{"id":5504,"date":"2020-08-19T22:48:15","date_gmt":"2020-08-19T21:48:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=5504"},"modified":"2020-08-19T22:48:15","modified_gmt":"2020-08-19T21:48:15","slug":"empyre-x-men-4-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=5504","title":{"rendered":"Empyre: X-Men #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

This is the final issue of Empyre: X-Men<\/em>, so a proper review will follow. Meanwhile…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

EMPYRE: X-MEN #4<\/strong>
“Un-Ring” <\/strong>
by Jonathan Hickman, Jorge Molina, Lucas Werneck & Adriano di Benedetto<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everyone else has had their fun on the middle chapters, but Jonathan Hickman’s back for the (vaguely) serious bit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

COVER \/ PAGE 1.<\/strong> Magik, Angel, Wolverine and M\/Penance being consumed by plants. Wolverine does not appear in this issue. The glowing sword sticking out of the rock is presumably Magik’s Soulsword.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 2-3.<\/strong> Recap and credits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 4-5.<\/strong> Flashback. The Scarlet Witch realises she’s brought back a bunch of zombies and beats a hasty retreat.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

PAGES 6-10.<\/strong> Still in flashback. The Scarlet Witch asks Doctor Strange for help.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I did what you said. I rang a bigger bell.”<\/strong> In the opening scene of issue #1, the Scarlet Witch asked Doctor Strange for advice on how she could alter history so that M-Day never happened. He told her that it was impossible because she was asking how to “unring a bell”. His advice was to atone for what she had done by making a bigger positive contribution instead. Wanda decided that the way to do that was to resurrect the millions of mutants who had been slaughtered on Genosha at the beginning of the Grant Morrison run. As Strange makes clear (and as the story title also spells out), this is just another example of the same error.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I’d start with the idea that you thought you could resurrect sixteen million dead people… You tried to undo death as if you – or any of us – have any power in that realm.”<\/strong> The unspoken point here, of course, is that this is exactly what the X-Men are doing on Krakoa. They claim to have defeated death. Strange is telling us in no uncertain terms that you can’t do that, or at least not without alarming side effects. Shhh – can you hear the Deafening Klaxon of Foreshadowing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vashurrnu<\/strong> is new.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wong<\/strong> is Dr Strange’s long-running aide, sidekick and sounding board.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Le Coucou<\/strong> is a genuine New York restaurant<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 11.<\/strong> Flashback. Doctor Strange and the Scarlet Witch gather the ingredients for his spell.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 12-13.<\/strong> Flashback. Dr Strange does his spell on Genosha.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Basically, the best Strange can do is make it so that the Scarlet Witch’s staff will dissipate in around a month, at which point the dead will go back to rest. In the meantime, he sets a barrier around the island to stop any of the zombies leaving. You’d have thought the sea would do that for most of them, but they are<\/em> mutants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Given that we must be in the Krakoa era by this point, you’d think that Dr Strange would let the X-Men know about this, if only to politely suggest that they leave the place along for the next month and for heaven’s sake keep the gates shut. But no.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 14-16.<\/strong> Everyone gawps at the giant plant zombie.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aside from Magik<\/strong>, still corrupted and carrying both the Staff and her Soulsword, we have three of the Stepford Cuckoos <\/strong>(a fourth can be seen later), Exodus, Kid Omega, Mr Sinister, Lady Mastermind<\/strong>, Mastermind<\/strong>, the Multiple Man, M, <\/strong>all four of Hordeculture, the Angel<\/strong> and Nightcrawler<\/strong>. Later on we get a glimpse of Selene <\/strong>too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 17.<\/strong> Beast quietly swipes Hordeculture’s Krakoan hacking technology.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In character with his behaviour in X-Force<\/em>, but a pretty sensible thing to do anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 18-28.<\/strong> Beast lets the resurrected Explodey Boy go through the gate to speak to his zombie counterpart, who then blows up the giant zombie.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hmm. Let’s be honest, in plot terms, this is all a bit weak. Why does Explodey Boy want to go and see himself as a zombie? Why does Beast know or care about that? Why does he send him through? How big a threat can the giant zombie be if it can be killed in one explosion by a background comedy character? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still… the point of all this is to confront us directly with the fact that the X-Men were busily resurrecting all these Genoshan mutants, many of whom are already<\/em> alive and well on Krakoa. But… Wanda has kind-of-sort-of revived the originals, who seem to retain something of their personalities. So… what’s going on here? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s played here as if the zombies aren’t quite “real”, but at the same time we’re obviously meant to care about the zombie version being touched to hear that things are going so well in his new life. And of course the whole plot of the series is that resurrecting the dead is a really, really bad idea that fundamentally messes with nature. Given how often the resurrection device has been used at this stage, including for major characters, we can be pretty confident that Marvel are not heading towards “resurrected characters are mere soulless copies” – at least when the original is genuinely dead so that the soul is around to be re-used – but it seems increasingly likely that the Hickman run is going to end with something about the whole resurrection process proving to be horrifyingly disastrous, so that it can’t be used again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arachnidor<\/strong> is new, and boy, her power sounds utterly useless. That must be great for your place on the Krakoan pecking order.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 29-31.<\/strong> Magik remains crazy for a couple of pages until the spell wears off.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which, come to think of it, means that zombie Explodey Boy’s heroic sacrifice was ultimately pointless because the zombie giant would have keeled over in a couple of minutes anyway. But hey. He didn’t know that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 32-34.<\/strong> Epilogue.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A weirdly sober ending to a ridiculous miniseries, reminding us that Genosha is what happened to a previous attempt at a mutant island society, that “There will always be a price”, and suggesting that the cycle will always repeat. Meanwhile, a sorrowful Scarlet Witch evidently remains determined to purge her guilt with some new, no-doubt-disastrous plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 35.<\/strong> Trailer page.<\/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 Empyre: X-Men, so a proper review will follow. Meanwhile… EMPYRE: X-MEN #4“Un-Ring” by Jonathan Hickman, Jorge Molina, Lucas Werneck & Adriano di Benedetto Everyone else has had their fun on the middle chapters, but Jonathan […]<\/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-5504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5504","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=5504"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5504\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5508,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5504\/revisions\/5508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}