{"id":7766,"date":"2022-04-07T23:24:40","date_gmt":"2022-04-07T22:24:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=7766"},"modified":"2022-04-07T23:24:40","modified_gmt":"2022-04-07T22:24:40","slug":"marauders-1-annotations-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=7766","title":{"rendered":"Marauders #1 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

\"\"<\/a>MARAUDERS vol 2 #1
\n<\/strong>“Extinction Agenda”<\/strong>
\nWriter: Steve Orlando<\/strong>
\nArtist: Eleonora Carlini<\/strong>
\nColourist: Matt Milla<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Ariana Maher<\/strong>
\nEditor: Jordan D White<\/strong><\/p>\n

COVER \/ PAGE 1:<\/strong> The new Marauders team pose dramatically. For anyone just joining us, this team was assembled in\u00a0Marauders Annual<\/em> #1, which is effectively the real first issue of Steve Orlando’s run.<\/p>\n

PAGES 2-4.<\/strong>\u00a0The new Marauders rescue Fever Pitch.<\/em><\/p>\n

“Gyrich’s little gift”.<\/b> Henry Peter Gyrich was a senior figure in the anti-mutant organisation Orchis, until Abigail Brand killed him and replaced him in\u00a0S.W.O.R.D.\u00a0<\/em>vol 2 #11.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Fever<\/strong>\u00a0Pitch.\u00a0<\/strong>This guy is obscure. He’s a Jay Faerber \/ Terry Dodson creation who debuted in\u00a0Generation X<\/em> vol 1 #50, originally as a member of Gene Nation. He’s made very sporadic appearances since – he was briefly a member of X-Corps (the paramilitary outfit led by Banshee from Joe Casey’s\u00a0Uncanny X-Men<\/em> run), and for some reason he was one of the 198 mutants who kept their powers after M-Day. He was last seen in\u00a0X-Force<\/em> vol 3 #12-13, thirteen years ago, when the Sapien League infected him with a virus that made him explode against his will. That’s what Bishop means by “Humans turned him into a suicide bomb.” Apparently he survived as an electromagnetic field and has been trying to re-establish himself ever since.<\/p>\n

Presumably Orchis were also aware of Fever Pitch’s quasi-survival, which is why they equipped the local enforcers with equipment designed to prevent Fever Pitch’s reincorporation. Bearing in mind that Fever Pitch was a murderous terrorist even before the Sapien League got to him, and that he’s known to have posed an extreme danger to those around him, the individual soldiers seen here are not necessarily Orchis affiliated.<\/p>\n

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

“Extinction Agenda.”<\/strong> The title references the 1990 crossover “X-Tinction Agenda”, which was about Genosha back in the days when it was an apartheid allegory.<\/p>\n

PAGES 6-9.<\/strong> Kate Pryde hunts out Cassandra Nova.<\/em><\/p>\n

The mysterium puzzlebox.\u00a0<\/strong>As the footnote says, Kate got the puzzlebox in\u00a0Marauders Annual<\/em> #1. The map we saw simply showed Krakoa with the words “The first blood spilled” written on it in Kate’s own handwriting. How that led her to anywhere\u00a0in particular<\/em> on Krakoa is not explained. This location is, apparently, an “archipelago even Krakoa didn’t know about”. By default, Krakoa is aware of every part of its body, as we’ve seen with Black Tom Cassidy in X-Force.\u00a0<\/em>Kate is probably right, therefore, to say that “[s]omeone made [Krakoa] forget” this part of its own body. The obvious candidate would be something to do with the No-Places, invisible to Krakoa, that were used to create a home for Moira McTaggert.<\/p>\n

“And I though Professor Xavier was a jerk.”<\/strong> The iconic title of\u00a0Uncanny X-Men<\/em> vol 1 #168, where it was a line delivered by Kate (then Kitty).<\/p>\n

Cassandra Nova.<\/strong> Cassandra Nova was one of the main villains in Grant Morrison’s\u00a0New X-Men<\/em> run from the early 2000s. She’s Professor X’s evil spirit double who took physical form as his twin, but was killed by him in the womb. In continuity terms, her main claim to fame is being responsible for the genocidal slaughter of the millions of mutants on Genosha, in New X-Men\u00a0<\/em>vol 1 #115.\u00a0She was last seen in\u00a0X-Men: Red<\/em> vol 1 #11, where Jean defeated her by forcing her to experience empathy for her millions of victims. The main angle in that story was that Cassandra had been driven by an innate hatred and that Jean was going to show her a better way. And then the book ended and we never did find out what happened to Cassandra next.<\/p>\n

Specifically, what Jean said in\u00a0X-Men: Red<\/em> vol 1 #11 at page 19 was “Every time our minds touched, I felt something. There was an integral piece of you missing. … We’ve given you what you were lacking … Now, every time you feel a mutant, you’ll feel something else, something you’ve never felt before. Empathy.” I would have read that dialogue to mean that Jean was giving Cassandra empathy as a general proposition, and that mutants were simply the immediately relevant example. Steve Orlando’s interpretation seems to be either that Jean\u00a0only<\/em> gave Cassandra empathy for mutants, or at least that what she did was somehow particularly effective in keeping Cassandra away from mutants.<\/p>\n

Okkara.<\/strong> Okkara was the ancient mutant-populated island that eventually split Krakoa and Arakko. Cassandra is claiming that even this ancient race of mutants was actually a second generation, and that a first, pre-Okkaran generation has survivors who are still out there somewhere. As Bishop acknowledges on the following data page, it’s not obvious what Cassandra would have to do with ancient mutants, considering that she’s the evil double of Charles Xavier, who is much, much younger than that. Thematically, of course, there’s a sense in which Professor X is a kind of “first mutant”.<\/p>\n

Kate’s father<\/strong>, Carmen Pryde, was not a mutant. He was indeed killed in the Genoshan massacre, however, as revealed in\u00a0X-Men Unlimited<\/em> vol 1 #36.<\/p>\n

PAGE 10.<\/strong> Data page. Bishop sends a memo to Kate Pryde setting out his thoughts on the new roster.<\/p>\n

The XSE<\/b> was the paramilitary mutant police force that Bishop served in in his own alternate-future timeline, before coming back in time and joining the X-Men.\u00a0Randall\u00a0<\/strong>and\u00a0Malcolm<\/strong> were his teammates who arrived in the present alongside him in Uncanny X-Men<\/em> vol 1 #282, and got killed shortly afterwards in\u00a0Uncanny X-Men<\/em> vol 1 #287.<\/p>\n

“I’ve travelled in time plenty.”<\/strong> Aside from his travel from his own timeline to the present, Bishop also travelled back in time to stop Legion assassinating the future Professor X at the start of the “Age of Apocalypse” storyline. More notoriously, Bishop spent the 25 issues of\u00a0Cable<\/em> vol 2 chasing Cable and Hope through time in an attempt to kill Hope as a child and alter history. This storyline effectively destroyed Bishop as a viable hero, and the general approach since has been to completely ignore it. Unusually, Orlando seems to be intentionally referencing it, as he compares himself to Cassandra later on (“I’ve done a mountain of bad myself, across time.”).<\/p>\n

Brimstone<\/strong>\u00a0Love\u00a0<\/strong>vivisected Daken (Akihiro) in\u00a0Marauders Annual<\/em> #1.<\/p>\n

Daken and Aurora<\/strong>‘s relationship is was a major subplot in\u00a0the recent\u00a0X-Factor<\/em> series.<\/p>\n

Stitch<\/strong> was rescued by Aurora in, again,\u00a0Marauders Annual<\/em> #1.<\/p>\n

Somnus<\/strong>‘s back story comes from\u00a0Marvel’s Voices: Pride<\/em> #1.<\/p>\n

PAGE 11.<\/strong>\u00a0Psylocke and Tempo on Danger Island.<\/em><\/p>\n

Danger Island.\u00a0<\/strong>Although Danger Island was mentioned back in\u00a0House of X\u00a0<\/em>#6 as a Krakoan location – presumably as the sort of training facility we see here – this is the first time we’ve actually seen it. It seems to have the same holographic imaging facilities traditionally associated with the X-Men’s Danger Room (the Shi’ar version, anyway).<\/p>\n

Psylocke<\/strong>‘s back story with the Hand involves her mind being (mostly) swapped with Betsy Braddock, the current Captain Britain, in\u00a0Uncanny X-Men<\/em> vol 1 #256 (as expanded upon by many subsequent flashbacks and retcons). All of it was eventually undone.<\/p>\n

PAGE 12.<\/strong>\u00a0Jean and Cassandra.<\/em><\/p>\n

Jean Grey<\/strong> is wearing her\u00a0X-Men Red<\/em> costume. The time “when I left you crying at my feet” is the scene from\u00a0X-Men: Red<\/em> vol 1 #11 already mentioned.<\/p>\n

Cassandra’s attitude here basically undercuts the ending of\u00a0X-Men Red<\/em> – which admittedly was always a bit power-of-love. The capacity to empathise with her victims has only introduced her to the joys of sadism. Cassandra’s comments about enjoying their suffering are a bit odd, since they seem to suggest that she\u00a0does<\/em> feel empathy for non-mutant victims. But if so, why has Jean only affected her attitude towards mutants?<\/p>\n

PAGE 13.<\/strong>\u00a0Bishop and Aurora.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Boneyard<\/strong> is the home of X-Factor, and presumably still of Aurora and Daken.<\/p>\n

PAGES 14-15.<\/strong>\u00a0Somnus helps Daken dream about killing Brimstone Love.<\/em><\/p>\n

“You had decades to spare.”<\/strong> Again, Daken is alluding to Somnus’s back story from\u00a0Marvel’s Voices: Pride<\/em> #1, in which they spend a night together but subjectively experience it as a lifetime.<\/p>\n

PAGES 16-17.<\/strong>\u00a0Kate introduces Cassandra to the team.<\/em><\/p>\n

Somnus died long after the Genoshan massacre. But because he was in the closet as a mutant during his first life, he was completely out of the loop of the mutant community, and doesn’t know anything about Cassandra’s involvement. (It’s evidently not a secret in Krakoan circles if Tempo knows about it.)<\/p>\n

PAGE 18.<\/strong> Data page. This is a discussion about Cassandra’s condition between\u00a0Dr Nemesis<\/strong>, the more-or-less nice mad scientist most recently seen in\u00a0Way of X<\/em>;\u00a0Cecilia Reyes<\/strong>, the X-Men’s regular old doctor; and\u00a0Mr Sinister<\/strong>, the more-or-less evil mad scientist.\u00a0ForgetMeNot<\/strong>, listed as stenographer, is a minor character with the odd power that everyone forgets him when they aren’t directly interacting with him – he started as a gag character, the joke being that he’d been on the X-Men for decades but you don’t remember either.<\/p>\n

“Fungus-headed dabbler.”<\/strong> Nemesis started growing psychedelic mushrooms out of his own head in\u00a0Way of X<\/em>. It was that sort of book.<\/p>\n

Mr Sinister’s mutant status.<\/strong> According to\u00a0Powers of X<\/em> #4, Mr Sinister used DNA taken from Thunderbird to create a mutant body for himself; hence, he’s not a natural mutant, but someone who artificially became a mutant. Nemesis obviously regards this as Not A Proper Mutant. But, as Reyes points out, Sinister\u00a0is <\/em>recognised by the Quiet Council as a mutant (though perhaps only because they need his DNA resources as part of the resurrection operation). And however he came to be a mutant, biologically, he is one now. Reyes is clearly right that, if Mr Sinister counts as a mutant, Cassandra Nova certainly does.<\/p>\n

Doctor Death.\u00a0<\/strong>This is the name that Dr Nemesis went by in his earlier Marvel Universe appearances, in the 1993\u00a0Invaders<\/em> miniseries. In that story, he was a member of Battle-Axis, a group of disillusioned superheroes who wanted to persuade the USA to drop out of World War II. So, you know, it’s not like the guy’s moral judgments have ever been impeccable. The context here is that Battle-Axis were originally meant to be thinly-disguised versions of public domain superheroes from the 1940s; when Dr Nemesis was brought into the Marvel Universe outright, this appearance stuck as part of his continuity.<\/p>\n

PAGES 19-21.<\/strong>\u00a0Cassandra reveals the plot.<\/em><\/p>\n

The crimes of Apocalypse and Sinister.<\/strong> Cassandra claims that her crimes – which involved the death of 16 million mutants – are trivial compared to Apocalypse or Mr Sinister. Unless she knows something we don’t, this certainly isn’t true of Sinister; if it’s true of Apocalypse, then it’s something way back in his early history that we haven’t seen.<\/p>\n

The Shi’ar.<\/strong> Cassandra conquered the Shi’ar by impersonating Professor X and seizing control, as seen in\u00a0New X-Men<\/em> vol 1 #122-126. The suggestion may be that she had reasons for going to the Shi’ar other than her plan for revenge on Professor X.<\/p>\n

PAGE 22.\u00a0<\/strong>The New Marauders leaves Earth.<\/em><\/p>\n

The New Marauder<\/strong> is the stolen spaceship formerly known as the Mercury, so it can do this.<\/p>\n

Chandilar\u00a0<\/strong>is the capital of the Shi’ar Empire. Its gate with Krakoa was created in the first\u00a0New Mutants<\/em> arc of the current run.<\/p>\n

PAGES 23-26.<\/strong>\u00a0Xandra learns the plot.<\/em><\/p>\n

The four characters accompanying Xandra are:<\/p>\n