{"id":9407,"date":"2023-09-07T21:44:04","date_gmt":"2023-09-07T20:44:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=9407"},"modified":"2023-09-07T21:44:04","modified_gmt":"2023-09-07T20:44:04","slug":"immortal-x-men-15-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=9407","title":{"rendered":"Immortal X-Men #15 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

\"\"<\/a>IMMORTAL X-MEN #15<\/strong>
\n“Thirst Things First”<\/strong>
\nWriter: Kieron Gillen<\/strong>
\nArtist: Paco Medina<\/strong>
\nColour artist: David Curiel<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Clayton Cowles<\/strong>
\nDesign: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen<\/strong>
\nEditor: Jordan D White<\/strong><\/p>\n

COVER \/ PAGE 1.<\/strong> A zombie Wolverine attacks.<\/p>\n

PAGES 2-4.\u00a0<\/strong>Selene eats Shaw’s soldiers.<\/em><\/p>\n

Selene is our designated narrator for this issue, even though she isn’t in the desert scenes. She was voted onto the Quiet Council in issue #12 and hasn’t had her spotlight issue yet.<\/p>\n

The soldiers are apparently the same ones that Professor X repelled from Krakoa at the end of the previous issue. Although they’re at an Orchis base, they don’t seem to be wearing Orchis logos on their uniforms, as with the previous issue. There were four of them last issue, and there seem to be only three here, but I doubt that’s meant to be significant.<\/p>\n

Selene’s captions get a black chess queen logo. Shaw had a similar black king logo on his captions in issue #6, although Selene is a former<\/em> Black Queen.<\/p>\n

PAGE 5.\u00a0<\/strong>Recap and credits.<\/p>\n

PAGES 6-7.\u00a0<\/strong>Shaw and Selene return to Krakoa with psi-blockers.<\/em><\/p>\n

Selene is surprised that Shaw was able to build effective psi-blockers. His back story does involve him being an\u00a0engineering genius, but it’s rarely a focus of this stories, and she’s right that Shaw would normally delegate this to someone else. We saw last issue, though, that Shaw seems to have realised that he needs to look out for himself rather than relying on his allies.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The External Gate<\/strong> was created in Excalibur<\/em> #12 when Apocalypse sacrificed several of Selene’s fellow Externals in order to create a portal to Otherworld. Despite their supposed immortality, none of them have returned. Selene clearly attaches real importance to the External Gate, even though she frames its importance here in terms of her personal glory. Later, on page 18, her narration tells us that she has always wanted to free her fellow Externals but couldn’t have done so while Krakoa was still in operation. This seems to be a big part of her motivation for bringing Krakoa down (together with being spurned as a Quiet Council member in issues #1-2).<\/p>\n

“Xavier … has some telekinetic powers now.”<\/strong> Professor X seemed to have low level telekinesis in House of X<\/em> #1. In X-Men<\/em> #15, he said that his telekinetic powers were getting stronger with each resurrection. Previously, he’s only been shown moving small objects around – pouring a drink, that sort of thing.<\/p>\n

“A grieving Xavier alone on the island… very Ozymandias.”<\/strong> Referring to the poem by Shelley, describing ruins: “And on the pedestal these words appear: \/ ‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: \/ Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’ \/ Nothing beside remains…”<\/p>\n

Selene’s narration at the bottom of page 7 confirms that Orchis really did intend to send all the mutants to Mars in\u00a0X-Men: Hellfire Gala 2023<\/em>, and had nothing to do with them being diverted to the desert and elsewhere. Orchis are well aware that the mutants did not wind up on Mars, but publicly they’re pretending that everything is going according to plan. Presumably, Orchis will be considering the possibility that the mutants somehow escaped.<\/p>\n

PAGES 8-9.\u00a0<\/strong>Exodus leads the Krakoan diaspora.<\/em><\/p>\n

Exodus seems to be a doing a good job of keeping the public inspired, and of using their powers to keep everyone alive. On the other hand, he seems to have told the Krakoans that they’re heading towards a promised land of which he has only “arguably” had a vision. Exodus seems to mean that he really has had some sort of vision, but that he’s well aware that it might not mean anything at all – he chooses to believe, but even he understands what he’s doing there. Hope is on board with this for now, for purely pragmatic reasons of keeping the Krakoan public on side.<\/p>\n

PAGE 10. <\/strong>Data page. Destiny is keeping a diary of the trek through the desert. Diaries are part of Destiny’s iconography. She wrote several volumes of them as a teenager, based on her first wave of visions. X-Treme X-Men<\/em> was largely based around people trying to find them. It’s not clear where Destiny got a book to write in, but she doesn’t seem to be writing this with hindsight.<\/p>\n

Destiny confirms that Jumbo Carnation is among the desert exiles, although we haven’t seen him. Despite being mainly a fashionista, he has practical skills he can bring to bear here.<\/p>\n

“One mutant fed 5,000 two millennia ago.”<\/strong> Exodus’s belief that Jesus was a mutant has been referenced multiple times in this series.<\/p>\n

Mystique<\/strong> is, as always, a key concern for Destiny. We saw last issue that told Professor X to make sure to get Mystique out of the way if anything happened at the Gala, but the Professor wasn’t able to achieve that. Mystique seemingly fell to her death in\u00a0X-Men: Hellfire Gala 2023<\/em>, but this is comics, and the word “seemingly” is doing a lot of work there.<\/p>\n

PAGES 11-15.<\/strong>\u00a0The exiles encounter a group of Wolverines.<\/em><\/p>\n

Kafka<\/strong> is a pre-existing character – he debuted in\u00a0Giant-Size X-Men: Jean Grey & Emma Frost\u00a0<\/em>and can be seen as a background character in several issues of this series. He was also being trained by Bishop in the epilogue to\u00a0Bishop: War College<\/em>.<\/p>\n

PAGES 16-17.<\/strong> Mother Righteous joins the exiled Krakoans.<\/em><\/p>\n

Mother Righteous<\/strong> claims to have been exiled to the desert along with everyone else, after being marched through the gates by Professor X. She also claims that the Wolverines just randomly attacked her and that she knows nothing about them. None of this is true. Mother Righteous appears in Hellfire Gala 2023<\/em>while all the other mutants are being marched through the gates, entirely unaffected by the whole thing. In that scene, she quietly appropriates Krakoa’s Atlantic offshoot for herself, and traps it inside one of her “lanterns”.<\/p>\n

The Scarlet Witch<\/strong> was a hate figure on Krakoa, due to her role in removing almost all mutant powers in\u00a0House of M<\/em>, until she redeemed herself by creating the Waiting Room in\u00a0Trial of Magneto<\/em>.<\/p>\n

PAGES 18-20.\u00a0<\/strong>Professor X kills the latest landing crew.<\/em><\/p>\n

He seems to have literally torn them apart.<\/p>\n

PAGES 21-23.\u00a0<\/strong>Mother Righteous leads the exiles to the Atlantic Krakoa.<\/em><\/p>\n

Again, she’s absolutely lying about having just found it here.<\/p>\n

Exodus is rightly suspicious. As a magician, Mother Righteous works in terms of stories. She made this point to Shaw last issue: he was outwitted by her because he wasn’t thinking in story logic. Exodus, however, absolutely sees this desert trek in terms of a metaphorical religious story. What’s more, it’s a story that he probably knows better than she does…<\/p>\n

Exodus seems to interpret the Wolverines as symbolic. Again, given Mother Righteous’s general approach, he’s very likely to be right. Versions of Apocalypse and Phoenix are also apparently out there, and quite clearly not the originals.<\/p>\n

“Logan stabbed me once back when the Avengers and X-Men were at war.”<\/strong>\u00a0Avengers vs X-Men<\/em> #2, I think.<\/p>\n

PAGE 24.\u00a0<\/strong>Trailers. The Krakoan reads RISE AGAIN.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. IMMORTAL X-MEN #15 “Thirst Things First” Writer: Kieron Gillen Artist: Paco Medina Colour artist: David Curiel Letterer: Clayton Cowles Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen Editor: Jordan D White COVER \/ PAGE 1. A zombie Wolverine attacks. PAGES 2-4.\u00a0Selene eats Shaw’s […]<\/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-9407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9407","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=9407"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9407\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9410,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9407\/revisions\/9410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}