{"id":6120,"date":"2021-01-06T22:25:29","date_gmt":"2021-01-06T22:25:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=6120"},"modified":"2021-01-06T22:25:29","modified_gmt":"2021-01-06T22:25:29","slug":"x-factor-6-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=6120","title":{"rendered":"X-Factor #6 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

X-FACTOR vol 4 #6<\/strong>
“Suite No. 6: Scio Me Hili Scire ‘Second Movement'”<\/strong>
by Leah Williams, David Baldeon & Israel Silva<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

COVER \/ PAGE 1:<\/strong> Siryn, with her voice forming the image of a death spirit of some sort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 2:<\/strong> An epigraph from Siryn, though with an asterisk to something redacted. Presumably this is supposed to indicate that it’s actually the death spirit that’s possessing her (of whom more later). Though this seems to be an original quote, the basic observation that death is comparable to waking from a dream isn’t new.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 3-4.<\/strong> X-Factor relax at home.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“May have gotten lonely and left an ill-advised voice mail to Alex last night.”<\/strong> Alex Summers (Havok from Hellions<\/em>). Lorna and Alex were a couple for decades, but haven’t had many dealings lately. It feels a bit odd for people on Krakoa to talk about using regular mobile phones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

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“It’s a nineteenth-century beekeeper almanac.”<\/strong> It is indeed. Specifically, Prodigy is reading excerpts from The American Bee Journal<\/em> (“Oldest Bee Paper in America, Established 1861”). On page 3, he’s reading from a short article entitled “Bee Humbug” by J H Thomas of Brooklyn, Ontario, published either September 1870 or September 1873 (the Project Gutenberg page lists both dates). It’s an article about the problem posed by unscrupulous or incompetent sellers of poor-quality beehives. For some reason, on the next page Prodigy has moved on to a different issue, published in 1894. Eye-Boy’s line – “Good for Texas” – is actually the next line of the original text. “Mrs Atchley” was Jennie Atchley, a regular contributor to the Journal at around this time. Isn’t this all wonderfully calming and irrelevant?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bush bagels.<\/strong> The Five gave X-Factor a “bagel plant” as a housewarming present in issue #1. (Thanks to Zack from Comic-XF for pointing that out, since I’d completely forgotten it.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aurora and Daken<\/strong>‘s sexual tension has appeared in previous issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 5.<\/strong> Recap and credits. The title continues the classical music theme from earlier issues (except the “X of Swords” crossover). The subtitle, “Scio me nihil scire”, is Latin for “I know that I know nothing” – i.e., I am aware of the limits of my own knowledge – which is a paraphrase of a comment attributed to Socrates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 6-12.<\/strong> X-Factor attend the second death of Siryn.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Siryn’s first inexplicable death was in the previous issue, when she somehow managed to fall to her death despite being able to fly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The police.<\/strong> This is a faithful rendition of the UK police, but nobody seems to raise the question of what Siryn was doing in the UK in the first place. She was born in the Republic of Ireland. One of the cops, Theo, is blatantly prejudiced against mutants; the woman who does most of the talking seems pretty reasonable, and actually quite sensible given X-Factor’s rather high-handed attitude towards her. (She’s awful at asking questions, though. If you want actual answers, don’t ask a string of unrelated questions in a row without waiting for an answer.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There’s an odd idea in this scene that X-Factor ought to have exclusive jurisdiction over mutant deaths even when they raise obvious suspicions of criminality (as Siryn’s surely does, at least from the police’s point of view). Are X-Factor seriously suggesting that if she had been murdered by a human on British soil then they would expect the killer to be tried in Krkaoa? If not, what’s their objection to the forensic scientists gathering evidence to be used in a trial? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Krakoan text.<\/strong> On page 9 panel 3, the text on Prodigy’s tablet reads:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KRAKOAN SEARCH ENGINE
HONEYDEW HONEY
HOLLYHOCK POLLEN HONEY
CHALK (wrongly written with separate C and H – there’s a CH symbol)
UPLOAD TO BONEYARD SERVERS
DAVID’S IN___ (with a regular apostrophe).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 13-14.<\/strong> Prodigy speaks to Dr Reyes.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Krakoan text on Cecilia’s screen reads:
SIRYN
RIGHT LUNG
WEIGHT
340G<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mutant remains.<\/strong> This is a question that hasn’t been raised before, and it’s interesting that Cecilia suggests that she might not give a full and accurate answer to everyone asking. Since Krakoans are resurrected, it would be a little uncomfortable to have their previous dead bodies lying around. In Marauders<\/em>, Kitty was buried at sea precisely because there are no graveyards on Krakoa. So the implication seems to be that – as far as the Krakoan public are concerned, at least – the bodies are cremated. The fact that Cecilia has some lying around suggests that it’s not quite that simple.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 17-19.<\/strong> Siryn argues with X-Factor.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alcohol.<\/strong> Siryn was a recovered alcoholic in X-Force<\/em>, so this isn’t a particularly good excuse for her to offer up if she’s wanting to deflect attention. The team seem to be awaare of this, judging from their response.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The corpse garden.<\/strong> The team seem keen that Siryn shouldn’t see David’s collection of decomposing bodies, perhaps particularly so because one of them appears to be her own previous body. Presumably this part of the grounds has somehow been sealed off from the rest of the Krakoan public.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I don’t remember interrogating folks about the nature of their deaths back when I was a member of X-Factor.”<\/strong> Siryn was a member of X-Factor Investigations (Madrox’s private eye group), which would never have been confronted with this situation anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 20-23.<\/strong> Polaris goes after Siryn.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I once came so close to cracking this world apart like an egg that you had to make a deal to host an ancient death goddess just to save my ‘fractured’ mind.”<\/strong> The “ancient death goddess” is the Morrigan, one of the Celtic Gods. In X-Factor<\/em> #244, Siryn invoked the Morrigan in an attempt to cure Polaris’s mental breakdown, and (as prompted) killed the Morrigan’s previous host in order to become the new Morrigan. She showed up again as the new Morrigan in X-Factor<\/em> #262. That was seven years ago, and it all seemed to have been forgotten about when she showed up on Krakoa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 24.<\/strong> A set of data messages between Prodigy and Sofia Mantega discussing the plot of the previous arc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

David says he “died around the same time as Loa and Rahne” and that their “deaths were presumably related.” If he means that it was a directly connected event, then that can’t be right. However, Rahne was killed by passing bigots who she happened to stumble across in Uncanny X-Men<\/em> vol 5 #16. Loa was reported dead at the hands of anti-mutant activists in Uncanny X-Men<\/em> vol 5 #11. So presumably David just means that he met his demise at the hands of some of the general anti-mutant violence that was going on during Matthew Rosenberg’s run. But it reads as if there’s more to it than that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tommy<\/strong>. Speed from the Young Avengers – he and David met in Young Avengers<\/em> vol 2 #6, and there was some movement towards making them a couple. A flashback in Lords of Empyre: Emperor Hulkling<\/em> #1 showed them dating “a few months ago”; that seems far enough back to work in continuity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 25.<\/strong> Trailers. The Krakoan reads NEXT: HYPNOSIS ACTIVATED.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. X-FACTOR vol 4 #6“Suite No. 6: Scio Me Hili Scire ‘Second Movement’”by Leah Williams, David Baldeon & Israel Silva COVER \/ PAGE 1: Siryn, with her voice forming the image of a death spirit of some sort. PAGE 2: An epigraph […]<\/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-6120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6120","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=6120"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6123,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6120\/revisions\/6123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}