{"id":7047,"date":"2021-08-20T22:09:11","date_gmt":"2021-08-20T21:09:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=7047"},"modified":"2021-08-20T22:09:11","modified_gmt":"2021-08-20T21:09:11","slug":"x-corp-4-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=7047","title":{"rendered":"X-Corp #4 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

\"\"<\/a>X-CORP #4<\/strong>
\n“A Carrot on a Stick”<\/strong>
\nby Tini Howard, Alberto Foche & Sunny Gho<\/strong><\/p>\n

COVER \/ PAGE 1:<\/strong> Selene and Mastermind. By the way, that mock-pharmaceutical branding is already starting to look a bit odd considering that it only took three issues before the series moved on to broadband.<\/p>\n

PAGES 2-3.<\/strong>\u00a0Mastermind covers for the failed launch.<\/em><\/p>\n

“It looks like we’ve got some intruders on board.”<\/strong> This scene plays as if the failure of the demonstration is something to do with Noblesse intruders, but that’s not what happened in issue #3. In that issue, Madrox just made an error in his calculations. At first glance you might think that Madrox is simply lying to cover his tracks, but we’ll see the intruders later in the issue. But they have nothing to do with the previous issue and they contribute nothing to the plot. See also pages 6-8 below.<\/p>\n

Mastermind<\/strong> is using his illusion-casting for PR exactly as foreshadowed in issue #2 – though surely this only works for people who are actually in the room. Does X-Corp not do streaming?<\/p>\n

PAGE<\/strong>\u00a04.\u00a0<\/strong>Recap and credits.<\/p>\n

PAGE 5.<\/strong>\u00a0Flashback: Selene and Mastermind talk.<\/em><\/p>\n

Nothing of note here.<\/p>\n

PAGES 6-8.<\/strong>\u00a0Selene rescues Monet from Sarah St John.<\/em><\/p>\n

This scene picks up from the end of page 21 of the previous issue, with Sarah repeating the same line of dialogue. Sarah has just injected Monet with a power-suppressing drug.<\/p>\n

In the previous issue, that scene continued onto page 22, where Sarah left the room just as Trinary and Sofia arrived, and showed them a hole in the ceiling where Monet had apparently left. This scene\u00a0presumably<\/em> takes place between pages 20-21 of the previous issue, but it doesn’t make any sense \u00a0– we see Sarah stagger out of the room when she was walking normally last time, and Selene and Monet are still talking for another page without ever doing anything to leave by the ceiling.<\/p>\n

I’m completely baffled, to be honest with you. Either I’m fundamentally missing the point of this scene, or something has gone massively wrong with it.<\/p>\n

Let’s be blunt: we’re three scenes into this book, and two of those three scenes just don’t fit properly with the previous issue. This is bad.<\/p>\n

PAGES 9-10.<\/strong>\u00a0Vulcan, Sunspot, Bishop and Neal Shaara round up the mercenaries.<\/em><\/p>\n

We saw these guys powering up the Ionospheric Bandwidth Generator last issue.<\/p>\n

According to Selene, the plan was to use the injection to remove Monet’s powers and then use her as a hostage to get the bulk of the mercenaries onto the X-Corp HQ. But Selene interrupted the plan and dispersed most of the soldiers. Which… hold on,\u00a0what<\/em>? The plan was to do this when exactly? Just as Warren was about to do the launch? They were going to rock up with a hostage in broad daylight and…\u00a0seriously, then what?<\/p>\n

Plus, how is this in any way a better plan than just getting Fenris to open the gate – which is what Kol does later in this very story?<\/p>\n

PAGES 11-14.<\/strong>\u00a0Warren calls a board meeting.<\/em><\/p>\n

The general thrust of this is that Monet has outmanoeuvred Warren by running off and recruiting a bunch of board members of her choice. It’s not entirely clear to me how Monet had authority to co-opt the others onto the board, but not Trinary. Anyway, Warren is trying to impose a bit of coherent order on this group, but nobody is going for it.<\/p>\n

Monet’s plan to get rid of Kol as an enemy is rather garbled. She starts off by saying that Kol is just a minority shareholder in the company he runs, in which case all she needs to do is buy them out. That’s fair enough, and it seems to be what the resolution on page 15 says too. But… if Kol is only a minority shareholder, why are the other shareholders meant to be so worried about appearing disloyal to him? And a few pages later her plan is to “Get his board to sell it out from under him.” But that’s a totally different thing – that’s getting the directors to sell the company’s assets to you.<\/p>\n

Look, I’m not that bothered when you get this sort of handwaving jabber in\u00a0Iron Man<\/em>. Nobody expects the creators of that book to know the difference between a share purchase agreement and an asset purchase agreement, because Tony Stark losing and regaining his fortune twice a year is just a vehicle to advance the plot. But in this book it IS the plot, and the central premise is supposed to be that X-Corp\u00a0<\/i>has something\u00a0to say about corporations.<\/p>\n

It wouldn’t be that hard to fix this plot and even hit a few eat-the-rich buzzwords in the process, either. FOR EXAMPLE:\u00a0“Kol owns the company but most of his shares are held through a complex web of nominees for tax reasons! He can’t admit to that without exposing all his incriminating dealings. So we go round the nominees and bribe them to sell to us instead.”<\/p>\n

PAGE 15.<\/strong> Data page. The votes on the board motion. For what it’s worth, the narrative here confirms that Trinary is not a director and Warren was right.<\/p>\n

PAGE 16.<\/strong>\u00a0The end of the meeting.<\/em><\/p>\n

Mastermind seems to think that the best PR is for X-Corp to play down the mutant angle. He’s probably right about that, but… well, they’re called X-Corp and they fly around in a sky island, so good luck with that one.<\/p>\n

X-Corp’s bagel bush is presumably from the same source as the one in\u00a0X-Factor<\/em>.<\/p>\n

PAGES 17-20.<\/strong>\u00a0Warren and Monet fight.<\/em><\/p>\n

This scene is stressing the parallels in both Warren and Monet having darker and more violent alternate personas (Archangel and Penance respectively). Warren gives a rather bizarre throwback speech that fighting is how mutants were trained to solve problems, but to be fair, that kind of was the genre convention for decades – and it\u00a0was<\/em> something that was being moved on from even by the time Monet was a trainee in\u00a0Generation X<\/em>. They had a glorified greenhouse to practice in, not a Danger Room.<\/p>\n

Both of them claim in various ways to be embracing their alternate personas, at least as tools that they claim to be able to draw upon and control. Warren seems much more conscious that Archangel is dubious and to be kept under a tight leash; Monet presents Penance as part of her own personality. More oddly, Warren claims that both of them were changed – and their personalities became more intertwined – after they were resurrected (following their deaths in\u00a0House of X<\/em>). This might be simply one of the ways in which resurrected characters have been improved or refined, or it might be something to do with Onslaught’s influence on resurrected mutants, as explained in this week’s\u00a0Way of X<\/em> #5.<\/p>\n

PAGE 21.<\/strong> Data page. A memo from Kol to his remaining allies.<\/p>\n

“When Charles Xavier bought my life’s work from me, I realised immediately there was no price for which I would have sold it.”<\/strong>\u00a0In issue #1, Kol had already concluded a contract to sell “my assets” to Xavier. (Meaning… what, exactly? His minority shareholding in Noblesse?) He was trying to get out of that contract, claiming that with hindsight he hadn’t been offered enough money. It’s not immediately clear whether this sentence in his memo is intended to mean simply that he realised after the sale that he’d made a mistake, or whether he’s insinuating that Xavier manipulated him telepathically. But Angel told us in issue #1 that several other people had turned Xavier down first, which suggests that Kol wasn’t being compelled.<\/p>\n

PAGES 22-24.<\/strong>\u00a0Kol and Sarah storm X-Corp.<\/em><\/p>\n

Apparently Kol has nothing to lose so he’s just going to shoot things up. Okay, but what do Sarah and Fenris get out of this?<\/p>\n

Madrox goes into a panic as in last issue about absorbing his dupes in order to get their research back. Surely they write some of this stuff down, though? They’re not really doing all the work in their heads?<\/p>\n

PAGE 25.<\/strong> Trailers. The Krakoan reads NEXT: HOSTILE TAKEOVER.<\/p>\n

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As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. X-CORP #4 “A Carrot on a Stick” by Tini Howard, Alberto Foche & Sunny Gho COVER \/ PAGE 1: Selene and Mastermind. By the way, that mock-pharmaceutical branding is already starting to look a bit odd considering that it only took […]<\/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-7047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7047","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=7047"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7047\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7049,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7047\/revisions\/7049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}