{"id":8837,"date":"2023-03-09T22:29:10","date_gmt":"2023-03-09T22:29:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=8837"},"modified":"2023-03-10T23:03:06","modified_gmt":"2023-03-10T23:03:06","slug":"nightcrawlers-2-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=8837","title":{"rendered":"Nightcrawlers #2 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

\"\"<\/a>NIGHTCRAWLERS #2<\/strong>
\n“Sins of Sinister, part 5: The Apostate”<\/strong>
\nWriter: Si Spurrier<\/strong>
\nArtist: Andrea Di Vito<\/strong>
\nColourist: Jim Charalampidis<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Clayton Cowles<\/strong>
\nDesign: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen<\/strong>
\nEditor: Jordan D White<\/strong><\/p>\n

COVER \/ PAGE 1.<\/strong> The Nightkin steal Mjolnir from Thor. It doesn’t happen this way in the story, for the obvious reason that Mjolnir can’t be picked up.<\/p>\n

PAGE 2.\u00a0<\/strong>The Nightkin prepare to head to Asgard.<\/em><\/p>\n

As we’ll see shortly, we’ve jumped forward 90 years since the previous issue. That issue ended with the first Nightcrawler-based chimeras bringing assorted superhero trinkets to Mother Righteous, who told them that they needed to build “the Reliquary Perilous”, a “holy weapon” which could “purge the Sinister Strain from the heart of every mutant – with the white-hot fire of faith.” She established a quasi-religious cult around the Nightcrawler-chimeras’ sacrifices and the original Nightcrawler’s “Spark” philosophy (with herself in charge) and told them to steal various superhero-associated items to build this Reliquary.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

What any of this had to do with actually defeating Sinister was unclear, and Mother Righteous had clear ulterior motives, but it was at least plausible enough that she had\u00a0some<\/em> sort of plan to break Sinister’s hold on humanity – after all, it wasn’t doing her any favours either.<\/p>\n

Ninety years later, however, the Nightcrawler-chimeras – now calling themselves the Nightkin, and evidently replenishing their ranks by periodically freeing new chimeras through Vox Ignis’ powers – are still hunting down objects, with no apparent end in sight. Nor is it very clear how any of this helps Mother Righteous; the implication seems to be that her goal is simply to remain in charge of the Nightkin. The whole thing seems to be a riff on organised religion, with the idea that it’s become detached from its roots and now exists primarily for the purposes of sustaining its leaders in their own power (however marginal).<\/p>\n

The narrator\u00a0<\/strong>is identified later as Wagnerine – a Nightcrawler\/Wolverine hybrid whom we saw last issue, the Wolverine in question being Laura.<\/p>\n

The countdown credo\u00a0<\/strong>is apparently the three lines (numbered in reverse) on this page, a parallel to Krakoa’s three laws. It’s effectively devoid of content beyond identifying three things as “blessed”.<\/p>\n

“The Beast with a Million Heads.”<\/strong> Sinister, presumably – in the sense that he’s corrupted most of the human race. Millions sounds on the light side, actually.<\/p>\n

“Ninety years ago, Asgard was sent spinning into the void.”<\/strong> In\u00a0Sins of Sinister<\/em> #1, Sinisterized Magik uses her own magic and a sword from Muspelheim to kick Asgard “away from Midgard, perpetually lost”.<\/p>\n

“Magik of the Red<\/strong> Diamond.”<\/strong> Referring to Sinister’s logo, obviously – but for what it’s worth, the Nightkin refer to Sinisterized characters elsewhere as [name]-in-Sin. For some reason Magik gets a different descriptor.<\/p>\n

PAGE 3.\u00a0<\/strong>Magik’s forces attack Asgard.<\/em><\/p>\n

Magik appers to be accompanied by weird hybrids of Sabretooth and something, and giant combinations of Chamber and… Abyss, maybe?<\/p>\n

Volstagg and Balder can be seen among the defenders.<\/p>\n

“I was reborn in the suit of Hearts.”<\/strong> Mother Righteous’s symbol. Obviously, the freed Nightcrawlers have just gone from one controlling Sinister to another slightly subtler one.<\/p>\n

PAGES 4-5.\u00a0<\/strong>Montage of previous Sinister attacks.<\/em><\/p>\n

The<\/strong> Shi’ar.<\/strong>\u00a0Panels 1-2 have Professor X bringing down the Shi’ar through paranoia, while the Nightcrawlers steal some shards of the M’Kraan Crystal – the cosmically powerful artefact first seen in\u00a0X-Men<\/em> #107 (1977). Xavier is boosting his power through “hybrid brains” drawing on psychic mutants like Amahl Farouk (the Shadoow King) and Carl Valentino (Somnus).<\/p>\n

Loki<\/strong>, in his traditional villain outfit, is fighting to defend Asgard and demands to know why the Nightcrawlers aren’t helping too.<\/p>\n

Otherworld.<\/strong> Wagnerine gives her answer here – according to their credo, the overwhelming goal is to take the artefacts, which has become a cause in its own right. But she does insist on page 6 that they will purge Sinister; everyone else is apparently just a distraction.<\/p>\n

Banshee told us last issue that all the magic-users had fled to Otherworld. The three seen here are\u00a0Elsa Bloodstone<\/strong>,\u00a0Dr Voodoo\u00a0<\/strong>and a horribly battered and scarred\u00a0Dr Strange<\/strong>. He dies in the next panel.<\/p>\n

Xandar.<\/strong> Homeworld of the Nova Corps. Sinister wipes it out with a chimera of Legion, Proteus and Polaris – i.e., the children of Professor X, Moira X and Magneto. Hence “Heirburst Bomb”, a pun on “airburst bomb”. Note that Sinister himself – who was basically enslaved by Emma Frost in\u00a0Immoral X-Men<\/em> #1 – is seen here. Or someone in his trademark cape, anyway – it’s a silhouette.<\/p>\n

PAGES 5-6.\u00a0<\/strong>The Nightkin steal Mjolnir.<\/em><\/p>\n

Thor\u00a0<\/strong>is predictably unimpressed at them trying to steal Mjolnir, so they cut his arm off to make him drop it. A chimera of Nightcrawler and Lost (from\u00a0Legion of X<\/em>) is able to move Mjolnir, not by lifting<\/em> it as such, but by using her gravity-altering powers to redefine “down” so that Mjolnir falls in whatever direction she wants to take it. Clever.<\/p>\n

In fairness to Mother Righteous, Mjolnir was on her initial shopping list last issue and it doesn’t seem to have been readily available to her until now. If there’s\u00a0anything<\/em> to her claim that these items will somehow help, then maybe she really hasn’t been able to finish the set until now. I wouldn’t be too optimistic about that, though.<\/p>\n

The Cortez sacrament<\/strong> will be some sort of distillate of Fabian Cortez’s power-boosting ability. Last issue, they were stealing “Brains of Cortez”, which were left hanging around in Sinister’s labs as generic power boosters.<\/p>\n

Fimbulwinter<\/strong> – or Fimbulvetr, really – is the mighty winter that precedes Ragnarok.<\/p>\n

PAGE 7.\u00a0<\/strong>Recap and credits.<\/p>\n

PAGE 8.\u00a0<\/strong>Data page, in the style of the back cover of an old sci-fi novel. The first two paragraphs basically recap the crossover to date. The remainder refers back to Hope’s concerns in\u00a0Immoral X-Men<\/em> #1 that the mutants needed to take the initiative or be wiped out by cosmic powers; Sinister’s contribution was to provide the chimera needed for that to happen.<\/p>\n

The Krakoan text in the bottom left is just the names of the participating comics in their reading order.<\/p>\n

PAGE 9.\u00a0<\/strong>The Narthex.<\/em><\/p>\n

Nightcrawler’s old home on Krakoa, apparently uprooted and turned into a spaceship – presumably for its religious significance to the Nightkin.<\/p>\n

The Chamber Nocturne<\/strong> are apparently Nightcrawler\/Chamber hybrids using their powers to power the ship.<\/p>\n

“It has been two years since he brought fresh novitiates.”<\/strong> In issue #1, Vox Ignis’ powers were able to free Nightcrawler chimeras – and only Nightcrawler chimeras – from Sinisterisation. Apparently, 90 years later, Sinister has only just stopped making them. Why? Was he deliberately providing Mother Righteous with a crew? Or were there just so many Nightcrawler chimeras that he didn’t notice a few going missing? Vox Ignis assumes it’s the latter on page 13, but is he right?<\/p>\n

Also, if there are no more Nightcrawlers around, where does that leave Mother Righteous’s cult? She needs followers, and as we establish in this issue, the Nightcrawlers are infertile.<\/p>\n

PAGES 10-13.\u00a0<\/strong>Summernight prepares to die.<\/em><\/p>\n

We saw last issue that the chimeras can eventually lose their independence and fall back under Sinister’s control. The same is clearly happening to this Cyclops-Nightcrawler chimera.<\/p>\n

A flashback establishes that Summernight and Wagerine had a child (because her healing powers overcame her infertility over her long lifespan), only for the child to suddenly vanish as soon as it was born. Mother Righteous has promptly placed this tragedy at the heart of the religious, presenting the child as a sinless innocent and redeemer.<\/p>\n

The Last Rite.<\/strong> Evidently the “father” is Nightcrawler and the “mother” is Mother Righteous, putting herself on a par with Nightcrawler. It ends with Summernight committing suicide in the same way that the Spider-Man chimera did in the previous issue. The barrier surrounds Orbis Stellaris’s Worldfarm, where Sinister’s secret lab has been taken.<\/p>\n

Auntie Fortune<\/strong> is the Domino chimera from the previous issue, still alive but extremely aged.<\/p>\n

PAGE 14.\u00a0<\/strong>Wagnerine asks Vox Ignis about Mother Righteous.<\/em><\/p>\n

Understandably enough, Wagnerine’s recent tragedy has shaken her faith. She points out that the list of sacred items for required for the Reliquary Perilous seems to just keep growing. However… Righteous’s vague explanation is that “it must be carried within the devil’s lab, to purge the Sinister strain”. There’s\u00a0some<\/em> truth to that, because inside Sinister’s stolen lab is the Moira clone who could be killed to rest the timeline. Presumably that’s what she means. But she doesn’t have a way in.<\/p>\n

PAGE 15.\u00a0<\/strong>Flashback: Mother Righteous visits Legion.<\/em><\/p>\n

Legion basically tells Mother Righteous to get lost, gives up on the world in despair, and departs for higher planes with “what remains of my people” – presumably people who escaped Sinister by taking up residence in the Alter.<\/p>\n

PAGE 16.\u00a0<\/strong>Vox Ignis has an idea to create more Nightkin.<\/em><\/p>\n

This is of interest to Mother Righteous because she’s running out of followers, of course.<\/p>\n

PAGE 17.\u00a0<\/strong>Data page. Sinister’s diary records that the Quiet Council, following Hope’s warning, have decided to attack the rest of the universe. His goal remains entirely different: recover the Moira clone and reset history. Even Sinister considers that the attacks on the rest of the universe long since ceased to be any sort of pre-emptive defensive strategy and became just plain imperialist. The war with the Brood and the Annihilation Wave has basically wiped out Earth, but Sinisterised mankind has headed for the stars anyway.<\/p>\n

Kenji Uedo<\/strong> is Zero from\u00a0Generation Hope<\/em>, who I don’t think has appeared anywhere since\u00a0Storm<\/em> #11 (2015).<\/p>\n

PAGES 18-19.\u00a0<\/strong>The Nightkin go to the X-Men Mansion.<\/em><\/p>\n

The X-Men Mansion is still mostly intact, and Dr Nemesis is still there. We saw him there last issue, guarding the original Nightcrawler, who was still in monstrous form following recent issues of\u00a0Legion of X<\/em>. He’s apparently now starting to turn into a plant. Ostensibly, he’s being released so that he can breed new Nightcrawlers. That’s evidently not Wagnerine’s primary goal – but maybe it’s going to happen in some form, because there’s an issue #3 of this series. Or maybe not, if it’s just going to be Wagnerine.<\/p>\n

PAGES 20-22.\u00a0<\/strong>Wagnerine unleashes Nightcrawler on Mother Righteous.<\/em><\/p>\n

Nightcrawler is not happy about this perversion of his Spark, to the extent that he can articulate anything about it. I think this is the first time we’ve seen Mother Righteous fight; she responds by drawing an energy sword from her body and summarily despatching Nightcrawler. Everyone else, she simply gets into line by using her influence over their souls, from their participation in her religion. The original Nightcrawler has never been part of that, so she resorts to regular combat.<\/p>\n

EDITED TO ADD: As pointed out in the comments, the sword appears to be the Hopesword which Margali Szardos conjured from Nightcrawler’s body in\u00a0Legion of X\u00a0<\/em>#10.<\/p>\n

PAGES 23-24.<\/strong> Wagnerine learns that her child is alive.<\/em><\/p>\n

The girl is actually part of the Reliquary. Wagnerine says that her love for “my child” and “my people” will “last a thousand years”, which of course is the time frame for issue #3.<\/p>\n

EDITED TO ADD: As pointed out in the comments, because the child’s father is a Cyclops chimera, this is an echo of Mr Sinister stealing Cyclops’s baby son Nate.<\/p>\n

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

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. NIGHTCRAWLERS #2 “Sins of Sinister, part 5: The Apostate” Writer: Si Spurrier Artist: Andrea Di Vito Colourist: Jim Charalampidis Letterer: Clayton Cowles Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen Editor: Jordan D White COVER \/ PAGE 1. The Nightkin steal Mjolnir from […]<\/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-8837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8837","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=8837"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8837\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8848,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8837\/revisions\/8848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}