{"id":7305,"date":"2021-11-10T21:55:10","date_gmt":"2021-11-10T21:55:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=7305"},"modified":"2021-11-18T20:47:14","modified_gmt":"2021-11-18T20:47:14","slug":"hellions-17-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=7305","title":{"rendered":"Hellions #17 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

\"\"<\/a>HELLIONS #17<\/strong>
\n“Trauma Response”<\/strong>
\nby Zeb Wells, Stephen Segovia & Rain Beredo<\/strong><\/p>\n

COVER \/ PAGE 1:<\/strong> Orphan-Maker rescues the Right AI baby.<\/p>\n

PAGES 2-3.<\/strong>?Psylocke decides to help Orphan-Maker.<\/em><\/p>\n

Psylocke decided to leave Krakoa last issue, after Havok (under Empath’s influence) destroyed the A.I. copy of her daughter’s mind, which Mr Sinister had been secretly using as leverage over her. She told Cyclops that “I was tasked with keeping the Hellions in check. If only I’d known they also tasked another.” That referred to the clear indication that Havok and Empath had been put on the team by Emma Frost specifically for this purpose. This is the subtext of Psylocke and Emma’s exchange on page 2, which is alluded to in Psylocke’s line “I think you do know.”<\/p>\n

Emma refers to Psylocke as a “Great Captain”, so this is after she was appointed in\u00a0Inferno<\/em> #1.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Stepford Cuckoos are giving a fairly straightforward recap of the Right’s attack on Nanny last issue. The bit about debriefing Nanny, and Orphan-Maker overhearing the location, is new. He\u00a0did<\/em> see the attack happen last issue, tried to help Nanny, and she rejected him.<\/p>\n

The “protocols” Emma mentions come up again on her data page later in the issue – basically, for fairly obvious reasons, the Krakoans don’t want people like Psylocke launching attacks on bad guys on foreign soil without some sort of prior authorisation. Psylocke simply responds by pulling rank as one of the Krakoan Captains (thus withdrawing her resignation).<\/p>\n

PAGE 4.<\/strong>?Orphan-Maker attacks the Right.<\/em><\/p>\n

The A.I. baby was recovered by the Right as part of their attack last issue. The three scientists with it are Dr Meyer, Dr Harold Murch, and Dr Green. We saw all of them before in issue #13, when they sent the Right’s Zeta Team after Nanny; Murch is the leader, and we established last issue that he’s Nanny’s ex-husband.<\/p>\n

Murch mentions Zeta Team being on “meds”, except for “Susan”. We saw in issue #15 that Susan is some sort of religious extremist, regarded with some bafflement even by her own teammates. I think the reference to meds is new, though.<\/p>\n

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

PAGES 6-8<\/strong>.?<\/strong>The Hellions gather to help their teammate.<\/em><\/p>\n

As made clear last issue, Havok still doesn’t understand that he was being manipulated; Psylocke forgives him because she does. Note, though, that while the rest of the team clearly show up out of a sense of team spirit and loyalty to Orphan-Maker, Havok\u00a0doesn’t<\/em> – he arrives separately, motivated by personal guilt. That’s consistent with his behaviour throughout the series, where he’s always tended to reject any team identity.<\/p>\n

Nanny has a particular concern for Peter, and now her anger has passed. Wild Child is obsessed with Psylocke. But both of them at least show up alongside the team-spirited Greycrow; the vibe is very clearly one of the team uniting after all. Empath\u00a0tries<\/em> to join in and is immediately rejected – Greycrow did indeed threaten to kill him last issue as revenge for what he did. The previous issue strongly suggested that Empath’s disdain for his teammates is a pose and that he does actually care about them to some extent – none of them see it that way, though, and he doesn’t seem to take their rejection well.<\/p>\n

PAGE 9.<\/strong> Data page. Emma’s memo to… someone… discussing how they’re going to spin a Krakoan assault on an Arizona extremist camp politically. Fortunately, the Right’s campus isn’t very popular with the locals, if only because they’re bad neighbours. Emma also makes sure to tell us that everyone in the Right compound is a mutant killer, so don’t worry, kids, they’ve got it coming.<\/p>\n

PAGE 10.<\/strong>?Orphan-Maker storms the compound.<\/em><\/p>\n

He’s yelling that all the bad things Nanny said to him last issue are untrue.<\/p>\n

PAGE 11.<\/strong>?The Arizona cops watch from a distance.<\/em><\/p>\n

These guys need to serve the role of hapless innocents caught in the crossfire, and Wells is making sure to set them up appropriately. They don’t understand what the Right is – they think it’s some sort of regular religious cult – but they do fully understand that it’s dangerous and they’re massively outgunned. And they’re going to do their job and go in anyway.<\/p>\n

PAGES 12-15.<\/strong>?The Hellions fight Zeta Team.<\/em><\/p>\n

From left to right in page 11 panel 1, Zeta Team are Cobb, Barker, Susan and Martinez. None of them have full names.<\/p>\n

Nanny runs off on her own during the fight; Wild Child notices but gets attacked by Susan before he can alert anyone.<\/p>\n

PAGES 16-19.<\/strong>?Orphan-Maker and Nanny reach the AI baby.<\/em><\/p>\n

Note that Orphan-Maker’s dialogue is much less childlike than normal on page 16; he reverts to his normal speech patterns when Nanny shows up on the next page, and starts pleading for recognition from Nanny. As in previous issues, Nanny more or less ignores him in favour of the AI.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, it turns out that the “mew mew” that the baby has been repeating for several issues is actually the opening syllable of something else entirely… Nanny is killed in front of Orphan-Maker’s eyes (she’ll be resurrected, of course), and he responds by killing all three scientists. There are no Right soldiers visible – I’m not sure what happened to the woman who was trying to get them to evacuate, but maybe she was blown up in the explosion – so the impression is definitely one of murder rather than self-defence. Certainly none of the three is presented as a physical threat to him. In principle, this ought to lead to a trip to the Hole… if anyone in authority on Krakoa finds out.<\/p>\n

PAGES 20-23.<\/strong>?Orphan-Maker goes on a rampage.<\/em><\/p>\n

It’s hard to have much sympathy for the Right cultists, but the problem is when he kills the two cops – who are maybe being unwise trying to take him on, but they certainly haven’t done anything to deserve being attacked. Orphan-Maker seems to realise this afterwards, saying that he “couldn’t stop” – he doesn’t try to tell us that he mistook them for Right members. We’ve repeatedly been told that Orphan-Maker is potentially very dangerous, but normally this is said to be something to do with his suppressed mutant powers. Here, he just seems to lack all self-control; Nanny\u00a0has<\/em> trained him to be a murderer, after all.<\/p>\n

PAGE 24.<\/strong> Our closing quote brings us back to Nightcrawler, who regularly provides wisdom to bookend issues of?Hellions<\/em> despite not being in the cast.<\/p>\n

PAGE 25.<\/strong> Trailers. The Krakoan reads NEXT:WE ALL FALL DOWN.<\/p>\n

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

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. HELLIONS #17 “Trauma Response” by Zeb Wells, Stephen Segovia & Rain Beredo COVER \/ PAGE 1: Orphan-Maker rescues the Right AI baby. PAGES 2-3.?Psylocke decides to help Orphan-Maker. Psylocke decided to leave Krakoa last issue, after Havok (under Empath’s influence) destroyed […]<\/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-7305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7305","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=7305"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7305\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7326,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7305\/revisions\/7326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}