{"id":9607,"date":"2023-11-18T17:41:19","date_gmt":"2023-11-18T17:41:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=9607"},"modified":"2023-11-18T17:41:19","modified_gmt":"2023-11-18T17:41:19","slug":"children-of-the-vault-4-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=9607","title":{"rendered":"Children of the Vault #4 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

\"\"<\/a>CHILDREN OF THE VAULT #4<\/strong>
\n“Kill the Future!”<\/strong>
\nWriter: Deniz Camp<\/strong>
\nArtist: Luca Maresca<\/strong>
\nColour artist: Carlos Lopez<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Cory Petit<\/strong>
\nDesign: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen<\/strong>
\nEditor: Sarah Brunstad<\/strong><\/p>\n

COVER \/ PAGE 1.<\/strong> Cable and Bishop fight the Children of the Vault.<\/p>\n

PAGE 2.\u00a0<\/strong>Cable threatens to shoot the City.<\/em><\/p>\n

This is where we left off last issue.<\/p>\n

PAGE 3.\u00a0<\/strong>Recap and credits.<\/p>\n

PAGE 4.<\/strong> Rodrigo Mu\u00f1oz reacts – kind of – to the battle.<\/em><\/p>\n

We saw Rodrigo before in issue #1. He was the kid wandering around the lithium fields just before the City showed up overhead.<\/p>\n

As Martillo explained in issue #2, the Children’s “Message” transforms people “first in mind, then in body”; most humans will die in the process, but the tiny minority who survive will become Children of the Vault. Clearly, Rodrigo is some way into his transformation.<\/p>\n

“Tierra Desnuda”, the name of Rodrigo’s Children-built “Tomorrow Town”, was previously given in issue #1.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

PAGES 5-6.\u00a0<\/strong>Muerte appears on<\/em> the Orchis Reforge.<\/em><\/p>\n

Madre despatched Muerte for this mission in the previous issue. According to Madre, the Children had stopped cloning Muertes because they caused so much indiscriminate damage, but “the time again call for murder and megadeath”. She handed Muerte the object he’s holding here, evidently some sort of weapon. We’re not told directly how he got onto the Reforge, but presumably one of the Children will have teleporting powers – perhaps Muerte himself. Since he doesn’t appear to use any powers to destroy the Forge, it may be that what suits him for this role is just a willingness to destroy himself and others.<\/p>\n

Of course, Orchis now seems to work mainly from its orbiting space station rather than from the Orchis Forge (original or rebuilt), but the loss of this thing is still a significant setback for Orchis. In terms of the timeline, it’s maybe worth noting here that\u00a0Children of the Vault<\/em> #1 gives the time frame as “weeks later”, and not “X weeks later” as in most other “Fall of X” books. It also says that Cable has been an Orchis prisoner for “over a month”. Since\u00a0X-Men Red<\/em> places “X week more explicitly as 10 weeks, it seems to be possible for this whole series to take place during the “X weeks” gap, which would explain why the Children’s actions haven’t been referenced in other titles.<\/p>\n

PAGES 7-8. <\/strong>Cable confronts Serafina and Capit\u00e1n.<\/em><\/p>\n

The footnotes already refer to the first Children story, and specifically X-Men<\/em> #193, where Serafina briefly traps Cannonball in a simulated life together with her.<\/p>\n

Cannonball died at the Hellfire Gala along with the rest of the new X-Men team. His wife, Smasher, hasn’t shown up since, but presumably has views on the subject, which might become relevant if Alpha Flight ever succeed in evacuating any mutants to the Shi’ar Empire.<\/p>\n

Cable says that he’ll “work with whoever I have to… the devil himself”, which most obviously refers here to him teaming with his former arch-enemy Bishop. He does in fact refer to Bishop as “the devil himself” when he shoes up on page 12.<\/p>\n

PAGE 9. <\/strong>More humans collapse in response to the Message.<\/em><\/p>\n

PAGE 10. <\/strong>Luz kills from Orchis soldiers.<\/em><\/p>\n

The narrator alludes to Luz being one of the more sympathetic Children, which indeed she was in her earliest appearances,\u00a0X-Men: Legacy<\/em> #238-241. She starts off as an artist rebel trying to escape her predetermine role in the Children, and was set up as a potential love interest for Indra.<\/p>\n

PAGE 11. <\/strong>Data page. In issue #2, the data pages were excerpts from “the Tetrahedral Histories of Diamante, the Flawless Memory, the-Brilliant-Breathing-Record”. Apparently those pages should now be read as representing the official history of the Children, because this page comes “from the Anti-Histories of Diamente, the Hidden Facets, the Flawed Libraries”. Basically, it’s a basic cultural premise of the Children’s society that they are the destined rulers of the world, and Diamante is acknowledging the fact that this belief sits very awkwardly with their abysmal win-loss record. Of course, the Children’s official answer to this objection is that they just need more evolution and they’ll get there in the end.<\/p>\n

The Conquistador was the old tanker where the Children’s time-dilating Vault was located in their first appearances, starting in\u00a0X-Men<\/em> #188 (2006).<\/p>\n

PAGES 12-13.\u00a0<\/strong>Bishop arrives to help Cable.<\/em><\/p>\n

Capit\u00e1n clearly buys in to the idea of the Children so fundamentally that he can’t really understand any other worldview. Bishop spells out for us that the X-Men’s two paramilitary time travellers are not at all put off by the idea that they’re fighting “the future”.<\/p>\n

PAGE 14.\u00a0<\/strong>Diamante is consumed by his flaws.<\/em><\/p>\n

Presumably, this is connected in some way to the error which the City reported in the previous scene – perhaps because the flaw which he has always suppressed (as explained in the next data page) is now coming to fruition.<\/p>\n

PAGE 15.\u00a0<\/strong>Data page: Diamante expands on the previous page, essentially saying that the reason why the Children always fail is because their society, however highly developed, started on a flawed premise. He has suppressed this insight because (he believes) the Children’s society could not survive coming to terms with it.<\/p>\n

“Poor, desperate Sangre, struggling to be heard on the steps of the Foro…”\u00a0<\/strong>In issue #2, Diamante’s official history reported: “Every Citizen watched Sangre-142 tear himself apart on the steps of the Gran Foro to make a point. The City wept that day, but the point was lost.” Apparently, that version of Sangre did recognise that the Children had no right to lay claim to the world, and his attempt to make that argument was suppressed.<\/p>\n

PAGES 16-22. <\/strong>Cable and Bishop intimidate Serafina into surrendering.<\/em><\/p>\n

Cable has infected the City with a strand of the techno-organic virus from an alternate future, which he is able to control thanks to his years of training with his own T-O infection.<\/p>\n

“That’s why, when they brought me back from the dead, I insisted it be with my virus.”<\/strong> This was indeed the first thing Cable asked about when he was resurrected in\u00a0Cable<\/em> #11 (2021).<\/p>\n

“Bishop here picked it up a week ago.”<\/strong> In issue #2.<\/p>\n

Babel<\/strong> Spires.\u00a0<\/strong>This is indeed the standard life cycle of a techno-organic infection; it was the central plot of the 1990s “Phalanx Covenant” crossover, and most recently came up over in\u00a0Legion of X<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Madre<\/strong> was attacked by Bishop last issue, and this scene makes clear that she was deliberately targetted in order to threaten the Children’s ability to clone future generations.<\/p>\n

Bishop\u00a0<\/strong>alludes to the fact that he committed far greater atrocities than this during the\u00a0Cable<\/em> solo series where he was pursuing Hope through alternate futures, something that most writers have tended to run a mile from. Deniz Camp is unusual in embracing it as an aspect of Bishop doing literally anything that he considers necessary. Of course, the Children don’t know anything about this (presumably), but Bishop and Cable are indeed unusually well placed to make the credible claim that they simply do not care about conventional X-Men moral values – certainly when up against the Children trying to kill 99%+ of the planetary population.<\/p>\n

Serafina\u00a0<\/strong>ends the series by, rather bitterly, objecting that all Bishop and Cable ever had to offer the human race was “projection after projection of their impending demise” – i.e., an endless series of stories about apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic futures. They’re not just time travellers, but they embody a fundamentally pessimistic – almost nihilistic – sub-genre of superhero comics, where the future is always dismal. To Serafina, a world where 99%+ of humanity gets wiped out and the rest join the Children is still an improvement on anything in Bishop and Cable’s continuity.<\/p>\n

“What is, is”\u00a0<\/strong>was the Askani mantra in various 90s Cable stories.<\/p>\n

The narrator tells us that once the “Message” is defeated, “something else rushes in to take its place” – apparently Orchis. This seems to confirm that\u00a0Children of the Vault<\/em> takes place during the time jump made in the other “Fall of X” books.<\/p>\n

PAGES 23-24.\u00a0<\/strong>The Children retreat back to the Vault.<\/em><\/p>\n

Serafina throws in a warning that something even worse is coming, and the humans will just die from that instead.<\/p>\n

Orchis are shown holding a victory parade after claiming credit for the defeat of the Children; Killian Devo is the guy waving to the public.<\/p>\n

We end with an image of a sickening Rodrigo Mu\u00f1oz, with the news reporting that the degrading Tomorrow Towns have turned toxic. Bear in mind that the series opened with Mu\u00f1oz in a poisoned landscape already, and if he’s one of the humans who would have survived the transformation – as his scene earlier in the issue seems to suggest – then in a sense he was<\/em> robbed of a better future by the Children’s defeat. I mean, aside from the point where all his friends and family would have died…<\/p>\n

PAGE 25.\u00a0<\/strong>Trailers. Since this is the final issue, we’re directed to\u00a0X-Men<\/em> #29. The Krakoan reads FOLLOW THE FALL.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. CHILDREN OF THE VAULT #4 “Kill the Future!” Writer: Deniz Camp Artist: Luca Maresca Colour artist: Carlos Lopez Letterer: Cory Petit Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen Editor: Sarah Brunstad COVER \/ PAGE 1. Cable and Bishop fight the Children of […]<\/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-9607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9607","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=9607"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9607\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9609,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9607\/revisions\/9609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}