{"id":5417,"date":"2020-07-26T11:39:51","date_gmt":"2020-07-26T10:39:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=5417"},"modified":"2020-07-26T11:39:51","modified_gmt":"2020-07-26T10:39:51","slug":"x-men-fantastic-four-4-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=5417","title":{"rendered":"X-Men \/ Fantastic Four #4 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

This is the final issue of the miniseries. I’ll review the whole thing soon, but in the meantime let’s cover the last chapter. Like most final chapters, it doesn’t really call for much annotation…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

COVER \/ PAGE 1.<\/strong> Dr Doom reaches out for Franklin; Kitty reaches through Doom to get to him first. All of the issues of X-Men \/ Fantastic Four<\/em> have had similar group shots on the cover, but this is the first one to feature Doom and to have a black background instead of a white one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 2-3.<\/strong> Everyone starts fighting Doom’s “Latviathan” Sentinels.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“they ignored my orders and murdered a Latverian mutant”.<\/strong> The X-Men did indeed ignore his orders, but they killed a mutant who had been sealed inside what appeared to be a Doombot. Pretty obviously, Doom was engineering this in order to have a pretext to set his Sentinels on them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

“Doom’s declared war on mutants”<\/strong> Doom would presumably say that he’s attacking Krakoa, and reject the suggestion that the two are interchangeable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 4-5.<\/strong> Recap and credits. This is “Welcome to the New World” by Chip Zdarsky, Terry Dodson, Rachel Dodson and Ranson Getty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 6-17.<\/strong> Franklin ultimately chooses to break away from Doom’s treatment in order to stop the Sentinels.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This all maintains the parallels with the original Fantastic Four vs X-Men<\/em> miniseries, in which it was terribly important that Kitty’s treatment shouldn’t be interrupted. In the original, Franklin made sure that Kitty’s treatment was completed; in this one, Kitty – the only character who has treated Franklin’s autonomy as a prime concern – encourages him to leave. Anyone reading this series really should dig out Fantastic Four vs X-Men <\/em>on Marvel Unlimited for the full picture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Doom seems to be engineering Franklin’s dilemma himself, though it’s not entirely obvious what he gains from doing so. The idea seems to be that he wants to convince Franklin that neither his family nor the Krakoans have his interests at heart, so that Franklin will reject both teams, see the treatment through, and then run off with Doom instead. It’s a bit of a stretch. Needless to say, Doom has failed to anticipate that the teams will unite effectively against an immediate threat, like proper superheroes. You’d think he’d know how team-up stories worked by now. Or maybe he just doesn’t care what the outcome is, as long as he gets to run some tests on Franklin – see epilogue 2.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Predictably, this all winds up with everyone friends again, and Franklin agreeing to live with his family while visiting Krakoa through the gates. But we’re not quite finished yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kitty Pryde<\/strong> can apparently resist whatever Doom did to interfere with her powers in earlier issues, but he responds by shifting her powers into reverse and making her “heavier than stone”. This isn’t really how Kitty’s powers are meant to work – the technobabble is usually something about passing her molecules between the molecules of other objects – but it is<\/em> standard for the Vision, Marvel’s other intangibility-based hero. The Vision’s powers are usually explained (equally illogically) as being something to do with density manipulation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Charles and his ‘nation of betters’…”<\/strong> As in previous issues, Doom seems particularly irked by Krakoa’s incessant proclamations of mutant superiority – partly, no doubt, because he expects to be recognised as superior himself. But he undoubtedly has a point that the Krakoans won’t stop banging on about this dubious might-makes-right claim. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Latviathans.”<\/strong> Doom insists that his Sentinel knock-offs are not anti-mutant robots, but general protectors of Latveria. That might be right, but they’re clearly intended to protect Latveria against Krakoa, if not necessarily against mutants in general. Doom seems surprisingly willing to let the Latverian mutants go with the X-Men after all – maybe he has no more use for them after his plan failed, but more likely Doom just knows that he’s outgunned by the X-Men and he’s putting on a show of indifference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 18.<\/strong> Data page. Reed’s notes on Krakoan gates. Note that Reed seems to be aware of the Atlantic Krakoa as well as the Pacific one – I’m not sure whether that’s deliberate or whether it’s just been taken from one of Hickman’s maps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There’s obviously a bit of a tension between the text, which says that Krakoan gates have emerged in most of the major cities on Earth, and the graphic, which shows eight in the whole of North America (but two in New Zealand!).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 19.<\/strong> Epilogue 1. The Beast runs tests on Franklin.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The X-Men can’t solve Franklin’s problem, but for some reason he seems to expend less energy when he uses his powers on Krakoa. There’s no apparent reason for this, and no reason to mention it unless it’s going to be a plot point down the line. (It surely can’t be that Beast is comparing with measures taken when Doom was siphoning Franklin’s power; there must be other baseline measurements from Reed.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 20.<\/strong> Epilogue 2. Valeria Richards has a video call with Dr Doom.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Doom was trying to siphon off some of Franklin’s power, and also to send a probe into the dimension from which he draws his power (or ought to).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Doom rejects the idea that mutants are the next step in evolution; he refuses to accept that the next step in human development would be purely about physical power rather than mental development. Obviously, this is partly because Doom is unable to accept that he could be on the wrong side of history. But bear in mind that his theory here – mutants will spark intellectual development from humans, which will be the real future – is essentially what Moira MacTaggert saw in her previous timelines. The future isn’t mutants, but smarter humans making better machines. In those terms, Doom is basically right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Valeria seems entirely relaxed about the prospect of humans being replaced by mutants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 21-23.<\/strong> Epilogue 3. Xavier wipes Reed’s memory of how to make his device for cloaking the mutant gene.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the device that Reed used in issue #1 to stop Franklin from using the Krakoan gates. The scene is a sting in the tail to the otherwise happy resolution; not only does Xavier put a mental block on Reed (and makes sure he remembers it), he apparently expects a civilised dinner party immediately afterwards. So the X-Men close the series by reiterating that they’re in charge now. You can see why they don’t want this device running around, but by choosing to neither<\/em> do it secretly nor <\/em>try to get Reed’s consent, they ultimately come across as sinister.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Note that Xavier removes Cerebro before doing this. That’s something he very rarely does, and there’s presumably some significance to it (even in a satellite X-book like this one). Is there some reason that he doesn’t want a record of this? Does he need to remove Cerebro in order to fully use his psi-powers for more difficult psi-stunts?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 24-26.<\/strong> The issue ends with three data pages fading out, as Reed’s memory of how to build his Code-X device is removed. Evidently the X-Men do something to remove his other records of this device as well – perhaps that’s why Magneto’s there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. This is the final issue of the miniseries. I’ll review the whole thing soon, but in the meantime let’s cover the last chapter. Like most final chapters, it doesn’t really call for much annotation… COVER \/ PAGE 1. Dr Doom reaches […]<\/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-5417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5417","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=5417"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5417\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5419,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5417\/revisions\/5419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}