{"id":6909,"date":"2021-07-16T22:22:21","date_gmt":"2021-07-16T21:22:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=6909"},"modified":"2021-07-16T22:22:21","modified_gmt":"2021-07-16T21:22:21","slug":"x-corp-3-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=6909","title":{"rendered":"X-Corp #3 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

\"\"<\/a>X-CORP #3
\n<\/strong>“The Madrox Workflow”
\n<\/strong>by Tini Howard, Valentine de Landro & Sunny Gho<\/strong><\/p>\n

COVER \/ PAGE 1.<\/strong> Corporate Madrox, with a bunch of dupes tessellated behind him.<\/p>\n

PAGES 2-3.<\/strong>\u00a0Who is Dr Jamie Madrox?<\/em><\/p>\n

This is a more or less straight recap of Madrox’s back story. Madrox’s family tie to Los Alamos, and his powers emerging at birth, both come from his debut in\u00a0Giant-Size Fantastic Four<\/em> #4, as does the panel of him with Professor X and Mr Fantastic. I’m pretty sure the bit about his childhood interest in science is new. When first introduced, Madrox’s gimmick was that he was a naive farmboy (his parents moved to Kansas soon after he was born) whose parents had died and who was living alone on the farm as a community of one.<\/p>\n

The idea that some Madrox duplicates were going out to learn about entire skills and then return with what they had learned, contributing to the skills of the whole, comes from Peter David’s\u00a0X-Factor<\/em>. Howard entirely ignores the usual depiction of Madrox as a bit of a comedy figure or (at the very least) everyman, which admittedly wouldn’t make much sense for something written in the tone of X-Corp pseudo-advertising. The idea that Madrox is “brilliant” is, um, novel. Still, the idea that his accumulated skills would allow him to work efficiently by churning out the duplicates and then reabsorbing them periodically to work as a one-man team… that makes sense.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

PAGE 4.<\/strong> Data page. The workflow chart that Madrox posts for his duplicates, which is self-explanatory. “Ex uno plures” (from one, many) is of course an inversion of the US motto Ex Pluribus Unum.<\/p>\n

They’re working on an “ionospheric bandwidth generator”, of which more later – henceforth, we’ll call it the IBG.<\/p>\n

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

PAGE 6.<\/strong> Data page.<\/p>\n

It’s pseudoscientific gobblegook, but the upshot is that X-Corp has built a thingummie that will allow unprecedentedly fast broadband. This is the IBG.<\/p>\n

This press release is intended for release when the IBG is activated, which hasn’t happened yet. The small print in the top left says “X-Corp PR queued up.” The bottom right references Sofia Mantega, their PR head; the last line of the press release repeats the “Simply Superior” slogan from the video in issue #1.<\/p>\n

PAGES 7-9.<\/strong> Warren and Monet at the Technology TALKS conference.<\/em><\/p>\n

That’s the X-Corp HQ hovering over the conference centre in page 7 panel 1.<\/p>\n

In page 7 panel 2 we can see the logos of stock Marvel Universe technology companies Stark Unlimited and Roxxon on their respective stalls, plus a sign that reads “It’s here – Ionosphere – Noblesse”. Angel’s dialogue explains that Noblesse have (somehow) found out about the IBG and are trying to spoil the launch.<\/p>\n

Monet sees women-only networking events as a ghetto. This scene doesn’t quite work, because if Sofia and Trinary are only going because Monet’s going, and Monet doesn’t want to got, then why don’t the three of them just… not go?<\/p>\n

PAGES 10-12.<\/strong>\u00a0Madrox and Layla.<\/em><\/p>\n

The four mutants using their energy powers to charge up the EBG are Vulcan from the cast of\u00a0X-Men<\/em>, Bishop from\u00a0Marauders<\/em>, Neal Shaara from\u00a0X-Treme X-Men<\/em> (the third Thunderbird, but evidently we’ve decided it would just be confusing to call him that), and Sunspot from the original New Mutants. They do indeed all having solar-energy-fuelled powers.<\/p>\n

Layla Miller<\/strong>, Madrox’s wife, makes her first appearance of the series. Evidently we’re working with the idea that she isn’t a mutant, since she isn’t on Krakoa. There\u00a0is<\/em> some material in Peter David’s\u00a0X-Factor <\/em>run that expressly casts doubt on whether she’s a mutant: see in particular\u00a0X-Factor<\/em> vol 3 #20, when she was unaffected by Quicksilver’s Terrigen Crystals, and #26, when she was scanned as both a human and a mutant. Their son Davey makes only his second appearance here, having previously appeared in\u00a0Uncanny X-Men<\/em> vol 5 #11.<\/p>\n

This scene is a standard trope of the guy who’s so wrapped up in his work that he misses important events in the lives of his family, with Madrox getting around it by sending a dupe to cover the event. There’s an obvious tension in the fact that Madrox clearly treats the dupes as extensions of himself who aren’t proper people, but still thinks they’re up to the task of acting as father for key family moments.<\/p>\n

PAGE 13.<\/strong>\u00a0Monet and Sara St John.<\/em><\/p>\n

Sara’s dealing with Fenris were last issue. She claims that the Struckers told her that they had the same access to X-Corp facilities as any other mutant; that’s probably true, since Angel said last issue that it was the Struckers’ actions that had prompted him to change that policy. Monet’s main objection to Sara seems to be her willingness to deal with Fenris at all, given their neo-Nazi tendencies. This is an interesting one in terms of the internal logic of Krakoa. You can see why writers don’t want to have Fenris hand-waved away, but it’s hard to see how that comes to be consistent with the sort of general amnesty that’s been extended to the likes of Mister Sinister and Apocalypse.<\/p>\n

PAGE 14.<\/strong>\u00a0Sofia and Trinary.<\/em><\/p>\n

“You’re like a feminist Robin Hood!” <\/strong>I know the point of this is to have Trinary go “ah, but it’s so much more complex than that”, but it really does just lampshade how one-dimensional she is.<\/p>\n

PAGES 15-17.<\/strong> Things go wrong with the IBG.<\/em><\/p>\n

The art on this issue is lovely, but the plotting is quite heavy handed. For random reasons, a thing has gone wrong. The nice dupe who spent the day with the family has to sort it out and gets incinerated before Madrox can absorb his memories. Yes, right, we get it.<\/p>\n

PAGE 18.<\/strong> Angel, Sara and Trinary.<\/em><\/p>\n

Monet has flown into a rage after encountering Sara’s psychic shields. We’re apparently meant to take it that these shields not only defend but cause pain to the scanning psychic. If Monet is just reacting badly to being blocked, then she’s wildly overreacting – why shouldn’t\u00a0<\/em>people be shielding their minds from her?\u00a0Everyone talks as if these things are commonplace, though if that’s the case you’d think we’d hear a lot more of them. To be fair, psi-blocks have long been something that may or may not exist, depending on the requirements of the plot.<\/p>\n

PAGES 19-22.<\/strong>\u00a0Sara and Monet.<\/em><\/p>\n

Monet does her usual mutant-first schtick here, which is getting pretty boring and we’re only three issues in. Sara’s argument in response seems to be blindingly obvious: there is scope for competitors to mutant technology precisely because many people don’t like or trust mutants. (And bluntly, who in their right mind would entrust their data transfer operations to Krakoa?)<\/p>\n

Kol have also apparently dusted off the old idea of a cure for mutant powers. Sara makes the entirely reasonable argument that many mutant powers are basically curses and that some people would be happier without them. Krakoa’s general policy on such things is that technology that can eliminate mutants must not be allowed to exist – see e.g.\u00a0X-Men \/ Fantastic Four<\/em> #4.<\/p>\n

It’s not entirely clear what happens at the end. Sara injects Monet with what’s apparently a prototype cure, and she collapses. On the next page, she seems to have flown out through the ceiling. So either she flies into a panic and escapes, or somebody else abducts her. We’ll find out next issue, I guess.<\/p>\n

Doreen Green<\/strong> is Squirrel Girl, if you don’t know.<\/p>\n

PAGES 23-24.<\/strong>\u00a0The big launch.<\/em><\/p>\n

It doesn’t work. We’ll find out why next issue.<\/p>\n

PAGE 25.<\/strong> A brief back-up strip based around the storytelling gimmick of following several Madrox dupes in parallel sequences of panels.<\/p>\n

PAGE<\/strong>\u00a026.\u00a0<\/strong>Trailers. The Krakoan reads NEXT: FAILURE TO LAUNCH.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. X-CORP #3 “The Madrox Workflow” by Tini Howard, Valentine de Landro & Sunny Gho COVER \/ PAGE 1. Corporate Madrox, with a bunch of dupes tessellated behind him. PAGES 2-3.\u00a0Who is Dr Jamie Madrox? This is a more or less straight […]<\/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-6909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6909","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=6909"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6909\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6911,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6909\/revisions\/6911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}