{"id":8392,"date":"2022-10-19T22:10:15","date_gmt":"2022-10-19T21:10:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=8392"},"modified":"2022-10-19T22:10:15","modified_gmt":"2022-10-19T21:10:15","slug":"x-men-16-annotations-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=8392","title":{"rendered":"X-Men #16 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

\"\"<\/a>X-MEN vol 6 #16<\/strong>
\n“The Mutant We Left Behind”<\/strong>
\nWriter: Gerry Duggan<\/strong>
\nArtist: Joshua Cassara<\/strong>
\nColourist: GURU-eFX<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Clayton Cowles<\/strong>
\nDesign: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen<\/strong>
\nEditor: Jordan D White<\/strong><\/p>\n

COVER \/ PAGE 1.<\/strong> Forge, wearing his Caliban-based harness.<\/p>\n

PAGE 2.\u00a0<\/strong>Obituary for Mike Pasciullo.<\/p>\n

PAGE 3.\u00a0<\/strong>Data page. Quote from Mr Sinister, which I can imagine he might have said somewhere. Obviously, in this context it’s a reference to the living suit that he’s produced for Forge.<\/p>\n

PAGES 4-6.\u00a0<\/strong>Flashback: Forge and Mr Sinister.<\/em><\/p>\n

Forge is asking Sinister to create a suit for him based on the powers of three mutants: Mystique, Caliban and apparently a third yet to be identified. The obvious candidate would be Tempo, given the time distortion involved in the Vault.<\/p>\n

Port Genosha whiskey<\/strong> is a recurring background feature from Duggan’s\u00a0Marauders<\/em> run. Tempo’s powers are responsible for its 50 year maturation.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

“I’ve watched several governments pervert what I do…”<\/strong>\u00a0This refers to Forge’s time as a weapons designer when he was first introduced, and most obviously to his Neutralizer design being used against mutants. Forge actually created the thing as a reverse-engineered version of Rom’s Neutralizer, for use in fighting the alien invader Dire Wraiths.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, there is an obvious irony (and a degree of self-delusion) in Forge claiming the moral high ground, and asserting a risk of governmental perversion, while striking deals with Mr Sinister to appropriate Caliban in the way we see in this issue.<\/p>\n

“Trust, but verify.”<\/strong> Generally associated in the west with Ronald Reagan and nuclear disarmament, though it’s originally a Russian proverb.<\/p>\n

Cradles.\u00a0<\/strong>Forge presumably has access to one of the cradles through a back door that he inserted when he created it in the first place.<\/p>\n

PAGE 7.<\/strong> Recap and credits.<\/p>\n

PAGES 8-9. <\/strong>Forge and Caliban in the vault.<\/i><\/p>\n

Caliban.<\/strong> Introduced in\u00a0Uncanny X-Men<\/em> #148 (1981), Caliban is a mutant with the power to detect other mutants; he originally helped identify new members for the Morlocks. He told us last issue that the last thing he could remember was having a drink with Forge in the Red Lagoon, which sounds awfully suspicious. Nonetheless, Forge insists that Caliban agreed to what’s being done here (which presumably means Forge is suggesting that Caliban’s memories happen to cut off there by sheer coincidence). And to be fair to Forge, Caliban seems genuinely quite enthusiastic about this mission, which suggests that he might well have agreed to it if asked. But it seems much more likely that Forge didn’t risk giving him the choice.<\/p>\n

“Your gifts have been used for the wrong reasons over the years.”<\/strong> Although he was a member of various X-teams (most notably X-Force), Caliban spends a lot of his time being exploited for various purposes. Most obviously, he was a Horseman of Apocalypse on two separate occasions. Forge might also be referring to Caliban’s time as a member of one of the black-ops versions of X-Force.<\/p>\n

PAGES 10-20.<\/strong>\u00a0Cyclops and Havok argue, and accidentally release Perro.<\/em><\/p>\n

“Supposedly I was the one who got brain damage when we fell out of that plane.”<\/strong>\u00a0Cyclops and Havok’s back story, from flashbacks in\u00a0Uncanny X-Men<\/em> #144 and #156, involves them parachuting from a plane as children in order to escape an attack by the Shi’ar. Cyclops suffers a head injury during the fall, which is usually given as the reason why he can’t control his optic beams.<\/p>\n

Havok’s place on the team.<\/strong>\u00a0The scene in\u00a0X-Men: Hellfire Gala<\/em> #1 is basically as Scott describes. He proposes that Forge should join the X-Men, and a surprised and irritated Forge responds by nominating Havok, to the bemusement of both brothers. Cyclops’ interpretation is that Forge only did it as a joke, but while it’s clear that Forge had ulterior motives, it’s not at all clear that he thinks quite so badly of Havok as that. As Havok points out, this whole sequence of events makes something of a mockery of the idea that the X-Men are consensually selected by the Krakoan population; the big names carry a lot of weight.<\/p>\n

Havok’s always had something of an inferiority complex when it comes to Cyclops, but Cyclops isn’t usually quite so condescending to him. They certainly don’t normally come to blows like this.<\/p>\n

Firestar.<\/strong> Magik could teleport Firestar anywhere to get her to safety, but she dumps her in front of Avengers Mansion. The subtext is that Magik sees Firestar as an outsider to the X-Men. (As in previous issues, Iceman seems to be the team member making the biggest effort to welcome Firestar.)<\/p>\n

PAGES 21-24.\u00a0<\/strong>Forge finds an older Laura in the Vault.<\/em><\/p>\n

So let’s go back to\u00a0X-Men<\/em> #19 (2021), which was the end of the first Vault arc. In that arc, Synch, Wolverine (Laura) and Darwin spend centuries of subjective time in the Vault. Darwin is captured by the Children, who apparently destroy him in an experiment to appropriate his powers. It’s explained in technobabble – “Subject Darwin final atomization and biomass seeding complete; fourth-generation Children now possible; begin Child evolution” – but the basic idea seems to be that they reduce him to atoms, and somehow manage to steal his adaptability powers, thus enabling them to evolve and develop even more quickly during the long stints that they spent in the Vault (from their point of view). Synch and Wolverine were well aware of this, and it’s what they were trying to warn Krakoa about when they tried to escape from the Vault.<\/p>\n

At the end of the issue, Laura stays behind to fight off the Children while Synch gets to safety. The Children catch up to him quickly, so they must at least get past Laura, but we don’t actually see what happens to her on panel. The Children blast Synch, but he gets a telepathic message to Professor X in time to be backed up before he dies. Synch is then resurrected back on Krakoa along with two other people, one of whom is Laura. The other, apparently, is not Darwin (despite appearances), but just some random being resurrected at the same time. It would have made\u00a0sense<\/em> to resurrect Darwin – as I say, Synch was trying to convey a message that the Children had killed him – but apparently the Krakoans chose to err on the side of caution and assume that his powers had somehow helped him survive.<\/p>\n

That leaves the awkward question of why they resurrected Laura, who apparently wasn’t dead after all. Two key points flow from this. First, Synch’s storyline since leaving the Vault has been all about the fact that he remembers spending centuries with Laura, and he is in love with her, while she has no memory of any of it (because she was restored from a back-up that predated her entry into the Vault). Second, there are now two Lauras running around, which isn’t meant to happen. Granted, other versions of Laura do exist – Scout is a younger clone of Laura – but this is ostensibly the same person, and that is very much not supposed to happen. The closest we’ve had to this story so far was the recent\u00a0X-Men Unlimited<\/em> arc in which Maggott was resurrected despite one of his maggotts still being alive, but that story turned on the peculiarities of his powers.<\/p>\n

PAGE 25.<\/strong> Data page, largely spelling out what we’ve just seen. Forge also mentioned in the previous issue that his containment device would only work for as long as Krakoa stayed around (perhaps because some sort of connection to Krakoa Prime is needed to power the organic containment technology), so he’s being pretty sensible in suggesting that the Avengers and Fantastic Four should be brought into the loop in order to provide redundancy.<\/p>\n

PAGE 26.\u00a0<\/strong>Trailers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. X-MEN vol 6 #16 “The Mutant We Left Behind” Writer: Gerry Duggan Artist: Joshua Cassara Colourist: GURU-eFX Letterer: Clayton Cowles Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen Editor: Jordan D White COVER \/ PAGE 1. Forge, wearing his Caliban-based harness. PAGE 2.\u00a0Obituary […]<\/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,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8392","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=8392"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8392\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8394,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8392\/revisions\/8394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}