{"id":7950,"date":"2022-06-09T21:55:21","date_gmt":"2022-06-09T20:55:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=7950"},"modified":"2022-06-09T21:55:21","modified_gmt":"2022-06-09T20:55:21","slug":"legion-of-x-2-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=7950","title":{"rendered":"Legion of X #2 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

\"\"<\/a>LEGION OF X #2<\/strong>
\n“Let Us Prey”<\/strong>
\nWriter: Si Spurrier<\/strong>
\nArtist: Jan Bazaldua<\/strong>
\nColourist: Federico Blee<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Clayton Cowles<\/strong>
\nDesign: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen<\/strong>
\nEditor: Sarah Brunstad<\/strong><\/p>\n

COVER \/ PAGE 1.<\/strong> Mother Righteous shows Nightcrawler and Banshee a vision of a nightmarish possible future Legion.<\/p>\n

PAGE 2.<\/strong>\u00a0Mother Righteous addresses Legion and Blindfold.<\/em><\/p>\n

“All those years broken, sedated, dismissed as a liability…”<\/strong> Mother Righteous is referring in broad strokes to Legion’s back story from his earliest appearances circa\u00a0New Mutants<\/em> #25. For anyone just joining us, David is the son of Professor X and Gabrielle Haller. Getting caught up in a terrorist attack as a child led to him going into a coma and developing multiple personalities. He remains comatose until his early appearances, but for years after that tends to be treated in stories as an eccentric and unreliable figure best marginalised.<\/p>\n

“You look at your dad now and all you see is coldness.”<\/strong> This is a recurring theme in Spurrier’s Legion stories. It’s slightly unfair to Xavier, who didn’t know that Legion existed until around the time of his debut appearance, and was then caught up in various storylines that prevented him spending any real time with Legion before the Muir Island Saga, at which point Legion wound up back in a coma. But Legion’s attitude is fair enough in a broader sense; Xavier, like everyone else, does pretty much forget about Legion when he’s not directly involved in a story.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Blindfold’s vision<\/strong>, as provoked by Mother Righteous, is oddly showing the present rather than the future. It’s not an easy image to understand and the dialogue patches it up on the next page, with Blindfold referring to a “horned god” and a “stolen hand”. On page 20, Pixie identifies the hand as “A Hand of Glory. A charm to open any lock.” Specifically, a Hand of Glory was the dried and pickled hand of someone who had been hanged. Various supernatural powers were attributed to them, one of which was indeed the ability to open any lock.<\/p>\n

PAGES 3-4.<\/strong>\u00a0Mother Righteous forces Blindfold to show a vision of a possible future.<\/em><\/p>\n

This possible future depicts Legion having ascended as leader of the X-Men (delivering his father’s leadership catchphrase), but with what appears to be a burning skull-like head, reminiscent of Ghost Rider or, perhaps more likely, Xorn.<\/p>\n

In the background, Krakoa seems to be partly converted into a techno-organic creature. The desk behind him is one of the four desks for the Quiet Council, though there are only two people sitting at it – presumably the third chair belongs to Legion himself. On the left is an aged Nightcrawler, accompanied by three Bamfs – Nightcrawler-like creatures from an alternate dimension who have cropped up occasionally over the years. To modern readers, they’re best known for infesting the X-Men’s school in\u00a0Wolverine & The X-Men<\/em>. On the right is a woman with long dark hair and what looks to be half of Destiny’s mask. Legion’s dialogue on the next page suggests that it’s an older Blindfold, though if so, she probably shouldn’t have visible eyes.<\/p>\n

“You rule you”<\/strong> – or rather, “I rule me” – was Legion’s catchphrase\/mantra in Spurrier’s\u00a0X-Men Legacy<\/em> run.<\/p>\n

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

PAGE 6.<\/strong> Data page. Dr Nemesis explains his theories on the Marvel Universe’s gods. Nemesis is basically suggesting here that the gods are created and sustained by the magical\/psychic processes of worship; important enough gods can survive the demise of their underlying religion by living on as mythical figures, presumably sustained by simply being part of the mass consciousness. If you don’t mind rationalising gods away, this all works perfectly well in continuity terms and explains why the various gods all assert mutually inconsistent histories as fact.<\/p>\n

PAGES 7-9.<\/strong>\u00a0Nightcrawler, Zsen and Sage in the Green Lagoon.<\/em><\/p>\n

The bar was smashed up last issue when the Juggernaut caught Paullie.<\/p>\n

Black Tom Cassidy<\/strong> serves as X-Force’s monitoring system, through his link to Krakoa, over in their title. He’s written here in line with his behaviour in\u00a0X-Force<\/em>. He and Juggernaut have a long and close relationship as partners and best friends.<\/p>\n

Nightcrawler<\/strong> is clearly oblivious to much of what X-Force get up to, and has a rather rose tinted view of the way that group behaves. He’s not going to be happy about it if he ever finds out.<\/p>\n

Banshee<\/strong> was killed and skinned by Moira MacTaggert, his long-time lover, in\u00a0X Deaths of Wolverine<\/em> #4. Obviously, he’s been resurrected since then. He’s possessed by Switch in this scene, hence his shaky accent, ham-fisted mention of his Interpol back story, and confusion when his cousin Black Tom Cassidy addresses him as “kin” – Switch doesn’t seem to know who Black Tom is. Banshee is carrying a small bag at the start of the scene, but it seems to go missing on the page turn.<\/p>\n

Juggernaut<\/strong> learned last issue that Professor X didn’t want him as a Legionnaire. He’s speculating when he says that it was because he’s not a mutant – but that\u00a0was<\/em> the reason that Xavier originally gave to him for excluding him from Krakoa in general, as seen in the\u00a0Juggernaut<\/em> miniseries.<\/p>\n

PAGE 10.<\/strong> Lost, Forget-Me-Not, Pixie and Dust talk to Paullie.<\/em><\/p>\n

Paullie is getting rapidly irritated with this touchie-feelie stuff.<\/p>\n

PAGES 10-11.<\/strong>\u00a0Nightcrawler and Sage.<\/em><\/p>\n

We get the tail end of Nightcrawler’s musings to Sage about his philosophy; how much she really agrees with him and how much she’s just nodding along politely is hard to say, though she\u00a0is<\/em> the nice one in X-Force. Nightcrawler’s current idea is that if people just embrace his philosophy of experimentation, maybe they won’t need laws at all and they can get by with just good old conscience. Good luck getting the likes of Sabretooth and Mr Sinister to sign on for that, Kurt.<\/p>\n

PAGES 11-13.<\/strong>\u00a0Zsen breaks into the Pointe and fights the Beast.<\/em><\/p>\n

Zsen is presumably looking for the monitoring devices that she mentioned on page 7. The Beast, in full paranoid mode, responds to this as an attack – probably not unreasonably, since she’s trespassing in a top secret area and he doesn’t recognise her.<\/p>\n

PAGE 14.<\/strong> Data page – the Beast notes the Skinjacker incidents (i.e., Switch) but decides that it’s not a threat to national security, so it can be left “to Kurt and his Emocops”. This\u00a0could<\/em> be played as a perfectly reasonable viewpoint – it’s a police matter, not a national security matter – but Hank clearly comes across as thinking that the suffering of individuals is beneath his notice, and that it can be palmed off on a group that he plainly thinks of as a joke. Of course, Hank’s main function in\u00a0X-Force<\/em> is to be wrong about stuff, and since the Skinjacker has indeed come back to bite him, he’s characteristically wrong here too.<\/p>\n

PAGE 15.<\/strong> Nightcrawler and Sage break up the fight.<\/em><\/p>\n

Singing stones<\/strong> are a thing from\u00a0X-Force –\u00a0<\/em>bugs disguised as ordinary pieces of stone – though I think this is the first time we’ve been told that they’re being used for surveillance on Krakoa itself.<\/p>\n

The object that Kurt picks up in the final panel is apparently meant\u00a0<\/em>to be the Hand of Glory which he brings back to the Altar later in the issue, though it doesn’t really look like it in the art. We’re told later on that it’s been made from some of the body parts that Switch made people cut off. The suggestion is that Switch used the body parts to make a Hand of Glory, which he then used to break into X-Force headquarters through its magical ability to open any lock. Why it’s still here lying on the floor isn’t clear.<\/p>\n

PAGES<\/strong> 16-21. <\/strong>The Legionnaires catch up with Switch, but he escapes.<\/em><\/p>\n

I’m not sure there’s anything in Switch’s earlier appearances about only being able to jump bodies once a day. It doesn’t seem to be true here, at any rate. In his handful of prior appearances (X-Force<\/em> #87-90), Switch swapped minds with his victim, who woke up in Switch’s body. Here, he seems to be a disembodied consciousness jumping from body to body. Juggernaut reports possession feeling “cold and dark”, which is certainly not what happened in the original arc.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, Switch’s stated motivation as just having fun by screwing with people’s lives is broadly consistent with how he was written the first time around.<\/p>\n

Nightcrawler must be correct when he says that Switch has learned sorcery, since there must be some magical component to a working Hand of Glory.<\/p>\n

PAGES 21-22.<\/strong>\u00a0Mother Righteous offers Legion power in exchange for appreciation.<\/em><\/p>\n

This book seems to be consciously avoiding doing its scene transitions at the end of a page, perhaps to make the scene jumps more momentarily disorienting. Legion then seems to jump to the easy solution of wiping Paullie’s memories (since he appears to be innocent), which Paullie promptly rejects. Moreover, Legion is offering that as an alternative to the touchy-feely approach favoured by Kurt.<\/p>\n

PAGES 23-24.<\/strong>\u00a0Banshee meets Mother Righteous.<\/em><\/p>\n

“You lose a vote, you lose your true love, you lose your own body.”<\/strong>\u00a0The vote is presumably when he put himself forward for the X-Men at the Hellfire Gala. The other two are obvious – Moira from X Deaths of Wolverine<\/em> #4, and Switch from this issue.<\/p>\n

PAGE 25.<\/strong> Trailers.<\/p>\n

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

As always, this post contains spoilers and page numbers go by the digital edition. LEGION OF X #2 “Let Us Prey” Writer: Si Spurrier Artist: Jan Bazaldua Colourist: Federico Blee Letterer: Clayton Cowles Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen Editor: Sarah Brunstad COVER \/ PAGE 1. Mother Righteous shows Nightcrawler and Banshee a vision of […]<\/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-7950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7950","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=7950"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7950\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7952,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7950\/revisions\/7952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}