{"id":5852,"date":"2020-11-11T21:41:13","date_gmt":"2020-11-11T21:41:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=5852"},"modified":"2020-11-11T21:41:13","modified_gmt":"2020-11-11T21:41:13","slug":"marauders-15-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=5852","title":{"rendered":"Marauders #15 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 #15<\/strong>
“X of Swords, chapter 14”<\/strong>
by Gerry Duggan, Benjamin Percy, Stefano Caselli & Edgar Delgado<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

COVER \/ PAGE 1.<\/strong> A smug-looking Saturnyne stands over her unconscious, and presumably poisoned, guests. None of the Marauders appear here, and this is another of those “X of Swords” chapters which is an issue of the title in question in name only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 2.<\/strong> Two epigraphs. The first is indeed a quotation from Sun Tzu’s The Art of War<\/em>. Given the way this week’s issues play out, the point is presumably that the whole contest is essentially rigged by Saturnyne, or at least open to rigging. The second is from one of the Arakkii champions, who we know has a hundred followers that he raises from the dead with his healing powers every day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

PAGE 3.<\/strong> Credits page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 4.<\/strong> This is a faux recap page. The previous issue ended with Wolverine apparently killing Saturnyne; as we’ll see, she’s actually just showing Wolverine how matters would play out if that happened. That starts with a “recap” page covering events that we never actually see. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Essentially, if Saturnyne is to be believed, her death would leave the way clear for the Arakkii to invade Earth and conquer the world. For some reason, this recap goes out of its way to mention that Moira is among hundreds of mutants who are psychically wiped instead of dying – presumably because if they all died then Moira’s powers would reset the timeline, but it seems an odd thing to specifically address here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 5-6.<\/strong> Saturnyne approaches Wolverine in the post-Arakkii wasteland.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wolverine is strapped to an X-shaped crucifix, which is an echo of his captivity by the Reavers circa Uncanny X-Men<\/em> #250. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although Saturnyne presents this as a punishment for trying to kill her, she also seems to intend it to motivate Wolverine to participate in her tournament. But more to the point, the whole logic of this timeline is that if she hadn’t stepped in with the tournament, the Arakkii would have swept all before them. If that’s right, then it implies that Saturnyne’s motivation in intervening was to stop that happening – despite all appearances in this week’s other issues. But of course, precisely what Saturnyne is up to and why she’s doing it in this roundabout way are deliberately obscure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 7.<\/strong> The actual recap page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 8-12.<\/strong> Cypher is poisoned and saved.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Storm<\/strong> knows that Wolverine was going to kill Saturnyne – they talked about it in the previous issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

War<\/strong> intended to poison Wolverine. Notably, though, it’s the other Arakkii champions who step in to stop it – Isca cuts him a second airway, and the White Sword heals him after berating War for her cowardice. This isn’t entirely <\/em>surprising from either of these characters; the Sword is some sort of puritan extremist but clearly doesn’t have much time for the Horsemen, while Isca seems to be a generally reasonable person whose power forces her into alliances she might not want. Even War seems to be simply trying to short circuit the contest because there’s too much at stake to play by the rules – which is basically what Wolverine was trying only a few pages earlier, and the whole point of the Hellions’ strand of this storyline. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Hopefully the payoff to all this is a bit more nuanced than “both sides get tired of being messed about by Saturnyne and they join forces against her just as she’d wanted all along”, but…)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 13.<\/strong> Captain Avalon tries to get a win by forfeit.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which doesn’t work because, as already mentioned, War wasn’t doing anything that Wolverine wouldn’t have done. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 14.<\/strong> Wolverine and War talk.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The obvious point here is, again, that they’re basically similar characters and they recognise that fact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The food. <\/strong>Do you want me to be really pointlessly nitpicky? According to the menu in the previous issue, these should be “scarabs stuffed with a cumin-spiced pharaoh brain mash in a wine reduction”. The stuffing seems to have changes to “hearts of polinae from the rivers of Wuhave”. There’s no such thing as polinae, and as far as I know, Wuhave is new.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 15.<\/strong> Death takes offence.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In ancient Egyptian religion, the scarab was a symbol of the cycle of rebirth or regeneration – so appropriate enough for Death. He seems to have a scarab symbol on the back of his (real) head, and apparent he can kill people by looking at them when he removes his helmet. That creates a vague parallel with Gorgon on the Krakoan side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 16. <\/strong>Saturnyne and Briana again.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Saturnyne is still<\/em> trying to get Brian to return as Captain Britain, and suggesting that this would put a stop to matters. Brian’s reluctance to do this is increasingly odd, considering that he’s already a version of Captain Britain and that a lot seems to be at stake here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The exchange “I trust you won’t go to bits” \/ “No, not I” foreshadows Betsy’s fate in the next chapter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 17.<\/strong> Unicorns are served.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was indeed on the menu last issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 18.<\/strong> Summoner and White Sword talk.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The White Sword’s daily resurrections obviously parallel the resurrections on Krakoa. Summoner seems to have no interest in resurrection, insisting that he only wants to die once. Again, this seems to be foreshadowing his fate in this week’s Wolverine<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 19.<\/strong> Cable tries to make conversation with Apocalypse and Annihilation.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

With predictable results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 20.<\/strong> Data page. Sir Jim Jaspers is taking bets on the 19 champions’ odds of survival (remember, Gorgon has two of the ten Krakoan swords). Given what happens in the following chapters, this may suggest that Jaspers doesn’t know the rules of this tournament, and is assuming that it is indeed simply a set of swordfights to the death. Then again, these odds only work if more than half the combatants die (otherwise, you can make a guaranteed profit by betting the same amount on everyone).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 21-23.<\/strong> Cable and Magik test Isca’s powers.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once again, Isca seems… actually quite pleasant. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 24.<\/strong> Death aand Redroot.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Again, the one who isn’t a Horseman is fairly reasonable. Redroot rather hammers the point that most of the Arakkii champions would probably have been quite reasonable people if they’d be born on Krakoa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 25<\/strong>. Storm and Wolverine.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

They haven’t given up yet on having a fallback plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 26.<\/strong> Saturnyne announces the first contest.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s Captain Britain versus Isca, which seems very unlikely to be a genuine random draw. Since Saturnyne apparently wants Betsy\/Cap out of the way, it’s decidedly convenient that Betsy gets to go first, against an unbeatable opponent, in the only contest that takes place while people are still expecting a series of sword fights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 27.<\/strong> The trailer page. The Krakoan reads NEXT: VERSUS.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. MARAUDERS #15“X of Swords, chapter 14”by Gerry Duggan, Benjamin Percy, Stefano Caselli & Edgar Delgado COVER \/ PAGE 1. A smug-looking Saturnyne stands over her unconscious, and presumably poisoned, guests. None of the Marauders appear here, and this is another of […]<\/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-5852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5852","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=5852"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5854,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5852\/revisions\/5854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}