{"id":7230,"date":"2021-10-13T21:47:58","date_gmt":"2021-10-13T20:47:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=7230"},"modified":"2021-10-13T21:47:58","modified_gmt":"2021-10-13T20:47:58","slug":"x-men-4-annotations-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=7230","title":{"rendered":"X-Men #4 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

\"\"<\/a>X-MEN vol 6 #4<\/strong>
\n“Fearless, Chapter 4: Nightmare on 86th Street”<\/strong>
\nby Gerry Duggan, Javier Pina & Erick Arciniega<\/strong><\/p>\n

COVER \/ PAGE 1.<\/strong> Nightmare rears up on his horse, holding the severed head of Cyclops.<\/p>\n

PAGE 2.<\/strong> Data page. Opening quotes about Nightmare from Dr Voodoo (currently in the cast of Strange Academy)<\/em> and Magik.<\/p>\n

Nightmare<\/strong> is a Doctor Strange villain, and the fairly self-explanatory ruler of a magical Nightmare Realm.<\/p>\n

“He’s conquered a splinter realm…”\u00a0<\/b>This is just referring to the Nightmare Realm. The term “splinter realms” comes from the 2000\u00a0Magik<\/em> miniseries.<\/p>\n

“…once succeeded in trapping Eternity.”<\/strong>\u00a0Doctor Strange<\/em> vol 2 #13, published in 1976.<\/p>\n

PAGE 3.<\/strong> Night at the Treehouse.<\/em><\/p>\n

The pumpkin with a single eye is a cute touch.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

PAGE 4.\u00a0<\/strong>Scott’s nightmares.<\/em><\/p>\n

The panels of Scott and Alex falling from the aircraft are part of Scott’s long-established back story, in which they parachute from their parents’ plane before it gets abducted by the Shi’ar. The child he’s giving up in the top right is little Nathan Summers, about to be sent into the far future to become Cable; the “many times” presumably just means it was a recurring dream. The panel with the Sentinel and the Cyclops skeleton is just a generic nightmare.<\/p>\n

PAGE 5.<\/strong>\u00a0Jean’s nightmares.<\/em><\/p>\n

Jean is dreaming about the annihilation of the D’Bari by Dark Phoenix in\u00a0X-Men<\/em> vol 1 #135. I expect you all know this, but: Dark Phoenix was originally meant to be just a cosmic-powered Jean. It was later retconned into being a cosmic entity which was impersonating Jean and had taken a part of her soul as a personality, so that it kind of was Jean, and kind of wasn’t. Basically, it was an attempt to preserve the original story by having Phoenix be Jean, while at the same time absolving Jean from genocide, although she wound up with all the memories again anyway. This story (understandably) glosses over all that.<\/p>\n

Nightmare hasn’t really had that many dealings with the X-Men, but they’re so angst-ridden that it’s easy to believe he enjoys them when they come round.<\/p>\n

PAGE 6.<\/strong> Recap and credits.<\/p>\n

This is billed as part four of “Fearless”, but it certainly looks like a one-off Hallowe’en story spliced into the middle.<\/p>\n

“Nightmare on 86th Street” is, of course, a reference to “Miracle on 34th Street.”<\/p>\n

PAGES 7-9.<\/strong> Nightmare discovers the Treehouse and watches Cyclops’ dreams.<\/em><\/p>\n

Evidently out of sequence, and taking place before page 4.<\/p>\n

Dr Strange is unavailable to deal with Nightmare because of the current\u00a0Death of Dr Strange<\/em> storyline.<\/p>\n

Cyclops’ dreams on page 8 are just generic scenes of him feeling guilty and apologising. One shows him and Jean in their\u00a0All-New X-Men<\/em> costumes (the Silver Age characters, when they were living in the present day). One shows him and Emma in Morrison-era costumes. The third is obviously the Krakoan-era X-Men, and for some reason Cyclops seems to fear (or know?) bringing down the whole thing. Nightmare’s interpretation is simply that this is the stress Cyclops places himself under.<\/p>\n

PAGES<\/strong>\u00a010-11.\u00a0<\/strong>Jean’s dreams.<\/em><\/p>\n

Not real flashbacks. The first panel has Jean in her Silver Age costume, but shows 2000s-era characters Nature Girl and Kid Omega as fellow pupils. The rest of the page has her in her late-60s costume, which she’s been fond of throughout the Krakoan era – she did indeed make it, as she says here. Being the girl in a Silver Age comic, she made all the X-Men’s late-60s costumes.<\/p>\n

Considering this is meant to be a nightmare, Jean imagines herself getting on rather well with perennial rival Emma Frost, who’s presumably making an oblique comment about the fan-service aspects of the miniskirt outfit. (Which is nothing compared to Emma’s outfits, but maybe that’s why Jean gives that line to Emma – who is dressed very normally here.)<\/p>\n

PAGE 12.<\/strong>\u00a0Wolverine’s dreams.<\/em><\/p>\n

This refers to the Vault arc from\u00a0X-Men<\/em> vol 5. She knows that she spent centuries in the Vault with Synch thanks to time distortion, but because she was resurrected from an earlier backup, she doesn’t remember any of it. Nonetheless, she knows that the memories were lost and she must have picked up on the fact that, at the very least, Synch’s attitude towards her has drastically changed. On Nightmare’s reading, she’s obviously aware that he’s in love with her, but doesn’t want to ask the question.<\/p>\n

Nightmare sarcastically suggests that enormous great memory gaps are precisely the sort of thing that legitimises Laura’s claim to the “Wolverine” name, referencing the many memory-gap stories of the 90s and early 2000s.<\/p>\n

PAGES 13-19.<\/strong>\u00a0Jean drives Nightmare away.<\/em><\/p>\n

All very straightforward. The flashback gives us Jean’s pitch during the “Hellfire Gala” when she was putting herself forward as an X-Man. Jean gets to do a fairly standard power-of-love schtick which makes her more powerful than Nightmare. If you want to be ploddingly literal about it, she’s just more powerful than him in the waking world, but it’s obviously meant to be the power of compassion and positivity. You might well see this as a 2021 iteration of Jean-as-mother.<\/p>\n

PAGE 20.<\/strong>\u00a0Ben Urich visits the grave of Nathan Summers.<\/em><\/p>\n

Um. Presumably, this is meant to be the grave of the older Cable who died in Extermination<\/i>. However, that grave was already raided by Deadpool in\u00a0Cable<\/em> #3 (another Gerry Duggan story), so either it’s been sitting open for an insanely long time, or Deadpool returned the body before the graveyard staff noticed, and it’s been stolen again. Neither makes a great deal of sense.<\/p>\n

PAGE<\/strong> 21<\/strong>. Data page. A memo from Dr Stasis to Orchis staff. He’s working on something called Project Polyphemus. Polyphemus was a cyclops from Greek myth; the story has been through so many iterations that the character really has no well defined traits. The project may be something to do with Feilong powering himself up using the Cyclops-associated ruby quartz in the next scene.<\/p>\n

PAGES 22-24.<\/strong>\u00a0Feilong heads for Mars.<\/em><\/p>\n

Feilong’s modification of his body to make it suitable for (pre-terraforming) Mars was established in issue #1. Here, he seems to be trying to re-enact the Fantastic Four’s cosmic ray-based origins, but with some sort of role for ruby quartz.<\/p>\n

In the real world, nothing has ever made it from Earth to Mars in 39 days, but that figure has been given as an estimate for various proposed alternative engines<\/a>. Presumably, in the Marvel Universe one of them got made – although if you’re going down that route, can Reed Richards really not go any faster…?<\/p>\n

PAGE 25.<\/strong> Trailers. The Krakoan reads NEXT: THE DOCTOR IS IN.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. X-MEN vol 6 #4 “Fearless, Chapter 4: Nightmare on 86th Street” by Gerry Duggan, Javier Pina & Erick Arciniega COVER \/ PAGE 1. Nightmare rears up on his horse, holding the severed head of Cyclops. PAGE 2. Data page. Opening quotes […]<\/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-7230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7230","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=7230"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7232,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7230\/revisions\/7232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}