{"id":7344,"date":"2021-11-26T22:28:46","date_gmt":"2021-11-26T22:28:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=7344"},"modified":"2021-11-26T22:28:46","modified_gmt":"2021-11-26T22:28:46","slug":"x-men-5-annotations-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=7344","title":{"rendered":"X-Men #5 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 #5<\/strong>
\n“Fearless, Chapter Five: Don’t Piss Off Polaris”<\/strong>
\nby Gerry Duggan, Javier Pina, Z\u00e9 Carlos & Erick Arciniega<\/strong><\/p>\n

COVER \/ PAGE 1.<\/strong>\u00a0A close-up of Dr Stasis (presumably), holding a scalpel, while his faceplate shows a reflection of a monster fighting Cyclops and Wolverine. It doesn’t help that this is the first time we’ve even had a clear view of Dr Stasis’s faceplate, but some of the red trim was visible in issue #3, and we also see it at the end of the issue.<\/p>\n

The original solicitation for this issue read “The X-Men’s new nemesis finally makes himself known to them, bringing his creations to bear. Mutants may have conquered death, but their foes are all too living…” This is not really what happens in the issue – which has a scene where the X-Men fight some of Stasis’ creations, but not where he makes his own involvement known – so you have to wonder if the cover is a hangover from an earlier story concept.<\/p>\n

PAGES 2-4.<\/strong>\u00a0The X-Men fight the Reavers in Mexico.<\/em><\/p>\n

The opening narration is a straight recap of the premise of the new Reavers, as established over in Duggan’s Marauders<\/em>. Although they’re mostly made up of former mercenaries, their main motivation is supposed to be revenge on mutants for their injuries – from the look of it, they’re also taking on unrelated mercenary work now, but they also suggest that they were deliberately trying to provoke a fight with the X-Men.<\/p>\n

Basically, the set up here is for Polaris to be the last X-Man standing and to beat a team of cyborgs on her own. They\u00a0are<\/em> part metal, after all.<\/p>\n

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

PAGES 6-7.<\/strong> Flashback: Jean makes Polaris put herself forward for the new X-Men team.<\/em><\/p>\n

This is a flashback to the election sequence in\u00a0X-Men<\/em> vol 5 #21. Dr Strange’s dialogue is a very loose paraphrase of what he said in the original issue. All of the telepathic conversation is new.<\/p>\n

Later in the issue, it’s clarifies that Jean isn’t altering Polaris’s mind here, but changing what everyone else heard her say – which Jean insists reflects what Polaris actually wanted. In\u00a0X-Factor<\/em> #10, Lorna apologised to Northstar for not telling him earlier that she was thinking of putting herself forward, but she doesn’t directly contradict this scene – she said she’d “been thinking about this move”, which is precisely Jean’s justification for forcing her to do it.<\/p>\n

PAGES 8-10.<\/strong>\u00a0Flashback:\u00a0<\/em>Polaris and Rogue deal with a reactor meltdown.<\/em><\/p>\n

The fact that Lorna had finally completed her doctorate (something also hammered in the next scene) was established in passing in\u00a0X-Men: The Trial of Magneto<\/em> #2.<\/p>\n

Other than that, this is a straightforward power demonstration with Polaris getting to do some straight superheroing, but still not feeling comfortable about it all.<\/p>\n

PAGES 11-12.<\/strong>\u00a0Flashback:\u00a0<\/em>The X-Men fight some of Dr Stasis’ creations in Central Park.<\/em><\/p>\n

This is the bit that, very tenuously, justifies the cover. Obviously, Polaris pairs off against the “monster” that doesn’t really want to be there either.<\/p>\n

The High Evolutionary.\u00a0<\/strong>The conversation with the High Evolutionary that Synch mentions took place in issue #3.<\/p>\n

“Dr Polaris”.\u00a0<\/strong>Dr Stasis calls Lorna “Dr Polaris” in reference to her degree, but it’s also the name of a DC supervillain.<\/p>\n

PAGES 13-17.<\/strong> Polaris defeats the Reavers.<\/em><\/p>\n

Back to the opening scene. This is Polaris getting to outthink and outpower the bad guys who underestimate her. You know the deal. They were prepared for the X-Men but they hadn’t fully thought through everything that Polaris can do, because she doesn’t normally show her full potential.<\/p>\n

Legacy House<\/strong> is a black market superhero memorabilia and information auction house, from various issues of Benjamin Percy’s\u00a0Wolverine<\/em>. It seems pretty likely that they’d bid highly for the X-Men, alive or dead.<\/p>\n

CHUDs.<\/strong> Apparently Laura is thinking of the 1984 horror film (it stood for Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers).<\/p>\n

Laura and Everett<\/strong> need to talk about the Hickman-X-Men\u00a0<\/em>“Vault” arc, where they spent hundreds of years trapped together in time dilation; both were resurrected in younger bodies at the end, and only Everett remembers it. Everett is in love with Laura; Laura has figured that out, but they haven’t spoken about it yet.<\/p>\n

PAGES 18-19.<\/strong>\u00a0Polaris speaks to Jean.<\/em><\/p>\n

It’s one of those dodgy scenes where blatantly overriding someone’s free will is apparently fine as long as you’re right. The basic take on Polaris is fairly standard, though – she’s an underachiever who needs to be pushed to reach her potential.<\/p>\n

The two lines of Spanish dialogue are “Hello, people!” and “Come and join us, friends.”<\/p>\n

PAGE 20.<\/strong> Data page. A note from Lorna to her former X-Factor teammate Northstar. She encourages him to stand for the team next week. She also says that Northstar supported her in the election, which we didn’t actually see, but then we didn’t see very much of the discussion among the mutants. He was perfectly supportive afterwards in\u00a0X-Factor<\/em> #10, so it makes perfect sense that he backed her.<\/p>\n

PAGE 21.<\/strong> Data page. The X-Men invite the general public to drop by their New York headquarters at the \u00a0Treehouse. It’s the sort of outreach project we saw them doing in issue #1.<\/p>\n

Apparently the Hellfire Trading Corporation’s lawyers are being wheeled out to offer free legal advice to New Yorkers, which sounds… inadvisable, since it’s unlikely many of them would know the first thing about New York housing law. Still, it is Manhattan. Maybe somebody will drop by with a query about the Hague-Visby Rules.<\/p>\n

PAGES 22-24.<\/strong>\u00a0Ben Urich talks to Cyclops.<\/em><\/p>\n

Ben has been showing an interest in resurrection throughout this series. He asked about Jumbo Carnation’s return in issue #1. The space mission he mentions is the attack on Orchis from\u00a0House of X<\/em>; Ben learned about it from Dr Stasis in issue #3. Ben saw Cable’s empty grave last issue.<\/p>\n

I’m not quite sure what “solved for death” is supposed to mean. “Solved death”, surely?<\/p>\n

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

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

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. X-MEN vol 6 #5 “Fearless, Chapter Five: Don’t Piss Off Polaris” by Gerry Duggan, Javier Pina, Z\u00e9 Carlos & Erick Arciniega COVER \/ PAGE 1.\u00a0A close-up of Dr Stasis (presumably), holding a scalpel, while his faceplate shows a reflection of a […]<\/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-7344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7344","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=7344"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7344\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7346,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7344\/revisions\/7346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}