{"id":7118,"date":"2021-09-10T22:16:02","date_gmt":"2021-09-10T21:16:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=7118"},"modified":"2021-09-10T22:16:02","modified_gmt":"2021-09-10T21:16:02","slug":"x-force-23-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=7118","title":{"rendered":"X-Force #23 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

\"\"<\/a>X-FORCE vol 6 #23<\/strong>
\n“The New Tsar”<\/strong>
\nby Benjamin Percy, Martin Coccolo & Guru-eFX<\/strong><\/p>\n

COVER \/ PAGE 1:<\/strong> Mikhail Rasputin drives the Cerebro Sword into the Beast’s head. A\u00a0very<\/em> symbolic rendering of the attack on Beast’s mind by one of Mikhail’s agents.<\/p>\n

PAGES 2-6.<\/strong>\u00a0The Man With the Peacock Tattoo brings soldiers to Mikhail Rasputin.<\/em><\/p>\n

Mikhail’s very uneasy alliance with XENO – an alliance of convenience against Krakoa – was established back in issue #12. The artificial red soldiers seen here are the same type of XENO agents previous seen in\u00a0issues #11-12 and, before that,\u00a0Wolverine<\/em> #3. We saw their “nesting doll” schtick in issues #11-12, which is of course a reference to Russian nesting dolls.<\/p>\n

PAGE 7.<\/strong> Recap and credits.<\/p>\n

PAGES<\/strong> 8-11. <\/strong>A nesting doll enters the Beast’s ear.<\/em><\/p>\n

As usual in this series, the Beast is doing something both morally dubious and practically unwise. One of the issues with the way Beast is being written here is that he’s not hypercompetent but unethical – which would invite the obvious moral dilemmas about whether the ends justify the means. Rather, he’s both unethical and massively arrogant and incompetent. Then again, that’s not\u00a0necessarily<\/em> a problem, depending on where Percy is going with this. Arguably the “ends justify etc” character has been done to death, and if the idea here is to have a character who gets away with far more than he should because too many people\u00a0assume<\/em> he’s that character – including himself – then maybe that works.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

“There is no crime of which I do not deem myself capable.”<\/strong> This is indeed a quote widely attributed to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), although it’s remarkably difficult to find any source being attributed to it, which makes me more than a little sceptical about it.<\/p>\n

“After Xavier died…”<\/strong> When he was assassinated in issue #1.<\/p>\n

PAGES 12-13.<\/strong> Mikhail imprisons the Man with the Peacock Tattoo.<\/em><\/p>\n

“Human and mutant.”<\/strong> The irony here is that Mikhail’s vision of co-operation with the Russian state is, in that respect at least, the traditional statement of Xavier’s dream.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, Mikhail seems to be identifying with a very outdated view of Russian-ness. Vladimir Putin’s party is not the Communist Party but United Russia, which is certainly nationalist in tone, but doesn’t go in for Soviet iconography.<\/p>\n

The Pale Girl<\/strong> was the villain from the opening arc of Percy’s\u00a0Wolverine<\/em> run.\u00a0Siber<\/strong> is new, as far as I know.<\/p>\n

PAGE 14.<\/strong> Data page.\u00a0Some sort of excerpt from a Kremlin document deeming depowered mutants after M-Day to be a destabilising force, for reasons that are not remotely clear. This must be going back a few years in Marvel Universe terms.<\/p>\n

PAGES 15-16.<\/strong>\u00a0The Beast asks Sage for help.<\/em><\/p>\n

“I died once already.”<\/strong> Issue #18.<\/p>\n

“The anxiety … that someone might try to change me upon my rebirth.”<\/strong> Beast’s narration here is referring in a rather meta way to people who preferred the traditional interpretation of the character (though it’s fair to say that what Percy is doing with him is an extension of something that began with Brian Bendis). Specifically, he’s worried that if he does die, the Five might be prevailed upon to restore him from an earlier back-up, when people actually liked him. It’s certainly possible that this is the ultimate way out of Beast’s storyline and the route towards redemption. The possibility that his radical personality change might suggest that somebody has been tinkering with him already doesn’t seem to occur to him.<\/p>\n

In issue #18, Sage told us that the Beast had given clear instructions that he should be killed if his body was compromised, because of the security risk. Obviously, he isn’t doing that here.<\/p>\n

PAGES 17-18.<\/strong>\u00a0More exposition from Mikhail.<\/em><\/p>\n

“I was supposed to receive a load of Shi’ar logic diamonds. To help power and decrypt the Cerebro sword. But that never came to pass.”<\/strong> The Cerebro sword, made from the Cerebro unit that was damaged in issue #1, still contains at least some data about mutants from the time. Shi’ar logic diamonds are the permanent storage medium for that data. The logic diamonds that Mikhail is referring to are the ones that were delivered during the Hellfire Gala crossover by Shi’ar agents who thought they’d been requested by Emma; we still don’t exactly know who\u00a0did<\/em> order them, given that Emma certainly knew nothing about it. Solem would be a reasonable bet, given that he stole the things over in\u00a0Wolverine.<\/em><\/p>\n

After that we get a tour of the great cultural achievements of Russia, all of which are fairly obvious choices.<\/p>\n

“Vonnegut once said everything you need to know in life can be found in The\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>Brothers Karamazov<\/em>.”<\/strong> Sort of. It’s an opinion voiced by one of the characters in\u00a0Slaugherhouse Five.<\/em><\/p>\n

PAGE 19.<\/strong> Data page. This is written by the same “\u041b\u0435\u0442\u043e\u043f\u0438\u0441\u0435\u0446” (Chronicler, or Scribe) who’s been shown writing various similar narrative data pages throughout the course of the series. This scene apparently shows Mikhail reading out a speech, presumably written for him by the Chronicler, and enthralling the Russian authorities with its vision of Russian nationalism. It’s not 100% clear whether Chronciler is meant to be some sort of writer of superhumanly convincing material, or whether his power is more to do with altering reality by writing about it. Hopefully the latter, because it’s usually a terrible mistake to give a character the status of “greatest writer error” and then actually show his work on the page.<\/p>\n

The Russian history stuff here is… all a bit surface level and Wikipedia, to be honest. It doesn’t convince as a conversation that actual Russian people would have about their own country. For what it’s worth, Mikhail is correct that St Basil’s was built to commemorate a military victory in the Russian-Kazan war.<\/p>\n

PAGE 20-22.<\/strong>\u00a0The Beast calls in Black Tom Cassidy.<\/em><\/p>\n

“Like in Genosha?”<\/strong> In\u00a0Empyre: X-Men,\u00a0<\/em>Black Tom did indeed send a little miniature version of himself as an avatar to Genosha, to steer the golems that were part of the main force.<\/p>\n

PAGES 23-24.<\/strong>\u00a0Mikhail visits the Chronicler.<\/em><\/p>\n

The first time we’ve seen him on the page, I think. The text in the foreground is obviously something to do with Piotr Rasputin. I suspect we’re\u00a0supposed\u00a0<\/em>to be able to stick the rest into a Cyrillic keyboard, feed it through Google Translate and work out what it says, but honestly, I couldn’t figure out how to match up the writing here with actual Cyrillic letters, so I gave up. Still, points for getting it hand lettered! Looks better!<\/p>\n

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

PAGES<\/strong> 26-32.\u00a0<\/strong>The 9\/11 anniversary story, “The Four Fives”.<\/p>\n

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

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. X-FORCE vol 6 #23 “The New Tsar” by Benjamin Percy, Martin Coccolo & Guru-eFX COVER \/ PAGE 1: Mikhail Rasputin drives the Cerebro Sword into the Beast’s head. A\u00a0very symbolic rendering of the attack on Beast’s mind by one of Mikhail’s […]<\/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":[31,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations","category-x-axis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7118","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=7118"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7120,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7118\/revisions\/7120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}