{"id":5413,"date":"2020-07-25T12:38:04","date_gmt":"2020-07-25T11:38:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=5413"},"modified":"2020-07-25T12:38:04","modified_gmt":"2020-07-25T11:38:04","slug":"empyre-x-men-1-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=5413","title":{"rendered":"Empyre: X-Men #1 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

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

EMPYRE<\/strong> is the big crossover event of spring<\/s> summer 2020. It’s principally an Avengers <\/em>\/ Fantastic Four<\/em> story, so the X-Men are on the margins. This is a four issue tie-in series. X-Men<\/em> #10 and #11 are also Empyre<\/em> tie-ins, and X-Men<\/em> #10 was originally supposed to have come out first, but, well, times change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the purposes of this series (at least so far), all you really need to know about Empyre<\/em> is that a race of alien plants called the Cotati are invading Earth. The Cotati come from the Kree’s back story in 1970s Avengers<\/em> stories, and traditionally they were cosmic peace types, so something is obviously up – but that’s probably not this book’s concern.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fact that the Cotati are plant people might potentially play into the X-Men’s current reliance on Krakoan plant-based technology, but you surely didn’t need me to point that out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

COVER \/ PAGE 1.<\/strong> Angel, Magik and Penance, surrounded by ominous plants. The Krakoan text above the X-Men logo reads “EMPYRE”, obviously enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 1.<\/strong> The Scarlet Witch visits Dr Strange.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wanda is asking the Marvel Universe’s Sorcerer Supreme if he can help her alter history to erase M-Day, the event in House of M<\/em> #7 where she used her reality-altering powers to depower almost all the world’s mutants. Strange is not being quite accurate when he says that she erased a million mutants from existence; they remained alive but depowered. Strange’s rather garbled reasoning seems to boil down to this: Wanda’s powers are too tied up with the nature of reality for her to alter her own personal history, and certainly not when the consequences would be on that sort of scale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 2-3.<\/strong> Wanda begins her quest.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Genosha.<\/strong> Unfortunately, as we’ll see, Strange’s advice to Wanda is that instead of trying to undo M-Day, she should atone for it by doing something positive which outweighs it. Wanda’s solution – evidently put in train before the emergence of Krakoa – is to try and resurrect the millions of Genoshan mutants who were slaughtered by Sentinels in New X-Men<\/em> #115.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Genosha was the previous mutant island kingdom, the one nobody on Krakoa likes to talk about much because it ended in absolute disaster. Far from creating a safe haven for mutants, it just gathered them all together in an easy target. People allude to this from time to time, but it’s rarely addressed head on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The statue in the background depicts Magneto and Professor X, and was first seen in New X-Men<\/em> #132. It was originally a memorial to Magneto, constructed from the remains of a giant Sentinel when he was believed to have died in the slaughter; Xavier was added to it by Polaris when she rebuilt it in Uncanny X-Men<\/em> #442.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The rest of Wanda’s magical quest seems to be generic stuff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 4-5.<\/strong> Wanda tries to revive the dead.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You’ll never guess, but it goes wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 6-15.<\/strong> The Cotati arrive on Genosha and meet the zombies.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is all rather silly, in a good way. It’s plants and zombies, for heavens sake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wakanda<\/strong> is the homeland of the Black Panther, serving here mainly as an excuse for the Cotati to have some vague reason to focus on this part of the planet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“There’s also a shocking amount of ash in the soil.”<\/strong> Because of the slaughter, presumably.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vibranium<\/strong> is a standard feature of Black Panther stories, and serves as the plot justification for Wakanda’s remarkable security and prosperity. It’s also an obvious reason for the Cotati to be interested in it. The Wakandans do indeed have a “ritualised animal religion” based on a panther god.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 16.<\/strong> Intentionally ridiculous “data page”. This book know how seriously to take an invasion of killer plants. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The small print reads “Again the pretender” and “meat is murder”. The vegetarian slogan is pretty self-explanatory. Several Hickman stories have had references to Wanda as “the pretender”, presumably because she used to be a mutant, but was retconned into having a different origin (mainly because Marvel wanted to detach here from the X-Men mythos for movie-related reasons).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 17.<\/strong> Credits. No story title. The creators are Jonathan Hickman, Tini Howard & Matteo Buffagni.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 18-21.<\/strong> Magik lures Angel and M away from their pharmaceutical licensing meeting.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“They might never escape that kind of predatory employment.”<\/strong> Naturally, all jobs are optional and fulfilling on the Krakoan utopia. Warren is also repeating the highly dubious claim that mutant nature is in some way different from “human nature”, something that Krakoa-era mutants keep insisting to be true, despite a conspicuous absence of any evidence for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Noblesse Pharamceuticals.<\/strong> There actually is a “Noblesse Pharma”, but it seems to be a pharmacy in Bucharest. So probably a coincidence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Serval Industries, <\/strong>on the other hand, does have an X-Men connection – it was the corporation that sponsored a version of X-Factor, as seen in All-New X-Factor<\/em> in 2014.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Did Sunspot tell you he had all this X-Corp stuff figured out and then bail for space?”<\/strong> We were told in New Mutants<\/em> #2 that Sunspot was in charge of X-Corp, though what exactly it did, and how exactly he was involved with it, was always a bit vague. Since Sunspot moved to the Shi’ar Empire a few issues later, Angel and M have apparently taken over as the businessmen (presumably alongside Emma Frost, who’s supposed to represent the legitimate side of the Krakoan pharmaceutical trade). Angel has some actual business experience, and M is… well, she’s from a rich background, and I guess Hickman figures that’ll do to fit in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Magik<\/strong> has less than no interest in monitoring this meeting, and you have to wonder why Xavier thought she was a sensible person to send for the job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 22-24.<\/strong> The Krakoans discuss trouble with the Genoshan gate.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Black Tom<\/strong> is linked to the vegetation of Krakoa, as seen in various issues of X-Force<\/em>. I think this is the first time he’s identified the gates<\/em> as his, though. He does make the reasonable point that the X-Men are planting Krakoan extensions all over the place, and not really in a position to look after all of them. Magik makes a similar complaint in the next scene (“I feel we spend a lot of time teleporting around to fix the gates”).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We canna lose ye again, Professor!”<\/strong> Referring to his assassination in X-Force<\/em> #1. Xavier never suggested he was going to go to Genosha in person. Black Tom’s agitation is consistent with his depiction in X-Force<\/em>, where extended exposure to Krakoa seems to be driving him mad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We simply don’t have enough good mutants, Angel.”<\/strong> Interesting. There are an awful lot of mutants on Krakoa, but Xavier seems privately willing to admit that the talent pool of people for the really important jobs is quite thin. That might explain how a lunatic like Black Tom ended up with the security job. Or, of course, Xavier is just manipulatively telling Warren what he’d like to hear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At any rate, this is also the reason why Angel’s only allowed to take one other mutant to Krakoa to join him, Magik and M – and why he ends up choosing the Multiple Man, who probably wouldn’t have been his first choice otherwise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 25-32.<\/strong> Big fight on Genosha.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Predictably, Multiple Man gets the gate working again just as everyone realises that this might not be a good idea with a horde of mutant zombies shambling towards it. I’m honestly not sure what’s meant to be happening with the slime that appears on Multiple Man’s hands – the visual storytelling is hopelessly unclear at that point and on the next page. I guess it’s meant to be Hordeculture firing through the gate?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hordeculture<\/strong> are four old women who are genius botanists; they previously appeared in X-Men<\/em> #3, which is a bit of a divisive issue depending on whether you find them funny or not. That issue already established that Hordeculture had worked out how to hack the gates for their own use. Their names are Lily Leymus, Augusta Bromes, Edith Scutch and Opal Vetiver. For all the surface ridiculousness, they’re fundamentally traditional mad scientist villains (plantlife edition).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 33.<\/strong> Another “data” page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 34-35.<\/strong> Trailers. The Krakoan reads NEXT: ZOMBIE HORDES.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and the page numbers go by the digital edition. EMPYRE is the big crossover event of spring summer 2020. It’s principally an Avengers \/ Fantastic Four story, so the X-Men are on the margins. This is a four issue tie-in series. X-Men #10 and #11 are also Empyre tie-ins, […]<\/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-5413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5413","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=5413"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5413\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5416,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5413\/revisions\/5416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}