{"id":6212,"date":"2021-01-27T21:22:32","date_gmt":"2021-01-27T21:22:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=6212"},"modified":"2021-01-27T21:22:32","modified_gmt":"2021-01-27T21:22:32","slug":"x-men-17-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=6212","title":{"rendered":"X-Men #17 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-MEN vol 5 #17<\/strong>
“Empty Nest”<\/strong>
by Jonathan Hickman, Brett Booth, Adelso Corona & Sunny Gho<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

COVER \/ PAGE 1:<\/strong> Just a generic action shot of Storm (by the regular artist Leinil Francis Yu, who doesn’t draw this issue).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 2-4:<\/strong> Deathbird calls for help after Xandra is kidnapped.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“[A]nnihilation events and celestial disruptions.”<\/strong> The lettering has both in lower case, but this is at least alluding to the various Annihilation<\/em> storylines in the cosmic books, and to the periodic appearances of Kirby space gods the Celestials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

“Warlike or savage, ancient or cultured…”<\/strong> Um… are those meant to be opposing pairs?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The aliens<\/strong> shown in page 2 panel 3 don’t really matter – it’s all just generic space stuff – but the guys on the left are Kree Accusers, and on the right are their age-old enemies the Skrulls. (The war is now over, as seen in the recent Empyre<\/em> crossover.) The big face in the background is the Kree Supreme Intelligence, and for some reason there’s also a random Kymellian in there – the horse-like aliens who tie in to the origin of Power Pack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Whether Shi’ar or Brood, Kree or Skrull, Wraith or Kymellian…”<\/strong> Most of whom should need no introduction to X-Men readers. The Wraiths are the Dire Wraiths, villains from 1980s toy tie-in Rom<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“[A]long with all galactic currency, worlds are collapsing…”<\/strong> The collapse of the galactic economy is a wider Marvel Universe storyline – I’m not sure where it first cropped up, but it was certainly referenced in the one-shot Empyre: Fantastic Four<\/em>, which reported that the “credit’ – the intergalactic currency – had collapsed, leading interworld trade to revert to a barter system. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“…and are only kept in line by the might of our Praetor.”<\/strong> Gladiator. For some reason, the art shows him with fellow Imperial Guardsmen Maanta and Hussar dealing with what appear to be black-armoured Shi’ar soldiers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“…and we have a new regent on the throne.”<\/strong> This is Xandra, who became the new Shi’ar empress in New Mutants<\/em> #7. Calling her a “regent” is odd – that term normally refers to someone who reigns in the place of an underage or absentee ruler. Xandra is<\/em> the ruler, and using “regent” in that sense is obsolete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Xandra is shown along with Oracle, Deathbird and Mentor, all of whom were positioned as her advisers in that New Mutants<\/em> storyline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“My paramour…”<\/strong> As we see later, Deathbird is referring to Sunspot. Sunspot did claim<\/em> in New Mutants<\/em> #7 that she had finally reciprocated his advances, but this is the first evidence to support that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 4.<\/strong> Recap (in form only, because we’ve just spent three pages on the recap) and credits. Maybe worth noting that although she’s sometimes been identified in the Krakoan era as Marvel Girl, Jean is identified here simply as “Jean Grey”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 5.<\/strong> The X-Men arrive on Chandilar.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Krakoan gate to Chandilar was established in the same New Mutants<\/em> arc, which is also where Sunspot moved to live in Chandilar. Cannonball has been living there with his wife Smasher (Izzy Kane) for ages now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 6.<\/strong> Data page, transcribing a conversation between Cannonball and Sunspot. This version of their relationship is par for the course in Hickman’s stories, where Sunspot is generally played for laughs. Obviously, as seen in New Mutants<\/em>, Sunspot is very much bothered by his best friend getting married and having kids and leaving him behind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 7-11.<\/strong> Jean psi-scans the palace staff.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

All fairly self-explanatory. Jean is the consummate professional, and so she finds the person with something to hide not by trying to scan their minds directly, but by looking for signs of psychic defences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The servant she exposes is a Stygian<\/strong>, the race that produced Neutron of the Imperial Guard. (That’s the big guy with the starfield effect on his skin – hence the colouring on these guys throughout the issue.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 12-15.<\/strong> Urr and Xandra<\/em> talk.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ringleader, Urr, is a new character. He gives us a fairly standard speech about how his people have been subjugated by the Shi’ar and, frankly, have it coming. In line with Hickman’s usual approach to these things, Jean makes sure to point out that the underclass were bound to rebel in the end. Nonetheless, the basic structure of this story puts the X-Men in the position of restoring the imperial order. Xandra gets a speech to point out that nobody knows yet what sort of empress she will be. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, there’s always been something a little odd in the idea that the Shi’ar Empire is the sort of thing we should be siding with, and that it becomes okay when someone like Lilandra is in charge. The Marvel Universe is full of spacefaring societies which still run on feudal politics, not so much because it makes sense, but because they’re the tropes of sword-and-sorcery fantasy translated into a space setting. Democracy seems remarkably unsuccessful in the Marvel Universe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As we see later, Storm has at least enough sympathy with Urr’s position to try and talk him down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 16-21.<\/strong> The X-Men and the Smashers make their rescue.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Page 17 has some storytelling issues: Cyclops gets hit with the axe nice and prominently, but he’s such a trivial part of the next panel that it’s a bit of a surprise to reach the bottom of the page and realise that this was supposed to be a crushing blow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sunspot has apparently somehow exchanged his Earth money for some sort of currency that’s still recognised in outer space, and he’s buying up tons of stuff at fire sale prices. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 22-23.<\/strong> Back in the throne room.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Page 22 panel 1 calls back to the scene of Xandra with her advisers from the start of the issue, but now she’s accompanied by Cannonball, Smasher, Deathbird and Sunspot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Deathbird has “persuaded” Sunspot to use his new fortune to improve the position of the Stygian people. I’m not quite sure how this works, if he was making his money by buying assets at rock bottom prices during a financial collapse. That’s not going to turn a profit overnight, so whatever the source of Sunspot’s funding, it’s hard to see how it can be “recent good fortune”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To show us that Xandra is “different”, she makes Urr a diplomat for his people – though since this seems to be a role intended to punish him, it’s less than obvious that it’s the most effective way of helping the poor Stygians, who might be better served by somebody with the faintest interest in and talent for diplomacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oh, and Xandra now owes Storm a favour for helping to beat Urr, which is obviously a plot point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 24.<\/strong> An election poster for an actual online poll to determine the final member of the X-Men team, who are going to be elected by the people of Krakoa as per last issue. Banshee, Polaris, Forge, Cannonball, Marrow and Armor have all been in the X-Men before. Boom-Boom, Cannonball and Sunspot have all been in the New Mutants and X-Force (not the current version). Strong Guy was in X-Factor. The odd inclusion is Tempo, best known as a member of the Mutant Liberation Front. That said, Tempo did actually come close to joining X-Force in X-Force<\/em> vol 1 #29-30, before deciding to go back to college instead – so she’s not a completely crazy choice <\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 25.<\/strong> Trailers. The Krakoan reads NEXT: THE VAULT, which indicates that we’re going to catch up on the characters who got trapped with the Children of the Vault back in issue #5. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. X-MEN vol 5 #17“Empty Nest”by Jonathan Hickman, Brett Booth, Adelso Corona & Sunny Gho COVER \/ PAGE 1: Just a generic action shot of Storm (by the regular artist Leinil Francis Yu, who doesn’t draw this issue). PAGES 2-4: Deathbird calls […]<\/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":[31,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations","category-x-axis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6212","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=6212"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6214,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6212\/revisions\/6214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}