{"id":8978,"date":"2023-04-23T18:07:25","date_gmt":"2023-04-23T17:07:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=8978"},"modified":"2023-04-23T18:07:25","modified_gmt":"2023-04-23T17:07:25","slug":"x-force-39-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=8978","title":{"rendered":"X-Force #39 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

\"\"<\/a>X-FORCE vol 6 #39<\/strong>
\n“Internal Affairs”<\/strong>
\nWriter: Benjamin Percy<\/strong>
\nArtist: Robert Gill<\/strong>
\nColour artist: Guru-eFX<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Joe Caramagna<\/strong>
\nDesign: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen<\/strong>
\nEditor: Mark Basso<\/strong><\/p>\n

COVER \/ PAGE 1.<\/strong> Colossus and Wolverine (Laura) in action.<\/p>\n

PAGES 2-7.<\/strong>\u00a0The Quiet Council discuss the Beast.<\/em><\/p>\n

Wolverine<\/strong>‘s appearance here is a direct repeat of page 11 of\u00a0Wolverine<\/em> #32. In the original scene, Wolverine has just marched into the Quiet Council chamber and dumped the body of the Beast (complete with the fungal boobytraps seen earlier in that issue). Wolverine complains about Beast being given “carte blanche”, and refuses Professor X’s request to talk about it privately. That scene ends with the first three lines of dialogue here. Wolverine’s brief exchange with Sage as he leaves the room is new.<\/p>\n

The Quiet Council.<\/strong> As in Wolverine<\/em> #32, Nightcrawler and Mr Sinister are both missing, without explanation. This avoids the need to address their status quo changes in\u00a0Legion of X<\/em> and\u00a0Immortal X-Men<\/em>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

MGH.<\/strong> Mutant Growth Hormone. I\u00a0think<\/em> this is referring to stories suggesting that MGH was somehow derived from the serum that Beast used to turn himself furry during his 1970s\u00a0Amazing Adventures<\/em> solo series – which is a bit of an odd thing to criticise him for.<\/p>\n

Legacy Virus.<\/strong> Again, a slightly odd thing to focus on. Back in Uncanny X-Men <\/em>#390, Beast developed a cure for the Legacy Virus which (through an incredible plot contrivance) required someone to die in order to activate it. None of this is\u00a0that<\/em> dodgy.<\/p>\n

“Traitor to the X-Men, ally to the Inhumans”.<\/strong> Again, this is a bit of a stretch. During the period when Marvel was desperately trying to push the Inhumans as the new X-Men, there was a storyline where the release of Terrigen Mist into the atmosphere was causing mutants to fall ill. Beast did go to work with the Inhumans to work on a cure, in\u00a0Uncanny Inhumans<\/em> #1, but that was with Storm’s agreement. Emma is probably referring to the fact that Beast tried to warn the Inhumans that the X-Men were planning to attack in\u00a0Inhumans vs X-Men<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Terra Verde.<\/strong> The micronation that he took over with organic tech earlier in this series; apparently we’re still going with the idea that the entire population of this state have all agreed to play along and not tell anyone about the time they and all their friends were mind controlled by a foreign power.<\/p>\n

Threnody.<\/strong> This is a better example – in\u00a0X-Men<\/em> vol 2 #27, Beast makes the decision to leave the vulnerable Threnody with Mr Sinister on the grounds that he might be able to make use of her to find a cure for the Legacy Virus. This\u00a0is<\/em> something you can sensibly point to as a forerunner for his recent characterisation.<\/p>\n

#XSpoilers\u00a0<\/strong>is a hashtag used for discussion of new X-Men comics on the declining social media network Twitter. If you’re reading this in the future, hi! Remember Twitter? It was weird, wasn’t it?<\/p>\n

“Tessa.”<\/strong> This is the name Sage used when she was working as an undercover agent at the Hellfire Club; she hasn’t used it much in years and it isn’t her real name. The implication seems to be that Xavier is a bit out of touch with her.<\/p>\n

“You all received the psychic briefing.”<\/strong> Presumably referring to page 11 panel 3 of Wolverine<\/i> #32, where Emma is certainly doing\u00a0something<\/em> telepathic, though it reads more like she’s reading Wolverine’s mind than communicating to everyone else.<\/p>\n

“Is Beast an enemy of Krakoa?”<\/strong> This, of course, is a different question from “Is he a bad guy?” Plenty of bad guys are allied with Krakoa, and Beast isn’t in any conventional sense an enemy of Krakoa. He might well be a dangerous liability, but that’s a different question. At any rate, Xavier, Emma and Shaw all seem to be of the view that as long as Beast is out there attacking enemies of Krakoa, it’s probably in their interests to let him keep at it. The idea that these operations are diplomatically deniable seems a bit of a strain, though. Beast has previous appeared in public as a Krakoan official.<\/p>\n

“He killed Wolverine.”<\/strong> In\u00a0Wolverine<\/em> #27.<\/p>\n

“Wolverine responded with a crime of his own.”<\/strong> In\u00a0Wolverine<\/em> #30; it’s fair to say that Wolverine deliberately kills Beast, who isn’t attacking him at the time, without making any attempt to subdue him.<\/p>\n

Colossus<\/strong>, of course, is still under the psychic influence of Chronicler, and thus the indirect control of his brother Mikhail. Thus, putting him in charge of the Krakoan security apparatus – even under the more sensible leadership of Sage – is a disaster waiting to happen.<\/p>\n

PAGE 8.\u00a0<\/strong>Data page – another passage from Chronicler’s writing, which he uses to control Colossus from a distance.<\/p>\n

The “stones that listen to whispered conversations” are the bugs created by Beast and Forge earlier in the series.<\/p>\n

PAGE 9.\u00a0<\/strong>Recap and credits.<\/p>\n

PAGE 10.\u00a0<\/strong>Sevyr Blackmore decides to release Beast’s experiments.<\/em><\/p>\n

Blackmore seized control of Beast’s black ops prison in issue #35, though it was presented in that issue as more of a riot and prison break. You’d have thought that X-Force would have gone back to try and liberate the place, but… no, apparently not.<\/p>\n

PAGES 11-13.\u00a0<\/strong>The new X-Force headquarters is created.<\/em><\/p>\n

This is replacing the giant skull thing that Beast marched into the sea with in\u00a0Wolverine<\/em> #31. Sage is obviously going for something a bit more friendly.<\/p>\n

PAGE 14.<\/strong> Data page. Sage assures us that her X-Force is going to have at least\u00a0some<\/em> proper moral values to underpin its actions, even as she acknowledges that varying degrees of dodgy behaviour will be unavoidable.<\/p>\n

PAGES 15-19.\u00a0<\/strong>Sage recruits Wolverine (Laura).<\/em><\/p>\n

So apparently Logan is leaving the team here, rather than sticking around to help Sage sort it out.<\/p>\n

The characters playing Sage’s drinking game are Juggernaut, Blob and Strong Guy, all of whom are much bigger than her. I suppose we’re going with the idea that healers are so prevalent on Krakoa that these characters are happy with a bit of casual maiming, which seems kind of out of character for all three of them, honestly.<\/p>\n

Wolverine presents herself as a loner, but the answer to “what have you been doing with that power lately” is that she was a member of the X-Men, and then she was in\u00a0X-Terminators<\/em>.<\/p>\n

“Quentin goes<\/strong> missing.” <\/strong>Quentin Quire vanished while defeating Cerebrax in issue #29 and hasn’t been seen since.<\/p>\n

“Jean quits.”<\/strong> Way back in issue #10.<\/p>\n

PAGES 20-23.<\/strong>\u00a0Beast’s bio-experiments crashland on Krakoa.<\/em><\/p>\n

Or at least, that’s presumably what these things are. Are we really doing “Wolverine learns the pleasure of being greeted as a hero?” After she spent a year with the X-Men? Come on.<\/p>\n

PAGE 24.<\/strong>\u00a0Kid Omega returns.<\/em><\/p>\n

Well, obviously Quentin has been away for a while. This isn’t quite the costume he was wearing when he disappeared, but it’s fairly similar – the omega designs have become less prominent, though. He seems to be carrying some sort of Soulsword type thing, again with an omega design built into the base of the blade.<\/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. X-FORCE vol 6 #39 “Internal Affairs” Writer: Benjamin Percy Artist: Robert Gill Colour artist: Guru-eFX Letterer: Joe Caramagna Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen Editor: Mark Basso COVER \/ PAGE 1. Colossus and Wolverine (Laura) in action. PAGES 2-7.\u00a0The Quiet Council […]<\/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-8978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8978","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=8978"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8978\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8980,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8978\/revisions\/8980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}