{"id":6699,"date":"2021-05-14T21:47:43","date_gmt":"2021-05-14T20:47:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=6699"},"modified":"2021-05-14T21:47:43","modified_gmt":"2021-05-14T20:47:43","slug":"x-factor-9-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=6699","title":{"rendered":"X-Factor #9 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Unknown-15.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-6700 alignright\" src=\"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Unknown-15.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"183\" height=\"275\" \/><\/a>X-FACTOR vol 4 #9<br \/>\n&#8220;Interlude: DJ Mark&#8217;s Mixtape of Mojoverse Beats to Make Out To&#8221;<br \/>\nby Leah Williams, David Balde\u00f3n &amp; Israel Silva<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>COVER \/ PAGE 1.\u00a0<\/strong>Dazzler and Lila Cheney perform in the Mojoverse, with X-Factor in the foreground.<\/p>\n<p>This is the penultimate issue of the series, and issue #10 is a &#8220;Hellfire Gala&#8221; tie-in. So if you&#8217;re wondering why this issue seems in a terrible rush to tie up its storylines&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">I\u2019m so glad you enjoyed 9, and thank you for reading. &#x1f497;&#x1f497;&#x1f497; I got the news about the book ending while scripting 9 so it immediately became a priority to resolve everything I could in a finite amount of space.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Leah #XFAQtor Williams (@mymonsterischic) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/mymonsterischic\/status\/1392556818879090693?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">May 12, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>&#8230;well, there you go.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGE 2.<\/strong> Opening quote. Wind Dancer talks about her new role as reluctant overseer of the Mojoverse &#8211; she&#8217;s appointed as the Krakoan envoy later in the story. This is why she has a movie studio on hand to make promo videos for X-Corp in\u00a0<em>X-Corp\u00a0<\/em>#1.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGE 3.<\/strong> Recap and credits. Seems a bit odd to bill this story as an &#8220;interlude&#8221;, when it&#8217;s actually full of vital plot content. &#8220;DJ Mark&#8221; is DJ, the music-powered teen mutant who&#8217;s also appeared in\u00a0<em>Way of X<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGES 4-9.<\/strong>\u00a0<em>X-Factor in Siryn&#8217;s psyche.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>When we left off, X-Factor had just driven the Morrigan away, and a temporarily-lucid Siryn had begged for help in getting rid of her. The previous issue ended with Northstar asking Siryn to &#8220;tell us about the new bargain you&#8217;ve struck with the Morrigan.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Rachel takes the group back through Siryn&#8217;s memories, which are exceedingly hazy, presumably because the Morrigan has been the dominant personality for most of the time that she&#8217;s been on Krakoa.<\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8220;You made us into a mutant circuit.&#8221;<\/strong> Several titles, notably\u00a0<em>New Mutants<\/em> and\u00a0<em>S.W.O.R.D., <\/em>have been pushing the idea of mutants working in synergy as a big deal. This seems to be something along those lines.<\/p>\n<p><strong>A geas<\/strong> is basically what Prodigy describes it as &#8211; a magical obligation to not do something or suffer the consequences, sometimes with a reward if you\u00a0<em>do<\/em> honour the obligation. The suggestion seems to be that the Morrigan is magically blocking some of Siryn&#8217;s memories, so they aren&#8217;t there to be viewed (or at least they can&#8217;t be accessed).<\/p>\n<p><strong>Kyle<\/strong> is returning from a weekend babysitting Shogo, as he mentioned last issue. I like him trying to start a mundane conversation in the middle of this.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGE 10.<\/strong> Data page &#8211; an exchange of text messages between Northstar and Mirage. This follows up on an exchange of memos that we saw in the previous issue, where Northstar was asked to keep the Quiet Council informed about the developments in Trevor&#8217;s powers, and he flatly refused to do so. He says here that he&#8217;s distrustful of what the Quiet Council is going to do with anyone who might potentially be a soldier (and by implication he wants Trevor to remain the noncombatant he is now). Obviously, this is being cut into the middle of a scene of Trevor casually announcing that he can see magic.<\/p>\n<p>Dani is a curious person for him to approach &#8211; it&#8217;s not like they have any significant history together. But she is semi-officially in charge of the training programme for young mutants over in <em>New Mutants<\/em>, which is presumably what he has in mind.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGES 11-12.<\/strong>\u00a0<em>The geas directs X-Factor to Shatterstar.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Northstar specifically tells Trevor not to share information about his powers with anyone (but doesn&#8217;t specifically mention his concerns about the Council).<\/p>\n<p>Somehow or other it&#8217;s Daken who figures out that the thing to do is wake the enchantment with a blood sacrifice. Not sure about this &#8211; shouldn&#8217;t figuring this out be a role for either Trevor or David?<\/p>\n<p>The geas responds with a riddle that the group immediately figure out relates to Shatterstar (who they met in the Mojoverse back in issue #3). They helpfully explain most of the riddle, except for the &#8220;father to his father&#8221; bit, which David glosses over with a bit of handwaving. It&#8217;s a reference to\u00a0<em>X-Factor<\/em> #259, which establishes that (1) Shatterstar is indeed the biological son of Longshot and Dazzler, as suggested in\u00a0<em>X-Men<\/em> vol 2 #11; (2) a time-travelling Shatterstar was also the source of the DNA that was used to clone Longshot; and (3) Shatterstar was sent a hundred years into the future to be raised in order to distance him from Longshot and thus minimise the potential for temporal paradoxes.<\/p>\n<p>The kid with &#8220;an advanced form of acoustikinesis&#8221; is DJ.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGES 13-15.<\/strong> <em>The liberation of the Mojoverse.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>X-Factor aren&#8217;t allowed to enter the Mojoverse (which you wouldn&#8217;t think would bother them that much, considering they&#8217;re there to overthrow the regime), and so they send some of their allies. Specifically, it&#8217;s DJ, Lila Cheney, Wind Dancer, Surge and Dazzler working together to create a musical distraction for the Mojoverse audience, while the New Mutants sort out Mojo himself. It&#8217;s an odd choice for the penultimate issue of the series &#8211; this feels like something the regular cast ought to be doing..\u00a0We also see trainees Rain Boy, Nature Girl, Anole and Dust (and one unrecognisable guy).<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not exactly sure what Magik means by the &#8220;show you [Mojo] made about me.&#8221; But making films about the X-Men has been Mojo&#8217;s schtick for years. Honestly, the whole thing crumbles far too conveniently, but that&#8217;s rushed wrap-ups for you. Mojo doesn&#8217;t seem to be deposed exactly, but forced to rein in his worst excesses under threat of being removed.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGE 16.<\/strong>\u00a0<em>Shatterstar arrives back on Krakoa.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Sofia really doesn&#8217;t look too happy about this job, does she?<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGES 17-19.<\/strong>\u00a0<em>Shatterstar fights the Morrigan.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Most of this, however, is a flashback to Morrigan striking her bargain with Siryn. The Morrigan wants to slaughter mutants for her own power; Siryn is offering herself as a sacrifice instead. Basically, Siryn has been trying to kill herself often enough to match the mass sacrifice that she bought off.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGES 20-21.<\/strong>\u00a0<em>The Morrigan&#8217;s agenda.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Presented in a very symbolic, myth-like art style. Basically, Morrigan feels threatened by the mutants transcending death, but sees the opportunity for the endless deaths and resurrections to make death more powerful than ever.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGES 22-23.<\/strong>\u00a0<em>Shatterstar defeats the Morrigans.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>For whatever reason, Shatterstar is magically able to defeat the Morrigan for good. Maybe if there had been more time, we&#8217;d have got a more compelling reason for why it had to be him in particular.<\/p>\n<p>The Morrigan finishes by leaving some sort of curse for Shatterstar and his former lover Rictor, now a regular cast member in\u00a0<em>Excalibur<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGE 24.<\/strong> Trailers. Most of the Krakoan this month has just read &#8220;Next: Hellfire Gala&#8221;, but this one reads NEXT: INVITE ONLY.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. X-FACTOR vol 4 #9 &#8220;Interlude: DJ Mark&#8217;s Mixtape of Mojoverse Beats to Make Out To&#8221; by Leah Williams, David Balde\u00f3n &amp; Israel Silva COVER \/ PAGE 1.\u00a0Dazzler and Lila Cheney perform in the Mojoverse, with X-Factor in the foreground. This is [&hellip;]<\/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-6699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6699","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=6699"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6699\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6702,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6699\/revisions\/6702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}