{"id":9323,"date":"2023-08-17T22:44:37","date_gmt":"2023-08-17T21:44:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=9323"},"modified":"2023-08-17T22:44:37","modified_gmt":"2023-08-17T21:44:37","slug":"dark-x-men-1-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=9323","title":{"rendered":"Dark X-Men #1 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

\"\"<\/a>DARK X-MEN vol 2 #1<\/strong>
\n“There is a Kingdom” \/ “Do You Love Me”<\/strong>
\nWriter: Steve Foxe<\/strong>
\nArtist (“There is a Kingdom”): Jonas Scharf<\/strong>
\nArtist (“Do You Love Me”): Nelson D\u00e1niel<\/strong>
\nColour artist: Frank Martin<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Clayton Cowles<\/strong>
\nDesign: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen<\/strong>
\nEditor: Jordan D White<\/strong><\/p>\n

DARK X-MEN.<\/strong> This is the second\u00a0Dark X-Men<\/em> miniseries, but it has no connection to the first, which was a Dark Reign<\/em> tie-in about Norman Osborn’s rival X-Men team.<\/p>\n

COVER \/ PAGE 1.\u00a0<\/strong>The cast pose. We’ll get to who all these people are shortly.<\/p>\n

PAGE 2.\u00a0<\/strong>Madelyne Pryor dreams.<\/em><\/p>\n

Madelyne became the ruler of Limbo in\u00a0New Mutants<\/em> #25-28.<\/p>\n

The Grim Reaper figure in her dream is holding the headdress from Havok’s costume.<\/p>\n

PAGES 3-4.\u00a0<\/strong>Alex Summers and Madelyne Pryor wake up.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Limbo Embassy.<\/strong> This improbable location was debuted in the epilogue to Dark Web: Finale<\/em> #1, after Madelyne Pryor regained control of Limbo and put a stop to its attacks on New York (even though she’d been complicit in them to start with). According to that issue, Krakoa helped talk the USA into accepting the embassy, but Madelyne more or less threatened to keep causing trouble unless the Limbo Embassy was tolerated in New York.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

That issue ends with Madelyne giving the following speech to a somewhat sceptical Scott and Jean: “For too long, Limbo has held the spirits no one wants to face. The parts of us we condemn to darkness. Nothing heals in darkness. I will open my arms to the rejected ones. The ones who have fallen so far, they’ve been starved of light… I will lead them out of the cold. I will show them they have a home. No more hiding.”<\/p>\n

The protestors here are presumably prompted by the anti-mutant sentiment whipped up by Orchis, in particular after\u00a0X-Men: Hellfire Gala 2023<\/em>. Certainly there’s a kid there with a cuddly Nimrod. On the other hand, if there’s any outpost of mutantdom that New Yorkers might have good reason to take against, the tower of black magic that was responsible for Inferno and Dark Web seems like it.\u00a0Alex does seem to understand that, at the very least, Madelyne hasn’t been doing much to win hearts and minds. He also seems to be the only person in the building wearing street clothes, as opposed to either a costume or demonwear. We’ll see on the next page that he’s arguing rather ineffectively for a more conciliatory approach to the humans, with a view to holding on to what they have left – basically, over correction in the other direction.<\/p>\n

PAGE 5.\u00a0<\/strong>The lobby of the Limbo Embassy.<\/em><\/p>\n

Other than the demons, we’ll see where all of these characters came from in the back-up strip. Starting with Alex and Madelyne and continuing down the stairs, they are:<\/p>\n