{"id":5718,"date":"2020-10-08T22:57:00","date_gmt":"2020-10-08T21:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=5718"},"modified":"2020-10-09T22:25:01","modified_gmt":"2020-10-09T21:25:01","slug":"marauders-13-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=5718","title":{"rendered":"Marauders #13 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

MARAUDERS #13 <\/strong>
“X of Swords, chapter 5” <\/strong>
by Vita Ayala, Matteo Lolli & Edgar Delgado<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

COVER \/ PAGE 1:<\/strong> Storm, Black Panther and Shuri (who are in this issue), plus Wolverine (who has a cameo) and Jean Grey (who isn’t in it at all).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 2:<\/strong> The Chadwick Boseman tribute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 3: <\/strong>An epigraph from a grateful person who was rescued by Storm. It’s credited to “S.A. Graham, Onslaught survivor”. I can only assume it’s someone who crossed paths with Storm during the Onslaught<\/em> crossover of 1996.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 4-6.<\/strong> Storm and Kate Pryde talk.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Page 4 panel 2 <\/strong>is a flashback to X-Factor <\/em>#4, and Polaris delivering Saturnyne’s cryptic clues about who should get which sword. This one was very obviously about Storm, who was worshipped as a goddess in her youth, and queen of Wakanda more recently. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

As we’ll see, Storm recognises the rest of the clue as relating to the Wakandan sword “Skybreaker”. It’s a culturally important artefact for the Wakandans, so she’s expecting to burn a lot of bridges by trying to get hold of it. Hence her comment that taking it will bring about “An end, I think. Heartache and strife, at the least.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Storm says she has to face this alone<\/strong>, but that hasn’t been stated as one of the rules of Saturnyne’s contest. Maybe it’s a combination of personal responsibility and feeling uniquely placed to take advantage of her access to Wakanda. Or maybe it’s just one of those things that characters insist on saying in solo issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The eight panels running down the sides of pages 5 and 6<\/strong> are a recap of Storm’s history. In sequence, they show:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  • Baby Ororo with her parents David and N’Dar\u00e9 Monroe, presumably in Harlem (where they were living when she was born). Strictly speaking I think this is an original scene, but we’ve seen Ororo as a baby before – there’s a scene of her in the maternity ward in Uncanny Origins<\/em> #9, for example.<\/li>
  • Ororo in the wreckage of her family home in Cairo after the bombing that killed her parents. This scene comes from X-Men<\/em> #102, and originally it was meant to be the Suez Crisis of 1956. That got retconned out due to sliding time within a few years in favour of something vaguer and more generic.<\/li>
  • Ororo as a pickpocket on the streets of Cairo, as first seen in X-Men<\/em> #113.<\/li>
  • Young Ororo bringing rain to some grateful villagers, setting up her time being worshipped as a “goddess” – which is how she was introduced in Giant-Size X-Men<\/em> #1. I’ve never been comfortable with this phase of her history, which seems to play off some very condescending tropes.<\/li>
  • A generic shot of Ororo in costume as Storm, and training in the Danger Room.<\/li>
  • Storm defeats Callisto to become leadership of the Morlocks in 1983’s Uncanny X-Men<\/em> #170. <\/li>
  • Storm teaching students at the Jean Grey School; she’s wearing her costume from X-Men<\/em> vol 5, the Brian Wood run that began in 2013.<\/li>
  • Storm greeting a newly reincarnated mutant on Krakoa.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n

    This skips thirty years of comics after the Callisto panel – I’m a little surprised that there’s no panel of her actually leading <\/em>the X-Men, or anything about Black Panther.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    PAGES 7-8.<\/strong> Flashback to the origin of Skybreaker.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Basically, Skybreaker is the first sword forged by the first Wakandan king using the vibranium mound – or at least is said to be, as all of this can only be legend so far as Ororo is concerned. Skybreaker itself is new, aside from being mentioned in previous chapters of “X of Swords”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Vibranium. <\/strong>The first panel shows a sacred mountain being struck by a meteorite, which is apparently where Wakanda’s vibranium deposit comes from. Given the size of that deposit, you’d have thought the meteorite would do a lot more damage than it seems to here, but hey, it’s a legend. The idea that vibranium arrived on Earth in the form of a meteorite is not new. No time frame is given for this flashback, but see below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The material about vibranium being the natural resource that propels Wakanda to become the thriving hi-tech society of today is all standard Black Panther back story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The King of Wakanda <\/strong>seen here is identified in the data page as “Olumo, first Father of Wakanda”. That name is new, at least to Marvel. (There’s an Olumo Rock in Nigeria; the word apparently means something on the lines of “troubles are over”.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    If he’s supposed to be the first man to discover and harness the vibranium mound, then presumably<\/em> he’s the Black Panther from the Avengers of One Million BC, seen in various Jason Aaron stories. In Avengers <\/em>vol 8 #4, that Black Panther is described as “the first to discover some manner of vibrating rock or some such, and the first to begin to unlock its many secrets”. That doesn’t exactly fit with what we see here, but it’s close enough allowing for the fact that Storm is recounting a myth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    PAGES 9-10.<\/strong> Recap and credits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    PAGES 11-14.<\/strong> Storm arrives in Wakanda and asks nicely if she can borrow Skybreaker.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The Black Panther is off doing superhero things, so Storm meets the rest of the royal family – who of course are well known to her from her time as an in-law. Ramonda doesn’t feel she has the authority to release the sword, while Shuri seems to think it’s out of the question. They invite her to stay and ask T’Challa when he gets back. Of course, Storm’s on a deadline, so you can see where this is heading (as can Shuri, who’s no fool). Quite why she needs to wait for T’Challa to physically return to Wakanda, and what’s stopping them from having a phone call is never really very clear – except for the fact that it would break the plot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    If you’re not familiar with them, the two royals here are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    • Queen Ramonda<\/strong>, who is actually T’Challa’s stepmother. She was introduced in the “Panther’s Quest” storyline from Marvel Comics Presents<\/em> in 1989, and she’s become a central figure of his supporting cast. These days everyone tends to gloss over the technicalities of her back story and just treat her as T’Challa’s mother.<\/li>
    • Shuri<\/strong>, Ramonda’s daughter and T’Challa’s half-sister. She was the Black Panther herself for a while (starting in around 2009) and she had a brief solo series under her own name recently.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n

      The flashback on page 12 is just a straight recap of “X of Swords”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      The Arms of Wakanda<\/strong> are basically new.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      • The Nation Maker<\/strong> is credited to “the founder of Wakanda’s capital city”, which is called Birnin Zana, if you were wondering. As far as I’m aware, the founder himself is new.<\/li>
      • The Panther’s Claws<\/strong> are new in themselves, but the costume shown here seems to be the prehistoric Black Panther from Avengers<\/em>.<\/li>
      • The King’s Mercy<\/strong> is again new, but T’Chakka – the previous Black Panther and T’Challa’s father – is a well established character.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n

        PAGE 15.<\/strong> Data page about Sevalith, continuing the randomly-inserted data pages about the worlds of Otherworld. Sevalith is new, so there’s not much to add to what’s on the page. It confirms the suggestion in X-Force<\/em> #13 that the worlds of Otherworld change from time to time, with worlds apparently coming and going from having a connection to the “wheel”. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

        Sevalith’s border with Avalon was shown in the map in X of Swords: Creation<\/em>. It’s worth remembering that that map divided the ten worlds of Otherworld into “fair courts” and “foul courts”. Intriguingly, despite its obviously vampiric theme, Sevalith was listed under “fair” – as, for that matter, was the Fury-dominated world of Infuri.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        PAGE 16.<\/strong> Data page about Mercator, the world which was highlighted on the Creation <\/em>map. Basically, it’s undergone some sort of coup, and we don’t know anything about who’s there right now. The previous occupants were the Telmenetes, who are also new – they’re described as a highly evolved society of light. Mention of highly evolved societies in the Hickman era should remind us of all that stuff about cultural singularities in Powers of X<\/em>, but the Telmenetes seem to have retained their individuality instead of becoming a hivemind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        PAGES 17-20.<\/strong> Shuri and Storm have dinner.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

        I’m not sufficiently up to speed on Black Panther<\/em> to know whether Shuri’s concerns about political stability have any real basis in its current storylines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        Shuri is very obviously sceptical of Krakoa and its sudden emergence as an economic power. She’s something of a nationalist and small-c conservative in this story, which I’m not sure is entirely in character, and seems driven by the fact that someone <\/em>has to fight Storm. (Was Okoye busy?) But she reminds us – and it’s been mentioned several times before – that Wakanda is one of the handful of countries that has not entered into a trade deal with Krakoa. It doesn’t really come to anything in the course of this issue, but we’ve been given a very clear impression that the Wakandans are deeply sceptical about what’s going on on Krakoa. And in the modern era, the Black Panther is usually right about that sort of thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        At least as of the most recent issues on Marvel Unlimited, Storm and Black Panther were indeed on good terms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        PAGES 21-34.<\/strong> Storm steals Skybreaker<\/em> and defeats Shuri.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

        Storm was, of course, a thief before she was a goddess or a queen. That aside, this part of the story speaks for itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        PAGES 35-36.<\/strong> The Black Panther returns in time to confront Storm<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        He trusts her, so he lets her take the sword, but he’s seriously unimpressed by this behaviour. He also throws in one of the rare lines where the Krakoans are directly challenged on treating Krakoa as their people and seemingly repudiating (or downplaying to nothingness) other aspects of their background.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        PAGE 37.<\/strong> Data page about Stormbreaker, which seems to be new information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        PAGE 38.<\/strong> Storm returns to Krakoa, where Wolverine and Magik are already waiting with their own swords.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

        Magik already had her sword. Wolverine got his in X-Force<\/em> #13.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        PAGE 39. <\/strong>Trailers. The Krakoan reads NEXT: SUBTERFUGE.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

        As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. MARAUDERS #13 “X of Swords, chapter 5” by Vita Ayala, Matteo Lolli & Edgar Delgado COVER \/ PAGE 1: Storm, Black Panther and Shuri (who are in this issue), plus Wolverine (who has a cameo) and Jean Grey (who isn’t in […]<\/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-5718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5718","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=5718"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5718\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5733,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5718\/revisions\/5733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}