{"id":6563,"date":"2021-04-07T21:32:05","date_gmt":"2021-04-07T20:32:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=6563"},"modified":"2021-04-07T21:32:05","modified_gmt":"2021-04-07T20:32:05","slug":"marauders-19-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=6563","title":{"rendered":"Marauders #19 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

\"\"<\/a>MARAUDERS #19
\n“Fire & Ice”
\nby Gerry Duggan, Stefano Caselli & Edgar Delgado<\/strong><\/p>\n

COVER \/ PAGE 1.<\/strong>\u00a0Kate, Callisto and Bishop, posing with the Marauders flag in a pile of junk.<\/p>\n

Incidentally, it’s been seven weeks since issue #18 came out, which is an unusually long gap.<\/p>\n

PAGE 2.\u00a0<\/strong>Opening quote from Wolverine, in the “Patch” identity he uses in Madripoor. This is pretty standard stuff for Madripoor, though it’s obviously an exaggeration – Madripoor also has a steady supply of victims, and several Wolverine supporting characters wouldn’t really fit into this description. It’s maybe true of the sort of people Patch hangs around with, mind you.<\/p>\n

PAGE 3.<\/strong> Recap and credits. One point worth clarifying: the Marauders’ instructions to stay out of Madripoor come from the Madripoor government with the backing of the United Nations, not from Krakoa.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

PAGE 4.<\/strong>\u00a0The new Reavers run wild in Lowtown.<\/em><\/p>\n

Picking up from the cliffhanger of the previous issue. The Reavers are meant to be henchmen injured by the X-teams, who have submitted to cyborg treatment as a result. This mission has nothing to do with any sort of revenge, but evidently the Reavers are still up for a bit of generic henchman work.<\/p>\n

Note that the narration calls the cyborgs “post-human”, a buzzword in Krakoa-era X-books for technologically enhanced humans, which plays into the cosmology from\u00a0Powers of X<\/em>.<\/p>\n

PAGE 5.<\/strong>\u00a0Homines Verendi watch from the balcony.<\/em><\/p>\n

There’s some\u00a0seriously wonky law here. Chen Zhao seems to be telling us that the Marauders can’t intervene because they’d “risk forfeiting the recognition they crave at the United Nations.” That really doesn’t work, for at least two reasons. First, we surely all know that that’s not the consequence in the real world of ignoring a UN resolution. And second, the whole reason why Krakoa got recognised so quickly in the first place was supposed to be a combination of massive leverage and outright manipulation of the vote – why would anything the Marauders do change that?<\/p>\n

To be fair, it’s probably true that ignoring a UN resolution would at least cause Krakoa some diplomatic problems. But we devoted an entire issue of\u00a0X-Men<\/em> to the X-Men showing up at the global elite and treating them with disdain because they had all the power. It’s rather hard to buy that diplomatic consequences are much more than a mild inconvenience for Krakoa, given the wider direction.<\/p>\n

PAGES 6-8.<\/strong> The Marauders decide to intervene surreptitiously.<\/em><\/p>\n

Pyro and Iceman create the necessary distraction while Kate swims ashore to plant a new gate. As we’ll see, the plan seems to be to get some of the Morlocks – the ones who don’t live on Krakoa – to go in and sort out the Reavers, with a deniable place of entry that prevents them being directly tied to Krakoa.<\/p>\n

The story also tries to draw out the parallels between Iceman and Pyro, who provide the title of the story: Iceman is the buttoned up one who’s cutting loose with the Marauders, Pyro is the crazy one who’s atoning here. To be honest, this fits Iceman’s back story better than Pyro’s, which (at least in some versions) has him starting out as a novelist.<\/p>\n

PAGES 9-10.<\/strong>\u00a0Kate plants her flower.<\/em><\/p>\n

The guys in the ship are from the UN peacekeeping force seen at the end of the previous issue.<\/p>\n

The father and daughter couple are the fishermen who retrieved Lockheed from the water in issue #7, and nursed him back to health. Kate already thanked them for that in issue #17.<\/p>\n

The hospital was opened in the previous issue.<\/p>\n

PAGES 11-13.<\/strong>\u00a0Callisto rounds up some Morlocks to help.<\/em><\/p>\n

This is the Morlock community which declined to come to Krakoa, and instead chose to live in Rio Verde, Arizona, back in issue #7.<\/p>\n

Most of the Morlocks, of course, were non-combatants or outright cannon fodder. The ones Callisto rounds up here – who conveniently happen to be just passing, it seems – are among the more threatening. They are…<\/p>\n