{"id":6595,"date":"2021-04-15T20:56:23","date_gmt":"2021-04-15T19:56:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=6595"},"modified":"2021-04-15T20:56:23","modified_gmt":"2021-04-15T19:56:23","slug":"children-of-the-atom-2-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=6595","title":{"rendered":"Children of the Atom #2 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 #2
\n“Prison Break”
\nby Vita Ayala, Bernard Chang & Marcelo Maiolo<\/strong><\/p>\n

COVER \/ PAGE 1:<\/strong> The… let’s call them the Children of the Atom for now, even though they don’t actually use that name in the story. Anyhow, they’re fighting prisoners while the prison seems to be on fire.<\/p>\n

PAGE 2 PANELS 1-3.<\/strong> Someone makes a phone call from prison.<\/em><\/p>\n

She’s unnamed, and not immediately identifiable without her costume, but this is Vague from Hell’s Belles, the minor villain team that our heroes captured last issue. She’s phoning Briquette, the one member of the team who kept her mutant powers, and asking her to come and break them out. Briquette is evidently still loyal to her depowered teammates, which raises the question of why she wasn’t with them in the previous issue. Perhaps we’ll get to that.<\/p>\n

PAGE 2 PANEL 4 TO PAGE 4.<\/strong>\u00a0The Avengers visit the Krakoan Embassy to talk about the kids.<\/em><\/p>\n

This meeting doesn’t go particularly well. What’s objectionable about the Avengers’ behaviour, really, is that the Avengers seem to have shown up unannounced (or at least uninvited) at the embassy and demanded to see Professor X, who is a foreign head of state and probably has better things to do than worry about a bunch of kids running around in costumes.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Some of the Krakoans’ other complaints are… less convincing. The suggestion that mutants are being treated inconsistently with non-mutant teen heroes runs up against the fact that Kamala’s Law is being enforced very vigorously indeed over in\u00a0Champions<\/em> and\u00a0Miles Morales: Spider-Man<\/em>. The bigger issue, really, is that it’s not terribly clear why either the Avengers or the X-Men sees this bunch of minor rookies as a priority (given that they don’t have the benefit of knowing that they’re the title characters). There’s something a bit unconvincing to me about the idea that either team sees this as particularly worth arguing about, beyond maybe the Avengers sending an email or something. Why are two members of the Quiet Council hanging around in the New York embassy anyway?<\/p>\n

The Krakoans also seem to be arguing (as they so often do) that their citizens should be allowed to go to other countries and ignore local law, which is just not the way things work.<\/p>\n

The media has apparently christened this team the “Young X-Men”;\u00a0Young X-Men<\/em> was the name of a shortlived title from 2008\/9, though I’m not sure the title characters of that series actually used it as a team name either.<\/p>\n

PAGE 5.<\/strong> Recap and credits<\/p>\n

PAGE 6.<\/strong> Data page. This is Gabe’s workout plan, as posted on some social media platform. Gabe is Cherub; we get his surname for the first time here. There’s a generally pro-mutant vibe to this whole thing, but more of a “mutants are cool” sort.<\/p>\n

PAGES 7-8.<\/strong>\u00a0Gabe at home.<\/em><\/p>\n

The previous issue focussed on Cyclops-Lass; this one seems to be focussing on Gabe\/Cherub. That rather suggests that we’re getting a spotlight issue for each member of the team during the opening arc.<\/p>\n

This is our first sight of Gabe’s mother (who doesn’t get a first name) and his younger sister Celeste. Gabe’s narration is pretty self-explanatory – everyone prejudges him as a black teen from single parent family, except his teammates, which is what he likes about them. The scene is at pains to tell us that Gabe is nothing like the stereotype that he thinks people associate with him, and if anything lays it on a bit thick in making him a high-achieving saint.<\/p>\n

Lila Cheney<\/strong> is the stock mutant rock star who isn’t Dazzler. She was Cannonball’s girlfriend in 1980s\u00a0New Mutants<\/em> stories. Granted that she was older than Sam, the timeline still seems a bit odd for Gabe’s mother to have been a fan of Lila’s while she was at school.<\/p>\n

In passing, Gabe gives us the first names for all of his teammates, which (by elimination) tells us that Daycrawler’s first name is Jay Jay.<\/p>\n

PAGES 9-12.<\/strong>\u00a0The Children of the Atom arrive at the Dazzler concert.<\/em><\/p>\n

Gabe’s<\/strong> continuing narration basically says that he identifies with mutants – or rather, the X-Men in particular – because they chose to be heroes and transcend people’s preconceptions of them. The parallels with his own experience are self-evident. Gabe seems keen that not only should they deal with the prison break, but that they should get there before the Avengers – given Cyclops-Lass’s comment in the next scene, he’s probably just meant to be concerned about getting in and out before anyone shows up to try and arrest them.<\/p>\n

Carmen<\/strong> mentions paying Gabe back after her “next donation stream” – what’s she raising money for, and what’s she spending it on? (Mostly likely she’s spending it on costumes and equipment, but if so, how’s she advertising it?)<\/p>\n

Buddy<\/strong> describes the “Cyclops-Lass” codename as a “respectful homage”, and apparently chose all of their codenames. Benny quite rightly thinks they’re terrible. Buddy seems somewhat oblivious to that, and generally seems to be not top-flight where self-awareness is concerned.<\/p>\n

Jay Jay<\/strong> isn’t with the group for some reason. Did he not want to go? Was he grounded? Is he too young to get in? At any rate, he’s at home scanning social media for supervillains. The message he’s passing on seems to have been posted by an Emma Frost fan.<\/p>\n

Cole<\/strong> appeared in the previous issue, where he seemed to have returned from injury to the school basketball team with mild superhuman powers. He gives a vaguely evasive answer here about having been signed up for an “experimental treatment program”. Cole has apparently taken to Dazzler after Gabe insisted on playing him her videos while he was in hospital. This all sounds like we’re heading towards the kids don’t really have powers, and they wind up going to Cole to find out how he got his. Normally that storyline ends in disaster, but you never know.<\/p>\n

The Tombs<\/strong> is the nickname for the Manhattan Detention Complex, an actual jail in lower Manhattan<\/a>.<\/p>\n

PAGE 13.<\/strong> Data page – a poster for Dazzler’s concert.\u00a0The sign outside the theatre says “Opening night”, but the poster says “One night only.” Maybe Dazzler added a date.<\/p>\n

The note from Benny confirms that Gabe seems to have bought the tickets for everyone, not just Carmen. Hmm.<\/p>\n

Webster Hall<\/strong> is an actual venue in New York<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The support act, Cat’s Laughing<\/strong>, are a folk rock band including several sci fi and fantasy writers. Chris Claremont used to reference them from time to time.<\/p>\n

PAGES 14-20.<\/strong>\u00a0The Children arrive at the Tombs and fight Hell’s Belles.<\/em><\/p>\n

Gimmick<\/strong>‘s first line in this scene is “I’ll never get used to that teleporter”, which is an odd thing to say if she’s talking about Jay Jay’s innate powers. It sounds like further evidence that their powers are all technologically simulated – though if so, it’s pretty high-end technology.<\/p>\n

Daycrawler<\/strong> announces that he’s changing his name to Nighty-Nightcrawler, suggesting that his instincts for a good codename are somehow a thousand times worse than Cyclops-Lass’s.<\/p>\n

Cyclops-Lass<\/strong>, adorably, greets the sight of actual-albeit-Z-list supervillain Briquette with the exclamation “Briquette! I wrote the\u00a0Mutants Unmuted<\/em> article about you!” She did indeed, and she couldn’t resist mentioning it last time either. Her priorities are highly questionable, but that’s fandom for you.<\/p>\n

Marvel Guy<\/strong>‘s attack is\u00a0exactly<\/em> the same as last issue, and the dialogue makes sure to flag that. Again, that tends to suggest he’s not a real psychic, though I suppose it’s possible that he just has an extremely specific power.<\/p>\n

The obvious ironic parallel here is that Hell’s Belles\u00a0would<\/em> be welcome on Krakoa because they’re real mutants, but they don’t want to go; the Children of the Atom are not admissible on Krakoa, presumably because they’re not real mutants. Despite that, Flamb\u00e9 gets a speech complaining that their true selves were violated when they lost their powers, while the Children have had everything they could want handed to them. (Presumably they think these kids are genuinely associated with the X-Men somehow.)<\/p>\n

Curiously, Cyclops-Lass seems to think that Briquette has amnesty on Krakoa but “Your fellow Belles have to answer for their attack.” She doesn’t seem to be aware that depowered mutants are welcome on Krakoa, and presumably also benefit from Krakoa’s amnesty policy. But later in the scene, Cherub\u00a0does<\/em>\u00a0know that the depowered mutants can go to Krakoa, and asks Vague why they don’t just do that. Maybe this is a scripting glitch or maybe Cyclops-Lass doesn’t really like to think about the idea that genuine depowered mutants would be able to use the gates.<\/p>\n

At any rate, Vague’s answer is that they don’t want to go to Krakoa when everyone else has powers, and that they were stealing money to try and get their powers back. That’s another plot reference to there being somebody out there who can give normal humans powers, which is surely no coincidence.<\/p>\n

Having beaten the three depowered Hell’s Belles last issue, the team do rather badly against Briquette – more through inexperience than anything else, to be fair.<\/p>\n

PAGES 21-23.<\/strong>\u00a0The Krakoans show up to deal with Hell’s Belles.<\/em><\/p>\n

It’s not exactly the X-Men. Storm shows up accompanied by ex-villain the Toad<\/strong> (who became a minor supporting character in\u00a0Wolverine and the X-Men<\/em> years ago), and two utterly random choices: Outlaw<\/strong>, a supporting character from Gail Simone’s\u00a0Deadpool<\/em> and\u00a0Domino<\/em> stories; and what looks to be Mercury <\/b>from the New X-Men. If so, she’s miscoloured on page 22, but she’s metal on page 21, and she’s wearing one of Mercury’s costumes, so I’ll go with Mercury.<\/p>\n

Gabe’s closing narration stresses his desire to save people as his main motivation for joining the team. He’s uncomfortable about the fact that it involves “putting on costumes and hiding behind mutant names”, which again seems to confirm that they’re faking.<\/p>\n

Storm gives them a communicator device, since they can’t be detected with Cerebro. Naturally, Cyclops-Lass reacts as if she’s been given a holy relic. Again, though, there\u00a0is<\/em> a plot problem in the fact that none of the X-Men seem to be contemplating the obvious possibility that Cerebro can’t detect them because they aren’t mutants. It’s so obviously being floated as an explanation that it doesn’t really work for the X-Men not to have it in mind. In fairness, though, it’s possible here that Storm is simply playing along to see what they do.<\/p>\n

PAGE 24.<\/strong> The Children try to go to Krakoa.<\/em><\/p>\n

Essentially a repeat of the closing scene of the previous issue. Last time they were in costume, so this is not meant to be the same scene. They’re just keeping on trying.<\/p>\n

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

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. CHILDREN OF THE ATOM #2 “Prison Break” by Vita Ayala, Bernard Chang & Marcelo Maiolo COVER \/ PAGE 1: The… let’s call them the Children of the Atom for now, even though they don’t actually use that name in the story. […]<\/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],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6595","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=6595"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6595\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6602,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6595\/revisions\/6602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}