{"id":8103,"date":"2022-07-31T21:09:55","date_gmt":"2022-07-31T20:09:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=8103"},"modified":"2022-07-31T21:09:55","modified_gmt":"2022-07-31T20:09:55","slug":"x-men-unlimited-infinity-comic-42-43","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=8103","title":{"rendered":"X-Men Unlimited Infinity Comic #42-43"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #42-43<\/strong>
\n“Cypher in the Cryptolect”<\/strong>
\nWriter: Alex Paknadel<\/strong>
\nArtist: Damian Couceiro<\/strong>
\nColourist: Felipe Sobreiro<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Joe Sabino<\/strong>
\nEditor: Lauren Amaro<\/strong><\/p>\n

X-Men Unlimited Infinity Comic<\/em>, by far the longest running of the\u00a0Infinity books, has settled into a role as a quirky diversion for X-completists. Is that the sort of material that draws people in to Marvel Unlimited? Maybe it is. Maybe the audience for an archive subscription service (albeit one that covers pretty much the entire Marvel line on a three-month lag) is the hardcores and what you need to offer them is something, well, if not essential, at least additive.<\/p>\n

So here’s a two-part Cypher story. Doug’s prominent in the Krakoan era but it’s not all that often that he actually gets to do anything – which is fine, since it has more impact when he actually does. Still, this is an actual Cypher story, written by Alex Paknadel, who was also responsible for the recent Maggott arc. Either he likes playing with underused characters, or this is just what’s available on\u00a0X-Men Unlimited<\/em>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The thing with Cypher, and the main reason he doesn’t get many stories, is that his translation powers aren’t what you’d call visual, and don’t naturally lend themselves to more than a supporting role. But if you actually have some ideas about language that you want to talk about, well, Cypher’s your lad.<\/p>\n

So Paknadel opens his story with Cypher monologuing about how languages like English and German lent themselves to both art and brutal rabble-rousing because the same ambiguity that enables poetics also makes it possible to manipulate a crowd, or at least justify things to them. I’m not sure I agree with that precisely as Paknadel explains it, but sure, I’ll accept the basic core of that argument: the features of a language that allow it to be used for art are the same ones that allow it to be used for oratory and manipulation.<\/p>\n

Cypher tells us that he wants to make Krakoan a perfect language which can’t be twisted for evil ends. At the same time, he wants it to be usable for art. In fact, this story makes it pretty clear that the inhabitants of Krakoa\u00a0can<\/em> speak Krakoan, but they\u00a0don’t<\/em>. Cypher describes it as a “bureaucratic” language, which Kurt has extended for liturgical purposes… but it’s not a language of self-expression. It feels like Paknadel is skipping a few steps in this argument. After all, surely the point of having Krakoan as a shared language was as part of a nation-building project. If people aren’t using it for art and song, then that’s because they’re\u00a0not using it<\/em>, which seems like it strikes at the heart of the whole idea. Then again, though, maybe Cypher doesn’t see it that way – maybe for him it really is a project in creating a perfect artificial language.<\/p>\n

Cypher’s solution to this dilemma is to… try and write poetry in Krakoan. If you actually want to, the page of symbols we see can indeed be transliterated into English, and it really is a poem – it seems to be Cypher wondering whether the utopian phase of Krakoa has passed. Nothing in the story turns on that, but bonus points for making it worth the effort of translating.<\/p>\n

After this initial phase of linguistic musings, we get to the actual plot, in which a mutant language shows up on Krakoa jumping from host to host. To be clear, what we mean here by “a mutant language” is not “a language used by mutants”, but “a mutant whose power is to become a language”. Apparently, he alters his hosts when they speak his words, and the big threat is that he will somehow manage to spread across the whole population. Visually, this gets represented as hosts glowing with energy from their eyes and mouth, which artist Damien Couceiro makes quite effective, not least because there’s a nice sense of panic in the hosts.<\/p>\n

Of course, when Cypher “learns” the language, he’s able to deal with it in a way that nobody else can, and so he can speak to the underlying mutant in a way that no one else can. All this calls for a certain degree of goodwill in the whole concept of mutants – how can you actually have an X-gene when you’re a concept? – but hell, if we’re willing to accept that Malice was still a mutant when she was a disembodied psyche, why not. Cypher’s discussion with Etienne is illustrated against the background of columns random letters tumbling down the screen, a cute effect which gets across the idea that we’re doing something different from just regular telepathy. (I mean, we’re probably\u00a0not<\/em>. But the visual helps sell the idea that this is something unique.)<\/p>\n

Etienne has come to Krakoa so that he can stop hurting people, and Cypher’s solution is pretty simple: use his powers to document Etienne so that he exists as a written language rather than a spoken one. And we end with Cypher determined to write poetry in Etienne so that his language will, in some sense, live.<\/p>\n

This is a rather nice little idea. Whether it has anything much to do with the stuff about the ambiguity of language and the need to perfect Krakoan at the start of the language, I’m not at all convinced. There doesn’t really seem to be much connection between these ideas. But at least they’re two interesting ideas, and this is a pleasant little story.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #42-43 “Cypher in the Cryptolect” Writer: Alex Paknadel Artist: Damian Couceiro Colourist: Felipe Sobreiro Letterer: Joe Sabino Editor: Lauren Amaro X-Men Unlimited Infinity Comic, by far the longest running of the\u00a0Infinity books, has settled into a role as a quirky diversion for X-completists. Is that the sort of material that draws […]<\/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":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-x-axis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8103","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=8103"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8106,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8103\/revisions\/8106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}