{"id":7640,"date":"2022-03-02T22:47:43","date_gmt":"2022-03-02T22:47:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=7640"},"modified":"2022-03-02T22:51:01","modified_gmt":"2022-03-02T22:51:01","slug":"x-men-vol-6-9","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=7640","title":{"rendered":"X-Men #9 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 #9<\/strong>
\n“The Rule of Three”<\/strong>
\nWriter: Gerry Duggan<\/strong>
\nArtist: C F Villa<\/strong>
\nColourist: Marte Gracia<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Clayton Cowles<\/strong>
\nEditor: Jordan D White<\/strong><\/p>\n

COVER \/ PAGE 1.<\/strong>\u00a0Orchis members sitting behind a bloodstained desk, after a bunch of shootings. That’s Killian Devo and Alia Gregor setting at the desk, with Dr Stasis, Nimrod and Omega Sentinel behind them, alongside a bunch of Orchis footsoldiers. The desk has obvious parallels to the Quiet Council desks, and this whole issue picks up the theme from Jonathan Hickman’s stories about clear parallels between the Krakoans and Orchis. I’m not sure who the guy lying on the floor is – it\u00a0might<\/em> be Feilong, but that doesn’t really make sense, and if it’s him his costume is miscoloured. On the other hand, Alia doesn’t actually appear in the story. Also lying on the floor in the foregrounds are a mixture of bullets and Orchis’s signature petals.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

PAGE 2.<\/strong>\u00a0Krakoa, Phobos and Arakko.<\/em><\/p>\n

Establishing shots as all three ruling councils begin their meeting – the Quiet Council on Krakoa, Orchis on Phobos (which Feilong colonised in issue #7) and the Great Ring on Arakko. To hammer home the parallels, all three seem to be starting their discussion with the same sentence. Professor X speaks first on Krakoa. Oddly, the first speaker on Phobos is Feilong, who doesn’t appear again in this issue. The first speaker on Arakko is Isca.<\/p>\n

These meetings can’t literally be simultaneous, because Storm is at two of them. The art avoids showing her in the Krakoa scenes, but the data page later in the issue confirms that she’s there.<\/p>\n

PAGE 3.<\/strong>\u00a0Professor X addresses the Quiet Council.<\/em><\/p>\n

Professor X is arguing for Krakoa to declare war on Orchis. Colossus is now present as a member of the Quiet Council, so we’ve passed\u00a0Inferno<\/em>. (The two seats now held by Colossus and Destiny were empty in previous Quiet Council scenes in this book.)<\/p>\n

“Both hard and soft power.”<\/strong> We’ve seen several times Orchis’s organisational chart which shows these two strands to their operation.<\/p>\n

“Who cares what the humans think?”<\/strong> I’m not convinced by this interpretation of Shaw. The whole point of bringing Shaw into the Quiet Council in the first place was that he would deal with the marketing of Krakoan drugs to the human world. He’s a mutant nationalist of sorts, but I don’t think he’s indifferent to humans on a purely pragmatic level.<\/p>\n

Emma seems to be more concerned about the reaction of other mutants, which is… not something I really follow. The X-Men have been fighting Orchis for a while now. What does a “secret war” on Orchis actually mean in practice that they haven’t been doing already? What’s the practical distinction between X-Force doing it (with the possibility of it coming out) and the Quiet Council doing it?<\/p>\n

PAGE 4.<\/strong> Stasis addresses Orchis.<\/em><\/p>\n

Actually shown on this page are Killian Devo, Dr Stasis,\u00a0Nimrod, and\u00a0Abigail Brand<\/strong>. Brand effectively told us near the end of\u00a0S.W.O.R.D.\u00a0<\/em>#11 that she was serving as her own mole within Orchis, but this is the first time we’ve seen her with them, and seen that she’s apparently working at a high level. Abigail is a mutant, but apparently Orchis don’t particularly care about that.<\/p>\n

“Modelling was counting on the mutant resurrection causing panic by now.”<\/strong> Stasis spent several issues trying to get Ben Urich to run a story on mutant resurrection, only for Urich’s memory to get wiped by Synch.<\/p>\n

M.O.D.O.K.<\/strong>‘s experiments were the subject of last issue’s story.<\/p>\n

“A machine designed only for killing.”<\/strong> M.O.D.O.K. stands for Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing, but there’s also an obvious parallel here with Nimrod and Omega Sentinel.<\/p>\n

PAGES 5-6.<\/strong>\u00a0Orchis break M.O.D.O.K. out of jail.<\/em><\/p>\n

Evidently M.O.D.O.K. was indeed arrested after the last issue, despite Cyclops telling him to go off and atone for his sins.<\/p>\n

PAGE 7.<\/strong> Data page. We’ve seen versions of this Orchis infrastructure chart before, though I think this is the first time we’ve had all of the departments named and the managers of petals 1 and 3 listed. Brand has replaced Henry Peter Gyrich (whom she murdered in S.W.O.R.D.\u00a0<\/em>#11) as leader of petal 2.\u00a0Stasis was named as human resources director in issue #2, though.<\/p>\n

The redactions in the opening text are odd, since when we saw this in\u00a0S.W.O.R.D.\u00a0<\/em>#3, the words now blacked out were shown clearly. The first sentence ends “by Homo superior is statistically inevitable.” The redacted words in the second sentence are “sustained resistance”.<\/p>\n

PAGE 8.<\/strong> Recap and credits. The title refers to the writing principle that a trio tends to be the most satisfying number (partly because it’s the smallest number that can establish a pattern).<\/p>\n

PAGES 9-12.<\/strong>\u00a0The Great Ring meet.<\/em><\/p>\n

Somewhat out of the blue, the Great Ring are debating whether they should return to the wartorn dimension of Amenth. Presumably the idea is that the warrior culture of Arakko leads many to feel that relocating to Mars is a bit of a cop out. It also generates some sort of parallel with the Krakoans wanting to go after Orchis, and Orchis discussing how to go after the Krakoans. Ironically, the Arakki – who actually\u00a0like<\/em> fighting – are thinking of just quitting the whole thing.<\/p>\n

We’re told that half of the Great Ring vote for this, but we’re not told which half. Only Tarn actually gets some dialogue, and he doesn’t actually tell us how he voted. Presumably everyone is present, but the members we actually see on panel in this sequence:<\/p>\n