{"id":5360,"date":"2020-07-08T21:31:04","date_gmt":"2020-07-08T20:31:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=5360"},"modified":"2020-07-08T21:31:04","modified_gmt":"2020-07-08T20:31:04","slug":"x-force-10-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=5360","title":{"rendered":"X-Force #10 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 1 \/ COVER.<\/strong> Black Tom Cassidy in attacking mode. This is another issue which doesn’t call for much in the way of annotation since it’s mainly the climax of plot threads from X-Force<\/em> itself, but we’ll run through it quickly anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 2-5.<\/strong> Wolverine, Domino and Kid Omega enter a Terra Verden temple and get separated by the evil plants.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wolverine and Domino discuss her apparent decision to be restored to life without traumatic memories. Regular readers will know that this isn’t what happened – in issue #8, the dying Domino specifically told Colossus that she wanted to “remember everything” when she was revived. Colossus clearly lied about her instructions. Wolverine does, however, remember her expressing a different opinion previously – but whether he’s suspicious about how this came to pass, or simply doubting the wisdom of the decision from someone who must have been changing her mind frequently, is less clear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Interestingly, Domino also knows she was telling people that she wanted to keep her memories – though it’s not clear whether she remembers these conversations or has simply been told about them. At any rate, Domino rationalises these decisions away by arguing that her desire to remember her trauma could itself have been a symptom of the trauma – which may even be right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wolverine’s quest to recover his lost memories was a recurring plot point in the 80s and 90s. It was finally closed off when he got all of his memories back in House of M<\/em> in 2005. Evidently he doesn’t regret getting them back, and sees them as helping to ground his sense of identity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 6-7.<\/strong> Recap and credits. This is “The Deadly Garden” by Benjamin Percy, Joshua Cassara and Guru-eFX.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 8. <\/strong>Data page. The Beast tries to convince himself that his botched attempt to disrupt Terra Verde’s telefloronic technology was definitely a good thing, because they’ll learn from the experience. (As we’ll see later on, he seems to be clinging to the belief that he’s only killed one person, though this surely has to be denial, given the information that prompted X-Force to go back to Terra Verde in the first place.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beast is now telling us that telefloronics are now based on some sort of indigenous plant-control system dating back thousands of years, the knowledge of which was largely lost during colonisation. Apparently the local plants were somehow symbiotic with humans, or could be made to be so. Beast tries to make the plants dominant in the expectation that this would turn the human host into a vegetable; the result has been to give dominance to the plants’ collective intelligence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Ak’ – the punishing Olmec deity”.<\/strong> The Olmec were a Mexican civilisation a couple of thousand years ago. As best as I can tell, the name Ak’ is an invention; relatively little is known about the Olmec religion, beyond visual depictions of supernatural entities in some surviving artwork.<\/a> Beast seems to know more about this religion than real-world experts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 9. <\/strong>Black Tom psyches himself up to leave Krakoa.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We already know that his bonding with Krakoa is destabilising his mind, but clearly he’s becoming increasingly reluctant to be separated from the place – though he does ultimately go through the portal to help X-Force.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 10-13.<\/strong> Domino in the temple.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speaks for itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 14-15.<\/strong> Marvel Girl confronts the Beast.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beast attempts to justify his actions on the basis that he’s only harmed one person, which must surely be wishful thinking by this point in the story. More fundamentally, Beast is trying to rationalise his behaviour by taking X-Force’s very remit as a licence for dishonesty. Jean (correctly) rejects this on the grounds that X-Force’s set-up calls for mutual trust and candour – but she seems uncomfortable enough with the entire thing that she quits the team later in the issue. (It’s a little unclear why she even joined, given what the book has done with her, but perhaps she isn’t out of the cast just yet.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Note, by the way, that Jean says that the lies are “for the humans” – given X-Force’s role, surely they’re for the entire civilian population of Krakoa too, but that’s not what comes to mind for her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 16.<\/strong> Another data page, which is simply a prose section explaining what Jean telepathically conveys to Beast. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The word at the bottom of the page, \u041b\u0435\u0442\u043e\u043f\u0438\u0441\u0435\u0446, means “chronicler” or “scribe”. In issue #7, the Beast noted in his logbook that he had found a scrap of artisan paper on his desk with that same word written on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Before, when the mutants lost Xavier and Cerebro…”<\/strong> The assassination of Professor X in issue #1. He got better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 17-23.<\/strong> Marvel Girl and Sage arrive in Terra Verde to help the rest of X-Force defeat the plants.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Black Tom<\/strong> turns out to be ineffective against these plants, presumably because they have a mind of their own anyway. Jean points out that his hope for a redemption arc is severely misplaced in X-Force<\/em>, given the sort of team that it is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s not very clearly explained, but the idea seems to be that Jean telepathically combines Black Tom’s powers with Sage’s programming capability to regain control of the plants for real, but this all seems very hand-waving. Even the status of the Terra Verdan public is left unclear at the end of the issue – Jean says that “maybe they can be free now”, but for some reason we’re never told.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Krakoa feeds on the few for the benefit of the many.”<\/strong> Does it? We were told back in X-Men <\/em>#3 that it feeds a small amount from each mutant, so that across the whole population, nobody notices. But we were also told that it needs the equivalent of two mutant lives a year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 24-25.<\/strong> Logan and Jean in the hot tub.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jean makes the point that X-Force’s set-up seems inconsistent with the idea that mutants are meant to be evolving into a new and better society. Logan doesn’t appear to buy in to all that stuff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 26-27.<\/strong> Trailers. The Krakoan reads NEXT: CODE RED, presumably referring to Omega Red.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. PAGE 1 \/ COVER. Black Tom Cassidy in attacking mode. This is another issue which doesn’t call for much in the way of annotation since it’s mainly the climax of plot threads from X-Force itself, but we’ll run through it quickly […]<\/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,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5360","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=5360"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5360\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5362,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5360\/revisions\/5362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}