{"id":5409,"date":"2020-07-24T21:25:15","date_gmt":"2020-07-24T20:25:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=5409"},"modified":"2020-07-24T21:25:15","modified_gmt":"2020-07-24T20:25:15","slug":"hellions-2-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=5409","title":{"rendered":"Hellions #2 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

COVER \/ PAGE 1: <\/strong>Kwannon \/ Psylocke and Wild Child fighting while Mister Sinister looks smug about it. This doesn’t actually happen until the last panel, so yay spoilers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 2:<\/strong> Epigraph. A vaguely compassionate quotation from Nightcrawler (original, as far as I know). Another quotation from Nightcrawler also opened issue #1, which is interesting, since he’s not otherwise a presence in this issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 3: <\/strong>Recap page. Note that Kwannon is definitely now being billed as the new Psylocke. Oddly, Havok is described as “theoretically reformed”, which doesn’t really seem to fit with the back story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

PAGES 4-6: <\/strong>The Hellions arrive at the Nebraska State Home for Foundlings.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the orphanage secretly run by Mr Sinister, where Cyclops and Havok spent some of their childhood. Officially, the Hellions are there to demolish the orphanage itself, but the real goal is to get rid of Sinister’s cloning facility underneath. Strangely, the cover story doesn’t bother to explain why<\/em> an X-Men satellite team has come all the way from Krakoa to knock down an old orphanage. You’d have thought that people would be asking questions about that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“You’re the alpha…?”<\/strong> Wild Child seems to instinctively attack anyone in a position of authority that he regards as physically unimpressive. Note that Scalphunter – not Havok or Psylocke – is the one who steps in to restore order. It’s not obvious that he really belongs here. Remember, the ostensible justification for the Hellions is to provide an outlet for mutants with inherently antisocial powers. That applies well enough to Empath and Wild Child, but Scalphunter…?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 7.<\/strong> Credits. The story is “Blood Work” by Zeb Wells & Stephen Segovia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 8-14.<\/strong> The Hellions explore the orphanage.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The orphanage is in a ruined state, but still has beds and the odd toy lying around. So that we know it’s an orphanage, I guess.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Your Nanny can feel it…”<\/strong> Nanny is being manipulated by Empath, but she is <\/em>a psychic in her own right, so maybe she really is picking something up – or reasonably believes that she is. Or maybe she doesn’t mean it literally. To Nanny’s credit, she responds by at least trying to protect a teammate, albeit in a very distorted way. And she does actually apologise later, even though she was being mind controlled. By the standards of this team she’s almost reasonable – when she isn’t thinking about one of her obsessions, at any rate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I know you’re hungry!” <\/strong>Nanny seemed to be feeding Orphan-Maker in issue #1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Warned him.” Empath doesn’t last long in this mission. He’ll be restored from back-up, of course. But Scalphunter is right – he did warn Empath, very clearly, in the previous issue: “I think for a second you’re using your powers on one of us, at any time, for any reason … I’m gonna shoot you between the eyes.” Empath didn’t seem to think he meant it. He’ll know better next time, I suppose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Havok<\/strong> quite reasonably thinks he doesn’t belong on a team where this sort of thing happens. He’s obviously right, so is there something going on here beneath the surface?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

The other Havok in the mirror shard<\/strong> has the same speech balloons as our Havok did in issue #1 when he was being possessed. The woman draped over his shoulders is presumably Madelyne Pryor. I’m guessing his costume is supposed to evoke his Goblin Prince look from Inferno, where he wore a tattered version of his costume as Madelyne’s mind-altered sidekick – though it didn’t really look much like this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We’ll see later that the zombie Marauders speak in the same way, so presumably Madelyne was behind his behaviour last issue. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The zombie Marauders<\/strong> are Riptide, Arclight, Harpoon, Prism, Scrambler and Blockbuster. Other than Scalphunter himself, there are three members of the classic Marauders team missing – Malice, Sabretooth and Vertigo. Sabretooth is accounted for in the Pit of Exile, as of House of X<\/em> #6. Malice was a psychic entity and presumably not cloneable. Vertigo’s absence is more curious, since she’s shown up among cloned Marauders groups int he past. (However, Vertigo was a Savage Land Mutate, not a mutant – so she’s probably of less interest to Krakoa.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 15. <\/strong>Data page. An unnamed writer – presumably the same one as in the previous issue – reflects on what ought to be done about the Marauders. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“To call his resurrection protocols lax…”<\/strong> Krakoa has procedures designed to make sure that no mutant is restored from back-up unless they were definitely dead to begin with. This is meant to stop multiple versions of the same character from running around, causing confusion and raising awkward questions about whether a cloned character really is a continuation of the original soul (and whether that makes a difference). Mr Sinister used to clone the Marauders with great abandon, showing no interest in this sort of thing. (Obviously, at some point the Krakoans are bound to wind up reviving a mutant who isn’t actually dead, because nobody’s ever “definitely dead” in superhero comics.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Are these current Marauders the most natural versions of themselves? If not, don’t they deserve to be?”<\/strong> We’ve seen it suggested in the past that the Five are bringing people back from the dead in improved versions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prior to the Krakoan era, the Marauders were last seen in Uncanny X-Men <\/em>vol 5 #18, where they were all killed by Chamber. It’s not obvious how Scalphunter came back separately from the others, or indeed if these are a completely extra set of Marauders who existed alongside the ones who got killed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 16-24.<\/strong> Big fight.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scalphunter<\/strong> seems genuinely concerned for his teammates. We’re clearly going with the take where he’s, if not exactly decent, as least the most human and professional of the bunch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Goblin Queen<\/strong> strongly implies that the people who sent the Hellions knew she would be there. If she’s right, then might that be something to do with the reasons for sending Havok on this mission? As she points out, she’s been back for years and she’s been floating around the fringes of the X-books making very little impact. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She briefly removed the mouths of one of the Marauders at the end of the previous issue, as she does with Havok here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nanny’s armour<\/strong> can fly, so it wouldn’t normally get stuck like this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. COVER \/ PAGE 1: Kwannon \/ Psylocke and Wild Child fighting while Mister Sinister looks smug about it. This doesn’t actually happen until the last panel, so yay spoilers. PAGE 2: Epigraph. A vaguely compassionate quotation from Nightcrawler (original, as far […]<\/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-5409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5409","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=5409"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5409\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5412,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5409\/revisions\/5412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}