{"id":8843,"date":"2023-03-10T22:57:57","date_gmt":"2023-03-10T22:57:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=8843"},"modified":"2023-03-10T22:57:57","modified_gmt":"2023-03-10T22:57:57","slug":"x-men-20-annotations-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=8843","title":{"rendered":"X-Men #20 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 #20<\/strong>
\n“Lord of the Brood, part 2”<\/strong>
\nWriter: Gerry Duggan<\/strong>
\nArtist: Stefano Caselli<\/strong>
\nColourist: Federico Blee<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Clayton Cowles<\/strong>
\nDesign: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen<\/strong>
\nEditor: Jordan D White<\/strong><\/p>\n

COVER \/ PAGE 1.\u00a0<\/strong>The X-Men fight the Brood. This continues the image from\u00a0X-Men<\/em> #19 and\u00a0Captain Marvel<\/em> #46, with Jean apparently partially transformed into a Brood. At least, I assume that’s it’s meant to be – honestly, it just looks like she’s wearing a mask. For what it’s worth, the cover of\u00a0Captain Marvel<\/em> #47 (which is out next week) continues the image and does something similar with Captain Marvel.<\/p>\n

PAGE 2.\u00a0<\/strong>Data page. Opening quote from Cyclops, claiming that (i) the X-Men aren’t just reactive like traditional superheroes, and (ii) ergo, they ought to have wiped out the Brood long ago. One wonders how he feels about Broo.<\/p>\n

PAGES 3-5.\u00a0<\/strong>Jean and Magik visit Broo.<\/em><\/p>\n

Broo<\/strong>‘s time at the Jean Grey School is covered in\u00a0Wolverine and the X-Men<\/em>, where he was a regular. He’s still wearing his school uniform – to be fair, a few of the student characters from that book who don’t have other costumes to fall back on have also been drawn in their school uniforms on Krakoa, such as Nature Girl.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

He became monarch of the Brood in\u00a0X-Men<\/em> #9 by eating a King Egg, which (somehow) is meant to give him complete control of the Brood. That said, the last time we saw him was\u00a0New Mutants<\/em> #21, when he specifically disavowed a group of Brood who attacked Warpath’s students: “This was not by doing. Those warriors were rebelling.” When asked how long this had been going on, he replied: “Oh, not long, and it was only… well, the group you killed. And one other, but loyal Warriors dispatched them quickly.” Warpath was supposed to be reporting this to the Council, but I rather suspect we’re all supposed to have forgotten about this whole thread (or that the writers and editors have), since Broo is absolutely adamant that he has total control.<\/p>\n

PAGE 6.\u00a0<\/strong>Recap and credits.<\/p>\n

PAGE 7-12.\u00a0<\/strong>The X-Men escape the Brood.<\/em><\/p>\n

This is the world where the X-Men arrived last issue in order to respond to a distress signal from Corsair. It was identified last issue as an “outer rim world”. The narrator here tells us that it has no name and that the inhabitants (evidently not natives) are “marooned” there and call it “Refugee Rock”. Supposedly no Nova Corpsman has ever visited, but since Corsair can make it out there, presumably that’s more a sign of its backwater obscurity than of its remoteness. We don’t know yet exactly why Corsair is there, though he said last issue that ht was being used as bait.<\/p>\n

When we left off, the X-Men were sheltering under an ice dome – this is apparently them fighting their way to a spaceship and getting to safety. Magik brought them to the planet, but then headed off with Jean to find Broo. It’s not entirely clear which spaceship it is – it’s not expressly identified as the Starjammer.<\/p>\n

The narrator stresses the X-Men’s job as being to “save everyone they could”, which is “the definition of what it means to serve on the team.” This is, of course, not the traditional function of the X-Men, which was more about pursuing Xavier’s dream. In the Krakoan era, though, the X-Men have been recast as more of a Krakoan outreach project. Jean repeats this formulation of the team remit on page 19, where we establish that the refugees are (entirely predictably) already infected by the Brood.<\/p>\n

Iceman<\/strong> having to reincorporate himself from surrounding moisture has come up before, though it’s not something he finds particularly challenging on Earth. Perhaps this world is much drier.<\/p>\n

Synch\u00a0<\/strong>and\u00a0Talon<\/strong>\u00a0reference their hundreds of years of subjective time together, stuck in the Vault during Jonathan Hickman’s run.<\/p>\n

PAGES 13-14.\u00a0<\/strong>Forge and M on Knowhere.<\/em><\/p>\n

An odd little scene in which we establish that Forge and M’s body swap got sorted out off panel since the previous issue, and Forge then brings Knowhere (with the duo aboard) back to the mainstream universe. The key point is presumably that whatever Forge does seems to cause the Celestial head’s eyes to light up. But it all feels a bit anticlimactic after the exercise of getting there last issue.<\/p>\n

PAGES 15-16.\u00a0<\/strong>Broo’s mindscape.<\/em><\/p>\n

Panel 1 page 14 shows Broo on the lawn of the Jean Grey school, with Kitty Pryde and Logan as teachers. (Kitty was the Headmistress in the latter part of\u00a0Wolverine and the X-Men<\/em>). The kids sitting in the circle, from left to right, are Kid Gladiator, Shark-Girl, Oya, probably Eye-Boy, Broo, probably Evan Sabah Nur, Kid Omega, and the second Sprite.<\/p>\n

The rest of page 14 establishes that, since gaining control of the Brood, Broo has been directing their murderous tendencies at deserving types like slavers. I’m not entirely sure this works, since the Brood killed mainly in order to reproduce. But maybe it keeps them sated enough.<\/p>\n

Dexter.<\/strong> I imagine you all know what\u00a0Dexter\u00a0<\/em>is, but actually it’s been off the air for a decade now, so maybe not. It was a series about a vigilante serial killer.<\/p>\n

PAGES 17-20.<\/strong> Nightmare explains his plan.<\/em><\/p>\n

Nightmare<\/strong> fought Jean Grey in issue #4, as the footnote says. It has to be said that in that issue she was depicted as totally out of his league, but he’s now capable of facing her as an equal because… well, there wouldn’t be a plot otherwise. To be fair, this time he’s also had the opportunity to plan in advance, which makes sense if you subscribe to the view that magic can do basically anything as long as it has time to prepare. (So, for example, Dr Strange can do pretty much anything if you give him a month, but if you attack him from behind he’s limited to basically flying, shooting magic energy blasts at you, and doing a few standard spells. Maybe Nightmare’s similar.)<\/p>\n

Curiously, Nightmare says that he found Broo while searching for mutants to influence on Krakoa, but Broo doesn’t actually live there. Let’s take it broadly and assume that he found out about Broo while searching on Krakoa.<\/p>\n

Anyway, Nightmare’s plan is to trick the X-Men into taking infected refugees to other worlds so that they’ll be blamed for spreading the Brood. He also seems to envisage Broo leading the Brood in an invasion of Earth.<\/p>\n

Quite how the Brood would get access to the Krakoan gates is unclear, since Krakoa is meant to be able to exclude non-mutants.<\/p>\n

PAGES 21-23.\u00a0<\/strong>The Kingpin arrives on Krakoa.<\/em><\/p>\n

And now for something completely different.<\/p>\n

This is probably obvious, but Emma is sparring with Kate Pryde (who isn’t actually named). Emma “tried to recruit [Kate] as a student” in her debut appearance,\u00a0X-Men<\/em>\u00a0vol 1 #129 (1979).<\/p>\n

The Kingpin<\/strong>‘s back story with Emma Frost is covered mainly in Duggan’s\u00a0Devil’s Reign: X-Men\u00a0<\/em>series, which establishes that she used to run missions for him back in the day, to pay off a favour that she owed him.<\/p>\n

Typhoid Mary<\/strong> married Fisk in\u00a0Daredevil<\/em> vol 6 #36 (2021). She’s a Daredevil character with multiple personalities, created by Ann Nocenti and John Romita Jr back in\u00a0Daredevil<\/em>\u00a0vol 1 #254 (1988). Basically, she’s a martial artist with low level psychic powers that vary in strength depending on which personality is in control. In Nocenti’s stories, her personalities are all extreme versions of different ways in which women might define themselves by reference to men, none of which are terribly healthy. (They also have different scents, heartbeats and so forth, which confuses Daredevil – but that’s not really an issue outside his book.)<\/p>\n

From her appearance here, she’s in Typhoid persona. Typhoid Mary\u00a0is<\/em> a mutant, but she’s had little or nothing to do with the X-books over the years. Wolverine has met her in a few\u00a0Marvel Comics Presents<\/em> arcs, and he knows her fairly well.<\/p>\n

The idea that a mutant’s human spouse can claim residence on Krakoa seems to have been established by the case of Northstar’s husband Kyle Jinadu over in\u00a0X-Factor<\/em>, though it seems remarkable that we haven’t seen a few more examples of Krakoa having a minority human population if this rule exists.<\/p>\n

PAGE 24.\u00a0<\/strong>Data page, summarising the Kingpin’s current status quo. Basically, he’s on the run after Devil’s Reign<\/em>, where his scheme to win re-election as Mayor of New York City by harnessing the mind-control powers of the Purple Man was defeated by Daredevil and allies. The author of this document doesn’t know about the Purple Man’s involvement, or at least doesn’t mention it.<\/p>\n

Obviously, the Kingpin hasn’t actually murdered Matt Murdock, as per the list of offences. He did, however, murder Matt’s duplicate Mike Murdock in\u00a0Devil’s Reign<\/em> #5, who was posing as Matt at the time. (The weird back story of Mike Murdock is beyond our remit here, but suffice to say he’s a persona that Matt used in the Silver Age, and he was brought to life as a semi-real person during the Charles Soule run.)<\/p>\n

PAGE 25.\u00a0<\/strong>Trailers.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. X-MEN vol 6 #20 “Lord of the Brood, part 2” Writer: Gerry Duggan Artist: Stefano Caselli Colourist: Federico Blee Letterer: Clayton Cowles Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen Editor: Jordan D White COVER \/ PAGE 1.\u00a0The X-Men fight the Brood. This […]<\/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":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8843","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=8843"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8843\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8845,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8843\/revisions\/8845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}