{"id":6461,"date":"2021-03-10T22:52:12","date_gmt":"2021-03-10T22:52:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=6461"},"modified":"2021-03-10T22:52:12","modified_gmt":"2021-03-10T22:52:12","slug":"children-of-the-atom-1-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=6461","title":{"rendered":"Children of the Atom #1 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>CHILDREN OF THE ATOM #1
\n“Uncanny”
\nby Vita Ayala, Bernard Chang & Marcelo Maiolo<\/strong><\/p>\n

Children of the Atom.<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0<\/strong>This is the first series of that name (though there was a miniseries called\u00a0X-Men: Children of the Atom<\/em> in 1999). “Children of the Atom” used to be part of the X-Men’s intro text back in the 70s, the original idea being that the upsurge in mutants was connected with the development of nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n

The central characters never actually call themselves by this name in the story, but I’ll use the name anyway for ease of reading.<\/p>\n

COVER \/ PAGE 1.<\/strong> A straightforward pin-up of the cast, giving nothing away beyond the very obvious parallels to existing X-Men characters.<\/p>\n

PAGES 2-3.<\/strong>\u00a0The Children of the Atom interrupt an armed robbery.<\/em><\/p>\n

Hell’s Belles.<\/strong> As explained later int he issue, the three villains seen here are Flamb\u00e9 (with the flamethrowers), Vague (in the white hood) and Tremolo (the, er, other one). Their only significant previous appearance was in\u00a0X-Factor<\/em> #80-81, back in 1992. Despite that, the information we’re given later on about their depowering is established canon – all three appear on the long list of depowered mutants in\u00a0New Avengers<\/em> #18, and their teammate Briquette doesn’t. Briquette showed up, with powers intact, attending a mutant support group in\u00a0Domino Annual<\/em> #1.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

There are several likely reasons to use Hell’s Belles here. First, while they’ve got a\u00a0tiny<\/em> amount of name value, they’re depowered Z-listers who shouldn’t pose that<\/em> much of a challenge even to the rookie Children of the Atom. Second, they’re depowered, but they’re unquestionably\u00a0real<\/em> mutants, and the significance of that will become apparent. And third, they’re a helpful example of some other mutants who haven’t chosen to go to Krakoa.<\/p>\n

Buddy.<\/strong> In narration, Buddy – or “Cyclops-Lass” – gives a fairly standard speech about always feeling different and knowing where she belonged once she saw the X-Men. Again, this takes on a different tone in light of the twist, which (spoilers) is that the Children of the Atom are apparently\u00a0not<\/em> mutants, but mutant-wannabes. That certainly explains why they’re all so obviously patterning themselves on existing mutants – names like Cyclops-Lass and Daycrawler aren’t even subtle. It\u00a0doesn’t<\/em> explain how they got powers, or at least the ability to simulate powers, so there’s clearly more going on than that.<\/p>\n

PAGE 4.<\/strong> The cast page.<\/p>\n

PAGES 5-11.<\/strong>\u00a0The Children of the Atom fight Hell’s Belles.<\/em><\/p>\n

Understandably, Hell’s Belles are baffled by what initially appears to be, and arguably is, a bunch of X-Men cosplayers. They soon come round to deciding that these are real mutants who, quite unfairly, got to keep their powers. Tremolo says they “won’t stop us from being right again” – presumably, because she’s never been to Krakoa, she doesn’t know about the Crucible option.<\/p>\n

The visual storytelling in this sequence isn’t always the clearest, if I’m being honest.<\/p>\n

Cyclops-Lass.<\/strong>\u00a0Note that she reaches up to touch her visor before shooting. The original Cyclops used to do this back in the day, before artists forgot about it – these days he’s supposed to control the visor mentally or by using controls in his hands. She seems a bit panicked when Tremolo responds to her attack by fighting back, and displays no actual combat skills beyond the eye beam.<\/p>\n

Gimmick.<\/strong>\u00a0Obviously patterned on Gambit, but Carmen throws pins from a pin cushion instead of playing cards. Her aim’s pretty good, so she might be one of the more useful one.<\/p>\n

Cherub.<\/strong>\u00a0He seems hesitant when facing actual villains. He’s also the most serious of the bunch, and the most obviously irritated by Daycrawler (though my god, how could you\u00a0not<\/em> be irritated by Daycrawler)? His costume is obviously based on Archangel.<\/p>\n

Marvel Guy<\/strong>. Does very little in this scene, and stays very quiet throughout the issue. He identifies Daycrawler as his brother, and seems to be able to make people fall asleep. I suppose he’s meant to be patterned on Marvel Girl, though he’s easily the loosest of the bunch.<\/p>\n

Daycrawler.<\/strong>\u00a0Seems more interested in playing at being Nightcrawler than in pressing his own identity. He’s intensely annoying and overconfident. It seems to be Daycrawler who declares the result “Not bad for our first mission!”, despite the fact that the street is smashed up. Mind you, Pixie congratulates them a few pages later for “keep[ing] the collateral damage to a minimum”, so maybe that panel’s just sending the wrong message.<\/p>\n

PAGE 12.<\/strong> Data page. This is an extract from mutantsunmuted.com, a website previously seen in\u00a0Excalibur<\/em> #3. The author, ArchivistX, is Cyclops-Lass, as we establish later in the issue.<\/p>\n

PAGE 13.<\/strong> Credits page. There’s nothing extra in the small print.<\/p>\n

PAGES 14-17.<\/strong> The Children of the Atom meet the X-Men.<\/em><\/p>\n

Or the foothills of the X-Men, at any rate. If it’s just a coincidence that these three are passing, then that’s a bit odd. At any rate, Pixie is a long-established character who made it into the main cast for a while; Magma is from\u00a0New Mutants<\/em>; and Maggott is from the Joe Kelly run and often gets cited as one of the less impressive characters. Basically, the Children are in awe at the presence of characters who wouldn’t get a great deal of respect on Krakoa.<\/p>\n

It seems a little odd that Magma would expect to recognise everyone on Krakoa – surely the population is far too high for that? – but I suppose anyone wandering around in costumes with X-Men logos would get noticed.<\/p>\n

The Children give blatantly evasive answers about why they haven’t come to Krakoa, for reasons which will be obvious at the end of the issue (basically, they know they can’t go through the gates). Magma obviously recognises that they’re not telling her something. Unfortunately for the Children, their excuse is for not\u00a0moving<\/em> to Krakoa, and doesn’t explain why they haven’t\u00a0visited<\/em>, so they get an invite anyway. Luckily for them, Gimmick comes up with the excuse of fleeing the cops, due to the no-teen-heroes edict currently in place in the Marvel Universe. (This is the “Outlawed” arc over in\u00a0Champions <\/em>and related titles.)<\/p>\n

Marvel Guy, who is clearly a very quiet type, plainly realises that this encounter has gone rather badly.<\/p>\n

PAGES 18-21.<\/strong>\u00a0The X-Men discuss the Children.<\/em><\/p>\n

All fairly straightforward. We’re told that the Children don’t show up on Cerebro; the main problem with this scene is that nobody then voices the obvious explanation that the Children aren’t mutants. Since this is bound to occur to the readers, it’s a problem that it doesn’t occur to the X-Men. After all, wouldn’t the simplest explanation be that they were just Inhumans or something?<\/p>\n

Storm refers to them as the “Young X-Men”, which was the name one of a short-lived trainee team.<\/p>\n

PAGES 22-29.<\/strong>\u00a0Basketball.<\/em><\/p>\n

Corbeau Preparatory High School<\/strong> is new. The best-known Corbeau in the X-books is Peter Corbeau, a scientist who used to crop up a lot in the late 70s. “Corbeau” is French for “raven”, so heaven only know why the school basketball team is called the Pigeons. Maybe another local school laid claim to Ravens first.<\/p>\n

Buddy and Carmen<\/strong> are discussing Dazzler, the Marvel Universe’s standby mutant celebrity. In narration, Buddy says that “It wasn’t until I met Carmen, Benny and Gabe that I understood why I couldn’t connect with other people.” Carmen is Gimmick, Gabe is Cherub, and Benny is Marvel Guy. Note that she doesn’t name Daycrawler. Nor is it clear just yet what they did to help her understand. It’s not entirely clear how far the rest of her team share her X-Men obsession, albeit that Daycrawler clearly relishes playing the role – still, in the final scene they seem to be doing more than just humouring Buddy.<\/p>\n

Carmen is apparently into making costumes, and is responsible for the Children’s gear. Presumably “the twins” are Marvel Guy and Daycrawler, though they don’t look or act the same age.<\/p>\n

Taylor<\/strong> is delivering a fairly standard paranoid conspiracist interpretation of the Krakoan status quo. This gives Buddy the opportunity to stand up for truth and decency, but also to tell Carmen with a straight face that “Spreading lies can get people hurt or killed.” Carmen resists the temptation to sound the dramatic irony klaxon\u00a0too<\/em> loudly, but clearly sees the point.<\/p>\n

Cole<\/strong> has returned from injury with what look to be mild superhuman powers. Hmm.<\/p>\n

PAGE 30.<\/strong> Data page. More from MutantsUnmuted, which is largely self-explanatory. I don’t think the Wolverine \/ Ghost Rider thing is referring to anything in particular, though Wolverine did fight him in\u00a0Ghost Rider<\/em> #5-7. Jumbo Carnation and Dazzler are just the sort of mutants who might hang out together, being celebrity creative types and all. The final entry makes sure to establish what happens if you try to use a gate when you aren’t a mutant.<\/p>\n

PAGES 31-36.<\/strong>\u00a0The Children try to go to Krakoa.<\/em><\/p>\n

They seem to be packing their bags, planning to stay in Krakoa once they get there. Buddy is leaving her father, who has nobody else in the world\u00a0by her own account<\/em>, without explanation – but rationalises it to herself as something he’d want her to do, so that she can be happy. Or maybe she knows deep down that it isn’t going to happen.<\/p>\n

At any rate, the Children must have already known that they can’t use the gates – otherwise, their exchange with the X-Men earlier in the issue doesn’t make sense. They seem to believe that if they keep trying then eventually something will change. It’s not clear just yet why that is. We know that Krakoa’s definition of a mutant is purely biological, and depends on the X-gene (though they’ve bent the rules for the likes of Longshot and Warlock, who are aliens). Do the Children know that, and believe for some reason that they have an X-gene that isn’t being detected? Or do they believe that anyone can (or should) ultimately be accepted as a mutant if they try hard enough, which would make it more rational for them to keep trying? We don’t know at this stage.<\/p>\n

PAGES 37-38.<\/strong> Trailers and credits. The Krakoan reads NEXT: ONLY HUMAN? – a rare outing for the ? symbol! It turns out that ? in Krakoan is ?.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. CHILDREN OF THE ATOM #1 “Uncanny” by Vita Ayala, Bernard Chang & Marcelo Maiolo Children of the Atom.\u00a0This is the first series of that name (though there was a miniseries called\u00a0X-Men: Children of the Atom in 1999). “Children of the Atom” […]<\/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-6461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6461","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=6461"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6461\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6463,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6461\/revisions\/6463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}