{"id":9350,"date":"2023-08-25T18:54:32","date_gmt":"2023-08-25T17:54:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=9350"},"modified":"2023-08-25T23:51:38","modified_gmt":"2023-08-25T22:51:38","slug":"realm-of-x-1-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=9350","title":{"rendered":"Realm of X #1 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/91K7uQdyxvL._AC_UY436_QL65_.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-9351 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/91K7uQdyxvL._AC_UY436_QL65_-195x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"195\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/91K7uQdyxvL._AC_UY436_QL65_-195x300.jpg 195w, https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/91K7uQdyxvL._AC_UY436_QL65_.jpg 284w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 195px) 100vw, 195px\" \/><\/a><strong>REALM OF X #1<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>&#8220;The White Witch&#8221;<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>Writer: Torunn Gr\u00f8nbekk<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>Artist: Di\u00f3genes Neves<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>Colour artist: Rain Beredo<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>Letterer: Clayton Cowles<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>Design: Tom Muller &amp; Jay Bowen<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>Editor: Lauren Amaro<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>REALM OF X<\/strong> is a 4-issue miniseries tying in to &#8220;Fall of X&#8221;&#8230; though possibly only in the sense that &#8220;Fall of X&#8221; provides the occasion for the story to happen in the first place.<\/p>\n<p><strong>COVER \/ PAGE 1:<\/strong> Mirage and Magik charge into action through a Krakoan gate. More of a misdirection cover for the solicits than anything much to do with the contents.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGES 2-10.<\/strong> <em>The cast wake up in Vanaheim in the middle of a fight.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The name characters, and a bunch of random generics, evidently wound up here after being marched through the Krakoan gates by Professor X in\u00a0<em>X-Men: Hellfire Gala 2023.<\/em> This is plainly not the alien landscape where we saw Forge in\u00a0<em>X-Men<\/em> #25, or the featureless desert where Exodus and co wound up in\u00a0<em>Immortal X-Men<\/em> #14 &#8211; despite Exodus claiming in that issue that the &#8220;whole population of Krakoa&#8221; was there. To be fair, they were a much larger group than the one we see here, so they may well be the vast majority of the Krakoan population; this issue&#8217;s recap page refers to &#8220;a handful of other mutants&#8221; accompanying the name characters, and Dani later mentions a &#8220;dozen&#8221; being wounded. We still don&#8217;t know why the mutants have been scattered in this way, although some sort of scheme involving Destiny and Manifold seems a realistic possibility.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The name characters here are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Magik.<\/strong> The reason why she can&#8217;t use her powers is that she was dosed with Orchis nanotech in\u00a0<em>X-Men<\/em> #23, but she doesn&#8217;t know that. Considering that the justification for some X-Men remaining on Earth is that they were able to resist Xavier&#8217;s influence thanks to his training, it&#8217;s a bit odd that Magik didn&#8217;t make the cut &#8211; not only is she one of his trainees, but she&#8217;s supposed to have an inherent magical resistance to telepathy. Perhaps the distraction of losing her powers had something to do with it.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Mirage.<\/strong> Magik&#8217;s longtime team mate in the New Mutants, and again, a Xavier trainee with psychic abilities&#8230; but let&#8217;s not ask too many awkward questions. Although it isn&#8217;t mentioned in this issue, Dani has a longtime connection with\u00a0<em>Thor<\/em> mythology as one of the Valkyries, which is doubtless going to be significant at some point.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Marrow. <\/strong>Her full name is given here as Sarah Rushman; that comes from the 2000 one-shot\u00a0<em>Spider-Man \/ Marrow<\/em>, where she used the name as a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, but it wasn&#8217;t clearly established as being her real name. We last saw her hanging around Madripoor with other former Morlocks in\u00a0<em>X-Men Unlimited Infinity Comic<\/em> #75-79. She&#8217;s written as weirdly reasonable in this issue, possibly because scripting Typhoid as such an intolerable brat necessarily forces Marrow into looking sensible by comparison. But then why is she here&#8230;?<\/li>\n<li><strong>Curse.<\/strong> Look, that&#8217;s her in the top left of page 3, running off into the woods. Curse had a major role in the X-Men Green stories in\u00a0<em>X-Men Unlimited Infinity Comic<\/em>, which very broadly established that she&#8217;s a reality warper who takes damage if she tries to use her powers without doing harm to someone else. Curse was killed at the end of that arc and somehow got herself put to the front of the resurrection queue, since we saw her alive and well in <em>Hellfire Gala 2023.<\/em> She&#8217;s also innately resistant to telepathic control, so she was unaffected by Xavier&#8217;s command, but the other mutants just picked her up anyway and bundled her through the gates.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Typhoid Mary<\/strong> is a mutant, but she&#8217;s principally a\u00a0<em>Daredevil<\/em> character. She has multiple personalities, and her creator Ann Nocenti clearly intended each of those personas to be modelled on different unhealthy ways in which women define themselves by reference to men. Her depiction here as a snarky princess type is&#8230; not really in character for any of her personas, to the best of my knowledge, but I wouldn&#8217;t claim to be hugely familiar with her. She married the Kingpin in <em>Daredevil<\/em> #36 (2021) and they showed up in Krakoa in\u00a0<em>X-Men<\/em> #20.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Dust.<\/strong> Introduced during the Grant Morrison run in\u00a0<em>New X-Men<\/em> #133, she was also a member of the\u00a0<em>Young X-Men<\/em> cast, but she hasn&#8217;t done much on Krakoa beyond cameos. As a fairly religious character, she tends to spend a lot of time being conflicted about stuff, and here she gets to make the point here that Dani&#8217;s idea of a <em>prima facie<\/em> villain would cover a lot of mutant activity as well. (Edit: As pointed out in the comments, she had a role in <em>Legion of X<\/em>, where Legion suggested renaming her Congregation, but she didn\u2019t expressly take the name. Evidently she politely ignored the suggestion. She didn\u2019t do a tremendous amount in that book either, anyway.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Vanaheim<\/strong> is the home of the Vanir, who are the more nature-themed branch of the Norse gods (as opposed to the Aesir, who live in Asgard). Actual Norse sources are pretty vague about what the place is supposed to be like. The Vanir are also associated with seeing the future, which fits the plot here. The specific Vanaheim characters in this issue are all new, but Vanaheim itself has appeared sporadically in\u00a0<em>Thor<\/em>-related stories.<\/p>\n<p>The attackers are working for &#8220;the White Witch&#8221; &#8211; we&#8217;ll see later on that this is apparently Opal Luna Saturnyne.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGE 11.\u00a0<\/strong>Recap and credits.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGES 12-14.<\/strong>\u00a0<em>Curse runs through the forest.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>This is all pretty much in character for Curse as depicted in &#8220;X-Men Green&#8221;. There&#8217;s a general sense in &#8220;X-Men Green&#8221; that Curse shirks responsibility to avoid putting herself in a position where she would feel obliged to use her powers to help people, and thus injure herself &#8211; but she&#8217;ll usually do the right thing if there really is no alternative. (Delaying the moment of decision counts for this purpose as an alternative.)<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGES 15-17.\u00a0<\/strong><em>The main cast search for Curse without success.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>All pretty self-explanatory. Dani&#8217;s power to telepathically communicate with animals gets a rare modern outing.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGES 18-19.\u00a0<\/strong><em>Curse fights off some Rock Trolls.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ll see later that these poor guys have been sent by Saturnyne to try their luck against Curse in order to test her powers.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGES 20-21.<\/strong>\u00a0<em>The heroes ask Trabin for explanations.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Again, this speaks for itself.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGE 22.\u00a0<\/strong><em>The &#8220;White Witch&#8221; fails to restore her trolls.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>She does\u00a0<em>attempt<\/em> to fix them, but she&#8217;s clearly more interested in what she&#8217;s learning about Curse&#8217;s powers. In fact, it&#8217;s decidedly possible that she only tries to fix them at all in order to test the resilience of Curse&#8217;s effects.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGE 23.\u00a0<\/strong><em>Trabin explains the history of Vanaheim.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Trabin explains that Vanaheim used to be full of massive cities, but that they deindustrialised and returned to nature on realising that their strength would simply lead to conflict. Broadly, this comes from <em>Thor: God of Thunder<\/em> #16 (2013), which is part of Jason Aaron&#8217;s run &#8211; though the reference to prophesies is new. In Aaron&#8217;s story, the narrator says: &#8220;Long ago &#8230; the gods of the Vanir built castles the size of mountains, great citadels that could be seen from worlds away. But over the eons, the gods grew weary of the constant warfare required to defend their walls, of the blood that was shed over pils of rock. And so one day, they returned to the depths of the forest, leaving their great stone towers to crumble back into the dust from whence they came.&#8221; Despite the way Vanaheim is depicted here, other parts of it still have massive ruins. They&#8217;re just not the parts where the Vanir are actually living these days. Aaron&#8217;s narrator describes Vanaheim as a land that has tried to turn its back on conflict.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGE 24.\u00a0<\/strong>Data page on the use of prophecy in warfare. Broadly speaking, the point being made here is that the Vanir know that their prophesies are fairly reliable, but also know that their reaction to the prophesies can change events. After all, as we&#8217;ve just seen, they left their cities in response to prophesies of future war &#8211; and successfully avoided it. The conflict for them here is that the Vanir know from their prophesies that the arrival of the mutant heroes is probably bad news, but the simplistic solution of changing history by killing them off doesn&#8217;t particularly appeal to them either.<\/p>\n<p>Some of the characters namechecked on this page are mythological figures and\/or have appeared in the Marvel Universe before:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Buri <\/b>is the first of the Aesir, and Odin&#8217;s grandfather. He first appeared in <em>Journey into Mystery<\/em> #97 (1963).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Njord\u00a0<\/strong>is Buri&#8217;s son, and a sea god. He appears on panel in\u00a0<em>Thor<\/em> #274 (1978).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Mimir\u00a0<\/strong>is also Buri&#8217;s son; in mythology, Odin carts his severed head around as a source of wisdom. The Marvel Universe generally presents that a bit more gently, showing him as a disembodied fiery head. He debuted in\u00a0<em>Thor<\/em> #240 (1975).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Bor<\/strong> is Buri&#8217;s other son, and Odin&#8217;s father. He was killed off in\u00a0<em>Thor<\/em> #600, whatever that means in relation to gods.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Kvasir<\/strong> seems never to have appeared in the Marvel Universe, but he was a wisdom figure created from the saliva of both the Aesir and the Vanir.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Freyr <\/strong>is the god of fertility; Marvel tend to call him &#8220;Frey&#8221;, perhaps to minimise the confusion with his sister Freya. The bit about him making a deal with Surtur in advance of the Aesir-Vanir war comes from\u00a0<em>Mighty Thor<\/em> #18 (2012), a Matt Fraction story. In mythology, Freyr is fated to be killed by Surtur at Ragnarok.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Surtur<\/strong> is a major <em>Thor<\/em> villain and probably needs no introduction.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>PAGES 25-26.\u00a0<\/strong><em>Trabin shows the heroes the statues of the Four.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The obvious point here is that only the name characters make it into the prophecy &#8211; and Magik and Curse both fail to make the cut.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGES 27-28.\u00a0<\/strong><em>The White Witch&#8217;s birds abduct a child.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>As we&#8217;ll see shortly, this is another test for Curse.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGES 29-32.\u00a0<\/strong><em>The White Witch captures Curse.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The plan is to manipulate Curse into a situation where she has to use her powers to help someone, thus forcing her to inflict pain on herself, and making her vulnerable. Faced with an immediate emergency, Curse <em>does<\/em> do the right thing, but only after trying to help indirectly by hurting the birds. Apparently it&#8217;s okay for Curse to use her powers with good <em>intent<\/em>, as long as the immediate effect is to hurt someone else.<\/p>\n<p>The White Witch is clearly identified as Saturnyne &#8211; which links this story more directly to the wider X-books. It&#8217;s not a massive twist, since Saturnyne was also referred to as the White Witch in Tini Howard&#8217;s <em>Excalibur <\/em>(see for example Morgan Le Frey in\u00a0<em>Excalibur<\/em> #1).<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGE 33.\u00a0<\/strong>Data page, fleshing out Trabin&#8217;s explanation earlier in the issue that the predicted &#8220;chaos&#8221; might be a person. The significance as far as the author is concerned is that they&#8217;re dealing with something that can be reasoned with, rather than just a force of nature.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PAGE 34.\u00a0<\/strong>Trailers. The Krakoan reads: SPARKS FLY.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. REALM OF X #1 &#8220;The White Witch&#8221; Writer: Torunn Gr\u00f8nbekk Artist: Di\u00f3genes Neves Colour artist: Rain Beredo Letterer: Clayton Cowles Design: Tom Muller &amp; Jay Bowen Editor: Lauren Amaro REALM OF X is a 4-issue miniseries tying in to &#8220;Fall of [&hellip;]<\/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-9350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9350","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=9350"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9350\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9354,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9350\/revisions\/9354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}