{"id":8782,"date":"2023-02-23T23:17:52","date_gmt":"2023-02-23T23:17:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=8782"},"modified":"2023-02-23T23:17:52","modified_gmt":"2023-02-23T23:17:52","slug":"sabretooth-and-the-exiles-4-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=8782","title":{"rendered":"Sabretooth and the Exiles #4 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

\"\"<\/a>SABRETOOTH & THE EXILES #4<\/strong>
\n“Station Four”<\/strong>
\nWriter: Victor LaValle<\/strong>
\nArtist: Leonard Kirk<\/strong>
\nColourist: Rain Beredo<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Cory Petit<\/strong>
\nDesign: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen<\/strong>
\nEditor: Mark Basso<\/strong><\/p>\n

COVER \/ PAGE 1<\/strong>. A whole bunch of Sabretooths claw their way out of their respective graves. This doesn’t happen in the issue, but it’s symbolically linked to the reveal at the end.<\/p>\n

PAGE 2.\u00a0<\/strong>Orchis Station Four calls for help.<\/em><\/p>\n

These guys were identified in issue #1 as “Nobodies”.<\/p>\n

Point Nemo<\/strong> is indeed a name for the location on Earth which is furthest from land (the oceanic pole of inaccessibility, if you prefer the more formal name). The caption says it’s “1,000 miles from any landmass in all directions”, but that’s actually understating it – it’s 1,670. It’s in the South Pacific, roughly equidistant from the Pitcairn Islands, Easter island and Antarctica.<\/p>\n

This may or may not matter, but it’s also the location of the city of R’lyeh in H P Lovecraft’s “The Call of Cthulhu” – which Magneto’s Bermuda Triangle island base was loosely based on. On the other hand, in modern times, its main significance is that it’s seen as a nice safe place for spacecraft to crash.<\/p>\n

Station Four.<\/strong> Just to recap, this is the fourth Orchis station we’ve seen in this book, although confusingly one of them was numbered Station Six. (“Station One” had previously appeared in the 2021\u00a0Juggernaut<\/em> miniseries.) Station Six was a big floating ship; Station Two was a prison over a volcano; and Station Three was the astral plane outpost from the previous issue. Issues #3 and #4 are titled “Station Three” and “Station Four” respectively, though issues #1-2 don’t follow that pattern.<\/p>\n

PAGES 3-4.\u00a0<\/strong>The cast consider the dead Creed duplicate.<\/em><\/p>\n

Issue #3 ended with the cast recovering the body of this Creed duplicate from Station Three. They’ve now returned to the ship that Sabretooth stole from Bling! at the end of the first mini, and recovered from Orchis at the end of issue #1. It’s become much bigger, however – it was the size of a yacht before – and we’ll find out later that Madison Jeffries is responsible for this.<\/p>\n

Sabretooth is preoccupied with getting revenge, and while he mentions Professor X, he actually seems more concerned about Orchis.\u00a0He does at least make an effort to frame it in a way that Nekra and Oya will sympathise with – avenging his duplicate. There’s no real sense here that\u00a0he<\/em> cares about this guy, though. As Sabretooth reminds us later, his powers are currently being suppressed (by Dr Barrington’s coil) and his real top agenda is to do something about that.<\/p>\n

PAGE 5.\u00a0<\/strong>Recap and credits. The strapline, “Sabretooths & The Exiles”, is not a typo.<\/p>\n

PAGE 6.\u00a0<\/strong>Data page. A brief recap of the history of this boat, mostly telling us what we already knew.<\/p>\n

Bling!’s engineering genius is previously established, though it doesn’t come up often. Her mother, Angel Dupres, has never actually been seen on panel as far as I know;\u00a0X-Men: The 198 Files<\/em> gives a random back story about being the daughter of hip hop royalty, which remarkably never seems to come up. Apparently, either Bling! didn’t feel that strongly about naming the ship in honour of her mother, or the rest of the Exiles didn’t feel very strongly about Bling!’s feelings, since they’ve renamed it the Maroon. (Note, incidentally, that this whole crew of 1008 mutants is now being billed as “the Exiles.”)<\/p>\n

The Maroons<\/strong> were a community of ex-slaves in 18th century Jamaica. They were previously mentioned in\u00a0Sabretooth<\/em> #5.<\/p>\n

PAGES 7-8.\u00a0<\/strong>Nanny and Orphan-Maker meet\u00a0<\/em>Herd and Bab.<\/p>\n

Orphan-Maker\u00a0<\/strong>now has new armour to replace the one that was broken open in issue #2. We saw Nanny and Madison Jeffries building this armour on Station Three last issue. (That means it was created in the astral plane, but Station Three and its contents were apparently all physical.)<\/p>\n

Understandably enough, their time in the Pit has not reconciled Nanny and the Orphan-Maker to Krakoa – instead, they immediately set about advising the rescued mutants to stay the hell away from it. This is not the intended result of time in the Pit, but frankly, what did Professor X seriously expect?<\/p>\n

PAGE 9.\u00a0<\/strong>Sabretooth contemplates his doppelganger.<\/em><\/p>\n

“Third Eye says we shouldn’t have been able to bring this Sabretooth’s physical form back from the Astral Plane.”<\/strong> Not sure I follow that – they brought the new Orphan-Maker armour back too, after all. Nonetheless, for some (no doubt good) reason, Third Eye thinks that this version of Sabretooth must have had psychic abilities. Perhaps the idea is that he was being used as the anchor to keep Station Three on the Astral Plane.<\/p>\n

PAGE 10.<\/strong>\u00a0Data page: a memo from “the General Contractor” to somebody else within Orchis. We’ll find out later on who this guy is (though it’s who we were expecting anyway).<\/p>\n

As in previous issues, we get an intra-Orchis discussion here about an example of oppression. This one is actually shorter, since the final few paragraphs are plot-related and amount to “back off while I deal with Sabretooth in person”. The story of Indian boarding schools is of course true, and given the quoted slogan, a likely source is Ward Churchill’s\u00a0Kill the Indian, Save the Man: The Genocidal Impact of American Indian Residential Schools<\/em> (2004).<\/p>\n

The slogan is credited to one Brigadier General Richard Henry Pratt (1840-1924), who used it in reference to the assimilationist ethos of his Carlisle Indian Industrial School. Pratt was an influential figure in the development of Indian boarding schools. By the standards of his time, he was a well-meaning white liberal who opposed segregation laws and genuinely thought he was helping marginalised people to participate in mainstream culture as equals. The problem is that on his approach, the road to equality lay in eradicating every other cultural tradition.<\/p>\n

How closely Pratt’s thinking really resembles the General Contractor’s is debatable. The GC appears to have in mind an army of mutants who “might serve the needs of the human population by standing against their kin in the coming war”, which rather sounds like he wants some brainwashed soldiers.<\/p>\n

PAGE 11. <\/strong>Third Eye and Madison discuss Point Nemo.<\/em><\/p>\n

Nanny is characteristically determined to protect mutant infants. But she also mentions later that she’s thinking about “what I can teach them”, which sounds a lot like what she can get them to do – after all, she turned Orphan-Maker into a weapon in similar circumstances.<\/p>\n

PAGES 12-13.\u00a0<\/strong>Barrington and the Creation get sucked into Station Four.<\/em><\/p>\n

Self-explanatory.<\/p>\n

PAGE 14.\u00a0<\/strong>Sabretooth talks to the kids.<\/em><\/p>\n

Nanny is obviously wrong to say that the kids wouldn’t be welcomed on Krakoa; she may or may not believe it herself, but she doubtless wants to have them under her influence to some degree instead. Sabretooth, of course, thinks likewise.<\/p>\n

PAGES 15-16.\u00a0<\/strong>The core cast discuss.<\/em><\/p>\n

Toad\u00a0<\/strong>has been ignored by the others because he wasn’t one of their core group – he was tacked onto the cast right at the end of the previous\u00a0Sabretooth<\/em> mini. But he reads it as personal rejection. By comparing them to the Quiet Council, he’s basically accusing them of making decisions for everyone else without any legitimacy.<\/p>\n

Melter<\/strong> is somewhat protective about Orphan-Maker, who has been quietly idolising him throughout the series.<\/p>\n

PAGES 17-18.\u00a0<\/strong>Sabretooth lectures the Exiles.<\/em><\/p>\n

Sabretooth is claiming that ugly, misfit mutants aren’t welcome on Krakoa – which isn’t true in the slightest, but it’s keeping these people on side. Note who gets the various reactions. Oya and Melter – the nice\/naive ones – are in disbelief that Sabretooth is being taken seriously. Nekra doesn’t find it surprising but does think he’s playing with fire. Third Eye sees it as a demonstration of manipulative technique. And Toad, who’s been a deluded follower himself, understands “what angry people will do for their leader”.<\/p>\n

PAGES 19-21.<\/strong> Madison Jeffries is killed, and Sabretooth is kidnapped..<\/em><\/p>\n

The fact that Madison deliberately hung back on page 16 to look at the water suggests there’s more to this. But Third Eye does seem to very that he’s dead, and the art undoubtedly has him in two bits.<\/p>\n

PAGE 22.\u00a0<\/strong>The core cast try to take command.<\/em><\/p>\n

Sabretooth vanishes just as he was being accepted as an inspirational leader figure. The others are saying the right thing but none of them really have the credibility with these people. Nekra is certainly\u00a0trying\u00a0<\/em>to position herself as leader, but is anyone listening?<\/p>\n

PAGES 23-24.\u00a0<\/strong>Sabretooth confronts the General Contractor.<\/em><\/p>\n

It’s\u00a0Graydon Creed<\/strong>, the son of Sabretooth and Mystique. Creed was last seen in\u00a0Weapon X\u00a0<\/em>vol 3 #27 (2018), when Sabretooth’s efforts got him resurrected. Traditionally, Graydon has been a fairly mainstream anti-mutant politician\/campaigner figure, so his departure into hunting down multiversal Sabretooths is something of a change of direction.<\/p>\n

It seems unlikely that Graydon could really have killed every other version of Sabretooth in the Multiverse, but we’ll see next time how literally we should take that. That said, the only\u00a0really<\/em> high profile alt-Sabretooth is the Age of Apocalypse version, and he already died in\u00a0Astonishing X-Men<\/em> #60.<\/p>\n

PAGE 25.\u00a0<\/strong>Trailers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. SABRETOOTH & THE EXILES #4 “Station Four” Writer: Victor LaValle Artist: Leonard Kirk Colourist: Rain Beredo Letterer: Cory Petit Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen Editor: Mark Basso COVER \/ PAGE 1. A whole bunch of Sabretooths claw their way out […]<\/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-8782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8782","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=8782"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8782\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8784,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8782\/revisions\/8784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}