{"id":7318,"date":"2021-11-17T22:01:07","date_gmt":"2021-11-17T22:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=7318"},"modified":"2021-11-18T20:45:24","modified_gmt":"2021-11-18T20:45:24","slug":"s-w-o-r-d-10-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=7318","title":{"rendered":"S.W.O.R.D. #10 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

\"\"<\/a>S.W.O.R.D. vol 2 #10<\/strong>
\n“Triple Threat”<\/strong>
\nby Al Ewing, Jacopo Camagni & Fernando Sifuentes<\/strong><\/p>\n

COVER \/ PAGE 1:<\/strong> Well, it’s a S.W.O.R.D. station exploding with Wiz Kid, Cable and Storm in the background.<\/p>\n

PAGES 2-4.<\/strong>?Wiz Kid starts his day.<\/em><\/p>\n

Last issue ended with the revelation that Wiz Kid is Henry Gyrich’s man inside S.W.O.R.D.. He was sitting right in front of Abigail Brand when he was talking to Gyrich, though, so there was always a suggestion that it might be a bluff. Much of this issue is devoted to teasing the possibility that Wiz Kid might genuinely have turned on S.W.O.R.D., specifically because he sees no real difference between humans and mutants in terms of the way they treat him, in particular as regards his wheelchair use.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I don’t think Wiz Kid’s dyslexia has come up in quite some time, but it was indeed mentioned in his first appearance,?X-Terminators<\/em> #1.<\/p>\n

Wiz Kid points out that the outer housing of his chair is designed in echo of the aesthetic of Professor X’s 90s hoverchair, but he seems to prefer using a smaller, inner chair in private. There’s a suggestion that the big hoverchair is for show, with its deliberate echo of X-Men iconography.<\/p>\n

Page 4 addresses the obvious question of why Wiz Kid hasn’t either been healed by omega-level healers or put himself forward for resurrection. He uses a wheelchair after an injury in the accident that killed his parents, so in principle resurrection ought to work. Basically we’re asked to accept for present purposes that healing won’t work, and Wiz Kid is understandably not keen to get himself killed – though this is a fairly un-Krakoan attitude.<\/p>\n

PAGE 5.<\/strong> Recap and credits. As in the previous two issues, the small print reads “Planet Arakko – death is here”.<\/p>\n

PAGES 6-9.<\/strong>?Storm, Frenzy and Cannonball defeat the new Lethal Legion.<\/em><\/p>\n

Picking up the battle from last issue. The character that tells Half-Bot to play dead is Orbis Stellaris, the alien allied with Henry Gyrich, who was behind this attack (as we also saw last issue).<\/p>\n

Xandra is adorably childlike here, celebrating Storm’s victory. She’s normally written a bit more mature than this, but I prefer this dynamic.<\/p>\n

PAGE 10.<\/strong> Data page. A log of Abigail Brand’s movements, explaining where she’s gone – or at least, when she dropped off the record. “Kallark”, mentioned at the 0820 entry, is Gladiator from the Shi’ar Empire – presumably Abigail was liaising about the upcoming visit. The next four entries are all things we saw in the previous issue. The “Discussion with … Wiz-Kid” is presumably the scene with them together at the end of the issue, after which she vanished from the record – no doubt because the two of them are putting into operation their plan to triple-cross Gyrich.<\/p>\n

PAGES 11-14.<\/strong>?Wiz-Kid betrays Cable.<\/em><\/p>\n

Wiz-Kid’s account of how Cable got his job – overpromotion as a teenager – is essentially what Abigail said last issue, in a data page with her thoughts on Cable. That data page also showed that Abigail had come up with the idea of using Cable’s techno-organic virus against him, which is presumably the scheme that Wiz-Kid puts into play in this scene.<\/p>\n

A brief flashback shows young Cable being introduced to Wiz-Kid and (apparently) being visibly distracted by the chair. Wiz-Kid seems to be saying, though, that he could empathise with teen Cable feeling out of his depth in a position of responsibility for SHIELD, and hiding it behind a veneer of confidence.<\/p>\n

Cable’s restoration to his traditional status quo took place at the end of the last?Cable<\/em> solo series.<\/p>\n

I’m not quite sure why Wiz Kid’s powers make him a “living surveillance black spot”. Traditionally, Wiz-Kid’s powers are a psychic ability to assemble and reconfigure machinery, combined with a Forge-style intuition as to what to build. He?could<\/em> build something to stop surveillance, but he could also give it to pretty much anyone.<\/p>\n

The “mission on Breakworld” that Cable mentions was part of the “Last Annihilation” crossover (involving the Guardians of the Galaxy and Dormammu). Specifically, it’s in the one-shot?Cable: Reloaded<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Obviously, Cable’s not an idiot and can’t be allowed to fall for this without qualification – but he gives Taki the benefit of the doubt just long enough to be taken out.<\/p>\n

Wiz-Kid’s password is a reference to DMX’s “X Gon’ Give It To Ya” (number 6 in 2003).<\/p>\n

PAGES 15-16.<\/strong> More Lethal Legions arrive.<\/em><\/p>\n

The previous issue established that these guys are off-the-shelf weapons, so this is the logical next step.<\/p>\n

PAGE 17.<\/strong> Data page – an extract from the Lethal Legion catalogue. The company name – Stellaris – is new, but presumably the company has something to do with Orbis Stellaris himself. Gyrich described it as “your enhancement tech” when talking to Orbis Stellaris last issue, but that could have just meant that he contributed it to the mission.<\/p>\n

PAGES 18-19.<\/strong>?The Peak blows up.<\/em><\/p>\n

Despite the planet art, this is meant to be the Earth S.W.O.R.D. station blowing up (tying the group ever closer to Arakko going forward).<\/p>\n

The Vanisher is part of S.W.O.R.D.’s teleport team, though we haven’t seen much of him. George, the unusually-shaped guy he’s shepherding through the gates is probably Gorgeous George, a minor villain from the David\/Stroman?X-Factor<\/em> run in the early 90s.<\/p>\n

PAGES 20-22.<\/strong>?Wiz Kid on the Alpha Flight space station.<\/em><\/p>\n

Understandably, Gyrich is still suspicious of Wiz Kid’s plans. Wiz Kid gives an explanation of his motives that he says is what he thought Gyrich was expecting to hear. On the other hand, the first thing he says – that he doesn’t see humans and mutants as all that different – is also something that he said in his monologue in the first scene. The rest of his comment is to the effect that he doesn’t trust any project that brings in Apocalypse as a co-leader. While he clearly doesn’t really want to destroy Krakoa, it’s entirely possible that he wasn’t comfortable with Apocalypse’s involvement – it’s certainly not a position he contradicts with any of the pro-Krakoa comments that follow.<\/p>\n

Broadly, Wiz Kid seems to align with Abigail Brand’s views, expressed throughout this series, that are far more interested in viewing Earth as a whole than in mutant exceptionalism. The two of them are in business for themselves here.<\/p>\n

As Abigail points out, mutants didn’t invent Pym Particles – that part of Marvel Universe lore is the work of Hank Pym, the original Ant-Man.<\/p>\n

PAGE 23.<\/strong> Trailers. The Krakoan reads NEXT: PLANETFALL.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. S.W.O.R.D. vol 2 #10 “Triple Threat” by Al Ewing, Jacopo Camagni & Fernando Sifuentes COVER \/ PAGE 1: Well, it’s a S.W.O.R.D. station exploding with Wiz Kid, Cable and Storm in the background. PAGES 2-4.?Wiz Kid starts his day. Last issue […]<\/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-7318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7318","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=7318"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7318\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7324,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7318\/revisions\/7324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}