transmission is going to work; Manuel is worried enough about interception to tell Yellowjacket to go radio silent, but presumably they have a plan to get messages back sooner or later. And there’s a pretty obvious question of how they plan to get Yellowjacket back – capture Pyro when he’s on a mission, and kill him?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yellowjacket.<\/strong> This is Darren Cross, an enemy of the Scott Lang version of Ant-Man. He first appeared in Marvel Premiere <\/em>#47 (1979) and became the new Yellowjacket after stealing some experimental armour from one of Hank Pym’s labs in Astonishing Ant-Man<\/em> #12 (2016). He hasn’t done a whole lot since then, but he is<\/em> an established character, albeit a fairly minor one. Cross is a millionaire businessman, hence him referring to “our businesses”. Again, he’s not particularly associated with anti-mutant sentiment. He tells us later that he’s been led to believe that the mutants want to exterminate humanity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

EDIT:<\/strong> As pointed out in the comments, while the small print makes clear that this guy is connected with Cross’s company, his speech patterns don’t seem like Darren Cross – it’s possible that this is his son Augustine, last seen in Astonishing Ant-Man<\/em> #12. He was left comatose in that story, but it does have a passing line of dialogue suggesting that the Yellowjacket armour could also be used to heal him. (Since Darren Cross used the Yellowjacket armour to attack Ant-Man and got handily defeated in public, it’s not clear why the Cross family still have the stolen armour at all – you’d have thought it would have been impounded.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 9-17.<\/strong> The Marauders defeat X-Cutioner, Hate-Monger and their leader Donald Pierce, and Kate seizes their cargo of anti-mutant tech.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

X-Cutioner.<\/strong> Kate describes him as a “former Fed”, referring to the original X-Cutioner, Carl Denti. In previous stories, Denti wasn’t particularly an anti-mutant bigot, so much as a vigilante going after mutants who had escaped the law. Generally, he was more of a Punisher type. Kate met a second X-Cutioner in X-Men Gold<\/em>, an anti-mutant serial killer whose family had been killed in a fight with Magneto. The character seen here seems much more like the second X-Cutioner, so maybe Kate is just getting them confused. Note that he responds to Kate by talking about a trail of destroyed human lives, which is much closer to the second X-Cutioner’s origin. Then again, he also gets yelled at by Hate-Monger for not actually trying to kill Kate when he gets the chance, so perhaps there’s more going on with this guy than meets the eye.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Obviously, Hate-Monger and X-Cutioner have been chosen partly because they’re existing characters whose costumes already include Klan-like hoods – something which was entirely deliberate with Hate-Monger, and less so with X-Cutioner (who cobbled his costume together from impounded alien technology).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Donald Pierce.<\/strong> Long time X-Men villain and leader of the Reavers, Pierce absolutely is<\/em> an anti-mutant bigot. The only surprising thing about seeing him in Homines Verendi is his willingness to take a secondary role to children. But Pierce and his Reavers have slipped badly down the pecking order in recent years, so this could well be the best offer on the table.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“M”.<\/strong> Everyone seems to know what “M” is. Since it’s a destination being chosen as an alternative to bringing a load of anti-mutant technology to Krakoa, presumably it’s Island M, the former base of Magneto, which we’ve seen a few times before in the Hickman era. The Krakoan “next issue” text more or less confirms that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Bring Sage and Beast. Forge should examine that anti-mutant tech.”<\/strong> Sage and Beast are both involved in X-Force, Krakoa’s black ops squad, though Kate doesn’t spell that out. As a member of the Quiet Council, she presumably knows about X-Force, even if she never seems to show up for the meetings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Forge was involved in making devices to suppress mutant powers in his 1980s appearances, including a long running storyline where his technology wound up removing Storm’s powers for a time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I don’t need a babysitter.”<\/strong> Pierce talks as if the other Marauders are looking after Kate, and she seems to agree with that reading. We come back to this later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 18.<\/strong> Data page with Yellowjacket’s log. Predictably, at this point all he’s seeing is Pyro and co messing around on a boat, and being amazed by Emma Frost’s wardrobe. None of this is remotely what Yellowjacket was expecting, and he seems already to be rethinking what he’s doing there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 19-26.<\/strong> The Black King assassinates Kate.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“You’re gonna end up sleeping next to Sabretooth.”<\/strong> Sabretooth has been buried under Krakoa in some sort of suspended animation since the end of House of X<\/em>, where the Quiet Council banished him for killing a human (despite the fact they hadn’t made that law yet). Kate wasn’t there, but evidently she’s been told.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Whatever quirk of your powers stops you from using the portals likely keeps you out of the Resurrection Protocols.”<\/strong> Why? There’s no particular logic to this, but everyone’s acting as if they believe it – or at least see it as highly likely. I suppose we have to take it as read that the characters have some reason to think the two issues are connected. At any rate, Kate certainly seems to drown at the end of the issue, so we’ll find out one way or the other whether there are any hitches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shaw’s plan.<\/strong> Shaw was hiding on the vessel with the anti-mutant power-dampening armour. He explains that it was all part of his plan to get the Marauders to rescue Shinobi, and then have Kate capture the armour vessel. He claims, at least, that he was using reverse psychology on them last issue, when he tries to send Kate to Madripoor instead. He also claims that Kate played into his hands by sending the other Marauders away, though that seems an incredibly risky bit of planning, so you have to wonder if he really was depending on that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shaw is probably not a reliable narrator, even when he’s gloating over his brilliant plan. Nonetheless, he claims<\/em> that he got Donald Pierce on side by bribery. He also claims that he told Christian Frost that Kate was keeping Iceman away from him, the implication being that this turned Christian against her. Note, though, that even in Shaw’s flashbacks, we don’t actually see Christian’s response to this. Nor does Shaw claim that Shinobi was in on the plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 27-28.<\/strong> Trailers. The Krakoan reads NEXT: ISLAND M.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. And yes, this is very late. It’s also the end of the first trade paperback, so I’ll do a review of the first six issues in the near future. COVER \/ PAGE 1. Kate Pryde and Bishop fight Hate-Monger and X-Cutioner. […]<\/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-5049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5049","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=5049"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5049\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5056,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5049\/revisions\/5056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}