{"id":5185,"date":"2020-03-11T23:36:54","date_gmt":"2020-03-11T23:36:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=5185"},"modified":"2020-03-11T23:36:54","modified_gmt":"2020-03-11T23:36:54","slug":"x-men-8-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=5185","title":{"rendered":"X-Men #8 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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

COVER \/ PAGE 1.<\/strong> Cyclops and the New Mutants (specifically, Magma, Mirage, Wolfsbane and Magik) versus the Brood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 1.<\/strong> Magma asks Mirage about Rahne’s egg.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Akademos Habitat \/ The Sextant.<\/strong> The area of Krakoa where the members of the former teen teams live, including the New Mutants, as seen in their book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Magma<\/strong> was a member of the classic New Mutants, but didn’t go on their recent trip to space, which was depicted in the Hickman-written New Mutants<\/em> #1-2, #5 and #7. Mirage<\/strong> did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The King Egg.<\/strong> This is the King Egg that the Starjammers were trying to steal in New Mutants<\/em>. We’ll find out later that it’s a Brood <\/em>King Egg. The Brood are insectoid aliens who go around planting eggs in people in order to turn them into more Brood; they’ve been major X-Men villains since the 1980s. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

In New Mutants<\/em> #1, the New Mutants hitched a lift with the Starjammers in order to get to the Shi’ar Empire (so that they could visit Cannonball). The Starjammers had their own mission, to steal a King Egg from the “Benevolence” space station. A data page in that issue said: “Under no circumstance should a King Egg be removed from its containment shield. Interstellar pheromone production can result in unexpected swarm activity. Never introduce a King Egg into an alien biome.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Starjammers’ attempt to leave the New Mutants behind while they went on the raid backfired, and the New Mutants (specifically Wolfsbane) wound up reaching the egg first, without realising what it was. At the end of that issue, the Starjammers apparently escaped with the egg, leaving the New Mutants behind with the Shi’ar authorities. However, New Mutants<\/em> #2 reveals that Wolfsbane actually swapped out the egg and hid it inside Mondo’s body. Mondo still had it in issue #7 (it’s visible in the panel where he brings out the flower), and evidently he brought it back to earth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Corsair mentioned in New Mutants <\/em>#1 that they had a “very serious buyer” for the Egg, but we didn’t find out who it was. We’ll see later that it’s Ronan the Accuser.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 2-4.<\/strong> The Brood gather in their spawning ground to hunt for the King Egg.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

All as foreshadowed in the data page in New Mutants<\/em> #1. The giant whale-like creatures that the Brood live in are the Acanti<\/strong>, who were being used as Brood spaceships in their 1980s stories too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though the Brood are not a technological race, they are still a massive hivemind of the sort that was presented as a major civilisation by scale alone in Powers of X<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 5-6.<\/strong> Recap and credits. The story is “Swarm”, by Jonathan Hickman, Mahmud Asrar and Sunny Gho.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 7.<\/strong> A data page recapping what happened to Gladiator, Black Bolt and Vulcan at the end of the 2009 crossover War of Kings<\/em>. It’s a pretty straight recap of where matters stood at that time. We’ll see later in the issue that none of it stuck (though the Fault is still around, for what it’s worth).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 8.<\/strong> Vulcan dreams.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vulcan is dreaming of being stuck in the Fault after War of Kings.<\/em> The art is symbolic – Vulcan was the mad Shi’ar Emperor at the time, and wasn’t wearing his superhero costume. However, the Fault itself resembles the way it was shown in FF <\/em>#6 (a Hickman comic).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 9-11.<\/strong> Vulcan wakes from a drunken night. The Brood arrive.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This picks up on a reference in X-Men<\/em> #1, where the data page introducing the Summers House said: “While all mutants are technically welcome, Vulcan has been bringing home quite a few acquaintances from the Krakoan mainland who have stretched the acceptable boundaries of decorum.” For whatever reason, Vulcan seems now to be prone to heavy drinking, which wasn’t particularly a trait of his in the past. Perhaps it’s connected with the circumstances of his return. Judging from Scott and Alex’s dialogue, the art is meant to show the place looking much<\/em> more messed up than it actually does.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The two women on the other sofas are Petra<\/strong> and Sway<\/strong>. They’re teammates of Vulcan’s from X-Men: Deadly Genesis<\/em>, which retconned in a short-lived stand-in team of X-Men, trained in secret by Moira MacTaggert, who tried to rescue the X-Men from Krakoa in Giant-Size X-Men<\/em> #1 and seemingly got wiped out. Until now, Petra and Sway were the two members of that team who seemed to have actually<\/em> died, but evidently they’ve been brought back by resurrection. One might figure that Petra, Sway and Vulcan – who all had some of the most traumatic experiences of their lives on Krakoa – would be particularly uncomfortable with the place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I fear the fire within me has been extinguished.”<\/strong> As we saw in issue #1, and we see again later, this version of Vulcan has something of a tendency to grandiose dialogue, and talks incessantly about the fire inside him. It doesn’t seem like entirely stable behaviour. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It’s all I remember from…”<\/strong> Assuming that Vulcan has been resurrected in the normal Krakoan way, his memories would have been restored from the X-Men’s last back-up. That would not have included anything that happened to him in the Shi’ar Empire, since it would have been out of range – we’ve previously established that even the Orchis Forge station is out of range, and that’s in the same solar system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 12-13.<\/strong> Broo tells the New Mutants what their egg is.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Broo<\/strong> is a mutant member of the Brood, introduced in Astonishing X-Men<\/em> vol 3 #40. Basically, he has human notions of compassion and friendship, and wound up being taken in by the X-Men as a student during the Wolverine and the X-Men<\/em> era (where he was a prominent recurring character).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Broo mentions that he was at the “independence party” – presumably the one we saw in House of X <\/em>#6 and Powers of X <\/em>#6. He wasn’t visible in that issue, but sure, he could have been in the crowd. Evidently non-human mutants like him are welcome on Krakoa too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oya<\/strong> (or Idie Okonkwo) is a friend of his from those days; as well as being a regular in Wolverine and the X-Men<\/em>, she was also in Generation Hope <\/em>and All-New X-Men<\/em>, but she’s faded into the background since then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Krakoa<\/strong> is continuing to shift and change, Oya notes. Wolverine pointed out something similar in Wolverine<\/em> #1 and it seems to be more than just an ongoing building programme. Broo, who is not a resident of the island, is uncomfortable with that, but the conversation swiftly moves on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 14-20.<\/strong> The Brood attack Krakoa. Cyclops, Havok, Marvel Girl, Vulcan and Broo set off into space with the King Egg to lure them away.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Captain \/ Commander.<\/strong> Cyclops and Magik’s formal ranks as Krakoan defence officers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vulcan<\/strong> is still<\/em> blathering about fire and insists on comparing the spaceship to the fire within him. He did the same thing in issue #1 when talking about a barbecue, but the analogy was less strained in that case. Specifically, Vulcan used the line about fire being fire in that issue too. It’s much clearer here that Cyclops is tired of this meaningless fire blather and (impatiently) indulging Vulcan – though that begs the question of why he’s bringing Vulcan with him on this mission, when by the look of it he’s in no state to be trusted with anything of importance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 21.<\/strong> Data page. This is an update of the previous page, to tell us what Gladiator, Black Bolt and Vulcan have been up to more recently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Krakoan text<\/strong> reads “UPDATE”, if you couldn’t figure that out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gladiator<\/strong>‘s text refers to the plot of recent issues of New Mutants<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Black Bolt<\/strong>‘s return from his apparent death in War of Kings<\/em> is treated here as a mystery. In fact, Hickman’s own FF <\/em>#7 (2011) has a flashback which shows Black Bolt surviving within the Fault, fighting a monster, and ultimately being rescued by the Inhumans’ teleporting dog Lockjaw. But the Shi’ar author wouldn’t know that. The terms “Midnight King” and “Celestial Messiah” comes from Hickman’s Fantastic Four<\/em> and Avengers<\/em> runs, though I’m not familiar enough with them to say whether they have any particular significance here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vulcan<\/strong>, we’re simply told, “never died”. That would make sense on one level – Black Bolt wasn’t killed by the T-bomb, he just fell into the Fault. So maybe the same applied to Vulcan. But in that case, who’s the guy with the X-Men, and why doesn’t he remember anything? Is he the original Vulcan, escaped from the Fault with amnesia? Or did the X-Men resurrect Vulcan because they assumed he was dead, when the original still out there somewhere?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 23-24.<\/strong> Sunspot persuades the Kree Accuser to let the Starjammers go so that they can collect the King Egg.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This Accuser is presumably the customer for whom the Starjammers were stealing the Egg is in New Mutants<\/em> #1. He’s presumably not<\/em> the best-known Accuser, Ronan, who was apparently mercy-killed by Black Bolt in Death of the Inhumans<\/em> #3 (a grinding bloodbath of a series if ever there was one). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sunspot<\/strong> is annoyed with the Starjammers for betraying him in New Mutants<\/em> #1. New Mutants<\/em> #7 established him with a second home in the Shi’ar Empire so that he could hang out with his good friend Cannonball. The woman in the last panel of this scene is Izzy Kane<\/strong> (Smasher), Cannonball’s wife. The flying kid is their son Josiah Guthrie.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 25.<\/strong> Gladiator is alerted to the Kree Accuser’s presence.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gladiator<\/strong> is still running the Shi’ar Empire for now, while Xandra is brought up to speed in order to take over. Like a good medieval king, he’s enjoying a nice bit of hunting by gunning down the Brood. The two Imperial Guard members are Manta<\/strong> (with the cape) and Oracle<\/strong> (in pink).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kubark<\/strong>, also known as Kid Gladiator<\/strong>, is Gladiator’s teenage son, and a major character from Wolverine and the X-Men<\/em>. He’s basically an immature version of Gladiator – in fact, his early appearances presented him as a dangerous maniac, but Wolverine and the X-Men<\/em> was always a bit over the top, so you may have to translate that a bit for saner titles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 26-27.<\/strong> Trailers. The Krakoan reads NEXT: INTERGALACTIC TROUBLE.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. COVER \/ PAGE 1. Cyclops and the New Mutants (specifically, Magma, Mirage, Wolfsbane and Magik) versus the Brood. PAGE 1. Magma asks Mirage about Rahne’s egg. The Akademos Habitat \/ The Sextant. The area of Krakoa where the members of the […]<\/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-5185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5185","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=5185"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5185\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5186,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5185\/revisions\/5186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}