{"id":5075,"date":"2020-02-04T22:01:07","date_gmt":"2020-02-04T22:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=5075"},"modified":"2020-02-04T22:01:07","modified_gmt":"2020-02-04T22:01:07","slug":"x-force-6-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=5075","title":{"rendered":"X-Force #6 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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

COVER \/ PAGE 1.<\/strong> The Beast beats up some G-men while reading a book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 2-3.<\/strong> Recap and credits. The story is “Intelligence”, by Benjamin Percy, Stephen Segovia and Guru-eFX.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 4-6.<\/strong> X-Force are on a mission in Terra Verde, guided by Beast and Sage back on Krakoa.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Parts of this issue are narrated by Beast in a monologue about his role in X-Force – basically, he’s very proud of his achievements as a co-ordinator of intelligence and coverer-up of inconvenient news.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Terra Verde.<\/strong> One of the Marvel Universe’s many South American micronations, this one coming from a Fantastic Four<\/em> arc in the early 70s. Its experiments in “telefloronics” were previously mentioned by Forge in issue #4.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 7.<\/strong> Data page: “Xavier’s Confession.” As with some previous data pages in this series, this is basically a text piece, rather than something bearing to be a document or database extract. It’s written from Xavier’s perspective (though in the third person) and claims that Xavier was hoping to get assassinated because he believed that it would be a unifying event for mutantkind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This doesn’t necessarily<\/em> imply that Xavier was actually complicit in his own assassination in issue #1, merely that he was consciously leaving room for it to happen – we were told that his levels of security were almost absurdly low before the assassination, and increased afterwards. It’s not at all clear whether any of the X-Men were in on the plan, and confident that Xavier could indeed be restored from back-up – though it might explain why Cyclops, Cable and Prestige seemed so relaxed in X-Men<\/em> #2.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 8-10.<\/strong> Flashback. Professor X attends a treaty signing in Terra Verde, and comes under attack from plant creatures; Black Tom defends Xavier. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Largely speaks for itself. Though why Black Tom? His role is tied to the defence of Krakoa itself, and in X-Men<\/em> #4 we were told that Gorgon normally serves as the bodyguard for Xavier. The answer may simply be that Black Tom is a regular character in this book, and Gorgon isn’t…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 11.<\/strong> Black Tom reports to Sage and Beast. Sage concludes that the attackers actually wanted President Cocom’s son.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Black Tom is inordinately pleased with himself for having actually succeeded in his assigned task. To be fair, given his track record as an X-Men villain, it must be a novel experience for him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 12-14.<\/strong> Beast and Marvel Girl confront President Cocom.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The upshot is that the bad guys are scientists who were working on “telefloronics” (plant-based technology), and who’ve gone mad and possibly been taken over by “a hostile botanical intelligence”. We’re getting a few plant-based villains, such as Hordeculture over in X-Men<\/em>, no doubt linked to the X-Men’s new reliance on Krakoa and organic technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 15.<\/strong> A data page on Terra Verde. The gist is that the tiny country has poured its resources into the “telefloronics” technology, but never quite got it to work, and now finds itself outflanked by Krakoa. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 16-20.<\/strong> X-Force track down Cocom’s son Hadwin, who turns out to be in on the telefloronics scheme.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beast narrates this scene, comparing the telefloronic weaponry to the cyborg technology used in Omega Sentinels (humans who were turned into Sentinels against their will). Beast also spends a lot of time congratulating himself for being five moves ahead of the competition; this turns out to be ironic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 21-24.<\/strong> Beast deliberately lobotomises Hadwin to stop him developing telefloronics as a threat. But it seems to go wrong, and Hadwin turns into an outright telefloronic supervillain.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beast’s basic concern seems to be that telefloronics might actually work, and if it did then (a) it could weaponise the Earth itself against mutants, but also (b) it would destroy Krakoa’s economic leverage over the rest of the world. He keeps what he’s doing secret even from the rest of X-Force, and his narration is a surprisingly robust piece of self-justification.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beast has shown a degree of hubris before, but he was meant to have learned a bit of humility after his bizarre idea to bring the Silver Age X-Men to the present day. He’s much<\/em> more “ends justify the means” here than we’re used to seeing; whether that’s creative interpretation or a deliberate change is difficult to judge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

As always, this post contains spoilers, and the page numbers go by the digital edition. COVER \/ PAGE 1. The Beast beats up some G-men while reading a book. PAGES 2-3. Recap and credits. The story is “Intelligence”, by Benjamin Percy, Stephen Segovia and Guru-eFX. PAGES 4-6. X-Force are on a mission in Terra Verde, […]<\/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-5075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5075","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=5075"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5075\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5076,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5075\/revisions\/5076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}