{"id":8563,"date":"2022-12-14T22:03:23","date_gmt":"2022-12-14T22:03:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=8563"},"modified":"2022-12-14T22:03:23","modified_gmt":"2022-12-14T22:03:23","slug":"legion-of-x-8-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=8563","title":{"rendered":"Legion of X #8 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

\"\"<\/a>LEGION OF X #8<\/strong>
\n“Family Ties”<\/strong>
\nWriter: Si Spurrier<\/strong>
\nPenciller: Netho Diaz<\/strong>
\nInker: Sean Parsons<\/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, surrounded by images of the cast (and focussing in particular on the transformed Nightcrawler. She isn’t actually in the issue, but her influence is apparent. We saw her with these sorts of viewing globes in the previous issue.<\/p>\n

PAGE 2.<\/strong> Stan Lee tribute page.<\/p>\n

PAGE 3.\u00a0<\/strong>Chamber and Husk waver over whether to go into the room.<\/em><\/p>\n

We’re picking up here from the cliffhanger, where Nightcrawler, Dr Nemesis and Pixie showed up at Archangel’s office only to find him demonically transformed and locked in battle with the Black Knight. At the start of the previous issue, Nightcrawler despatched Chamber and Husk to visit Archangel, in response to a “hazy” request for an investigation. This is them showing up separately.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

“I’m not gonna blow the bloody doors off.”<\/strong> Referencing a line from the 1969 British comedy film\u00a0The Italian Job,<\/em>\u00a0which is pretty much universally known in the UK and probably means nothing to Americans. The implication is that Chamber’s door removal efforts tend to take most of the room with it.<\/p>\n

“Your old billionaire boyfriend…”<\/strong> Husk and Warren were a couple in Chuck Austen’s\u00a0Uncanny X-Men<\/em> run.<\/p>\n

“I had a run-in with Doc Nemesis recently – sort of incinerated his arm a bit…”<\/strong> Issue #4, while fighting Switch. Historically, it’s not really true that Chamber relies entirely on energy blasts – he’s got the generic range of psi-powers too – but it\u00a0is<\/em> the thing that makes him stand out.<\/p>\n

“Concupiscent”<\/strong> means lustful. Chamber and Husk were a couple in\u00a0Generation X.<\/em><\/p>\n

PAGES 4-7.<\/strong> Everyone fights Angel, and he escapes.<\/em><\/p>\n

Nightcrawler’s loss of self-control is new – he was behaving normally in the previous issue, despite his change of appearance.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, it’s Pixie who starts giving orders with Nightcrawler out of the picture, rather than Dr Nemesis (perhaps because she’s giving sensible practical directions, and he only really does mad science).<\/p>\n

PAGE 8.<\/strong> Data page on the history of the new Black Knight – written by the Beast, but a fairly straight recap nonetheless. She was introduced in Spurrier’s\u00a0Black Knight: Curse of the Ebony Blade<\/em> miniseries last year, which is where most of the back story comes from. The “extradimensional silliness” is the\u00a0Death of Dr Strange: X-Men \/ Black Knight<\/em> one-shot, also written by Spurrier, from earlier this year; the Peregrine Child is the antagonist of the whole\u00a0Death of Dr Strange <\/em>event. That’s also where Jean Grey and Synch identified that Jackie is a mutant.<\/p>\n

PAGE 9.<\/strong> Recap and credits.<\/p>\n

PAGE 10.<\/strong> Juggernaut, Lost and Forget-Me-Not arrive at the Narthex<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The Narthex.<\/strong> It’s been a while since we’ve talked about Nightcrawler’s windowless home, which gets a name here (and we’ll establish shortly that there’s a Krakoan gate that lets you get inside). As Cypher says, the word “narthex” literally means a type of giant fennel. The bit about “fire of the gods” relates to the fact that the giant fennel has a hollow stalk which burned very slowly, meaning that it could be used to transport fire.<\/p>\n

More relevantly to Nightcrawler, a narthex is also the lobby of a church.<\/p>\n

Forget-Me-Not.<\/strong> The devices that prevent people from forgetting about him were mentioned back in issue #1. He clarifies here for the first time that people do retain their memories of meeting him, but simply can’t access them. Presumably this means that the devices allow people to recover their memories of all their encounters with him.<\/p>\n

PAGES 11-12.\u00a0<\/strong>Vox Ignis addresses the group.<\/em><\/p>\n

Vox Ignis already addressed Nightcrawler while he was awaiting resurrection in the previous issue, but I think this is the first time that he’s shown his new powers directly to regular Krakoans.<\/p>\n

His “benefactor” is Mother Righteous. When we saw her last issue, she noticed that something (“a hitchhiker”) had entered Warlock while he was in the Altar.<\/p>\n

PAGE 13.<\/strong> The gates run away.<\/em><\/p>\n

Warlock<\/strong> has been integrated with the island since day 1 of the Krakoan era, as revealed during\u00a0Inferno<\/em>. As Cypher says, they did that in order to keep an eye on Professor X, and they were ultimately vindicated when they learned about Moira.<\/p>\n

Warlock and Cypher spent some time in the previous issue talking about their “soulbonding”, although it’s clearly something more than mere physical separation that generates this reaction – we’ve seen them separated before, and even had Warlock lamenting being displaced by Bei. Warlock also explained last issue that although his mutant nature helped him resist the normal urges of his race, it was his bonding with Cypher that gave him understanding and such forth – so separating them is bad news.<\/p>\n

PAGE 14.<\/strong> Data page. An unspecified Sorcerer Supreme – almost certainly Dr Strange, since that’s his window emblem at the top – writes about the Spirit of Variance. It’s a rebel Spirit of Vengeance from\u00a0Ghost Rider<\/em>. For the wider themes of this book, the key point is that the Spirit of Variance rejects not just vengeance but all forms of retribution, which plays in to Kurt’s attempt to create something more nebulously progressive in the form of his Legion.<\/p>\n

PAGES 15-17.<\/strong>\u00a0The Black Knight recaps why she was visiting Warren.<\/em><\/p>\n

Basically, she has the power to make other people temporarily develop mutant powers and register as mutants. Apparently Orchis have started marketing mutant tests, which she’s been using to test herself, but which are obviously intended by Orchis to allow other people to expose mutants; hence Warren’s interest in knowing that they can be fooled. Black Knight interprets him as being motivated by money, although what he actually says suggests that he’s more interested in embarrassing Orchis.<\/p>\n

The identity of the woman in her vision isn’t clear (obviously), though Mother Righteous would be a natural contender.<\/p>\n

Mythomancy<\/strong> is an invented term, but the suggestion is that it allows whoever’s responsible to bend reality to accord with people’s preconceptions.<\/p>\n

PAGES 18-20.<\/strong>\u00a0Blindfold visits Professor X.<\/em><\/p>\n

“Blindfold? But I thought you were d—“<\/strong> Professor X seems unaware that Blindfold has been resurrected, even though the rule against resurrecting precognitives was presumably dropped after\u00a0Inferno<\/em>. It might be that Legion (or Nightcrawler) arranged for her resurrection behind his back, but it could also simply be that the minor names on the resurrection list are simply beneath his notice.<\/p>\n

Blindfold’s eccentric speech patterns are dropped when she’s on the astral plane.<\/p>\n

“The kind words of a dead hero.”<\/strong> Magneto’s endorsement in issue #6.<\/p>\n

Professor X’s<\/strong> skull comes from\u00a0Way of X<\/em> #4, where Legion killed everyone in the Green Lagoon in order to contain Onslaught. He collected a skull at the end of the scene, though it wasn’t completely explicit that it had belonged to the Professor.<\/p>\n

“I wasn’t aware he existed…”<\/strong> Professor X is making the point I’ve made in previous annotations: that in traditional continuity he didn’t actually have all that much opportunity to form a relationship with Legion. Professor X didn’t learn that Legion existed until around\u00a0New Mutants<\/em> #26, and there are relatively few subsequent periods where (a) Professor X is on Earth and (b) Legion is not in a coma. However,\u00a0Powers of X<\/em> #6 strongly implies that Xavier and Moira MacTaggert deliberately identified Legions’ mother Gabrielle Haller as someone with whom Xavier was likely to have an Omega mutant child. If that’s correct, then it doesn’t\u00a0entirely<\/em> prove that Xavier knew he had actually fathered a child by Gabrielle Haller, but it certainly makes it seem unlikely that he wouldn’t have kept some sort of eye on matters. Which would imply that he’s lying to Blindfold.<\/p>\n

PAGE 21.<\/strong>\u00a0Nightcrawler and co arrive in Bavaria.<\/em><\/p>\n

“The things I have seen…”<\/strong> Nightcrawler may be referring here to the “painting with truth” portrait that Zsen left him in issue #5, which we didn’t see, but was apparently disturbing in some way.<\/p>\n

PAGE 22-23.<\/strong> The locals panic.<\/em><\/p>\n

Ingolstadt<\/strong> is a real city in Germany. It’s also the setting for part of\u00a0Frankenstein<\/em>, and generally taken to be the place where the monster was created.<\/p>\n

The woman on the last page is Nightcrawler’s adoptive mother\u00a0Margali Szardos<\/strong>, or\u00a0Margali of the Winding Way<\/strong>. She’s a sorceress, and apparently she’s back to doing circus work.<\/p>\n

PAGE 24.<\/strong> Trailers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. LEGION OF X #8 “Family Ties” Writer: Si Spurrier Penciller: Netho Diaz Inker: Sean Parsons Colourist: Federico Blee Letterer: Clayton Cowles Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen Editor: Sarah Brunstad COVER \/ PAGE 1: Mother Righteous, surrounded by images of the […]<\/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-8563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8563","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=8563"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8563\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8565,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8563\/revisions\/8565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}