{"id":7885,"date":"2022-05-19T23:01:18","date_gmt":"2022-05-19T22:01:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=7885"},"modified":"2022-05-19T23:01:18","modified_gmt":"2022-05-19T22:01:18","slug":"x-men-red-2-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=7885","title":{"rendered":"X-Men Red #2 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

\"\"<\/a>X-MEN RED #2<\/strong>
\n“Man on Fire”
\nWriter: Al Ewing<\/strong>
\nArtist: Stefano Caselli<\/strong>
\nColourist: Federico Blee<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Cory Petit<\/strong>
\nEditor: Jordan White<\/strong><\/p>\n

COVER \/ PAGE 1.<\/strong> Storm fighting Vulcan. It seems to be going rather better for Vulcan than it does in the issue itself.<\/p>\n

PAGES 2-5.<\/strong>\u00a0Flashback: Professor X and Cyclops confront Vulcan.<\/em><\/p>\n

This takes place before issue #1 (when Vulcan had already been kicked out of the Summer House), and shortly after\u00a0X-Men: Trial of Magneto<\/em> #5 (when the Scarlet Witch created the Waiting Room).<\/p>\n

The Summer House<\/strong> is the Summers family’s home on the Moon – though with Cyclops and Jean Grey in New York with the X-Men, Kid Cable no longer in this timeline, and Rachel with X-Factor and now in\u00a0Knights of X<\/em>, it may just be Vulcan, Havok and Wolverine actually living there now.<\/p>\n

The three aliens<\/strong> on page 2, and their dialogue, come from\u00a0X-Men<\/em> #10 of the Hickman run. It’s a straight recap of what was set up in that issue, which didn’t identify them or shed much further light on their plans.<\/p>\n

Petra and Sway.<\/strong> Oh god.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Vulcan’s back story involves him being part of a team of trainees who were pressganged into becoming an ersatz X-Men group, and who made a first, doomed attempt at rescuing the original team from Krakoa in\u00a0Giant-Size X-Men<\/em> #1 – as retconned in\u00a0X-Men: Deadly Genesis<\/em>. Petra and Sway were also members of that team, and died on Krakoa. That\u00a0was\u00a0meant<\/em> to be before the earliest Cerebro back-ups, making it impossible to resurrect them until\u00a0Trial of Magneto<\/em> created the Waiting Room and made it possible to resurrect mutants who had died in earlier years.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, Petra and Sway appear alongside Vulcan in the Summer House in several stories (such as\u00a0X-Men<\/em>\u00a0#8 and #10). Jonathan Hickman’s intention was apparently for them to be hallucinations, but dialogue in issue #8 mistakenly implied that other people could see them too (Havok refers to “you guys”) and issue #10 has them continuing a conversation in his absence. Making matters worse, Petra appears – and has dialogue – in\u00a0New Mutants<\/em> #14, where Vulcan isn’t even present. That’s the visit to Krakoa that Xavier mentions on the data page.<\/p>\n

This flashback, and the data page that follows, square all this away and get the story back to Hickman’s original intention by explaining that “Petra” and “Sway” are energy constructs created by Vulcan, whom everyone can see, but whom Vulcan delusionally believes to be real.<\/p>\n

Vulcan’s behaviour in this scene (and Petra and Sway’s, for that matter) is in line with his Hickman appearances. Petra kept banging on about margaritas in X-Men<\/em> #10 too.<\/p>\n

The Changeling<\/strong> is, technically, the first X-Man to die in battle, having died in X-Men\u00a0<\/em>vol 1 #42 while impersonating Professor X. He doesn’t have the iconic status of Thunderbird because his death was a retcon to explain away Professor X’s return from the grave in issue #65. The Changeling has also previously been shown in crowd scenes in Krakoa (he’s among the mutants gathering around Professor X’s body in\u00a0X-Force<\/em> #2), but evidently we should disregard that as an art error. Poor Changeling is apparently still dead, and was last seen in\u00a0Sensational She-Hulk<\/em> #36 as a member of the mutant zombie group the X-Humed.<\/p>\n

PAGE 6.<\/strong> Recap and credits.<\/p>\n

PAGES 7-10.<\/strong> Abigail Brand introduces Vulcan to X-Men Red.<\/em><\/p>\n

Vulcan was causing trouble in the Diplomatic Zone last issue, where he was mortally offended by a Shi’ar diplomat pretending not to know who he was. Plainly, even aside from the manipulation he’s undergone at the hands of the aliens, Vulcan is a character looking for a role and for some direction, and unable to come to terms with having lost the one he had before. Brand pitches X-Men Red to him as an opportunity to do something worthy of his talents. Since X-Men Red are part of Brand’s scheme to destabilise Arakko, she’s presumably well aware of the fact that she’s putting someone deeply unreliable on the team.<\/p>\n

Vulcan’s “personal reasons” for not setting foot on Krakoa are presumably to do with the traumatic memory of leading his team to annihilation there in\u00a0Deadly Genesis<\/em>.<\/p>\n

X-Men Red<\/strong> are notionally the title characters of this book, but it’s fairly clear from the first two issues that the Brotherhood are at least the co-stars, if not actually the real stars. That said, Cable and Vulcan both got a fair amount of page time in the first two issues.<\/p>\n

Aside from Vulcan, the members of this team all come from the cast of\u00a0S.W.O.R.D.<\/em>, and they don’t seem especially keen to be there. Frenzy wants to get back to diplomacy; Manifold has lost all confidence in Brand and walks out within pages. Random is hard to read. Mentallo seems amused by the whole thing but gives the impression that he realises all is not as it seems. As for Cable, he remains mostly silent here and certainly\u00a0seems<\/em> to be a loyal right hand man to Abigail – but can he really be that gullible? Or is he just keeping an eye on her? (He could of course be on her side – but Abigail went out of her way to sideline him in the closing issues of\u00a0S.W.O.R.D.<\/em>, which makes that unlikely.)<\/p>\n

Henry Gyrich<\/strong> was murdered by Abigail in\u00a0S.W.O.R.D. <\/em>#11, and as Manifold says, he and Cable were both kept far away from that as part of a scheme of Abigail’s. Manifold blatantly sees through it all, making it all the less likely that Cable can’t see it. Abigail pretty much invites the X-Men Red team to accept that they would be fine with killing Gyrich anyway, but the reaction she gets is less than enthusiastic. (Again, Mentallo seems to be amused by the situation, but is that because he’s fine with murdering Gyrich or because he’s paying attention to the reactions of his teammates?)<\/p>\n

The Krakoan text<\/strong> in the last panel reads “ALERT”.<\/p>\n

PAGES 11-14.<\/strong>\u00a0X-Men Red fight the Progenitors.<\/em><\/p>\n

Cable gets killed rather quickly – partly because it’s part of Abigail’s plan to take the opportunity to investigate his techno-organics, but note that it also has the effect of getting him out of the way before the real heroes show up.<\/p>\n

The<\/strong> Progenitors\u00a0<\/strong>are an alien race from Al Ewing’s\u00a0Royals<\/em> (an Inhumans series). They were vastly powerful in that story, which may suggest that these guys are fakes. Abigail’s data page later on tells us that they were “programmed” by Orbis Stellaris. Cable wasn’t in\u00a0Royals\u00a0<\/em>but seems to suggest that he’s met them before.<\/p>\n

The Arakkii<\/strong> seen here are the local version of artists – they have no particularly useful combat powers, from the look of it, but still have a strong cultural inclination to fight any opponent in front of them. Note that Mentallo’s attitude changes dramatically here from the previous scene – he’s genuinely appalled by this suicidal attack. Brand’s idea seems to be to offend Arakkii sensibilities by having the Krakoans “rescue” them – and again, she waits until Cable’s out of the way before giving orders to start clearing away the battle-ready civilians. Just to make sure it goes as badly as possible, she entrusts the job to Vulcan, a disturbed man who presumably read the “civilian rescue protocol” on his way there.<\/p>\n

The Arakkii artists repeat the “you were not there” complaint from the previous issue.<\/p>\n

PAGES 15-18.<\/strong>\u00a0The Brotherhood sort it all out.<\/em><\/p>\n

The key point here is that the Brotherhood are trying to work in line with Arakkii sensibilities, and they have a degree of credibility in that regard because Ororo has earned cultural respect, and the Fisher King clearly carries some cultural cachet. The Brotherhood harness the local mutants as allies and summarily despatch the Progenitors.<\/p>\n

Vulcan<\/strong>\u00a0yelling that he “never died” refers to the end of\u00a0War of Kings,\u00a0<\/em>where he was banished to the Fault. That was\u00a0the end of his tenure as Shi’ar Emperor.<\/p>\n

Storm’s reference to him containing a “flaw” is a reference to the aliens’ speech in\u00a0X-Men<\/em> #10. (“There was a flaw in you. An error in your existence. A crack in your firmament. It cannot be fixed. You cannot be fixed.”) The “flaw”, in their eyes, appeared to be that Vulcan had the potential for good.<\/p>\n

PAGE 19.<\/strong> Data page – Abigail’s diary.<\/p>\n

Orbis Stellaris<\/strong> is the arms dealer who was dealing with Gyrich in the closing issues of\u00a0SWORD<\/em>; a data page from\u00a0SWORD\u00a0<\/em>#11 says that he’s from Earth, but we still don’t know much about him.<\/p>\n

“That Skrull separatist who’s running the Chitauri these<\/strong>\u00a0days”.\u00a0<\/strong>Talionis, who seized power in\u00a0Guardians of the Galaxy<\/em> vol 6 #18 (part of Al Ewing’s “Last Annihilation” story).<\/p>\n

“Queen of Wakanda \/ Queen of the Morlocks”.<\/strong> Storm was (notionally) the leader of the Morlocks for much of the 1980s, having defeated Callisto in a knife fight to win the role. There are some parallels between that side of Morlock culture and Arakko. Storm as queen of Wakanda is, well, a regal supporting character.<\/p>\n

PAGES 20-21.<\/strong> Brand sends Vulcan to kill Tarn.<\/em><\/p>\n

Tarn is mainly a\u00a0Hellions<\/em> villain, but he’s also a sadistic maniac with vast power. This isn’t going to go well for Vulcan. It also shows that he’s failed to learn the point of this issue’s story: the Arakkii don’t want an outsider to come in and save them from Tarn.<\/p>\n

PAGE 22.<\/strong> Trailers.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. X-MEN RED #2 “Man on Fire” Writer: Al Ewing Artist: Stefano Caselli Colourist: Federico Blee Letterer: Cory Petit Editor: Jordan White COVER \/ PAGE 1. Storm fighting Vulcan. It seems to be going rather better for Vulcan than it does in […]<\/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,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7885","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=7885"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7885\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7887,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7885\/revisions\/7887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}