{"id":8217,"date":"2022-09-02T20:44:52","date_gmt":"2022-09-02T19:44:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=8217"},"modified":"2022-09-02T20:44:52","modified_gmt":"2022-09-02T19:44:52","slug":"knights-of-x-5-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=8217","title":{"rendered":"Knights of X #5 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

\"\"<\/a>KNIGHTS OF X #5<\/strong>
\n“Fort Krakoa”<\/strong>
\nWriter: Tini Howard<\/strong>
\nArtist: Bob Quinn<\/strong>
\nColour artist: Erick Arciniega<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Ariana Maher<\/strong>
\nDesign: Tom Maher<\/strong>
\nEditor: Sarah Brunstad<\/strong><\/p>\n

COVER \/ PAGE 1:<\/strong> Captain Britain on the throne, flanked by Merlyn and Saturnyne.<\/p>\n

PAGE 2.<\/strong> Merlyn is angry.<\/em><\/p>\n

This is basically a recap page.<\/p>\n

“On the way to his last stand, Omniversal Majestor Merlyn has been betrayed.”<\/strong> This is the final issue of\u00a0Knights of X<\/em> and it really feels like it’s rushing to a conclusion that it was meant to get to at much greater length. The narrator is having to spell out beats. Merlyn was indeed pursuing Roma and Saturnyne into Mercator at the end of the last issue but there wasn’t anything about it being a last stand. (To be fair, the narrator doesn’t say that Merlyn\u00a0knew<\/em> he was on his way to a last stand.) The “betrayal”, I assume, is the letter from King Arthur that appeared as a data page last issue, in which he told Merlyn that he was going his own way to confront Mordred and somehow address his kingdom’s future.<\/p>\n

All the stuff about Merlyn’s “ragged army” seems to suggest that Merlyn has been suffering a longer series of reverses rather than just losing the one battle in the Crooked Market. There’s a whole\u00a0load<\/em> of missing set up to get to this point, but then that’ll happen when a book gets cancelled with issue #5.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

“His most legendary ally, King Arthur of Avalon, is dead in the muck…”<\/strong> What we actually saw last issue was Arthur and his men sinking into a swamp within the Siege, but the dialogue presented it as something that would lead to Arthur “contend[ing] with [his] deepest, innermost self”, rather than killing him.<\/p>\n

PAGE 3.<\/strong> Recap and credits.<\/p>\n

PAGES 4-5.<\/strong> Mercator explains the Siege Perilous.<\/em><\/p>\n

This is relatively straightforward: Mercator has used his matter-manipulation powers to turn the Siege Perilous into an entire landscape, presumably because it’s hard to steal a desert. Mercator reminds us that the ground rules of this series are that things in Otherworld have to function by the rules of story, hence the need for a quest and a sacrifice to get into his realm – though he also seems to imply that this is something to do with Merlyn’s spell. This kind of explains why Mercator has been sealed off until now, though it doesn’t really explain what happened to the previous inhabitants.<\/p>\n

“Gambit tried to use the Death card on Merlyn…”<\/strong> In issue #3, Gambit did indeed get blown up while fighting Merlyn with a charged-up Death tarot card taken from the Starlight Citadel. The somewhat tortuous logic here seems to be that, because the Death card symbolises change rather than death (or perhaps more accurately, change of all types rather than specifically death), the magical effect of being blown up by a Death tarot card is to be changed rather than to fully die. But we’re also told later on that death in Otherworld isn’t permanent any more because mutants who die here can be resurrected using the previously-inaccessible Siege Perilous. In which case… was the card actually significant at all? In conventional terms, no, but in terms of story-logic, symbolism always helps.<\/p>\n

“And the Siege is where mutantkind goes to be changed…”<\/strong> Um… that’s a stretch, surely? The Siege is meant to be ancient. It’s been used by the X-Men in a scattering of stories in the late 1980s in which they also chucked a bunch of non-mutants through it (such as most of the original Reavers).<\/p>\n

PAGE 6.<\/strong>\u00a0Shogo arrives.<\/em><\/p>\n

Shogo is now talking, at least telepathically, which he wasn’t doing in the previous issue. Perhaps it’s because Captain Britain can contact him telepathically, when neither Roma nor Saturnyne could.<\/p>\n

PAGES 7-8.<\/strong>\u00a0Mordred gets dragged away.<\/em><\/p>\n

Mordred and Arthur are going to resolve their storyline off panel because we’ve only got 16 pages left and Howard (understandably) wants to focus on the core plot. Have fun, guys.<\/p>\n

PAGES 9-11.<\/strong> The Knights of X find the hall of Gambit statues.<\/em><\/p>\n

“The Captain Britain Corps had a place like this in the Starlight Citadel.”<\/strong> Betsy is probably referring to the memorial garden from\u00a0Excalibur<\/em> #13.<\/p>\n

PAGES 12-13.<\/strong>\u00a0Wrongslide attacks.<\/em><\/p>\n

Or a vision of Wrongslide, anyway. This is the reincarnated version of Rockslide, as named over in\u00a0X-Men Red<\/em>, representing Gambit’s fear of what will happen to him if he does get resurrected conventionally.<\/p>\n

The fact that Wrongslide isn’t real explains why Rictor’s rock-control powers don’t work on him, though note that he’s still calling it “magic”.<\/p>\n

PAGES 14-16.<\/strong> Gambit as Death.<\/em><\/p>\n

Gambit became Death in\u00a0X-Men<\/em> #184 (2006), during the little-referenced Peter Milligan run. He accepted Apocalypse’s offer in a misguided attempt to keep an eye on him. It’s kind-of-sort-of correct that Sunfire freed Gambit from that role in\u00a0X-Men<\/em> #187 through what the original story described as “the cleansing purity of fire”, but he kept his Horseman appearance for a while after that, and he and Sunfire wandered off together to hook up with Mr Sinister. That plot then basically gets dropped, as Sinister has restored Gambit to normal by the time he next shows up in\u00a0X-Men<\/em> #200. It’s not an especially satisfying arc.<\/p>\n

PAGES 17-18.<\/strong>\u00a0The X-Men come to the rescue.<\/em><\/p>\n

Apparently the restoration of Gambit completes the “story” and allows the immediate opening of a portal to Krakoa that lets the full X-Men forces come through. Visible in the double page spread are Pixie, Scout, Rogue, Legion, Mordred, Exodus, Jean, Polaris, Wolverine (Logan), Roma, Cypher, Bei, Saturnyne, Kylun (fiercely loyal to her), Wolverine (Laura), Shatterstar, Rictor, someone with fire powers, Captain Britain, Rachel Summers, Meggan, Captain Avalon, Cyclops, Synch, Shogo, Juggernaut, Nightcrawler, Psylocke and Daken. The character selection and costume suggests we’re before the Hellfire Gala and this is the previous X-Men line-up.<\/p>\n

PAGE 19.<\/strong>\u00a0The post-battle party.<\/em><\/p>\n

Off panel, Mordred and Arthur have broken their narrative cycle by bonding; presumably this was going to be a story where Mordred’s power of irritation eventually got resolved in some way, because Brian likes him now, but we’re only getting the very broad strokes.<\/p>\n

PAGE<\/strong>\u00a020.<\/strong> Data page, in the form of a hand-written letter from Brian to Mordred. I don’t think you can get away with doing a handwritten letter by an adult that isn’t in cursive, but whatever.<\/p>\n

Brian explains that Mordred and Arthur were able to break their narrative cycle through confronting themselves in the Siege Perilous. Okay then. Brian essentially says that they’ve earned the right to rule Avalon again and that he’ll be their hero. Again, all of this would have been much more convincing if it had actually happened on panel but, well, that’s early cancellation for you.<\/p>\n

PAGES 21-22.<\/strong>\u00a0Betsy rejects all the rulers of Otherworld.<\/em><\/p>\n

Betsy is basically claiming that all three potential rulers of Otherworld are just finding excuses to have the Captain Britain Corps under control, and aren’t actually needed for the Corps to fulfil its function of protecting the Multiverse. Of course, that’s only the case because she has access to Rachel as an alternative way of monitoring the Multiverse.<\/p>\n

PAGE 23.<\/strong> Data page – the current Map of Otherworld. The former Starlight Citadel is now empty, and a “Fort Krakoa” has appeared in Mercator, which will presumably be the headquarters of the Captain Britain Corps.<\/p>\n

PAGE 24.<\/strong> Trailers. The Krakoan reads “Coming soon: Captain Britain.” This is an odd call – this series reads very much like it’s been heavily truncated, and we don’t normally get this sort of rushed ending simply in order to go into a relaunch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers and page numbers go by the digital edition. KNIGHTS OF X #5 “Fort Krakoa” Writer: Tini Howard Artist: Bob Quinn Colour artist: Erick Arciniega Letterer: Ariana Maher Design: Tom Maher Editor: Sarah Brunstad COVER \/ PAGE 1: Captain Britain on the throne, flanked by Merlyn and Saturnyne. PAGE 2. […]<\/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-8217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8217","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=8217"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8217\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8219,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8217\/revisions\/8219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}