{"id":9073,"date":"2023-05-17T21:56:38","date_gmt":"2023-05-17T20:56:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=9073"},"modified":"2023-05-18T00:13:11","modified_gmt":"2023-05-17T23:13:11","slug":"x-men-22-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=9073","title":{"rendered":"X-Men #22 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 #22<\/strong>
\n“Bring on the Bad Guys”<\/strong>
\nWriter: Gerry Duggan<\/strong>
\nArtist: Joshua Cassara<\/strong>
\nColourist: Marte Gracia<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Clayton Cowles<\/strong>
\nDesign: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen<\/strong>
\nEditor: Jordan D White<\/strong><\/p>\n

COVER \/ PAGE 1.<\/strong> Pin-up of Orchis. Specifically, from left to right, that’s Feilong, Omega Sentinel, Nimrod, Dr Stasis, the Wolverine-skeleton Sentinel seen later in the issue, M.O.D.O.K., and two of the ape scientists who’ve occasionally been seen among Orchis ranks.<\/p>\n

PAGES 2-4.\u00a0<\/strong>Omega Sentinel meets with Opal Vetiver.<\/em><\/p>\n

Omega Sentinel.\u00a0<\/strong>It’s been a while since Karima actually\u00a0did<\/em> anything – she was prominent as an Orchis adviser in the Hickman run but she’s done essentially nothing in the time since he left.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Opal Vetiver\u00a0<\/strong>is one of the four members of Hordeculture, the mad botanists who are all old women. She’s making a rare appearance here away from her teammates. The information that she’s been taking Krakoan drugs is new, but not particularly hypocritical since Hordeculture aren’t an anti-mutant organisation as such. Despite the term “drug of the mind” here, the proper term from\u00a0House of X\u00a0<\/em>#1 is meant to be “Human Drug M”, described “a drug that cures diseases of the mind (in humans).”<\/p>\n

Oddly, Omega Sentinel acknowledges that Opal’s interest in her is transactional rather than ideological, but Opal doesn’t actually\u00a0ask<\/em> for anything in particular in exchange for Hordeculture’s “research into mutant gateways”. Since their first appearance, Hordeculture have been able to access Krakoa’s gateway network despite not being mutants; evidently, that’s what Orchis want to get control of.<\/p>\n

The Trojan horse.<\/strong> We’ll find out later that there\u00a0is<\/em> a “Trojan horse” in the Krakoan drugs, planted (somehow) by Orchis themselves. The story glosses over the question of how they could have contaminated so much of the supply chain; either they’ve got someone on the inside, or they’ve done a lot of work further down the chain. (EDIT: The comments suggest this is what Stasis was up to on page 57 of last year’s X-Men: Hellfire Club<\/em>, where he does indeed seem to be in an automated \u00a0Krakoan facility delivering a “payload”, while Emma’s voice over talks about Krakoan flowers.)<\/p>\n

The idea that there was something dodgy about the Krakoan drugs always seemed to be something that was being hinted at, possibly as part of Moira’s schemes, though it was never very clearly resolved in Hickman’s time. I always got the distinct impression that it had been quietly dropped because it felt too much like a Covid-vaccine conspiracy angle, and we’re now maybe far enough past that for it to seem viable again.<\/p>\n

PAGE 5.<\/strong> Recap and credits. The recap of last issue’s Brood story has little or nothing to do with this issue’s plot. It plays up the argument between Scott and Jean last issue, and it might be significant that Jean doesn’t appear in this issue. Then again, neither do Iceman, Synch and Talon.<\/p>\n

“Bring on the Bad Guys”<\/strong> was originally the title of a collection of villain origin stories that Marvel put out in the 70s.<\/p>\n

PAGE 6.<\/strong> Data page. This is a structure chart we’ve seen many times before, though I think this is the first time that we’ve seen it without any redaction on the names. However, the names are all well established by this point. The first three paragraphs of the introduction have appeared before, but I’m fairly sure that the fourth is new, explaining that once Orchis have dealt with the mutants, they’ll move on to all other superhumans.<\/p>\n

PAGES 7-10.<\/strong>\u00a0Dr Stasis, M.O.D.O.K. and Nimrod test their Trojan horse.<\/em><\/p>\n

Self-explanatory. The guy in red is just an Orchis scientist, wearing a red version of the A.I.M. uniform.<\/p>\n

PAGES 11-12.\u00a0<\/strong>Orchis’ pop-up clinic in Chicago.<\/em><\/p>\n

Orchis have started offering an X-gene “cure” for free, apparently. It’s left unclear in this scene quite how genuine this is, but removing the mutant powers of actual volunteers would serve their goals well enough, more through publicity than anything else. The narrator tells us that this is happening “every day across the country”, too – and one of the Orchis doctors claims to be a former mutant.<\/p>\n

Let’s assume that the X-Men have been patiently waiting for an incident that justified them barging in.<\/p>\n

PAGES 13-21.\u00a0<\/strong>The X-Men fight Orchis.<\/em><\/p>\n

“I used to think like you, Doc.”<\/strong> Duggan is probably thinking of the fact that Forge produced the Neutraliser that removed Storm’s powers for a time in the 1980s. But he didn’t do that in order for it to be used against mutants – it was a reverse-engineered copy of Rom’s signature weapon, and it was meant to be a weapon against the Dire Wraiths.<\/p>\n

The Wolverine<\/strong> skeleton\u00a0<\/strong>could have been harnessed from all manner of places, but we established in\u00a0Inferno<\/em> #1 that Orchis had acquired a collection of them following a series of failed X-Force raids on the Orchis Forge base.<\/p>\n

PAGE 22.<\/strong> Data page. Forge writes to Emma Frost. The key point seems to be that, following his moral epiphany in issues #15-17, Forge is in a somewhat utopian frame of mind – he’s finally catching up with the Krakoan mindset just in time for “Fall of X” to hit. But he wants to help the whole word, not just Krakoa, and basically he wants to solve scarcity. This sort of thing never goes well, if only because the Marvel Universe needs to retain some recognisable relationship to the real world. Forge wants to announce it at the Hellfire Gala, anyway.<\/p>\n

“Your advocating for her [Firestar] was a great call.”<\/strong> Emma pushed for Firestar to join the team in\u00a0X-Men: Hellfire Gala<\/em> #1.<\/p>\n

“I know your relationship was complicated.”<\/strong> Emma was an abusive mentor of Firestar back in her villain days, as covered in the Firestar\u00a0<\/em>miniseries.<\/p>\n

“I agreed to build the cradles for Charles…”<\/strong> The cradles are the data storage for Cerebro. Forge agreed to build them in a flashback in\u00a0Powers of X\u00a0<\/em>#5.<\/p>\n

“[T]he containment system to keep the Children of the Vault in stasis”.<\/strong> In issues #15-17.<\/p>\n

“The Krakoan battle suit”.<\/strong> The costume that Forge created and that Cyclops wore as Captain Krakoa, between issues #6 and #12. It shows up again in the\u00a0Free Comic Book Day: Avengers \/ X-Men<\/em> one-shot, where Orchis will steal it – but we haven’t reached that yet.<\/p>\n

PAGE 23.<\/strong>\u00a0The X-Men at the Treehouse.<\/em><\/p>\n

“Cyclops and Jean Grey have hit a rough patch.”<\/strong> Following their argument about the Brood last issue.<\/p>\n

PAGE 24.<\/strong> Orchis work on their X-Sentinels.<\/em><\/p>\n

Apparently they’re going to make a Wolverine copy. You… do know the Beast’s got about ten of them, right?<\/p>\n

PAGE 25.<\/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 #22 “Bring on the Bad Guys” Writer: Gerry Duggan Artist: Joshua Cassara Colourist: Marte Gracia Letterer: Clayton Cowles Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen Editor: Jordan D White COVER \/ PAGE 1. Pin-up of Orchis. Specifically, from left […]<\/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-9073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9073","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=9073"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9073\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9077,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9073\/revisions\/9077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}