{"id":5618,"date":"2020-09-17T22:42:41","date_gmt":"2020-09-17T21:42:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=5618"},"modified":"2020-09-17T22:42:41","modified_gmt":"2020-09-17T21:42:41","slug":"hellions-4-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=5618","title":{"rendered":"Hellions #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

HELLIONS #4<\/strong>
“Love Bleeds”<\/strong>
by Zeb Wells, Stephen Segovia & David Curiel<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

COVER \/ PAGE 1.<\/strong> Havok lashes out, with the Hellions lying defeated around him. Not exactly a scene which takes place during the issue. It seems to be a homage to the cover of Uncanny X-Men<\/em> vol 1 #270 (the first part of the X-Tinction Agenda crossover), in which Havok was a brainwashed Genoshan magistrate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 2.<\/strong> Once again, an epigraph from Nightcrawler. He seems to be addressing somebody (most likely the Quiet Council) and making an argument for the need to come to terms with past trauma.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

PAGES 3-4.<\/strong> Madelyne talks to Havok about demons.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Madelyne seems to be claiming that the boundary between Earth and Hell is literally eroded in Sinister’s old base. I’m not sure that really makes sense; Madelyne was living in Australia when she started to get corrupted by demons and turned into the Goblin Queen. She did<\/em> confront Sinister in the orphanage in Uncanny X-Men<\/em> vol 1 #241, and it’s something of a turning point where she goes from being a corrupted Madelyne into an outright villain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 5-6.<\/strong> Recap and credits. As pointed out in the comments last time, the former Scalphunter is now credited simply as “Greycrow”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 7-11.<\/strong> Wild Child and Psylocke rescue Nanny and Greycrow from the zombie Marauders.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The idea seems to be that Wild Child is obsessed with finding an alpha figure to follow, and has now settled on Psylocke. While this is going to be rather annoying for Psylocke, it does seem to make him a lot calmer and more manageable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of the Legacy Marauders, Arclight seems to be set up as the most sympathetic, or at least the one with the strongest friendship with Greycrow – that might become significant later, if and when the Legacy Marauders return.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Greycrow, meanwhile, tells us that his responsibility is to get the Marauders clones (“my people”) out and bring them home, which makes it sounds as if he’s going to rescue them. As we’ll see later, he actually intends to kill them, although in the Krakoa era that can be seen as clearing the decks to allow them to return in a more coherent form. This is presumably what he means when he tells Arclight that Madelyne did “nothing that can’t be fixed”, right before killing her. Psylocke essentially confirms later on that she knew what he was going to do but wasn’t going to stand in the way of him fulfilling his nature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE<\/strong> 12. <\/strong>The other Hellions find the waste processing centre.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nanny is genuinely appalled by what she finds there, which is perfectly in character – Nanny has always been trying<\/em> to help people, just filtered through a very distorted grip on reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 13-20.<\/strong> Greycrow shoots Madelyne, and Havok goes crazy and destroys the building.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Your wounded mind… It wasn’t me…”<\/strong> Havok was acting out of character, and clearly under outside influence, in issue #1. Apparently that wasn’t Madelyne after all, despite the fact that possessed Havok spoke in the same way as the Legacy Marauders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Greycrow<\/strong> shoots Madelyne, but it’s not 100% clear whether that’s because he’s treating her as a villain or as another distorted clone in need of a reset.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Madelyne.<\/strong> As she dies, she repeats the point that she was stressing in the last issue: her main concern is to be remembered as a character in her own right, not merely as some sort of continuity spin-off from Jean Grey. Havok is obviously very emotional about this, but as we’ll see, the Krakoan authorities don’t honour Madelyne’s wish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 21.<\/strong> Data page – a report from an unnamed writer, presumably the same one as in previous issues. As I said last time, Nightcrawler seems a likely contender, if only because he must keep getting mentioned in the epigraphs for some reason. On the other hand, the tone seems a bit distant for him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Emma Frost.<\/strong> We’re told that she’s been providing input to the Hellions’ progress and scanning Havok in particular. Emma voices concern about having messed up an attempt to fix Alex “last time”. That presumably refers to X-Men: Blue<\/em> #28, where she restored Havok’s normal personality after he was turned evil during the best-forgotten Axis<\/em> crossover. Havok said in that issue that he could still feel his “inverted” personality inside him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Legacy Marauders<\/strong> are to be returned – eventually with “as few of Mr Sinister’s genetic modifications as feasible”. Bearing in mind that the X-Men rely on Mr Sinister for the genetic material to carry out resurrections, that might be easier said than done. Greycrow is understandably not keen to have anything more to do with the revived Marauders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Madelyne Pryor.<\/strong> This is the big question – do they resurrect Madelyne? She clearly isn’t human, but is she to be classed as a mutant in her own right (as she so desperately wanted) or just a clone of Jean?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE<\/strong> 22.<\/strong> Greycrow and Psylocke talk.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Considering how little he wants to do with the Marauders, it’s odd that Greycrow is still wearing his Scalphunter costume. (Incidentally, Wild Child is wearing the costume of his Age of Apocalypse counterpart.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 23-25.<\/strong> Cyclops tells Havok that Madelyne won’t be revived.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Quiet Council decide that Madelyne isn’t<\/em> a mutant in her own right, but just a stray clone of Jean. This is true in a technical sense but doesn’t really accord with how any of us see the character. Obviously, it’s tied in with the resurrection protocols which are designed to stop multiple versions of the same character running around, something that would be bound to spark awkward questions about the soul which are best not thought about too closely. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s difficult to square this decision with the fact that two of the Stepford Cuckoos were resurrected at the start of the Krakoan era. The Cuckoos are clones of Emma Frost – what’s the difference? Is there some desire on the Quiet Council’s part to rationalise away Madelyne as Not Quite Real, which doesn’t apply to the Cuckoos?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mister Sinister<\/strong> says he “made eternal life possible for all Krakoans”. That’s overstating it, since he couldn’t do it without the Five and Professor X, but we’ve seen that he seems to be the source of all the DNA samples, which is presumably what’s being referred to here. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nanny has decided she’s going to kill Sinister, so outraged is she by what she saw in his lab. She’s so grossly outpowered by him that this seems absolutely suicidal, but we’ll see where it goes. More fundamentally, how do<\/em> you kill anyone on Krakoa? Sinister is on the Quiet Council – even if he dies, he’ll be back very quickly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 26-27.<\/strong> Reading order and credits. As always this month, the trailer text reads NEXT: X OF SWORDS.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. HELLIONS #4“Love Bleeds”by Zeb Wells, Stephen Segovia & David Curiel COVER \/ PAGE 1. Havok lashes out, with the Hellions lying defeated around him. Not exactly a scene which takes place during the issue. It seems to be a homage to […]<\/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-5618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5618","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=5618"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5618\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5620,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5618\/revisions\/5620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}